It was a long time ago, when I was a young girl. It happened before the colonies went to war. It was before there was much thought for rebellion, or revolution, or freedom—or at least representation.
Back then, we worried about different things. We spoke of our fear of harsh winters and plagues.
We never spoke of what we really feared.
That’s how witchcraft works. You spoke of it, and it came at you. You never spoke of it, you never believed in it, and God would always protect you. You never doubted true faith, and its power was always with you.
We learned. As children, we learned. You never went to the old house across the fields. The old man was retired by then, and the fields grew nothing but tall grass and weeds that froze into a solid wall in the early frosts.
Something was wrong with the scarecrow in his field. We never learned what. That would bring the magik. That would believe in the magik. That would doubt God.
Even as children, though, we knew that the strangeness was there. The ravens all gathered on it, tore at something inside the tattered and stained clothes. There was no straw. You could see that. The head looked odd. Small. Strange. Black.
We never went near it.
No one spoke of it, so I do not know if the others feared it. I cannot know what I felt, being small and innocent at the time. I did not go near it. I respected its space. I respected the power that the others insinuated it had. Yet, I never felt the shivers the rest of the people in the village seemed to have as they passed it by. I never felt the need to cross myself when the murder of crows would fly off from it suddenly. It was there. And I was not. I gave it the distance I thought it should have from me. I left all thought of it at that.
Someone must have spoken of it. Maybe they dreamed about it, an accident. Maybe it was all accidents.
Yes, I went near it.
But that was later. Much later.
It was after my father was murdered, and my mother lost her hands.