The Year of the Witching

Good people don't bow their heads and bite their tongues while other good people suffer. Good people are not complicit.

True Evil...wore the skin of good men. It uttered prayers, not curses. It feigned mercy where there was only malice. It studied Scriptures only to spit out lies.

People do foolish, reckless things when they’re desperate to find ways to escape themselves.

To be woman is to be a sacrifice.

This was the great shame of Bethel: complacency and complicity that were responsible for the deaths of generations of girls. It was the sickness that placed the pride of men before the innocents they were sworn to protect. It was a structure that exploited the weakest among them for the benefit of those born to power.

A man who knows his past is a man with the power to choose his future.

Reading was one of the few things she felt she was truly good at, one of the few things she prided herself on.

Isn't it strange how reading a book is a sin, but locking a girl in the stocks and leaving her to the dogs is another day of the Good Father's work?

I have seen the Beast and her maidens again. I hear their cries in the woods at night. They call to me, and I call to them. There is no love as pure as that.

The forest is sentient in a way man is not. She sees with a thousand eyes and forgets nothing.

It’s always the kind ones who keep secrets,” said Martha, squinting into the light of the fire. “Always the kind ones who best hide their sins.

Sometimes I think we share a soul. His pain has become mine. And mine his.

And with that pity came a kind of rage, not at Judith or Ezra, but at the system that held one accountable for her sins while the other was lauded.

Today, we choose mercy." The flock answered her as one. "Now and forevermore.

Let those who have raised a hand to me reap the harm they sow. Let the shadows snuff their light. Let their sins defy them.

I love him. He taught me how. I don't think I knew how to choose to love until I met him.

Shared or spilled, it seemed that blood did not matter as much as appearance did. And so, no matter how many centuries passed, no matter what they rendered in service of Bethel's betterment, it seemed the Outskirters would always be consigned to the fringes.

It's almost the witching hour,' said Martha, and a bitter smile touched her lips. 'Perhaps that's what the Prophet should have named this wretched year. It's more fitting, don't you think? The Year of the Witching.

In the Scriptures and the stories, in the stained-glass windows of the cathedral or the paintings that hung from its stone walls, the angels always looked like Leah: golden-haired and blue-eyed, dressed in fine silks and satins, with full cheeks and skin as pale as river pearls. As for the girls like Immanuelle—the ones from the Outskirts, with dark skin and raven-black curls, cheekbones as keen as cut stone—well, the Scriptures never mentioned them at all. There were no statues or paintings rendered in their likeness, no poems or stories penned in their honor. They went unmentioned, unseen.

Good people don’t bow their heads and bite their tongues while other good people suffer. Good people are not complicit.

There were wreaths of wildflowers, tokens and tributes, even a small pair of children’s shoes hanging from a fence post by the laces - as though someone believed the child they belonged to might one day emerge from the trees to claim them. These relics were all that remained of those who were lost to the Darkwood. For what the forest took it rarely returned.

Immanuelle stared at him—this man who’d used his lies to make himself a martyr. He thought he was the one who made the true sacrifice, but he couldn’t be more wrong. It was not the Prophet who bore Bethel, bound to his back like a millstone. It was all of the innocent girls and women—like Miriam and Leah—who suffered and died at the hands of men who exploited them. They were Bethel’s sacrifice. They were the bones upon which the Church was built. Their pain was the great shame of the Father’s faith, and all of Bethel shared in it. Men like the Prophet, who lurked and lusted after the innocent, who found joy in their pain, who brutalized and broke them down until they were nothing, exploiting those they were meant to protect. The Church, which not only excused and forgave the sins of its leaders but enabled them: with the Protocol and the market stocks, with muzzles and lashings and twisted Scriptures. It was the whole of them, the heart of Bethel itself, that made certain every woman who lived behind its gate had only two choices: resignation, or ruin. No more, Immanuelle thought. No more punishments or Protocols. No more muzzles or contrition. No more pyres or gutting blades. No more girls beaten or broken silent. No more brides in white gowns lying like lambs on the altar for slaughter. She would see an end to all of it.

Only the wealthy had the luxury of minding things; the rest simply ducked their heads, bit their tongues, and did what needed to be done. Ezra obviously fell into the former category, and she the latter.

four witches planted seeds of discord in the hearts of good Bethelan men, tempting them and leading their souls astray. The roots of their deceit ran deep, and it wasn’t long before the rule of the land shifted into their hands. It was only by the Father’s grace that a young man by the name of David Ford—the first prophet—had rallied a brave army of holy crusaders to overthrow the four witches with fire and purging

Pain carved through her belly and a great roaring filled her ears as the shadows rose around her. The last thing Immanuelle saw, before the night swallowed her, was the bright of the moon, winking through the trees.

Sometimes I wonder if my secrets are better swallowed than spoken. Perhaps my truths have done enough harm. Perhaps I should take my memories to the grave and let the dead judge my sins.

Better to take sin upon . . . one’s own shoulders . . . than allow harm . . . to befall others. Sometimes a person . . . has an obligation . . . to act in the interest of the . . . greater good.

Her sin had saved her.

The way she saw it, sin wasn't a plague you could catch if you ventured too close.