Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

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

“And thou hast seen no prayers answered.” “It is not that,” she corrected him. “It is my acceptance, finally, that our Lord has His plan for us and it is not for me to try and influence His vision. We cannot—and so it has come to me of late that there is no reason to appeal.” “I have heard it argued that prayer does not change God’s mind; rather, it changes us.” “The act.” “Yes, the act.”

“Cruelty,” said Richard Wilder, “may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.

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

“She was sent to the scaffold because she had a sharper tongue and a shrewder mind than her accusers. It is always the case when men hang women. Look at Magistrate Caleb Adams: there is nothing that frightens that man more than a woman who does not live happily under a man’s thumb.”

“Men call bright women dim whenever they are threatened. So, take no relief in the names that any man calls thee. There is no safe harbor there.”