I remember we walked for hours. We walked and walked, until finally we stopped in a clearing.

Mother made me sit down on a stump in the middle of the clearing and promised that she would return. "Wait right here," she told me, and I did.

For three days, I waited just as she told me to. On the evening of the third day, I was found.

"What are you doing here?" The voice that interrupted my thoughts was unfamiliar. It was lower-pitched and raspier than Mother's, but still undeniably a woman's.

"Waiting for my mother," I replied, swinging my legs against the stump. I wasn't bothered by this stranger; I wasn't even afraid that she might hurt me. After all, Mother was coming back for me, and she wouldn't let anyone hurt me. She was too nice for that.

The woman in front of me frowned, setting the basket that she held down on the ground. The glass vials inside clink against one another unharmoniously, their contents sloshing around. "Waiting?" she repeated, her brow furrowed in thought. "For how long?"

"Three days," I answered, seeing nothing wrong with this length of time. If it was unusual, it didn't occur to me then.

A dark expression passed over the woman's face – this, too, went over my head; it didn't occur to me either that she was reacting to Mother leaving me behind.

"Well," she said slowly, as if she was tasting her words before speaking, "how would you like to come home with me? Just for a bite to eat. You must be hungry after so long."

"But Mother told me to wait here..." Not to mention, she was a stranger. I might not have been worried about this strange woman hurting me, but even with a child's mind, I knew wandering off with a stranger was unwise.

"Surely she wouldn't want you to starve. It would be awful if your mother returned to you all skin and bones, wouldn't it?" The woman held out a hand for me to take, and I did. She led me back to her house, a quaint little cottage that looked like it belonged in a storybook. Maybe it had come from a storybook, for all I knew.

There was a stew simmering when we walked in, the scent of spices permeating the air. The woman – now my savior – took one of the vials from her basket, its contents a bright canary yellow.

"What's that?" I asked, my nose twitching as she added the substance to the stew. It somehow made the food smell even better; even the cottage itself seemed a little more homely.

"Joy," she said simply, not explaining further. I didn't ask any further, supposing that if she wanted to explain, then she would.

She ladled out a bowl for me, sitting me down at a round, wooden table that was clearly well-used. Maybe it was the added vial of joy, or maybe it was simply eating after so long, but either way, the food left a burst of warmth in me, as though it were the first ray of sunlight I had felt in ages. I practically inhaled my bowl after that – now that was definitely because of hunger.

Not having an extra bed, the woman tucked me into her own. The quilt was soft and well-used, clearly handmade.

"My mother wouldn't lie, would she?" I asked, staring up at the ceiling. "She's too nice to lie."

She stopped in the doorway; her silence was incredibly telling, even to my ears. "Perhaps. But nice does not always mean good, child."

The days became weeks became months, and there was never any sign of Mother. At first, I worried that she was lost. I had read about faeries spiriting people away, so perhaps that was what happened to Mother. Eventually, though, my memory of her left, just as she had on that fateful day.

"Mother?" I had taken to calling the woman who found me my mother. After all, what else would I call her? She was raising me in the absence of the woman who abandoned me, therefore she was my mother in everything but blood.

"Yes?"

"Why do you collect emotions?" I had figured out by then that the basket she'd been carrying when she found me held vials of emotion, raw and unfiltered.

"People give them to me freely," she said simply – she said most things this way, I learned early on. She turned a vial of grief between her fingers, the dull grey seeming to repel light. "Grief, despair, envy, anger – we all feel these, yet so many seek to get rid of them. You will understand when you're older, child," she finished with a sigh, turning away from me.

I didn't press further, believing that I would understand eventually. It seemed that a lot of things would make more sense when I was older. As inquisitive as I was, for now I was content to leave things for my older self to understand.

Over the years, my mother taught me all that she knew, and I gladly soaked it up like a sponge. My mother's magic came more easily to me than trying to understand it did. I gave her plenty of gray hairs in the process, to be sure. It wasn't until much later, after a botched hair dye job that left my hair a dusky pink, that something occurred to me.

"Mother, have you ever taken someone's emotions from them?"

"I do it all the time, dear," she responded, a touch of amusement in her voice.

"You know what I mean," I said with a huff, turning to face her. I wasn't looking at her face, though, not really. Instead, my eyes fell upon the shelves of vials behind her, all filled with liquid emotion. Most were negative: mostly the dull blue of sadness, the deep gray of grief, and occasionally even the true black of despair. Others were more intense, like the violent, pulsing red of anger. The rarest among these vials were the radiant colors of positivity, all shining brighter than the rest: canary yellow joy, soft pink love, even the sky blue of hope.

Those who came in to get rid of the latter were always the most downtrodden and beaten down; people who believed they didn't deserve those emotions at all. It baffled me, but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel so deeply for them that I felt the ache in my bones.

"Do you think I have?" my mother asked, raising an eyebrow at me as she looked up from the quilt she was stitching together.

"...No," I admitted, feeling ashamed that I would even consider such a thing. "It seems like an evil thing to do, and you are far too nice."

My mother smiled, bowing her head slightly. "Perhaps. But nice does not always mean good."

The seasons passed by in a blur, the warm tones of fall giving way to the cold bite of winter, which in turn softened to the fresh green of spring. As I grew older, even if only by mere months, I grew restless. But even if I were to leave, where would I go? Not to mention, there was the matter of my mother, who wasn't getting any younger.

"Perhaps it's time you went off on your own," she suggested to me one day. Her back was turned to me, her expression hidden from view. The cauldron of strawberry jam simmered under her patient hand, the familiar smell of nostalgia in the air.

I jolted to my feet in surprise, nearly knocking over the jam that I'd already bottled in my haste. "What? Why?!"

"You have grown restless," she said in that simple way of hers, finally turning to face me. Before I could even open my mouth to protest, she silenced me with an upheld hand. "Don't deny it. You are not a child anymore. It's time you made your own way."

"Yes, I... I suppose you're right," I conceded, sitting down more carefully than I'd stood.

My mother smiled, not refuting my statement, pacified by my acquiescence. "The city would be good for you. There are more opportunities at the very least."

A few weeks later, I left, taking the quilt that my mother stitched. Spells of protection and warmth were in every stitch, dyed with bottles of joy. She made me promise to visit, and I did, lingering just a moment too long on the doorstep of the only home I remembered.

My mother was right about the city, as it would turn out – it was good for me. Maybe a little too good. I didn't remember my former life in the city at all, but returning felt too much like stepping back into the world I belonged in. It felt like a betrayal to the woods I grew up in.

Eventually, though, I grew to call the city my home away from home in the few months I'd set up shop, offering the same services my mother had.

My mother had been right about another thing, too: it was easier now to understand why people gave up their emotions so easily. Grief and other forms of sadness were the most common, followed by envy and anger and fear. Despair was rare and positive emotions were even rarer. Even bottled, the extracted emotions seemed to pulse through the glass vials. Being in their presence could be overwhelming, especially all at once.

All was well, until...

Until I encountered her one day. Although years had passed, I knew her immediately. A wave of anger rose in me; this was the woman who'd abandoned me in the forest, who didn't even have the decency to leave me in a town and instead left me to starve. In that moment, I hated her. Maybe I always had.

She looked well-off, her clothing fancier than I remembered. Perhaps she'd remarried or went on to be a socialite. She gave no indication that she recognized me or if she even remembered me. And why would she? I wasn't the child she left behind anymore.

There were children running ahead of her, both with the same flaxen hair as hers – hair that was the same color as mine had once been. One of them – a girl; older, if I had to guess by height – bumped into me as they ran past, the treats she held staining my shirt.

"Children! What did I say about running?!" she called out after them, the cajoling tone in her voice as unfamiliar as she was. She realized I was there just then, a horrified expression forming on her face as she took in the state of my clothing. "Oh, I'm so sorry about your shirt! I insist you send me the cleaning bill, it's the least I can do."

She handed me a calling card before chasing after her children. The card was clearly professionally done; its paper was both crisp and thick and the letters were embossed, spelling out her name and address as plain as day. Obviously, Mother had been doing well for herself if she had such calling cards to hand out as if they were money. She'd been polite, kind...nice, even.

But then again... Nice did not always mean good.