WITCH TRIALS by Victoria Sellar

 

You tell them that they didn’t burn witches around here; they hanged them, and when you say this the tourists nod and murmur assent, as if this makes it okay. They will ask what the women were accused of, and you have a list ready: spoiling butter and cheese, sending a ferret to knock over firewood and drown cattle; having a pet cat. But when they stop laughing you’ll tell them that any woman, living alone and growing old around here, was at risk from her neighbours, especially if she owned property.

 

A man at the front, his eyes hidden under a checked cap, turns his head and mutters something to his wife and son; the son laughs, but the woman looks away and shifts her feet as if she suddenly feels the cold, though her face is bright red. You remember where you thought your years of education, the doctorate you gave up everything for, would take you; it wasn’t here, doing this for a living.

 

After the tour, you have to hand out hot drinks, and try to upsell postcards to the tour group. You watch the man with the cap take a swig of his coffee and pull a face. He says the milk is bad, but his wife has a drink and says it tastes fine to her. Through the window, you see a magpie fly out of the sunset, its white wings tinged with scarlet.

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(From The Waxed Lemon Issue 7)