“Thomas! She is having some sort of fit!” My mother’s voice seemed to be coming through a wall of water, and my body was a world of pain, my stomach, my head, my heart.
“What is it, Ann? Ann! Speak to me!” To my father, she said, “It is bewitchment!”
“Ann?” My father knelt beside me now, and I could hear Deliverance crying. “Ann! What is happening?”
I writhed from side to side, clutching my stomach to my knees to hold in the pain, gasping, glad of the little breath I had.
“They . . . hurt . . . me!” I gasped out.
“Who does?” Mother took hold of my shoulders. “Who has done this to you?”
I coughed, choked, tried to form the words, for I knew the source of my trouble. “Kendra!” I finally gasped. “She sticks me with pins! She pushes the breath from my lungs!”
“Who?” Father asked.
“I think she means the Harwoods’ girl,” Mother said. She peered into my face. “No one else?”
“And Martha Corey,” I said, for I knew it was true, knew she was in league with the devil, knew she tormented me, knew they would believe it.
And then the pain became too much for me, and I could not speak, could not move. My body went stiff, and the world went blank.
5
Kendra
That night, I could not sleep. I huddled on my pallet, which was near the window and thus subject to the freezing cold. I clutched the buttons James had given me, turning them over and over in my hands.
And then I found myself pressing my hands together. What if James was right? The girl had seen me. She could implicate me as a witch. They would rip out my fingernails to make me confess. Should I run away?
But I did not want to. There was some part of my personality that did not run away, that did not want to be defeated. I had done nothing wrong, so why should I leave Salem?
The wind whistled through the cracks in the window frame.
Also, I could not leave James.
James. When I had seen him in the shop, something stirred in me.
No, not that. Not merely that. Certainly, he was handsome. I could not recall when I had been more drawn to a man. But it was more than that. I also could not recall when someone, anyone, had been so concerned for my well-being. Not since my parents had died so many years before.
The Harwoods had also become something of a family to me. In the end, I did not wish to leave Salem. Salem was my home. I was tired of running and wanted to be in one place. I was tired of giving up and letting others—awful others—have their way.
The wind whistled outside, wailing to come in, and then I heard a rapping on the window across the room. I gathered the thin quilt around myself and pulled it over my head. I had to go to sleep. There was a world of wood to chop and chickens to kill for dinner. I could not do it on an hour’s sleep.
Yet the rapping continued. It was too regular to be a branch. But what else could it be? I rose, clutching the quilt around me. I traversed the room. I slept on the first floor, while the family slept on the second, so it was up to me. My plan was to open the window, find the delinquent branch, and snap it in two.
When I reached the window, there was no branch, only a crow.
I undid the latch, but it would not retreat. Instead, it stared at me.
“James?” I whispered.
It continued to stare. The wind howled behind it, burning my hands.
“James, is that you?”
At this, the crow flew a few feet away and landed near the woodpile. Through the snow and tree branches, I saw it become a man. He beckoned to me.
Quick as I could, I shut the window, donned my shoes and coat, and ran out the door. I pulled it shut behind me. I ran to the woodpile.
He was not there. I looked around, the snow whipping at my face. Finally, I spied him, as a crow still, perched atop that woodpile. He flew away.
I turned myself into a crow and followed him.
We flew, higher, higher, over the houses and trees and fields, over the church and the little shops of town. It was glorious, for I had seldom flown with another of my kind before. Finally, we reached the woods. I saw James look back at me, and I imagined him as a boy, playing in the snow. I flapped to catch up to him, but when I was close, he dove down under a branch. He was too quick for me to follow. I flew around him, swooping at him, and finally, we reached the thickest, darkest part of the forest, away from any homes. It was there that he landed. I set down too, about ten feet away.
He started toward me.
I ran. “You cannot get me!” I shouted over my shoulder.
“I will catch you!” he hollered back, and he ran after me. The snow was shallow, for little of it could pass through the looming trees. Still, I was not a fast runner. But neither was he.
“Why are you running from me?” he yelled. “You followed me out here!”
Just for fun, I waved my arm at him. “Catch me!”
I hastened my step, hearing his footsteps like thundering hooves behind me. I wanted him to catch me. But, more than that, I wanted to run. I wanted to be free like the little girl I once was back in Eyam, before I lost everything and found my powers.