The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

There’s no such thing as witches, but there used to be.

i used to be an academic, sort of. i got my master's in history, and spent lots of hours pursuing, considering, weighing, and writing the truth. now, of course, i'm a professional liar. this book in particular is full of lies. i lied about the names of cities and people and the dates of the pullman strike and the triangle shirtwaist fire. i made up an entire alternate history of witchcraft and worker's rights. i combined real people and condensed timelines so that i could fit something as vast and diverse and diffuse as the women's suffrage movement into a single book. but the best lies are the ones that are based on the truth. you know that twain quote, "history never repeats itself, but it rhymes"? this book doesn't accurately reflect our history, but it does rhyme with it. (a small thing that amuses me is that twain may or may not have said that; nobody seems to know where it came from, but it persists, one of history's little white lies). so i want to thank you for putting up with 500 pages of fibs. i'm providing these notes for anyone who wants to know where it rhymes.

Eastwood

a shameless reference to The Witches of Eastwick. (no, not the updike novel, the 1987 movie with both pfieffer and sarandon at peak hotness.)

A tangled web she weaves When she wishes to deceive.

sounds like shakespeare, but it's actually stolen from walter scott, who was trying very hard to sound like shakespeare at the time and probably grins in his grave every time someone mis-attributes it: 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave/ when first we practise to deceive!'

Miss Cady Stone, NSWA President.

named after Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone, which is a little mean of me because actually they fought so badly over the 14th and 15th amendments that they formed competing women's rights organizations (NWSA and AWSA). the New Salem Women's Association has an intentionally similar acronym, which i thought was clever until i mis-typed it approx. 400 times.

Clement Hughes

named for vermont's Governor Clement, who vetoed a bill permitting women to vote in presidential elections.

war-witches of Dahomey,

the french really did go to war against Dahomey, and Dahomey really did have an elite force of women warriors (called Mino by the Fon, and Amazons by Europeans). most of them died in the second franco-dahomean war, around 1893 but like, what if they'd been WITCHES?

stubborn Choctaw still holed up in Mississippi.

in a world where magic is real, where it persists most strong in non-european cultures, i figure the trail of tears wouldn't have gone the way president jackson hoped.

There are many versions of this story, but there is always a pricked finger. There are always three drops of the Maiden’s blood.

lord, i love fairytale retellings. right after i finished this book i wrote a multiverse version of sleeping beauty called "a spindle splintered" which is coming out from tor.com in 2021!

Sister, sister, Look around, Something’s lost And must be found! A spell to find what can’t be found, requiring a pinch of salt & a sharp eye

a twisted version of st. anthony's prayer, which i stole from my italian in-laws

Miss Grace Wiggin,

named for Kate Douglas Wiggin, a children's author who actively and stridently campaigned against women's rights.

The New Salem Defender.”

named after The Defender, a Black newspaper out of Chicago, which is still in (digital) print

Colored Women’s League.

the real CWL was founded in D.C. in 1892, and eventually merged with other groups to become the National Association of Colored Women

Madame Zina Card:

name stolen from Zina P. Young Card, who was a women's rights activist and also the daughter of Brigham Young, and who would probably be pissed to have her name associated with an immigrant abortionist witch. it's her fault for having a cool-sounding name.

C. P. QUINN

quinn is very much fashioned in Ida B.'s illustrious image, but the quinn comes from Hallie Quinn Brown, a slightly earlier Black activist and educator

Geoffrey Hawthorn

named for John Hathorne, the only judge from the salem witch trials who never regretted his actions.

Jackson Turner’s The Witch in American History,

a joke exclusively for history grad students: Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis argued that the fight for the "frontier" in american history--which could also be called, you know, theft and genocide--defined our national spirit, without which we would lose our hardy, pioneering identity.

“How, then, did Cairo manage to repel the Ottomans and the redcoats both for decades, despite all their rifles and ships?

if egyptians had witchcraft, i don't think conquest would have been so easy. (i also thought an independent and powerful Cairo would have been a powerful symbol of freedom and resistance to Black americans, which is where Cleo's name comes from)

Jennie Lind,

if this name rings a faint bell, you might google Jennie June.

Inez Gillmore

named for Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was the super hot suffragist who famously rode the white horse in the 1913 parade

Electa Gage, who keeps muttering about chaining themselves to public buildings like the English ladies did. Juniper doesn’t understand what this is supposed to achieve, but she admires the spirit of it and likes Electa very much.

named for Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose middle name at birth was Electa. and the english ladies chained themselves to several things--i especially liked Helen Fox and her friend, who so effectively chained themselves to the grille in Parliament that the entire thing had to be removed and taken to prison with them while they shouted and threw pamphlets. bless them.

Juniper thinks it must be that Susan Bee woman, a mummified Victorian type who wears an honest-to-Eve monocle and treats Juniper like a cleaning girl.

look, give me at least ONE dig at Susan B. Anthony, who gets all the credit and doesn't really deserve it

Charlotte Perrault’s Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals

honestly, why couldn't Charles Perrault have been a Charlotte instead? so many men took credit for the work of women in the past that i think it's only fair play for me to switch things around.

They wander into a tent labeled Doctor Marvel’s Magnificent Anthropological Exhibition!,

the Centennial Fair is like a tiny version of the 1893 World Fair, which had lots of these "anthropological" exhibits, where actual human people were put on display. (for more on the skin-crawlingly awful imperial practice of displaying humanity, i can recommend Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Sadiah Qureshi)

Silent sentinels rather than wicked witches.

alice paul and her buds called themselves The Silent Sentinels when they stood outside the white house advocating for the vote.

Miss Florence Pearl,

named for Florence Bayard Hilles, one of the founders of the National Woman's Party (which split from NWSA in order to take a more "deeds not words," prison hunger strike, constitutional amendment route to suffrage)

Frankie Black

named for Juno Frankie Pierce, the daughter of a freed woman in tennessee who became a prominent activist, educator, and suffragist

“Those thrice -damned boot -licking shit -witches! Too cussed cowardly to take a damn stand—to hell with them!”

this insult was written in honor of the gentleman who stood before the Seattle city council in the summer of 2018 and began his speech with "what's up, boot lickers." an absolute legend.

“Annie Asphodel.”

Annie is named for Annie Kenney, a legit working-class fighter who went to prison for assaulting a viscount.

Moly and spite a woman make, May every man his true form take. A spell for swine, requiring wine & wicked intent

a reference to The Odyssey, but more honestly a reference to Madeline Miller's Circe, which is a rexamination of greek mythology through the eyes of its women and witches. it's a flawless book.

She assumes they are the addition of the translator, a Miss Alexandra Pope.

the real 18th century translator of the Odyssey was Alexander Pope; but if women were once witches, and if their craft could be hidden in myths and stories and rhymes, maybe a few more of them would have snuck past the gatekeepers and into publishing.

Later that evening Agnes walks past the black remains of the Square Shirtwaist Factory on St. Lamentation. She read in the papers that forty-six women died in the fire, and another thirteen leapt from the high windows. “It’s company policy to lock the doors,” the owner argued in court. “So the girls don’t get shiftless.” He and his partner had paid a fine of seventy-five dollars.

the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire didn't happen until years later, but that's honestly what the owners said in court, and the actual fine they had to pay.

Misses Victoria and Tennessee Hull—”

these girls got their names in accurately, because there are no witchy-er suffragists than the Hull sisters. victoria in particular is worth a google.

Gertrude Bonnin,

named for Zitkála-Šá, a Yankton Dakota activist and writer who was called Gertrude Simmons Bonnin by the missionaries

Eastwood. Check Araminta’s, on Nut Street.” He says Nut strangely, almost like night.

a reference to the egyptian goddess Nut, who's associated with the night sky.

An invention of Saint Glennwald Hale, in the sixteen-hundreds.”

Hale is named for John Hale, one of the pastors at Salem

Hark, hark, The dogs do bark, When witches come to town. A spell to raise the alarm, requiring a gnawed bone & a strong whistle

the original rhyme goes: "Hark, hark! the dogs do bark/ Beggars are coming to town. / Some in rags, some in jags / And some in velvet gowns."

a perfectly ordinary piece of embroidery: a crooked house framed by a pair of dark trees, with three lumpy women standing in the foreground beside a scattering of animals. Clumsy letters run across the top: “Workd by Polly Pekkala in The Twelfth Year of her Age, 1782.”

this is a real piece of embroidery recovered from the actual salem! i changed the named of the girl to Pekkala, because i like alliteration, and because Serafina Pekkala remains one of fantasy's best witches.

The wayward sisters, hand in hand, Burned and bound, our stolen crown, But what is lost, that can’t be found? The rhyme their Mama Mags once sung to them, the verse hidden in the Sisters Grimm. Except this time the words keep going: Cauldron bubble, toil and trouble, Weave a circle round the throne, Maiden, mother, and crone.

if this sounds familiar, it's because it was partly stolen from macbeth--"we weird sisters, hand in hand," and "toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble"--and partly from coleridge: "weave a circle round him thrice."

Aunt Nancy

there's not enough room to trace the whole linguistic history of this here, but the short version is that the west african (Akan) spider/trickster/story god, Anansi, crossed the atlantic with enslaved Africans and became known, at least in some gullah cultures, as Aunt Nancy.

“Miss Araminta Andromeda Wells.

it's probably obvious where the Wells comes from, but Araminta is a reference to Tubman's given name--she changed it to Harriet, her mother's name, as an adult.

“And if they stay, will we help them? Will the Daughters stand beside their Sisters, Ohemaa?” Agnes frowns over the last word, but Araminta gives a little grunt, as if the title is an arrow aimed well.

Ohemaa means "queen-mother" in Twi, a Ghanain language. i figured the Daughters would have a mix of pan-African cultural influences, like many historical Black radical groups did, and that maybe in this world the title of Queen would be associated with powerful witchcraft.

What is now and ever and unto ages and ages, may not always be

this is altered from the Usual Beginning of the Eastern Orthodox prayer, which goes: blessed is our God, always now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Mr. Henry Blackwell

i named him Blackwell in honor of a dear friend, but also for Lucy Stone's husband, Henry Blackwell. he proposed to her after hearing one of her angriest speeches and--when she refused him on the grounds that marriage was an unequal institution that would limit her personal freedom--funded a national speaking tour for her as a form of courtship. when they married, they read a list of grievances against the institution rather than vows. honestly, where's my romance novel about those two.

The Queen of Spades She made a blade All on a winter’s day. A spell for sharp edges, requiring a crown of cold iron

the real rhyme goes: the queen of hearts she made some tarts, all on a summer's day. how fortunate that spade rhymes with blade.

Red sky at night, witch’s delight. Red sky at morning, witch’s warning. A spell for storms, requiring red cloth & wet earth

stolen from "red sky at night, sailor's delight/ red sky in morning, sailor's warning"

“And Wiesensteig in the fifteen-sixties, before that, and the Auld Kirk Green at the end of the century. Navarre in the early sixteen-hundreds.

67 women were burned for sorcery in Wiesensteig in 1563; 70 people were convicted in the North Berwick trial in 1590, and witches were accused of gathering at Auld Kirk Green; over 7,000 women were questioned during the Basque witch trials in Navarre, as part of the Spanish Inquisition.

Alexandria, Antioch, Avicenna… They keep burning us. We keep rising again.”

Caesar burned the library of Alexandria in 48 BCE; The Royal Library of Antioch was destroyed in 363 CE by Emperor Jovian, supposedly for containing pagan/unChristian materials; the royal library of the Samanids was burned in the capture of the city of Isfahan in 1034--some people think the scholar Avicenna did it himself to prevent the books from falling into enemy hands.

Our Own Stories Being the Entirely True Tale of the Sisters Eastwood in the Summer of 1893

Emmeline Pankhurst titled her 1914 autobiography "My Own Story."

He doesn’t watch as his Inquisitors approach the sisters with jangling metal bridles, as thumbs bruise their jaws and force their mouths open, as Juniper curses and spits until she’s silenced by the bit between her teeth.

the bridles are loosely based on historical "scold's bridles," a rare punishment for women who were considered nags and public nuisances.

Remember, remember till the fifth of December! I know no reason why a single season Should ever be forgot.

stolen from "remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason, why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot"