Interlude
We would never forget the sound of their cries.
All the girls the men brought to the tree, year after year, our descendants written in Gideon’s Bible as he took their blood, their birthright, for himself and the other men.
Their power, the wealth owed them by the promise we made to the tree, stolen as he carried out his bloodletting.
He thought he could drug them, and they would forget.
He imagined he could keep them from the truth of what he and the others did, but the opium poppy’s confusion did not fully erase the harm.
The girls remembered in what small ways they could.
In nightmares. In panic they could not explain.
Their bodies carried that trauma, and they learned to live in fear of the woods and the tree that still held the blessing that belonged to them.
Years passed, Gideon’s death marked only by the appearance of a new minister, but still, his tradition flourished as the town grew.
Girls brought to the tree every year so the men of the newly christened Hawthorne Springs might lessen their daughters’ power, that wealth and affluence, and take it as their own.
There was no endpoint to their greed.
At first, we were the witch women of the wood, but as with all things, our story changed.
Generations were born and died, and the natural fear we inspired in the hearts of those who saw us became a warped parable of the virtues of goodness and the dangers of sin.
Not mother and daughter, but sisters birthed from darkness.
Each time, the girls and women who saw us ran. Each time, they told themselves what they’d seen wasn’t real.
And then there were the ones who came to the tree, their mouths and tongues bloodied, the illness Florence spoke into existence so long ago still alive.
We did what we could, showed them our faces, but the women could not understand how we loved them.
How we were not the source of their pain but only wanted to help them understand. They only knew their fear.
We continued to wait. For someone to see us.
So we might finally unleash our punishment.