The Hounding

by Xenobe Purvis

She thought about what they all went through each day: the great, gruelling trial of being a woman in a world governed by men. How painful it was, and how humiliating. To be forced to hold your dead friend aloft because it was thought that you, in your smallness and stupidity, might not realise that this could be your fate.

He and his wife had brought them up as they had brought up their own son, with interests and dreams. Perhaps it had been a mistake, he thought, to let them believe they could reach beyond what the world expected of them. The world expected so little.

little tasks were the foot soldiers in the ongoing battle against despair.

the villagers were more afraid of the girls themselves than they were of the dogs. Girls—normal human girls—people could contend with; they were weak and small. And dogs too could be trained. But girls who became dogs, or who let the world believe they were dogs, were either powerful or mad: both monstrous possibilities.

God was like the vicar: she knew everything about him, but he had never shown any interest in her.

He had seen them. Beautiful dogs, fierce and full of power. Amid his grief and his fear, he found another feeling—gladness. The old thought returned to him, that he’d rather they were dogs than damaged girls. He’d rather they were free than confined by him.