Thus begins the Mamagrow storyline – one of the funnier moments in the whole Puck series. For those that have been following along with the series, you’ll know that Puck’s lack of endowment has long been a source of cheap jokes. That unholy tradition continues here.

My one friend thought that the Mamagrow salesman looked freaky. I guess he does.

And for those who aren’t the native English-speaking types, the whole “first-born child” thing has been taken from the European folktale “Rumpelstiltskin”, where the evil gnome/goblin/dwarf creature called Rumpelstiltskin makes a girl promise to hand over her first-born child in exchange for him spinning straw into gold. That sort of weird literary allusion pops up now and then in this series.