I suppose we witches got a pardon for eating plants because they were actually a form of life. But we had to eat something, and their life energy aided us in a special way. In exchange we honored them and never recklessly misused them. (That was one of my internal conflicts. How could pulling weeds be considered following our belief system? Wasn’t it being judgmental, declaring a preference in plants? Did the fact that weeds served no purpose (to us) and were often ugly — did that mean that their life force should be doomed?
When I asked about that, Old Mother, who’d taught me many of the traditions of my sect, had ordered me to stop overthinking. But how could one stop pondering such discrepancies?)
My thoughts were running away with me again. I wasn’t about to reveal my views on religion and/or witchcraft with Mrs. Penn, so why was I musing over them at this moment? I knew better than to discuss these things with Mrs. Penn. Most folks were not only appalled, but scared by the idea of magical beings.
In the minds of the village, witches consorted with the devil, which couldn’t be further from the truth. (They had never known that Old Mother had been a full witch. They just thought she’d been a kindly old woman who knew more herbal recipes than the apothecarist.)
I think the village mind believed that witches spent their nights in the sky, darting about on broomsticks and cackling over the malicious deeds they planned to hurl out on those they disliked. I’d heard gossip from one of the village ladies that they had observed witches meeting in secret midnight circles, dancing nude in the night’s moonlight, and casting spells while sacrificing rabbits or other timid woodland animals.
To my knowledge that had never happened, at least, not in our village, and Old Mother had told me once that she and I were the only witches in the village. (I certainly could not imagine Old Mother taking off her clothes to participate in such a witchy ceremony. Her raggedy dark gowns of stiff broadcloth, had been part of her, melded to her wrinkles and her thin, brittle bones. And to think she could ever balance on a broomstick was absurd. She’d needed a cane just to hobble about the cobblestones in front of the general store.