Oh, she looks like a wanton indeed, coming back to town after some secret tryst: wisps of hair coming undone under that little coif; grass seeds in the hem of her skirt. Cheeks pink, lips red; all that vivid color in this severe, colorless town: it stands out stark as a scarlet letter.
There's a commotion at the town commons, and the nearer she is the louder she hears it. No longer the wailing, keening cries of the morning but shouting, now: voices raised in anger, rife with passion and hysteria. She comes around the corner of the church and sees that a roiling, tumultuous crowd has gathered. Men shouting redfaced; women with their voices shrill with anger or fear or both; the carpenter barely restrained by his two brothers, hurling accusations at the cobbler's wife.
All of a sudden she sees the two children. It doesn't seem as though they'd found their father. They huddle together, staying out of the way of the adults run amok. Faith sees her first -- she can't hear the little girl, but she can see her tug on her brother's hand and point excitedly. Together, the children come toward her -- only to draw up short as the butcher, a great heavyset man with hams for fists, quite literally drags a woman across their path. He has her by a wrist and a fistful of hair; her bonnet has come loose, her hair spilling awry. Even at a distance, she is recognizable as one of the women at the fire.
DevonWaiting a few minutes and fanning herself isn't going to erase the fact that she was gone for minutes on end, perhaps even half an hour. It won't hide the color of exertion or the coif slipping on her hair from where Rafael was pawing at her. She feels like people can see his handprints on her bodice and the thought turns her on even though it should shame her, freak her out, any number of things that a sensible witch in this time and place should be feeling.
The color drains from her face as she gets near the commons, no longer shouting for Faith and Nicholas. She walks quickly, then balks at what she sees. Across the way, through other bodies, she spots Mercy's family, and starts to move towards them as well, but everyone halts when the butcher yanks a woman from the crowd.
She doesn't even think. Devon whips her head around to stare at the man, feeling a great crackling anger snapping and bursting inside of her skull.
Snapping, bursting,
like bone,
like ligament.
It is unaimed, uncareful, unconsidered, but it is filled with rage. What she might have once done with a small bottle of wormwood oil she now does to the butcher.
Devon[willpower: softhearted flaw: can she hurt the butcher?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 2, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
DevonDevon @ 7:34PM
[telekinesis. -1wp, wits + empathy.]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
Devon @ 7:35PM
[wits spec. is 'quick reactions'. your call if you want to use these re-rolls.]
Roll: 2 d10 TN6 (10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Devon @ 7:35PM
[...or these, apparently.]
Roll: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
It happens without her direction, and almost without her permission.
One moment the butcher is dragging the woman, his hands brutal on her body, her heels kicking and gouging the earth. The next there is a strangled cry, and then some fifteen stone of grown man is simply yanked into the air -- screaming, limbs flailing -- and then hurtled at unbelievable speed. Sails some ten, twenty yards -- lands with a sick thud, a dull wet pop.
There's a stunned silence. Then the butcher's screams fill the air. Pandemonium descends: the townsfolk shrieking and scattering, cries of witch! witch! ringing hither and to. There are people praying, brows pressed fervently to earth. One man has produced a crude wooden cross and is pressing it against every brow, palm, or nape he can reach; perhaps he believes a witch would recoil and be burnt.
And as for the witch -- the one Devon meant to save: she is on the ground where she was dropped, as shocked as anyone, staring agape at the butcher, his unnaturally bent limbs, the impossible distance across which he soared. She's still staring when the crowd inevitably turns on her again, more certain than ever of her guilt.
DevonWhatever it is, power like she's never dared touch on before surges through Devon, all lightning and thundercloud. She hears hooves clamoring in her skull and feels the hairs on her arms stand on end. For a moment she thinks she's floating.
The children, at very least, cannot miss the way her head snaps about, how ferocious her crystalline eyes suddenly are, how focused her intention is on that one hateful man. Nor can they miss the correlation, instant, between that look in Mercy's eyes and the way the butcher is yanked heavenward, thrown, his body hitting with that sickly sound, rolling, skidding in dust.
It all leaves her. Devon almost crumples from the sudden gaping void inside of her, the drop after the rush. She feels like throwing up. She wonders if he's dead. Is he dead, is he dead, is he dead, and all she wants to do in the world is run to him and please don't be dead please please please don't be dead I don't want to have killed anyone --
Thoughts rise like a panic inside of her, followed swiftly by what her inadvertent exercise of strength will do to the woman in the circle. The minister -- or whomever he is -- passes by her. Maybe he presses a cross to her brow. Maybe he skips her. Maybe it burns; maybe it doesn't. She doesn't believe in Jesus, but these people do.
Who knows what belief can do, in a world where a sudden lash of her temper might kill a man.
Devon is crying. But Devon is also, thoughtlessly, stupidly, pushing her way towards the woman in the middle, the witch or maybe just the innocent girl, and falling to her knees beside her, taking her face in her hands, gasping in harsh, quick whispers:
"Scream that you renounce Satan," she says, hurrying. "Scream as though in agony. Command his spirits to leave you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Say it. 'I renounce you, Satan'. Say it."
witcheryShe's younger, this one. Mercy recognizes her, whispers to Devon from somewhere within: this is Hannah Wilke, a farmer's daughter, betrothed to a neighbor's son. She is young, and plain, and clever, and even as Devon recognizes her, she recognizes Devon.
"'Tis you! You were -- "
But there's no time for that. Their coming together raises cries of alarm. Already there are hands pulling at them, grasping arms, yanking them apart. Witches! Don't let them--!
Hannah screams. She throws her head back, arches hideously, and shrieks like nothing human. It is so sudden and so loud and so terrible that the men trying to drag her off -- to prison? to the stake? -- leap back in terror. Released, she thrashes; she kicks at the air and bites at the ground, claws at her own flesh. And then she shouts the words, so loud and raw they can hear her clear to the edge of the green:
"I RENOUNCE THEE, SATAN. I CAST THEE OUT. LEAVE ME BE, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, THE HOLY GHOST. LEAVE ME!"
A great collective gasp ripples through the crowd. The men look at each other, uncertain. Then -- the Reverend Pike pushes through the crowd, seizing that battered wooden cross from that anonymous parishioner and raising it aloft.
"Behold!" he bellows. Never has he commanded such attention on the pulpit, but right now, in this instant, every eye swings to him. "Behold, she who was witched is now washed clean. There can be no mistake: the Devil is amongst us. But by God's grace we may yet be spared!"
"By God's grace!" someone cries, somewhere between hysterical and ecstatic.
"Aye, by God's grace we are saved!"
"Yet she cannot have acted alone," someone else argues. "Look at what has been brought down upon us. That cannot be her work alone!"
"Ask her! Ask her who the others are!"
"What of her?" Someone points right at Devon. "We all saw them, heads together in confidence. Is she not one of them? A witch?"
DevonTruly, she's not sure what she might do next, when panicked. When angered. Devon is still shaking when she's pulled away from Hannah, who recognizes her, and Devon thinks maybe: last night. Last night in the woods, before they all ran from her.
She backs away, insisting to those who grab her that she only meant to see if Hannah was hurt --
but Hannah is screaming. Everyone looks on in shock. So does Devon, even though she fed the girl her lines. Delivered rather well, if she must say. Good on Hannah. The minister takes credit, because of course he does. She echoes God's grace in a murmur with everyone else, barely catching Hannah's eye in that moment. Better than stocks or fire, she thinks. Shame and atonement and chaos is better than being burned alive. Devon believes it.
She does not dare speak up now. Not to argue with the men yelling, or the shrieking widows. She's an unmarried girl, a burden on her family, and known for being disobedient and unruly already. She shrinks away from the fight until
someone
points
right at her.
Devon freezes, and her eyes widen, brilliant blue and bright as a summer sky. Brighter, even.
Tears spring to her eyes; she doesn't even have to call them. She doesn't know, still, if she fucking killed a man today. So she weeps, and she cries out: "I am Hannah's sister in Christ! Should I not go to her when she is afflicted? Is that not what our Lord would have me do?"
Devon[charisma + subterfuge]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
witcheryThere is a general confusion -- a hubbub of voices and murmurs; some cries in her favor,
she speaketh true!
aye, 'tis so!
the girl is innocent!
praise the Lord, Hannah is freed! Mercy has freed her!
and somewhat fewer against her:
our eyes do not deceive. look ye upon poor Thomas Wright and tell me the devil is not amongst us!
they must be tested! their word cannot be trusted!
Through it all the pastor's gaze flicks from her, to Hannah, to the distant groaning form of the butcher; back. Finally, he looks into the crowd:
"Samuel Noyes!"
The crowd parts. Standing uncomfortably at the center of attention, his eyes darting to and fro, is Mercy's uncle. "Aye, Reverend?"
"This girl is your ward; she sups at your table, sleeps 'neath your roof. What have you observed? Is she witched? Or does she walk yet in the grace of our Lord?"
DevonDevon stays where she is, kneeling in the dust beside or -- perhaps -- tugged away from Hannah. She sort of knows the girl; Mercy remembers her. She doesn't know the girl; she's never met her before in her life. She knows her; they are witches. They are of a tribe, though Devon is not known to them, understood as one of them.
Someone cries about Thomas Wright, and the devil. Devon looks over at the butcher's limp body and her shoulders hunch, her body curling in on itself. She trembles. There are tears in her eyes, and she covers her face with her hands while the townsfolk argue about her.
Thomas Wright groans and Devon's knees go out. She crumples, crippled with relief.
She didn't kill him.
But when she hears the name of Mercy's uncle, her hands lower. She lifts her head, looking to him, her eyes aching. Please, they say. Please don't surrender to this madness. Please, uncle.
witcheryFor a long, baleful moment, Samuel Noyes glares at her.
Then he swings his eyes to Pike. She may never know whether it was some shred of errant humanity that compels him or the force of her own will bending his, but he mutters, reluctantly: "She is an insolent, wicked girl ... but not witched."
"So be it," Reverend Pike replies -- raising his voice above a swelling cacophony. "Samuel, see to your niece and keep her in line. Hannah, come with me. We must be certain the Devil has been entirely cast from you. The rest of you -- for pity's sake, someone see to poor Thomas. And make ready the courthouse for the magistrate's arrival tomorrow."
DevonShe may never know; she certainly doesn't care to investigate or wonder right now. Devon is on her knees, her hands on the dirt, still trembling from panic, from anger, from relief, from fear. She exhales heavily, closing her wet eyes for a moment, then starts to get to her feet as attention leaves her and returns to Reverend Pike.
Shaking, she retreats to Samuel and the children, her head low, her face ashen. She does not look back at Hannah, doesn't look for Mary Goffe or for Rafael. She doesn't dare.
witcheryShe keeps her eyes low. She doesn't see where the minister leads Hannah. She doesn't see if Mary is looking on. If John Thorton, the miller's boy who is also her lover from another place and time, witnessed any of that. She doesn't see who goes to tend to the butcher, nor what condition he is in. She doesn't see what expression resides on Samuel Noyes's face.
She does, however, see the small hands that reach for hers. Faith takes her right hand in both of hers; wraps her little arms around her forearm and hugs it, tight.
"Let's go home, Mercy," she whispers. "I don't like it here."
DevonWants to look for Rafael. Wants to watch out for Hannah. Wants to glance, worriedly, to see what Samuel is thinking: she expects him to try and beat her tonight.
A flash of that old, familiar anger: let him fucking try.
A sickening plummet into the cold pit of her stomach, remembering the butcher and the sound his body made when it landed. She did that. She could have done worse, if she'd really been paying attention. She knows that, and the knowledge makes her knees wobbly again.
But then there's this, and it's a piece of grace that once made men and women imagine gods, angels, and even faeries. The benevolent ones, at least. Goddesses of hearth and of moonlight, gods who guard children.
Gods who give little gifts, like a moment of comfort from a small person who knows nothing but how to trust and doesn't even realize they are comforting. Faith's warm little hands wrap around Devon's cold, shaken one, and Devon holds on like she's grabbing a branch so the floodwaters don't sweep her away. She clutches, then relents. Faith's grasp crawls up her arm and she holds on to Devon, whispering that she doesn't like it here.
Devon doesn't blame her. And, steeling herself, pouring what strength she has back into her extremities, she picks up Faith in her arms. Faith is too big for this, but perhaps this one thing they won't be judged for, after what's happened. Devon hefts the little girl up, wraps her arms around her, and begins to carry her back home, whispering answer:
"I don't, either. Let's go somewhere nicer."
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