”Has she denounced me? Am I under suspicion too?”
The crowd of people around the pyre is still dense. And here she stands, among the other villagers. She talks to them – says the words they expect to hear – but a dreadful terror is making her quake inside. At home, on the bottommost shelf of the corner cupboard, at the very back – that’s where it lies. Wrapped in cloth and kept secret from the rest of the family – a little doll, carved from the poisonous root of the mandrake.
Made to secure good fortune for them all – to bring them the good fortune of another. She knows it’s wrong, but the cow died, and the month of August was so rainy that the field was flooded and half the crops rotted away. How else are they going to make it through winter?
She has learned about white magic and healing tonics, how to lay on hands and how to lend that gnarly little root enough power to draw away happiness from one person and transfer it to another. She learned it all from her – the woman now devoured by the flames. And now the pyre is extinguished, but the gossiping is just starting to catch fire, and it will spread like rats on the poorhouse attic.
Has she been singled out too? Will she be the next to burn?