A Resistance of Witches

by Morgan Ryan

passing through a magical door was a rite of passage—the black-and-white partition where one’s old life ends, and a newer, stranger one begins.

“You have no talent for diplomacy. Your teachers tell me you are hardheaded, and honest to a fault. You bow to no one when you know you’re right, not even when doing so would save you pain and trouble. And when you have decided upon a thing, you will see it through to the end, even if it costs you dearly.”

“Show me a world that does not hate a powerful woman, and I’ll show you a world without men.”

“Their mothers and grandmothers hanged or drowned. Their daughters left untrained. The academy was founded in the midst of that tragedy, Miss Polk, to ensure that our knowledge could never be lost.

“True leadership is knowing the difference between the things that concern you, and the things that don’t.

birds sang to each other in the morning as a way of making sure everyone had made it safely through the night.

Men have power the moment they enter the world. Women have to make their own.

“In America, when you’re a Black man, you’re a boy. It doesn’t matter how old, or how educated. You’re a boy until the day you die. ‘Watch your mouth, boy. Don’t get smart, boy.’ ” He shrugged. “In France I’m a man.” “The Nazis don’t see you as a man.” “There are Nazis everywhere. They just go by different names.”

We shared a body once before, she heard her mother say. I loved you then, long before we’d even met. I will always love you.

We don’t die, my love, Evelyn had told her, though Lydia remembered her mother’s eyes were red and rimmed with tears. Not really. We change, yes. We become other things—the grass and flowers, trees and wind and stars. We rejoin the Great Mother, and our souls disperse into the universe, and become a part of a hundred million other living things, forever and ever.