The Once and Future Witches

by Alix E. Harrow

That temper will get you burnt at the damn stake, Mama Mags used to tell her. A wise woman keeps her burning on the inside.

why, we ask, should women wait in the shadows while their fathers and husbands determine our fates? Why should we—we doting mothers, we beloved sisters, we treasured daughters—be barred from that most fundamental of rights: the right to vote?”

Demand is high, too, because one of the other mills caught fire last week. Agnes heard women had leapt from the windows, falling to the

“Witching and women’s rights. Suffrage and spells. They’re both…” She gestures in midair again. “They’re both a kind of power, aren’t they? The kind we aren’t allowed to have.” The kind I want, says the hungry shine of her eyes.