A Resistance of Witches

Men have power the moment they enter the world. Women have to make their own.

In America, when you’re a Black man, you’re a boy. It doesn’t matter how old, or how educated. You’re a boy until the day you die. ‘Watch your mouth, boy. Don’t get smart, boy.’ ” He shrugged. “In France I’m a man.” “The Nazis don’t see you as a man.” “There are Nazis everywhere. They just go by different names.

Show me a world that does not hate a powerful woman, and I’ll show you a world without men.

We don’t die, my love, Evelyn had told her, though Lydia remembered her mother’s eyes were red and rimmed with tears. Not really. We change, yes. We become other things—the grass and flowers, trees and wind and stars. We rejoin the Great Mother, and our souls disperse into the universe, and become a part of a hundred million other living things, forever and ever.

You talk as if we were still in the Middle Ages. The world has changed, Vivian.” “Has it?” Vivian’s tone was mocking. “Show me a world that does not hate a powerful woman, and I’ll show you a world without men.

We shared a body once before, she heard her mother say. I loved you then, long before we’d even met. I will always love you.

Great Mother, please let me be strong enough, she prayed, and when she did, it was her own mother’s face that she saw.

Great Mother, this fixation with Hitler.” Sybil’s tone was calm, infuriatingly so, as if she were trying to soothe an infant. “He doesn’t matter.

I meant what I said before. I’ve never had the stomach for politics. I’ve always preferred a place behind the curtain. Besides, in my experience, people are much more inclined to follow the leadership of a man than a woman. And the coven, they believe in him. So many of them were raised for it, you know, and who am I to dissuade them? This way is best.

Henry was quiet for a moment. “Hitler covets art. It isn’t the same as loving it. He takes the things he wants and destroys the rest. Anything that doesn’t align with his worldview, anything that isn’t Aryan enough for them, they have a name for it, they call it Entartete Kunst. Degenerate art.” He was quiet for several seconds. “How can art be degenerate?” Lydia couldn’t think of anything to say, and so she said nothing. “I had a responsibility. I couldn’t just let them take whatever they wanted and pick and choose what to keep, what to destroy.

There are Nazis everywhere. They just go by different names.