The Year of the Witching

by Alexis Henderson

wandered astray too many times—reading in secret, in breach of Holy Protocol, or forgetting to say her evening prayers and falling asleep unblessed. Maybe she had spent too many mornings daydreaming in the pastures when she should have been herding her sheep. Or perhaps she hadn’t demonstrated a spirit of gratitude when being served a bowl of cold dinner gruel. But Immanuelle knew this much: She had far too many sins to count. It was no wonder she hadn’t received the Father’s blood blessing.

She had never fully understood what the Prophet had seen in her mother. Some said it was love, others lust, but most believed that Miriam had seduced the Prophet with her witchery. There were so many stories and secrets, tangled threads and loose ends, but Immanuelle wondered if the truth lay somewhere in the intersections between them all.

After all, a prophet was nothing more than a vessel of the Father, and the Father was not always the benevolent god of light. He was also wrath and fire, brimstone and storm, and He often used His almighty power to smite the witch and the heathen alike. Immanuelle could only imagine how dangerous a man might become when filled with a holy wrath like that.

This was not some one-room study tucked into the back of a schoolhouse. It was a full cathedral, but in place of the pews, there were bookshelves, rows and rows of them, from the altar to the threshold where she stood. On the right wall was a spiral staircase that twisted up to what ought to have been the organ deck, but instead of an organ, there were just a few rusted pipes with crooked shelves wedged between them.

“Why did the Prophet want those names?” “What?” “In the Haven, your father asked you to compile all the names of the women and girls in Bethel. Why?” Ezra’s answer was halting. “It’s said that a curse can only come from the mouth of a woman. From the mouth of a witch.” A curse. There it was, then. The truth out in the open. “That’s what he thinks this is?” “Well, it’s certainly not a blessing,” said Ezra. “What else could you call it?”

The woman is a cunning creature. Made in the likeness of her Mother, she is at once the creator and the destroyer. She is kind until she is cruel, meek until she is merciless.

“In life, most of us have the luxury of nuance. We may be angry, but we balance that anger with mercy. We may be filled with joy, but that doesn’t prohibit us from empathizing with those who aren’t. But after we die, that changes and we’re distilled down to our most rudimentary compulsions. A single desire so powerful it trumps all others.”

“The world you want can’t be bought with blood. You build it with the choices you make, with the things you do. Either we can keep purging, keep the pyres burning, keep hoping that our prayers will be enough to save us—or we can build something better. A world without slaughter.”