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?

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

Thomas had shot the animal that night, even though it had been a docile beast until that terrible evening.

A sign he is evil

she would convince herself that she wasn’t destined for Hell because in all other ways she led a good life.

Cruelty may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.

but after all she had been through and what loomed next week, she felt she had earned a little purposelessness.

“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.”

“Just as I was my own agent when I married him. We are flawed; we make mistakes. We try our best to correct them.”

A husband who strikes his wife or is peevish with her puts to lie his profession of faith and has smashed soundly divine law and dishonored our Lord and Savior.

She paused momentarily at the reminder of all she would never have.

But a woman is not a serpent to be crushed under her husband’s foot,”

I believe there is nothing in the Bible about it being a sin for a woman to live alone.

“A husband who strikes his wife or is peevish with her puts to lie his profession of faith and has smashed soundly divine law and dishonored our Lord and Savior,”

But the Lord will give me nothing I cannot bear.”

Mary was aware of the way that her whole body wanted to curl up inside her cloak, her shoulders hunching, but she stood tall, hoping to project a confidence that she did not in fact feel.

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

She was a prisoner of a man who had within him a monster.

Someday she would know God’s eternal plan for her, whether she was among the damned or the elect.

The self-pity had been accreting inside her like January snow on the sill—blinding her—since the moment she had stepped back inside this house.

She began to fear that if she didn’t move, she would take the knife and sculpt a cup of flesh from her wrist and never get up again. And that wasn’t really what she wanted. Not at all. She wanted more, she wanted life.

There are many things in this world we should fear, but to bend one’s knees to the smallest of minds? That is beneath a mind as sharp as the one that the Lord God has given thee.

And in it a woman is a man’s helpmeet, not his slave. There is a difference. A woman has a mind, too, and that scares the likes of our esteemed magistrates.”

“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.”

“There comes a time when resistance is not zealotry, but sanity.”

How could he treat her the way that he did if he wanted to follow his Lord and Savior with all his heart and with all his soul?

It had felt like a criminal sentence, and she really had contemplated killing herself.

the innuendo that trailed women who stood up to the men who ran the colony and led, invariably, either to exile or the hanging platform.

“Yes, this may be the hour of the witch. But the Devil? He most definitely wears breeches. The Devil can only be a man.”