Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft

by Jessica Spotswood

We say this with conviction, but we also know what it’s like to have no idea what’s coming and to want to meet it anyway, no matter what anyone says. To ignore warning signs, to believe the best in people. A truck hit each of us, one after the other, and it’s still on the road, now heading for this girl.

“How is it so bright?” the one of us called Mirah said. The moon had grown along with us, and she was looking up at it. She didn’t understand she’d done it. We all had, and we were only getting started. She didn’t realize that all her roaring, living, breathing anger could create so much light. *

memories make things grander and more beautiful when you want to think fondly of them.

Just that even in our most-told stories, sometimes the grandmas don’t know how to tell the really bad parts. We grew up not understanding a lot of stuff,

I wish I could stop smiling at things I hate. Sometimes I wish I never learned.

At Kolbe, the teachers would have called down thunder on something like that. It wouldn’t have been allowed. It wasn’t allowed at St. Constantine, either—they had one of those zero tolerances—but that kind of thing only works when someone knows how to catch you. The anointed douchebags in their halos never got caught at anything.

The way they thought it was so funny was sort of normal—people are assholes, that’s not a secret. The thing that made me bite my pencil and wish for a metal spine was that they could do it, and keep on doing it forever.

was just mad. Mad at Maya, and mad that the meanest, most hateful thing that someone could say was just another way of pointing out that you were a girl.

When I smile, I’m not smiling. I’m showing you my teeth.

But men were the most unpredictable animals, and those that found Elsa’s oasis were usually lost both in geography and life, looking for directions, land, or, worst of all, wives.

The line between cure and poison is always fine, and walking it takes all the skill and gift I have in me.

I said my prayers to God, who I believed still wanted me, even if the men who took up His name on Earth never would.

She warned me that, especially in small towns, people believed in our remedios when they needed us and called us sorceresses when they didn’t.

“Faith comes in as many forms as the faithful.”

Boys like Adrián sometimes loved witches, even considered marrying them. But when it came time for any public declaration, they always faltered.

She’s had her fill of Grander, Wyoming. Last time she went to get groceries, a girl from high school said hello and then: I’d heard you buzzed your head. That just about summed it up. Grander: where you can move two thousand miles away, and people will still hear about your damn haircut.

When Nova asked her mother if they were related to the Salem witches, Momma smiled at her three girls. “In a way, you’re related to many women who have suffered for misunderstanding and fear.”

The doors in the house don’t lock—never had. But the girls have a rule between them, for doors and for emotional boundaries: never barge in unless it’s an emergency.

Rosie never yells, really, except at Nova. And she’s always wondered why that is. It seems so clear now: she can yell at her older sister because Novy’s love is not conditional on Rosie’s behavior.

They’d plead with her to let them in, but they’d never, ever kick her door down. They’d whisper her name back when she’d lost it, place the missing pieces back into her hands. What a wonder—love that powerful, but so careful to never break anything in its path.

If you don’t feel safe enough to yell back, you’re not safe enough. My babies, that is not love.

The priests bless the wood and mark it with symbols to ward against witchcraft—highly valued in an age when they claim witches walk amongst us, disguised as your mother, your sister, your daughter, your wife.

So our lumber builds men houses, furniture, and gleaming tables like the ones I once set with food. The warded wood is meant to protect them from me, from all of us. From our curses and our words and our seductive ways—but not just that. We provide the wood that burns witches.

Then I think of witches, and understand that there are too many people in this world who would rather see a woman burn than wield power.

The priest likes to speak in a soft voice compared to the guards. He presents himself as humble. He tells us to work harder as he starves us. He tells us to hold on to our axes as our fingers are numb from cold. He quotes scripture to women he’s already condemned to Hell.

I’d go to Hell for every single one of these girls if it meant they never have to endure that.

As if three hours of prayer every day (twenty-one hours a week, not counting the expectation of pious thoughts, the dinner speeches, the nighttime murmurs. An entire day spent praying to a god for forgiveness—the same god that men offer the burned corpses of witches) meant much of anything.

When I swung my axe (again and again, each stroke splintering the wood with strength I never knew I had), he stared in resentment and loathing.

He would call me sweetheart, dear, love, pet, because I might as well have been any woman—any woman at all—unworthy of a name.

I understand now that magic is not for wickedness, not for the devil, not for those with cruel hearts. It’s for hope. For survival. It thrives in the darkness not because it is dark in nature, but because the fire shines brightest then. This is what witchcraft looks like: It is women holding hands, harnessing power, and changing their fate. If every woman practiced such a thing, we would learn what Eve did after she ate that apple. When she held knowledge in her hands. We would upend the world.

I must write another lesson here for those who come after us if we don’t succeed, for the women who find their way into this forest and are tempted to drop their axes and disappear. I am writing this now with my heart and with my mind and with my magic where I know everyone will see: Look at our handprints. Memorize our names. We did not go quietly.