by Alex Flinn
The wolf slunk up to me, and then he rubbed against me. His fur was warm and soft. “It is not true,” the wolf said.
“Then how . . . how can she say such things?” I had forgotten my nervousness. The wolf was the only creature to whom I could talk.
“She says it because she is a witch, an evil witch in league with Satan.”
I hugged the wolf. It was as I had suspected.
“She casts spells on people,” the wolf said. “She casts spells on Betty, which is what makes her act as she does.”
I knew what the wolf meant. Betty was a strange child who often acted inappropriately, staring at nothing or sometimes crying out, even at church. But did the wolf mean Tituba would cast a spell on me? Or that she already had?
“What will become of me?” I asked.
“That,” the wolf said, nuzzling my hand that I might pat its head, “remains to be seen.”
“So you mean that she is wrong, that my parents will not die?”
The wolf stared at me. “Is that the part of her prophecy that concerns you most?”
“Of course.” But was it? I knew it should be. For my parents to die before my siblings came of age would be horrible. I repeated, “Of course.”
“Of course.” The wolf’s eyes were unblinking. “You are a dutiful daughter.”
Was there mocking in his tone? “I am.”
He held my gaze an instant longer than expected. “You are. And, as certain as I am that you are a dutiful daughter, I am equally certain your parents will not die.”
His voice was calm, and I let out the breath I had not realized I was holding. If that part of Tituba’s grotesque prediction did not come true, likely none of it would.
“But you must stay away from Tituba,” the wolf said.
“Why?”
“For your own safety. And you must find a way to warn others of the havoc she may wreak. She and the other witches.”
In the distance, I heard the crack of a branch. Was it Mary? Mary or Mercy, come to look for me? Nonsense. They cared little about me. If they cared, they would have pursued me when I left, not so long after. If they came now, it was for their own purposes. Still, it would not do for them to see me here dawdling, much less speaking to a wolf.
“I must go.” I pulled away.
He bared his teeth. I started, then cringed, and gradually, his eyes regained their calm appearance. He said, “Go now, child, but be careful. And look for me again.”
I heard a voice in the distance. In these empty woods, sounds carried far. Still, I ran down the path to my house.
But in the back of my head, I heard his words, You must find a way to warn others of the havoc she may wreak. She and the other witches. What other witches did the wolf mean?
Mary and Mercy followed a scant five minutes later. They were laughing when they barged through the door but stopped quickly at Mother’s disapproving look. I was at my weaving and pretended to take no notice. I wished to punish them for the way they had treated me. I also wanted to hear what they had to say. If I was as quiet as falling snow, perhaps they would forget I was there.
And they did. “I was so worried for her,” Mary said when they sat down to their sewing.
I looked up with only my eyes, lest they see I was noticing them. Did she mean me?
“I was not,” Mercy said. “She does it for attention. She should not be rewarded.”
This must be me, and I wanted to cry out at the unfairness. But still, I held my tongue.
“She has always been an odd child,” Mary said. “Were she not our reverend’s daughter, people would remark her behavior even more.”
I looked down at my weaving, concentrating. It was Betty they meant, not me.
Confirming all this, Mary glanced about the room, then whispered, “You missed all the excitement, Ann. I do not know why you left.”
I leaned toward her, away from Mercy, still trying to seem aloof but with much difficulty. “What happened?” I whispered.
“After you left, Betty began behaving strangely.”
“Betty always behaves strangely,” Mercy interrupted.
“But more strangely. She was staring, as usual. But after you left, she began to writhe around and bark like a dog. Abigail too. It was almost as if they were possessed by evil spirits.”
“Possessed of the need for a good spanking, more likely,” Mercy said.
I remembered the feeling I had had when Tituba held my hands, as if insects were crawling upon me, as if they might consume me alive.
“No,” I said to Mercy. “There is evil in that house. We should not go there.”
Mercy laughed. “Perhaps you should not go there, if you are so easily frightened,” Mercy responded at the same time Mary said, “Evil at our reverend’s house?”
I was framing my response when my father came home, so we could no longer speak freely. Mother asked Mercy to help her with the serving and me to gather the younger children. I had corralled Timothy, Deliverance, and Ebeneezer. They were pulling at me, pushing against me, wrapping themselves around my legs, and I remembered what Tituba had said.
Was Tituba right? And, if so, was she really a witch?
3
Kendra
About One Month Later
“What is a . . . witch cake?” I pretended simplemindedness, for of course I knew what a witch cake was. Any good witch would, and I was a very good witch. But I was not about to tell Betty Parris that. Nor would I tell her that witch cakes were silly superstition.
James Brandon had been at my side, as promised, informing me of the goings on at Reverend Parris’s house (How he knew such details, I did not speculate). As predicted, Betty’s symptoms had not been ignored. Rather, the doctor had been called, and when he found nothing, there was talk of witchcraft.
I had tried—oh, how I had tried—to ignore what was occurring, but it was impossible. Little of interest happened in Salem. On the rare occasion when it did, it was all people could talk about. The dry goods store, where I had walked to purchase buttons, had become a place of gossip and intrigue. And, dare I say, theatrics. Right now, young Betty was holding court with much of Salem’s youth gathered around her.
“Since Abigail and I have been having so many ailments . . .” Betty shivered for emphasis. “Goody Sibley suggested that John Indian make a witch cake to find out who was afflicting us with such miseries.”
I knew John Indian was one of Reverend Parris’s slaves, along with Tituba. I wanted to find out what the witch cake had supposedly told them, but first, Betty went into a recitation of the nature of her various “miseries”—fever, crying out in pain, barking like a dog, convulsions.
“You were saying about the witch cake?” someone finally asked.
“Well.” Betty smiled. “John Indian took the . . . contents of our chamber pots, Abigail’s and mine, and baked them into a cake. Then he fed it to our dog. Goody Sibley said that, since a dog is a witch’s familiar, once he ate the cake, the invisible particles that the witch sent to hurt us would make the dog hurt the witch.”
“The witch sent invisible particles to hurt you?” a girl named Mary Warren asked.
“Of course, Mary,” Betty said. “Everyone knows that! Invisible particles fly through the air and cause all our miseries. But when the dog ate the witch cake, the particles would come back to him, and make the witch suffer. So by her pain—Goody Sibley said—we would be able to tell who the witch was.”
The assembled girls stood, slack-jawed at this brilliance, but I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. Particles? In piss? And those piss particles would make the dog sick and, in turn, make the witch sick, even if the dog did not belong to the witch?
“What if the witch does not like dogs?” I could not help but ask.
Betty looked around, for she had not been particularly speaking to me. “I . . . I do not know,” she said. “Goody Sibley only said that witches had dogs as familiars.”
“I had always heard
that witches had different familiars,” I said. “Like cats. Or wolves.”
I heard a gasp from without the crowd, and a voice said, “Wolves?”
I looked to see young Ann Putnam. She seemed wide-eyed. I did not know why.
I stammered an explanation that would get me out of this. “Well, I had heard that witches in England, where I once lived, liked wolves. I have never heard of an American witch who kept company with a wolf. But a dog is a great deal like a wolf, is it not?”
The girls goggled at me, and I felt a hand pinching my upper arm. Then it tugged me away. “Can I help you now, miss?” a voice asked. James! He was employed with the shop.
I say this as if I did not know it, but in fact it was my reason for coming. My every excuse for going there.
“I have come to get buttons for a dress Goody Harwood is making,” I said.
“What size buttons?” he asked, a bit more loudly than necessary, and before I could answer, he said, “Let us take a look,” and pulled me as far from the assembled group as possible.
When we got to the corner of the shop, he whispered, “Are you insane?”
“I do not think so,” I replied.
“Then why are you talking of witchcraft and familiars to the very girls who are likely going to be the ones . . .” He looked around, as did I. Betty was still giving her recital, but I noticed Ann Putnam was gone. When had she left?
James pulled me out the back door of the shop. “These may be the girls to accuse you.”
I thought he was being a bit overly dramatic, though I did wonder why Ann had left. “I was trying to tell them how silly it was. Piss cakes—my goodness—and feeding them to dogs.”
“Silly?”
“Aye. Silly. Those things are merely made-up stories.”
“And you, of course, know what real witches do?” he said.
“Of course I . . .” I stopped, seeing his point.
“Has anything that you have heard in your life led you to believe that the people of this town—or any other—believe witchcraft to be silly?”
“It can be silly,” I said. “For example, if I wanted to make an egg appear and crack itself onto your head right now, that would be quite silly.”
I moved to conjure up an egg with a gesture of my hand. I had played such tricks on him before. But now, James caught my hand in the air.
“Do not do it, Kendra.” His eyes were intense, and his fingernails dug into my wrist. “No witchcraft. It will put you at risk.”
“Why do you worry so much?” I tried to laugh, but it was hard, for his grip was like a claw on my arm. Yet another part of me wanted to obey him. It was sweet, him being concerned for my safety. It had been a great while since anyone had been.
“Because I have seen what can happen.” He pressed his lips together, and I heard him catch his breath.
“What do you mean?”
“I am a bit older than you, I suspect. You, I know, were alive for the English plagues.”
“Aye. I lost my family to them. Thank you for reminding me.”
“So if you saw someone about to be struck with Plague, I daresay you would warn them about it, so they might avoid it.”
“Of course.” I whipped my arm around, in an attempt to get away from him. To my surprise, he merely let go with a shrug. I looked down, pursing my lips.
“’Tis the same with me. I lost my family, my mother, at least, to witch trials in Scotland.”
“Was your mother a witch?”
“Aye, she was. But not an evil witch who cast spells on people, merely a poor woman trying to support her children. She sometimes performed funny spells too, like making our cat appear to talk. But in 1590, the king of Scotland sailed to Copenhagen to marry his princess. The weather was bad, and when he finally returned, he looked for someone to blame for it.”
“And your mother was implicated?” I asked. “How awful!”
“Aye. Along with seventy other women. Someone accused a neighbor, and then the neighbor named someone else, and soon, over a hundred people were on trial, my mother among them.” He looked downward, not meeting my gaze. “They tortured her to get her to confess, pulled out her fingernails, and twisted her toes with thumbscrews. Such torture would have killed a normal person, but since she was a witch, she survived it.” He shook his head.
I did too, imagining it, the horror. “But witchcraft does nothing for the pain.”
“Nothing.” James passed a hand across his face. “Finally, she confessed, just to stop the torture, though she was innocent.”
“And that did not work?” I asked.
“Nay, of course it did not. After she confessed, they burned her alive. I can still hear her screams.” He closed his eyes against the vision. “Someone else, someone who was not a witch, might have died from the smoke inhalation, but she was a witch, so only the flame itself could kill her. It probably was only minutes, but it seemed so much longer.”
“I am so sorry.” I imagined the pain he must have felt, losing her, the first of his family. I had lost my family, one by one. Only another witch would understand what it was to outlive everyone, to be alone. I wanted to take him in my arms, comfort him as I had once comforted my brothers and sisters when they were sad. But I dared not touch him.
And then his arms were around me, and he was weeping. “It has been over a hundred years. I was merely a boy. Yet I still feel that I could reach across the decades and stop it. But I cannot. I cannot.”
“Poor James.”
Suddenly he pushed me away with an intensity that shocked me. “Do not say that! Do not pity me. Save yourself. If you are called out as a witch, they may torture you. They may hang you. But, eventually, they will find the way to kill you. Or, if they do not, and if you do not die, you will provide the proof that witches are real. And then who knows how many innocent people will be killed for it.”
Innocent people. Did he mean me? Was I an innocent person? Or did he mean only people free of the sin of being born a witch? I could not help it. What I was, was not a choice. If I could but have died with the rest of my family, I would have chosen that. As it was, the decades and centuries stretched before me with no promise of anything but heartbreak.
But James was right. It would not be fair to the other women of Salem for me to make their choice for them. And, if I gave them reason to know that witches were real, so many more might die.
I nodded. “I have to go. Goody Harwood will wonder what happened to me.”
“Of course,” he said. “Let me . . . you must have your buttons.”
“Aye.” I thought he meant to walk into the shop to get them for me, but I felt something in my hand, and when I turned it over, eight black buttons shone in my palm.
“Be on your way, Kendra,” James said. “And remember what I said. No magic.”
“But when . . . ,” I whispered. “When can I see you again?”
He looked around. “I will find you.”
Then, using the door like the mortal he pretended to be, he walked back into the shop.
I stole around the front. The position of the sun in the sky told me it was late, and even with James’s shortcut with the buttons, I had taken longer than I should. I would have to walk through the woods to get back to the Harwoods’. I was not afraid of wolves or other wild creatures, but I had been attacked once in the woods, as a girl, and had to use my magic to defend myself. Since then, I had feared the people who might lurk in dark places.
Still, that day, I took off at brisk pace. It was early March, cold, and darkness was settling in. I stuck to the path. But then I saw something that startled me.
Another person. Someone in crimson.
Ann Putnam. But that wasn’t what startled me. It was the creature to whom she was talking. Yes, creature, for Ann Putnam spoke to a wolf. A great, white one with snow-covered fur and eyes like pearls. Ann leaned in as if having a conversation with it.
“What should I do?” she said, and then she appeared to listen to
the wolf’s answer. I could not hear it myself, for it was muffled by the wind.
Ann Putnam, daughter of one of the town’s wealthiest citizens, could talk to wolves? Or any animal? I knew that sometimes people—even ordinary people—spoke to their domestic animals, dogs, cats, or horses, even though the animals did not reply. But this was no cat nor even a dog. For Ann to be able to go up to a wolf in the wild . . .
Was Ann a witch?
Surely not. I would know if she was like me. I could sense it, as I had with James.
I remembered Ann’s shocked reaction when I had said that wolves were a witch’s familiars. Was it that she did not know that? Or that she did not wish it to be known?
Still, I determined to walk, quick as possible, back to town and take a more circuitous route home, a road that did not go through the woods or past Ann. If Goody Harwood questioned me, I would tell her I felt unsafe in the woods. It was true, after all. If she was angry, I would bear the consequences and, only later, put crushed-up insects into her food. But just as I started to turn on my heel, I felt the wolf’s eyes upon me. Then Ann was looking at me too.
“Hello, Ann.” I smiled best I could. “Did you, uh, get everything you wanted at the store?” I wondered if there was some sort of spell I could cast on Ann—or the wolf—to make them forget about me. I did not know one.
“Uh . . . I did,” she stammered. “Just some sugar to make a cake.”
A witch’s cake? She must have thought it too, for she flushed and looked down.
“I only had to get buttons,” I said. “I will be seeing you.”
I turned and went down the path as I had been before.
But I was not quite out of earshot when I heard Ann say, “She saw us. She saw us talking!”
4
Ann Putnam
“She saw us! She saw us talking!” I said to the wolf as soon as the girl was out of earshot.
“Mmm.” The wolf chuckled. “Do you want me to eat her?”
