Devils on Starfall Isle

2

'She's no good, that one. Won't marry. Won't join the Church. Works her plot well enough, but it's not proper.'

She pretended not to hear the men, her face set like stone. She knew that they wanted her to react, to break her dignity with rage or tears; but she had suffered this all her life, and knew how to keep her mental shell closed like a skullbug. She would weep later, quietly, where they couldn't see; but now she was impassive, and she carried her water buckets from the well with dignity, staring ahead.

The other man, Goodman Cuther, nodded sagely. He shifted his balance so that he was resting on his shovel, and he pushed his straw hat up his head.

'Betty Clayruck says she's a witch.'

Verity nearly did stumble at the point, spilling precious drops of clean water onto the mud underfoot.

'She says that the crazy old woman who came in the summer taught her spells,' continued Cuther. 'That she could turn you into a pig if you looked at he wrong.'

'Not hard to do that to you, mind,' replied his companion, Goodman Smith. 'Not as far to go, I reckon.'

Cuther did have a porcine look to him: tiny glaring eyes, snub nose, hungry grin. He wasn't grinning now, though.

'Laugh if you want,' he said, sourly. 'She's got devils in her, has that girl. That old woman was the thing that brought them out, I'll bet. Maybe she'll choose you to turn into a pig first.'

Verity made her way into her hut, put the buckets down; and then she sat behind her door, and sobbed, silently.