I struggle and push against the hands holding me down in the chair but they push me down with enough force that I will bear the bruises for many days after. “Matthew…Ezra…please let her go. She doesn’t need to be restrained. At least not unless she makes it necessary.” His tone makes it very clear what will happen if I “make it necessary”. The hands release and the feeling returns to my hands below where they had grasped me. The two men step around me and come to stand behind the Reverend. His son Matthew and Ezra Miller, his son and his lieutenant. He has brought his most trusted followers.

The Reverend reaches inside his coat and slowly pulls out his pipe and tobacco bag. Slowly…painfully slowly he packs his pipe and lights it with a match from his pocket. Finally he speaks to me again. “You know I thought I’d lost you. Your trick after the funeral was very clever.” He chuckles “Into the woods where nobody would follow. That was clever…very clever. I should have expected as much from you though, your mother being your mother. I suppose I rather sorely underestimated you.”

The Reverend pauses and puffs on his pipe. The smoke rises and gathers about his head like a cloud and fills the air in the kitchen with the acrid odor of burning tobacco. He breathes in deeply and leans back into his chair, his eyes do not drop from mine. “That was my mistake,” He continues “it is however a mistake I will not be making again. Imagine my surprise though when I got a chance to rectify my error. How lucky I was to find you hidden below my own window…and I knew you would lead me to Jane.” He smiles “I guess the good Lord did always mean for me to find you…just later than I imagined.”

“Why?” I feel something rising in my chest. It’s a tightness that clamps my lungs, restricts my breathing, and makes my heart pound in my chest. “Why can’t you just let us go? Why are we so important to you?” The feeling rises from my chest to my throat, at the edges of my vision the world dances in and out of focus. The Reverend pauses and his eyebrows rise.

“Why? My dear Mary…all those conversations with your father…I heard some of them myself as we passed in the road or when he leaned down to whisper to you in church. All those conversations…what wisdom did he impart to you child?” His eyes narrow and his face grows stony. “I suppose it does not matter. ‘Suffer not a witch to live amongst you’ is the wisdom my father gave to me. That is the ‘why’ you are so desperate for.”

“We are not witches!” The tightness in my throat escapes through my mouth and turns into a scream. “We are not witches! Just because we are not like the women who pack your service on Sunday does not mean we are witches!” Ezra and Matthew step forward toward me but the Reverend raises his hand and they stop, receding back behind him again.

“Where is your mother’s brilliance now? My dear Mary of course YOU are not a witch, you have not received that dark gift. Your sister and your brother however...now they are special”. The Reverend rises and leans over me, his hands come to rest on the arms of my chair and his face comes to rest only inches from mine. “Do you understand how special your siblings are?” His voice drops to barely more than a whisper and his breath stings my nose with the stench of tobacco. “Jane will be able to do incredible things if she learns…unnatural and unholy things but incredible things.” He leans in even closer, his warm breath threatens to suffocate me. He speaks in a whisper I can only barely discern. “And your brother…your brother can talk to God. Of course I can do that, I do it every evening before dinner, but your brother…when your brother speaks to God God speaks back.” He shudders “and you would not believe the things God has shown him”.

Suddenly he jerks back upright and returns to his seat, crossing his legs as he sits down and taking another long drag on his pipe. “You see Mary, the only thing I want from you is your sister. You may yourself be an unnatural woman whose father taught her things most unnatural for her gender…but that is all that you are. Tell me where Jane is and you and your savage uncle are free to go and do as you wish. Stay here, run far away…it really makes no difference to me”.

That feeling is gathering in my chest again, it threatens to explode out again but I manage to choke it back. “What will you do with Jane and Thomas if Jane goes with you?”

The Reverend stares into my eyes for a long time before he speaks. “They will serve the Kingdom of God and I will make sure they are well cared for…they will have as good a life as I can provide them”. His eye twitches just ever so slightly and I know. “Suffer not a witch to live amongst you”.

The Reverend waits…and waits. I begin to wonder if Jesus himself might return before he realizes I do not intend to speak. Finally he rises from his seat and turns to face Ezra and Matthew. “She’s not going to help us,” he declares. “Ezra, Matthew, take care of her, then go clean up the savage. Since won’t help us we’ll just find the girl ourselves”. Without speaking another word he strides out of the kitchen and leaves me alone with Ezra and Matthew.

Ezra and Matthew are silent for some time, staring intently at me. Ezra’s face is twisted with cruel pleasure, Matthew looks frightened. I think about running but the two of them are standing directly between me and the door. “Are we going too…does father want us too?” Matthew stammers.

“Yes he does and yes we are going to” Ezra cuts him off and steps in front of him. “He didn’t say we couldn’t have fun first though.”

“But we can’t…we”

“We can’t what Matthew?” Ezra cuts him off again. “We can do whatever we want. If you don’t want to be a man you can just run home. I’m a man though…and I’ll prove it.” His hand drops and I hear the buckle of his pants come undone”. I can see a hunger in his eyes as he looks down on me. I want to run or fight but I can’t, I’m suddenly frozen to the chair, my body refuses to respond “Ready for a good time before you go?” Ezra voices grates against my ears as he leans in close.

“No!” Before Ezra can lay a hand on me I see Matthew’s body collide with his and Ezra staggers off balance.

“Matthew you little…” Ezra shouts angrily.

The tightness in my chest rises to my throat again and this time I rise with it. I throw myself out of the chair and into Ezra with as much strength as I can muster pushing him back into the table. Without thinking I bring my knee up and into his groin bringing a scream from his lips as his hands drop down to protect himself.. As he tries to stand, my hands find an unlit lantern on the table. I step off to his side and bring the lantern crashing into the back of his head. It shatters and soaks his head and shoulders in lamp oil.

The blow sends Ezra staggering forward. His foot catches and he falls forward headfirst into embers still glowing in the fireplace. When he lands face down a shower of sparks is sent into the air igniting the oil that has soaked into his hair and clothes. As the fire engulfs him I hear him scream. It’s a noise straight from hell, an agonized unearthly shriek that pierces my heart as he writhes in the fire.

I run. Before the Reverend can return I run as fast as I can, past Matthew who stands frozen and unmoving in the doorway and out of the home. I can’t see, or at least I am not aware of anything I am seeing. My vision is blurred and my body moves by instinct and memory. I feel the cold rocks river bed cutting into my feet.

“Mary! Stop!” The Reverends voice booms through the air and I hear the crunch of rocks under pursuing feet. I push harder running as fast as my legs will carry me…not fast enough. A searing pain cuts through my back and I scream as I fall to the ground. The rocks on the ground cut my hands as I put them out to catch my fall. Large powerful hands grip my shoulder and flip me over onto my back. I scream again as my weight falls onto the wound in my back.

The Reverend looms over me, a long hunting knife in his hands. His body blocks the sun from my view. He does not speak as he raises the knife into the air and silently brings it down toward me. I close my eyes but the knife never reaches me. When I open my eyes I see William. His face is bruised and his clothes are torn and stained with blood. A large cut stretches from his forehead to his chin. He and the Reverend are wrestling for the knife. As I watch William uses his leg to sweep the Reverends out from under them sending both tumbling to the ground.

“Mary…GO!” William shouts. I try to stand but my legs refuse to bear my weight. The pain in my lower back is blinding and the agony works its way deep into my flesh and up and down my spine. I cannot run so I crawl desperately away over the rocks. As I crawl the world fades. The sound of William and the Reverend struggling grows faint and my vision grows dark and black. My arms grow tired and soon I cannot go any further so I lie and let the world fade.

I hear a faint clattering rising out of the darkness. It seems so faint and far away. My back doesn’t hurt me anymore. I feel the pain but it no longer feels like mine, the pain, the wound, the sounds, they all belong to someone else now. I feel small hands on me. Smaller than William, or Ezra, or Matthew, or the Reverend. Impossibly I feel them drag me to my feet and lean me against something large, warm, and…hairy?

“Come on Mary!” Someone speaks. A faint voice from the world I am rapidly leaving behind. “Come on Mary!”. The hands are trying to push me up. There is nothing left in my limbs but somehow I find the strength to push off weakly with my feet. The hands push with me and I feel myself slide over the top of whatever I have been leaning on. My head and shoulder dangle off one side and my legs over the other. I feel the thing begin to move, bouncing up and down before I finally slip away into warm darkness.