The trees are whispering. Every word is articulate as the crisp rustle of the leaves.
There’s blood in the trees, blood in the trees.
Everyday there are more and more hangings. Today it’s my turn.
For the record I never made a deal with Satan. If I knew how to contact him, I probably would. Maybe then I could live for a few more years. Fifteen is a young age to die.
Witchcraft was never a practice, it was curse. It was something that appeared in the womb. My sister had it too. I watched her body go limp in the noose.
We could have saved ourselves had we lied at the trial. We were never ones to lie though. We would die in the right and we trusted God would save us for it.
The winter I was two years old, the water in the village well froze solid. No one could get it out. I don’t remember how it happened- I just remember a gurgling ball of cool water floating into my mother’s bucket. Somehow, I knew it was me.
The summer I was ten years old, some of the boys from some of the nearby houses were playing with a lit torched. One of them decided to set my cat on fire. Somehow, the boy ended up with burn marks all up his arms and legs, though a flame never licked his skin. My cat, though she was engulfed in flames, got away without as scratch. From that day onward, the other children became deathly afraid of me and my cat.
The spring I was thirteen, the same village boys who played with fire came across me while I was bathing in a stream in the woods. I never laid a finger on them. I swear. I was angry and they were snickering. By the time I went crashing through the brush, sopping wet in my under things, they were tied up in cocoons of poison ivy.
The autumn I was fifteen, I was hanged by a rope from an old maple tree. It was the same rope that my sister, mother, and grandmother were hung on. The only evidence that they two had once been there was the red stains on the loop.
“Do you have any last statement to make to your neighbors?” The executioner’s gaze was cold and unfeeling. I opened my mouth to speak. Out came the voices of those who fell before me.
“Every spring our fire will seize, every summer our poison will disease, every winter our ice will freeze, and every autumn, may our blood drip from the trees.”