Weyward

by Emilia Hart

Fiction became a friend as well as a safe harbor; a cocoon to protect her from the outside world and its dangers.

The physician spoke with confidence. He was a man, after all. He had no reason to think he would not be believed.

We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those who speak it, not those it describes. A word that builds gallows and pyres, turns breathing women into corpses.

A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.

“Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.”

I am trying to think of where the beginning is. Who decides where things begin and end? I do not know if time moves in a straight line, or a circle. Here, the years do not pass so much as loop back on themselves: winter becomes spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter again. Sometimes I think that all of time is happening at once.

Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet. —Adrienne Rich