The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

The Salem Witch Trials, pt. 2

            

 

I offered to take a break. Enthusiastically, Mark chose a Pan-Asian restaurant off the square to sit in. I ordered tea. He ordered six vegetarian dishes, each entirely green.

 

            "Tired of the sunglasses, eh?" I asked, neck-deep in my stack of books.

 

            "I can't get away with it here like I can in California," he sighed. "There they think you're a hotshot. Here, they think you're..."

 

            "Weird?" I offered.

 

            He scrunched up his face. I forgot—Mark hated being anything but utterly, painfully cool.

 

            "Feel like you're learning anything?" he asked as his food arrived about fifteen minutes later.

 

            "Oh, I'm learning," I nodded, pushing through my fourth book since we sat down. I had to slow down to read the Malleus Malificarum, which I had purchased in its original Latin. A poor choice.

 

            "Anything fun?" he asked, inhaling his seaweed salad in two bites. It was interesting watching him navigate chopsticks. He had to be so careful not to break them into splinters.

 

            "Oh yeah," I joked. "My favorite so far in this one? 'If she be a witch, she will not be able to weep,' they suggest."

 

            "So? You can't cry," Mark shrugged. I thought it interesting that he had noticed this.

 

            "Yeah, but the other Survivors can. Well, the rogue bunch excluded," I said. "Not to mention, so can your mom, so...wrong on that account. Says a witch can't say the Lord's Prayer, either."

 

            "Wrong on that account as well," he nodded. "Any mention of your ancestors in there?" he asked.

 

            "Doesn't seem to be," I said, which was true. "But there are a few weird things. Like here's this letter from Governor Phips, the governor at the time, to the king of England. He's begging King Philip to offer him a solution, tell him what to do with the accused witches. He doesn't think they should kill them because the evidence is too circumspect, but he doesn't think they should ignore the accusations either. He's asking for a compromise."

 

            "Like exiling twenty-six kids instead of killing them," he suggested.

 

            "Yeah, exactly. Not to mention, the Survivors didn't get tried. They were accused and exiled. That was it. And that was supposedly December 1692, which makes sense now because the court that did the most of the trying in that year—the Court of Oyer and Terminer—was absolved by Phips in October," I said, showing him to a large timeline I'd bought at the Witch House. "The next entry on the timeline is December 29th when Phips instituted a day of fasting and prayer, as if asking forgiveness for what they'd done."

 

            "Like, say, exiling and leaving twenty-six kids who were accused as witches to die, after executing 19 or 20 and imprisoning hundreds of people that year?" Mark suggested.