The Hounding

by Xenobe Purvis

Anne was loved by all in the burning but inattentive way that children love their mothers.

He was sure she had seen in his face his naked longing, but there was nothing he could do; he was transfixed by the sight of her. He would have done anything in that moment. He would have knelt at her feet right then and there, would have killed for her, would have died for her, even. Yes, he realised with some bemusement—he would do whatever she asked. She had bewitched him completely.

She thought about what they all went through each day: the great, gruelling trial of being a woman in a world governed by men.

It would end, as first loves always did, and she would marry a more fitting man. Occasionally, perhaps, over the course of her long and level life, she might sit and wonder at the fierceness of that first love, the mad unsuitability of it.