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It was the summer that made her anxious.
Could someone plateau at twenty-four? Could your brain shrink? She felt tired and listless all the time. Often, she was sad for no reason.
As for the Devil, he seemed to live everywhere in New England. There was a Devil’s Rock and a Devil’s Footprint and a Devil’s Pulpit.
On the night of the new moon evil witches liked to dance against the treetops; that was what her great-grandmother used to say. They’d slip out of their human skins and grow wings, turn into balls of light, and cavort in the sky. The teyolloquani, the most fearsome of all, drank the blood of their victims and ate their hearts.
That’s what their name means, “heart eater,” Nana Alba had said. Listen, this story, you should hear it and learn how to fight them. About how to know them. Know the signs. A true witch is born, the day of their birth marks their path.
“Growing old is terribly inconvenient,”
Some moments return to us, intact and incandescent, undimmed by the passage of time.
She had that terrible split second of panic in which she did not know what shape a man’s rage might take.
Time is a treacherous mistress. In our youth it flows slow and deep; the days stretch out endlessly. When we are children, a summer lasts for a century. As we age, the flow of time speeds up. Suddenly, a year vanishes with the snap of one’s fingers. How quickly time eludes us, how easily it tricks us.
When the lamps bloom on the street, I peek through the curtains and gaze at shadows. Who goes there, I wonder. What goes there.
“You speak with footnotes tacked onto every sentence.”
