Carefully, the way you draw something up out of deep water, I worked the object free of the stuffing and pulled my hand back out through the torn seam.

Resting in my palm was a small pouch of dark velvet, worn soft at the corners, tied shut with a piece of twine gone gray and brittle with age.

My hands were shaking.

I set it on the table and looked at it for a long moment, almost afraid of it — of what it might be, of what it might mean, of the way it turned that ordinary kitchen into a place where something enormous was about to happen.

Then I took up a small knife and cut the old string, and it fell away, and I tipped the pouch over onto the wooden table, and two things slid out into the lamplight.