Kirsty Logan

Now She Is Witch

Laura Dobie

And she thought then of the people in the village, watching their families and neighbours choke to death on their own blood, powerless against the sickness, desperate for someone to blame. And of Hulda, and of other girls like her, raising her voice in a cry of witch! because it was the only way it could be heard. 

There, alone in her cell, Lux realised that power did notjust sit around waiting to be found. Power could only be taken - and only from people who had less of it than you did. Women already had so little, and poor women least of all; they were easiest to take from. So what does a woman do if she is already poor, already powerless? She finds a poorer woman and blames her.

What is a witch, anyway? I ask you: have you wished anybody harm? Have you grasped for a tiny bit of power when you had none? Have you been scorned and cast out? Then you too are a witch. All of this she would say. 

There was beauty in the dark, and safety and wonder. The dark was not bad, was not evil or secretive; the dark just was.

Then she'd gone to the stronghold and lived only in the day, and been always lit by dozens of candles. But what scheming and secrets were hidden in the light of that place. The light was not good, was not pure or cleansing; the light just was. Without one, there can't be the other. 

‘The bonfires will burn through the night,’ said Else, answering Lux's thoughts, 'and be extinguished at dawn. Light in the dark' 

Else came to Lux and held out the curl of ribbon. 

When she looked at Saga, Lux did not see a north witch. She did not see a lonely woman. She saw something more important and more powerful: a woman who was entirely herself.

At the sanctuary there was honey to be collected, herbs to be picked, clothing to be washed in the stream; admittedly there were also prayers - so many prayers - and they were done indoors. Lux didn't like the thought that her prayers floated up to the pointed roof of the church and got caught there like dandelion fluff, mixing with the prayers of all the other girls. Even if they managed to escape from there, how would her words be separated from the others? Far better, in her opinion, to pray under the sky, where her words could fly straight up and not snag on anything missed this: the outside, the night-time.

It was a shame, it really was; women couldn't help being more susceptible to possession.

Lux watched. She waited. She knew she wasn't really a kitchen girl, but she played her role as best she could. But then - the thought came suddenly to her. Were any of the kitchen girls really kitchen girls? Even Goodwife Ethelinda - the way she could hack apart a side of meat, knife thudding on the counter, blood staining her knuckles; then the next moment construct the most delicate sugared fancies, coloured pale and pretty as flower petals, so dainty that a single breath could topple them. The same two hands used to make both. Was anyone one thing only?

All these poisons, she had realised from hearing the other girls talk about what they did and didn't grow in their respective gardens, were linked with witches and the devil. How silly it all was. A plant couldn't be either good or evil: it was what people did with them that mattered.

she dies for every thing she is & every thing they want her to be that she isnt - 

& all their secrets die with her & i bet they are glad of that most of all -

& it seems to me that she became no longer a woman- 

because it is a careful line we walk my mother & i - 

& we both know that a devil in a girl who is not a proper woman is only a sniff away from being a witch -

So this was the sickness. She hadn't known it would be so terrible; it was as if God was angry at this man in particular, and was punishing him. It seemed the witches sacrificed on the drowning posts weren't quite enough. God was still angry about something.

Beautifully written, haunting and absorbing. A searing indictment of the treatment of women.

Now She Is Witch

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