Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

Never did they ask the question Why me? In truth, they never even asked the more reasonable question Why anyone?

The issue, of course, would not merely be his violence, nor would it boil down to a debate over what she said versus what he said. The wrack of their marriage was not solely his cruelty, and the divorce petition would be grounded by snares beyond her ken. Here, she realized, there were times when she would have been better off if she could have been alone but for the angels or her God, and—conversely—there were times when she would have given a very great deal for a witness that was human.

How is it I am humiliated when I am alone? Does not humiliation demand an audience?

unfathomably arid, waterless worlds. Barren. A word, it seemed, for worlds and for women.

And now there were those forks. A small thing, yes, but the world was rich with small things that in truth were signs of great importance.

But then, where in the Commandments did the Lord God forbid a man from stabbing his wife? Murder was a sin; sticking a fork in one’s wife was…what? Thomas claimed it was discipline. She wasn’t even sure what the colony’s law was when it came to a man’s cruelty toward his wife.

“I have heard it argued that prayer does not change God’s mind; rather, it changes us.”

dancing could lead to lasciviousness. Mary

Yes, she thought, revenge belongs to God. But justice? That will be mine.

She rubbed gently at the setting bone in her hand and wondered at her wretchedness. At man’s wretchedness. At the way her anger, once more, was bubbling inside her. This would not stand. It would not.

The Devil is less interested in the specifics of a potion than in the conversion of a saint. Again, this is just what some people—including the good men in our pulpits—say.”

“I used to have more fears than I have now. After what I have endured this autumn? Now I have but few. And the principal one, at least while I am breathing still? It is the prospect of a life lived only with a man thou dost rightly call a beast.