Necklaces around the Throat

When she was young, Hannah and her husband's sisters had huddled together within a humid crowd beneath the bloated old woman dangling from a rope, and she had thought that God had finally abandoned them. Adore, at the time betrothed to the jailer, had breathed quietly to Hannah and her sister Grace that it was custom for town authorities to visit the accused the night before, to provoke a ready confession and a witch's consent to die innocent. None of the women could look the corpse in its bloated face.

Hannah wished now that she could blame the necklace. In her grasp it had been a gorgeous thing, a gift from her weakening father who most certainly had not obtained it from her deceased mother.

"Might it be emerald?" she had whispered excitedly into her husband's ear.

"There is gold at the clasp," he had replied.

It was a foolish thing. Both she and her brother knew. Their family plow was splintered and their cow dry, and a precious gem encased in precious metal would buy them five cows and laborers to work the plow, and it was enough to build a whole barn with the leftover wealth. Worst of all, her father had granted it to her, and she was married.

"Madness," her brother had said. "A fortune lost to your new family. A fortune," he had paused in thought, "that father seems to have drawn from the clouds. As if by magick."

Magick. What a terrible, terrible thing. Women had died for less.

He had not permitted her the time to gift him the necklace freely, nor even the chance to refuse him and snatch it away from his grasp. All it took was one, "Witch!" for her husband to join her brother in hoisting her by the arms and tossing her in here.

The way that we live, she thinks bitterly, chewing on her filthy nails, it is no surprise that Satan lays in wait for us rather than God.

A door beyond her view creaks. Although the night is black as the Devil, someone is awake. And she is the only guest in this metal establishment. They are here for her.

Hannah's bones howl as she jerks to her feet. At the clicks of approaching heels she raises clenched hands that quaver with cold and stress.

Two faces, beautiful faces, both as round and cratered as the moon, slide into view behind her bars.

"Grace." Her hands relax. "Adore."

"Shh!"

Pale nervous hands jab a metal key into the lock and grate open the door with a screech that strikes Hannah's eardrum. The frigid but steady fingers of her almost-sisters clutch her arm, who shuffle her out of prison into the severe light of freedom.

The cold wind slaps her with a realization. Three women are under the moon's glare tonight, and two of them are accomplices who are helping a newly freed witch onto a stolen horse.

"Your husband--" Hannah protests.

"--has too many horses to count," Grace says.

As she squirms in the saddle to accommodate her shredded skirts, Hannah remembers huddling beneath that hanged witch. All three women had then shuddered to imagine themselves on the noose, at the stake, or below the lake.

"When they find my cell empty, they will turn to you. For you are wives to the jailer who lost his keys and to the hostler who lost a horse this night, this night when a witch magicks herself from mortal justice."

The sisters' eyes are wide and glisten up at her.

"Our conscious souls--" Grace says.

"--would be as guilty as any real witch if we were to turn our eyes from you," Adore finishes.

The reins bite into Hannah's palms. Her thorny breath tears from her throat. "Your innocence, my guilt. It matters not to them."

"Yet--"

"--How can you, we, continue to live in this place of sin, where innocents die for the guilty's fortune?" She jostles the reins with growing vexation. "I would wander the earth for eternity in search of a place where God cares to dwell, sooner than I would settle for a town that belongs to Satan. Come with me, sisters. Wander lands with me. I know that there are two other horses in your husband's stalls."

It is for their benefit only that she evokes God. 

As she hopes, it makes their ears jump. Sparing a half-second glance towards Adore, Grace hastens to secure two more steeds.

God or Satan, it does not matter. She has her sisters, who together canter away from her brother, her jailers and their husbands. 

Into the night in search of rest. Forever to wander.