Jenni Fagan

A powerfully poignant tale of one of the most turbulent moments in Scotland's history: the North Berwick Witch Trials. IT’S THE 4TH OF DECEMBER 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh’s High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor – Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe. As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace – and the tantalising prospect of escape. Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terrible force of a king’s violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day. 'This series has already produced two works of note and distinction. It raises the question – if a country cannot re-tell its history, will it be stuck forever in aspic and condemned to be nothing more than a shortbread tin illustration? Hex and Rizzio are showing the way towards a reckoning, and about time too’ – Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

Darkland Tales

Laura Dobie

A woman's voice is a hex. She must learn to exalt men always. If she doesn't do that, then she is a threat. A demon whore, a witch so says everyone and the law. So say the King and his guards. So say the witch-pricker and his sadistic friends. So say the husbands, the haters, the wives, the daughters, the God-fearing - demons are always trying to kill them, so they know. So says the hangman who sleeps with Bible in hand. 

Bring upon a woman only shame. Make sure there is nothing she can say that could be taken as truth! Take the only thing she owns - her voice, her mind. Take it. Grind it into something pestilent. Line her up as dust and imbibe. What a way to get high! Absorb her. Destroy what brought you here. Power is not something women are allowed to own easily or - often - at all, let alone learn to wield. Not by law! The church says no. Education does not teach what should be taught. Girls learn to shine in secret.

I will not let him make me the way he is: that kind of malevolence belongs to him, and I return it to him threefold – he will not spoil me bitter like the cream. There is mostly just good in me. His toxic bile does not belong in my throat to make my gut acidic and corrode my body as well as mind and soul. I am a healer. I was born like this. I am a pure one. I cannot choose to live, but I can decide to leave this world with men's hatred as the strongest mark on me.

Hex quotes

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