“Witch,” I spat — though it came out hollow, almost forced. I glared at her, holding onto the rage the way you hold onto the edge of something steep.

She stood — almost hung — back flat against the cedar’s trunk, arms raised above her head, lashed there by rope thick enough to moor a ship. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“They mean to burn you with this tree. Your cursed little cabin too, I’m told.” I waited for a reaction. She didn’t lift her head.

I had been at the back of the crowd that morning, which has since gone, pressed in among my study group. She was young like us — that was what struck me first, and made it strange to watch them throw stones at her stomach. I had looked away before most of the others.

She looked worse now. Worn through, in the way of someone who had used up the last of something. And yet there was still that glow to her skin, soft and persistent, and the sight of it coiled something in my chest that I could only call frustration.

“You cursed my father, didn’t you?” My voice cracked on it, came out too loud. “Confess!”

It might not even be true. But he had told me he was cursed before he died, and I needed something to pin on her — not just a reason for his death, but a reason to hate her. Those were not the same thing, and I knew it, and I wanted her to confess anyway.