Toil & Trouble

by Jessica Spotswood

  II.

  * * *

  I have no paper or pencil, no chalk or stone floor. But I have a heart and I have a mind and these are the events and my thoughts as I would have written them.

  * * *

  In our camp, the priest believes that if we had instruments to write, we would use them to compose spells.

  The priest, the police, and the crowd who threw stones at me tell me I am a witch. Every woman in this camp is, they say.

  So if I were to cast a spell, it would involve food. Before this (before him. Before he ogled and touched and grasped—), I served beautiful platters to businessmen in one of the tallest skyscrapers in the City. A constant banquet of mouth-watering meals—royal ballotine of pheasant, beef madrilène topped with gold leaf, morel soufflé for dessert. Appalling amounts of food that I was never allowed to eat, that always went unfinished into the dumpster.

  Here we eat bread, and what one of the girls calls slop (porridge or potatoes, depending on the time of day), and other scraps meant only to keep us upright in order to chop trees for lumber.

  Ever since my trial, my stomach has ached. On the road here, the truck bounced constantly along the rough single track (all dirt, uneven from the constant rain), and I had not eaten for days. The officer drove for hours up the winding mountain, and the metal cuffs bruised and cut into my wrists. He had snapped them on too tightly (deliberately; he said I deserved worse).

  “How long until we get there?” I asked quietly, leaning forward to speak through the bars that separated driver from prisoner.

  The officer was silent for so long that I wondered if he would answer at all. Then, with a sneer: “Does it matter? It’ll be the last day you spend outside of the camp, witch. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Judges always said we could be released if God willed it. But everyone in this country knows women who go into the forest never come back out, and it has nothing to do with God. Our labor is too valuable. They could give us more efficient ways of cutting trees, but the use of axes is our penance. The priests bless the wood and mark it with symbols to ward against witchcraft—highly valued in an age when they claim witches walk amongst us, disguised as your mother, your sister, your daughter, your wife.

  Any woman, they warn men. Any one of them at all. They’re liars, not to be trusted.

  So our lumber builds men houses, furniture, and gleaming tables like the ones I once set with food. The warded wood is meant to protect them from me, from all of us. From our curses and our words and our seductive ways—but not just that.

  We provide the wood that burns witches.

  I suspect the ache in my stomach is not the tasteless food (truthfully, it settles like a stone in my belly), but the scent of fir that surrounds the camp. It had been that way for miles as the police truck drove up the mountain. The fog had descended, and a sight that might have looked enchanting before my stay in prison only served to make me feel suffocated. There were no houses on that road, no trucks or cars that passed—only an endless expanse of kindling. These trees are more effective than iron bars; you’d be dead before you reached civilization.

  The only thing for miles and miles is the camp. The biggest building is a wooden chapel with a white cross painted on the door, and surrounding it are a few log cabins that are as small as prison cells.

  One of these is for sleep, but it’s a threat, too. They need only bring torches and we’ll die burning just like the others. This is how they keep us in line: the illusion of freedom (pray to God, pray for forgiveness, on your knees, on your knees, goddamn it, get on your knees), obtainable if we remember how to be meek, how to be submissive and voiceless. Remember how it was before? they might as well ask. Remember how you silently judged those other girls? You thought it must have been their fault, that they cast spells with their body, their eyes, their words. But when you remembered your own tongue, your own words, it was to say no instead of yes.

  My mind wanders like this while in prayer. I don’t think of God; I keep thinking that it’s my own fault for saying the name of the man who hurt me, for trying to speak the truth. Maybe it didn’t happen like I thought it did. Maybe I did something to deserve this. But that’s not my voice. It’s his, and it’s theirs.

  The officer reminded me of him when I reached the camp.

  He pulled me out of his truck and spun me around to roughly remove my handcuffs. The camp was empty then; the girls had all gone out to work, overseen by the priest and guards. The only sound in the forest had been a click of metal as the officer finally freed my bruised hands.

  I caught the scent of fir and my stomach heaved. The officer grasped my arm and shoved me forward. “This way.”

  He showed me the cabin where I now sleep (so small, blankets on the floors, pressed up against twelve other girls for warmth), then the shed where the axes are kept. He told me about the lumber quota: meet it and we eat, don’t and we starve. He told me about how I needed to pray every morning, and every night, and while I chopped down trees. He told me this wasn’t optional. He told me this was a mercy granted by good men.

  “The girls don’t have names here,” he told me, his eyes as sharp as blades. “You don’t use names. You don’t have names. You’re nothing now. Do you understand?”

  I shut my eyes at the memory from my trial. The papers called me Jane Doe. We were all Jane Doe until people called us worse. Then we weren’t even given the courtesy of a fake name. We lost the right to freedom, to rest, to food, to something as simple and important as being called anything other than “witch” and the obscenity that rhymes with it.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Good. I’ll pray for you, witch.”

  Then he shoved me into the chapel, and told me to get on my knees (goddamn it, get on your knees) and pray with him.

  III.

  * * *

  I stole coal from the potbelly stove to write these words. After I finish, I will wipe them from the floor as if they never existed, so the priest doesn’t see. He would have me killed for this part:

  If I cast a spell, it would be to heal my hands.

  They are a mess of blood and blisters and calluses from the hours spent with my axe chopping, chopping, chopping down trees. I want so badly to sing or hum to distract myself from the pain, but we are not allowed. The guards and the priest do not let us sing, for spells can take the form of song, and they fear we will enchant them.

  This is meant to shame us into silence, I think, but sometimes I take up my axe, and I hear the ragged cadence of twelve other breaths in sync with my own and I imagine it’s a song instead.

  All thirteen of us, on the same breath, singing our wish for the same thing: to survive.

  IV.

  * * *

  Forgive me for these shaky letters, but I cannot keep my hand steady.

  I dropped my axe yesterday. It felt so heavy in my grip, so cumbersome that I could no longer hold it aloft. Into the soil it went, and another girl picked it up for me. She is beautiful, this girl. Her eyes are as deep and black as an ocean at night. Her hair is the same color, though I would say it looks like an expanse of moonless sky. Oh, her features are so austere, so regal, with high cheekbones beneath smooth ochre skin. When she speaks, it’s with the softest lilt on top of an American accent that betrays time spent elsewhere.

  She handed me my axe, and god help me, I blushed when her fingers touched mine. It was like relearning what touch felt like (before him, before that day, when it could bring comfort and not pain).

  “You hold this in a narrow grip,” she said in that lilt, that beautiful lilt. Like music to my ears. If she spoke enchantments in that voice, I would have been under her spell, and I would have been so willing. “It’s better to spread your hands farther apart. May I?”

  I started when she gently took my hand in hers. She wrapped our fingers aroun
d the handle of the axe, and did the same with the other hand. “You grip it like this, see? It gives you more control when you strike.”

  More control, yes. More.

  Her eyes met mine, and it was as if the world suddenly tilted on its axis (my world, every vulnerable part of me). For a mere space between heartbeats, I lost myself in her gaze. A guard yelled at us for stopping (get back to work!), but I barely heard him. I only heard the rasp of her rough wool clothes when she leaned forward. A desire struck me then, small and bold and surprising: I wanted to press my lips to hers.

  She smiled, as if hearing my thoughts. “See you around.”

  The next time I swung the axe, it splintered the wood and severed the tree in a single, powerful stroke. It felt like magic.

  V.

  * * *

  My charcoal is less frequent now as the weather grows colder. The twelve other girls are in my cabin as I write this, pressed against each other to conserve warmth. The girl with the obsidian eyes lies in the blankets next to me, and she often murmurs with her lilting voice full of sleep.

  Last night, she spoke to me as if we were sharing a dream. “Are you ever angry?” she asked, her words a low breath in the darkness. “Sometimes you say things when you’re dreaming...”

  I was surprised by her words. Most of the girls here talk in their sleep (nightmares, hunger, tears, no, no, no, stop), and our unspoken rule is to pretend we can’t hear.

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  When I strike my axe, my rage becomes a living thing that writhes inside me, and I welcome it. Then I think of witches, and understand that there are too many people in this world who would rather see a woman burn than wield power.

  I feel anger the most when I watch new girls arrive and disappear into the woods, never to be seen again. Some of them are taken by guards (the girls who struggle to hold their axes, or who become ill; the priest calls them a burden, a disappointment, and says that God has rendered his punishment). Others leave in the night to escape to civilization that I know is too far to reach without food or supplies. In the end, it is always just us. Thirteen girls; thirteen survivors.

  The size of a coven.

  “Good,” the other girl said thoughtfully. “Anger is good. You can survive on anger. For a while I wondered if you would drop your axe and never pick it up again.”

  “Did you think I would?”

  “I hoped you wouldn’t.”

  I studied her features, the way her cheekbones caught the light from the dying embers of the fire. I wanted to memorize her. I wanted to be able to keep the image of her with me, always, conjured up again on a day when I need it most.

  Perhaps for when I’m taken into the woods, too.

  Here is how I will always remember her: She hums in her sleep. In the darkness of our cabin, I can always tell it’s her beside me, because her touch is featherlight—as if she’s asking for my permission. She always seems so strong, so utterly invulnerable. When she gazes at the priest and the guards, they sense a threat, and I’ve seen them try so hard to break her. They give her less bread than the rest of us, because she does not pray to their God. They call her a heathen.

  If she’s a heathen, then I’m a heathen. Their God takes too much.

  “Have you ever been tempted?” I asked her.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied, and she curled against my side with a shiver. “But I don’t listen to him.”

  “Him?”

  “We all have someone who caused us to be here. Him. Her. Their names don’t matter; they all fear the same thing.” She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to my shoulder, her next words whispered against my skin. “You understand the truth, though, don’t you? The most terrifying thing in the world is a girl with power. That’s why they watch us burn.”

  VI.

  * * *

  We did not make our lumber quota this month.

  As the icy days grow more numerous, it becomes harder to work. Our wardrobe is not appropriate for the hours we spend outside; our shoes have holes, and our clothes are merely scraps of layered secondhand fabric.

  “You’ll just have to work that much harder, won’t you?” the priest said in the chapel on Sunday as we prayed. “If you feel that axe slip from your hands, remember your lessons. ‘I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.’ And so we shall pray for strength.”

  The priest likes to speak in a soft voice compared to the guards. He presents himself as humble. He tells us to work harder as he starves us. He tells us to hold on to our axes as our fingers are numb from cold. He quotes scripture to women he’s already condemned to Hell.

  He is the sinner who cast the first stone.

  The priest has a favorite among the girls. I call her Blue, because she has the most vivid eyes I’ve ever seen. He gives her more bread. If he touches her in the chapel, his hand lingers too long. After prayers on Sundays, he keeps her behind as we go off to chop lumber.

  The priest likes Blue because she keeps secrets well. The priest likes Blue because he thinks she barely speaks at all. He doesn’t know that she prefers to speak at night in the darkness of the cabin, when we all lay together for warmth.

  “I’ll hurt him if he makes you stay behind again,” I told her yesterday. “He thinks I’m going to Hell anyway.”

  He looks at Blue in a way that reminds me of my past, of leering and grasping and bruises on my thighs. I’d go to Hell for every single one of these girls if it meant they never have to endure that.

  “I’ll help you,” said one of the other girls. Rose, for the birthmark on her freckled cheek. The Devil’s kiss, the priest calls it. Next to the obsidian-eyed girl, she’s his least favorite. “That Bible of his looks like a decent weapon.”

  Obsidian smiled and nodded her agreement. So did the other girls.

  We were not permitted to use names, but we all had secret ones for physical features that made us stand out. Obsidian, Rose, Blue, Scar, Green Eyes, Hazel, Tall, Tiny, Curly, Red, Blondy, Porcelain. They called me Night, for my dark hair.

  Green Eyes had suggested we learn our names from Before. In private. Just because they don’t treat us like we’re human doesn’t mean we have to do the same.

  Green Eyes wanted us to know her Before Name so badly she cried. The name her parents had given her was for a son, and she had endured a long, hard, difficult road before choosing her name as their daughter. It was hers, and now it had been taken away. This place (them, the people who accused us) had taken away everything. Our names, our lives, our identities. Our struggles.

  But one girl disappeared into the woods, dragged off by the guards for introducing herself with her Before Name, and we learned it was easier this way. Safer.

  And so I am Night. Green Eyes chose her new name, too.

  “No hurting him,” Blue said. She rested her head on her knees. In the flickering light of the cabin stove, I noticed a slight bruise on her pale cheek from last Sunday. “We didn’t meet quota.”

  Rose wasn’t deterred. “What does that have to do with—”

  “It just does,” Blue said with a sigh. “Shipment comes tomorrow before prayers. I need to think.”

  I didn’t like the way that sounded. “About what?”

  “Nothing.” Blue shook her head. “Nothing. I’m going to sleep.”

  The next day, after we came back from work, we found the cabin filled with food again. Blue wouldn’t look at us, and I knew what she’d done, the sacrifice she’d made. The exact thing I would have done.

  She made a deal with the devil for us all.

  VII.

  * * *

  The priest expects confession every Sunday, and I’ve lied every time.

  It’s to get off my knees, you see. They have bruises over the bone, my skin covered in smudges of black and blue and brown.

  A new girl came weeks ago, and before she di
sappeared into the forest, she would show the rest of us these bruises with pride. As if three hours of prayer every day (twenty-one hours a week, not counting the expectation of pious thoughts, the dinner speeches, the nighttime murmurs. An entire day spent praying to a god for forgiveness—the same god that men offer the burned corpses of witches) meant much of anything.

  I thought about trying, once. Shortly after I arrived, I got on my knees and focused my thoughts on guilt, on propriety, on pretending to be this woman that they want because maybe then they’ll drive me back to the City and I’ll never smell wood again.

  It wasn’t because I believed. I just didn’t want to die here.

  I’m not like those girls. I’m different.

  I caught myself in that terrible, destructive mantra in the middle of my fake prayer and wanted to scream. Those are not my thoughts. Those are his thoughts, their thoughts. Even when I was pretending, they were still there, those callous words whispered at the back of my mind.

  They’ve infected my brain like a virus, like wood rot.

  This time, as I entered the reconciliation room and settled on my aching knees, I struggled to come up with a lie. Through the confessional screen, I saw the shadowed outline of the priest, and I imagined his hawkish eyes on me, the expression he wore when I worked. When I swung my axe (again and again, each stroke splintering the wood with strength I never knew I had), he stared in resentment and loathing. Always. As if he hated my very existence.

  I was supposed to beg for forgiveness for being a witch, but the words wouldn’t leave my tongue.

  Here’s the truth: I want to cast spells, I want to heal, I want to destroy, I want to create, I want to use magic and rise, and rise, and rise, to my feet, into the air, and fly. If witchcraft is the voice of women rising free and powerful (to change the world, make it ours, on our feet instead of on our knees) then I wish to be a witch more than anything.

  “Forgive me, Father.”