The Year of the Witching

by Alexis Henderson

“I would do it because I care for you, Immanuelle. And I believe that, with time and atonement, we could be of use to each other.”

“In a holy way, through the bond of marriage.

“You do favor her when you look at me that way.” “Favor who?” “Your grandmother. Vera Ward.

True evil, Immanuelle realized now, wore the skin of good men. It uttered prayers, not curses. It feigned mercy where there was only malice. It studied Scriptures only to spit out lies.

“What do I have to atone for?” “I think you know.” “I never claimed perfection, Immanuelle. We all make mistakes.”

There is nothing you wouldn’t do, no one you wouldn’t hurt, to keep power in your hands.”

What keeps me up—tossing and turning and sweating in my sheets—is the knowledge of how fragile it all really is.

No, to be prophet is to be the one man willing to damn your soul for the good of the flock. Salvation always demands a sacrifice.”

It was all of the innocent girls and women—like Miriam and Leah—who suffered and died at the hands of men who exploited them. They were Bethel’s sacrifice.

It was the whole of them, the heart of Bethel itself, that made certain every woman who lived behind its gate had only two choices: resignation, or ruin.

But it won’t be enough to save your life . . . or your wretched soul.”

For Ezra, she said to herself, turning his name over in her head. For Honor. For Glory. For Miriam. For Vera. For Daniel. For Leah. For Bethel and all of the innocents in it.

I have broken the holy conduct of meekness and modesty and spoken out of turn.

“His words mean nothing,” said Esther bitterly. “Less than nothing.

She was a prize lamb,

Perhaps she ought to have prayed in that moment—to something, to anyone—but all she thought to do was conjure a curse: Let those who have raised a hand to me reap the harm they sow. Let the shadows snuff their light. Let their sins defy them.

This was, after all, the first time in Bethel’s age-old history that a prophet had wed one of their own.

Fire licked across Ezra’s back.

Grab the knife hello

“There is.” A voice echoed through the dark, and to Immanuelle’s shock, Martha stepped forward, moving between tables to the front of the feast. “I’ll go in her stead. Spare her.”

“His sins are mine.”

The maiden will bear a daughter, they will call her Immanuelle, and she will redeem the flock with wrath and plague.

The sigil hadn’t worked. She’d failed.

Slaughter.

“If this is the end, then I die with them.”

Immanuelle raised her bloody hands and, with a ragged cry, summoned the power of the plagues.

She let herself feel the ugly. She accepted it all

Blood.

Blight.

Darkness.

The sounds of slaughter died into the hiss of wind in the treetops.

even motherly.

She shut her eyes against it, reached into the depths of herself, and unleashed all that she had to give.

Slaughter.

And on that day, when the dark has passed and the sun has risen again, the sins of the deceivers will be brought to light and the truth will emerge from the shadows.

THERE WAS SUNLIGHT

There was no divinity in this violence. No justice. No sanctity.

All that ruin and pain had been wrought not from the Mother’s darkness or the Father’s light, but from the sins of man.

More women followed,

then other women of the Church after them—little

I want a world where sins are atoned for. A world where evil men suffer for their wrongdoing.”

“The world you want can’t be bought with blood.

A world without slaughter.”

“I think we should call it Year of the Dawn.”