Weyward

by Emilia Hart

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.

“They say that the first woman was born of man, Altha,” she said to me once when I was a child, for this was what we had heard the rector say in church that Sunday. “That she came from his rib. But you must remember, my girl, that this is a lie.” It was not that long after we’d attended Daniel Kirkby’s birth that she told me this. “Now you know the truth. Man is born of woman. Not the other way round.” I asked