Agnes curled up into a ball, desperately trying to keep the memories out, but they had taken over completely. They passed by so fast it was hard to keep track, but then they started to slow down until one remained.
Agnes found herself back there. She was a child again, only eight years old, back in the family home. She recognized the stone floor of the kitchen, the scent of stew cooking.
“Please, John,” a voice said. Her mother.
Agnes crawled out from under the table where she had been hiding, to see her father dragging her mother across the floor by the hair.
“You’re a witch. I knew it and now everyone will know it too.” He stopped walking, pulling her up by the hair. “And you’ll hang for it.”
Fear gripped Agnes’ heart. Though her mother did her best not to cry in front of her, she could see the fear on her face. How could her father do this?
“You’ll hang and that little brat won’t be far behind,” he growled.
“No, John! Agnes is innocent.”
“We’ll let the witch finder be the judge of that.” He yanked her forward, heading for the door.
“Stop,” Agnes cried, running after them. Grabbing her mother’s skirts, she tried to hold her back.
John turned, glared at her, and smacked her across the face. Falling to the floor, she was too shocked to even cry. Her father had always been a horrid man, but now he was threatening to kill her mother. Her too if he had his way.
“Go to your room, Agnes,” her mother whispered. She tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.
I won’t lose her.
To be left with her monster of a father was a fate worse than death. Feeling anger rise inside her, Agnes got to her feet. “No! You are not hurting my mother.”
John sneered at her. “You insolent wench.” He raised his hand to strike her again, but she found that she was no longer scared of him. Something erupted from inside her, a wave of power she had never felt before. It pulsed forward and engulfed her father.
John’s hand dropped as he took a gasping breath. Releasing her mother, he staggered back.
“Agnes, no,” her mother cried.
But Agnes knew if she gave him the chance he would follow through on his threat. They’d both hang. She pushed the power out again.
Clutching his chest, John dropped to his knees, his face deathly pale. He tried to speak, but only managed to grunt. Then he toppled face down on the floor.
“John,” her mother cried, rushing to his side. She turned him over, cradling his head in her lap. “Agnes…what have you done?”
The guilt hit her as it had that day. Screaming, Agnes pushed the memory away. “Stop it.”
A murderer at such a young age. And it wasn’t the first time you killed, was it?
The next few years of her life passed in a blur. Fleeing the village with her mother, being taken in by the coven. When the initial guilt faded, she knew that she had done the right thing. She would do anything to protect her family and now the new coven they belonged to.
A new memory took hold. She was eighteen, newly initiated. Witch hunters were roaming the land, trying to pick off as many of her kind as they could.
The coven leader, Elizabeth, Helen’s predecessor, took her aside one day.
“Now that you are officially one of us, we need your help with something.”
“Of course, I’ll do whatever you need me to.”
Elizabeth smiled. “That’s good to hear. There is a small group of witch hunters in a nearby town. We would like you to…take care of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are a very beautiful girl, Agnes. These men act pious, but in the evenings, they enjoy the company of women at the taverns they are staying at. If you were to pose as one, you could get close to them.”
Her heart beat wildly in her chest at the suggestion. “I…why get close when I could kill them from afar?”
“No, we do not want to alert them to our presence. That is why I want you to hex them instead. If you can touch their flesh, you can place the hex and they will die of an accident. We will be blameless, and their numbers will dwindle.”
“I am sorry, Ma’am, I cannot do that.”
The memory dissolved to be replaced with another, just three nights later. Agnes rutted in a bed with a young witch hunter, doing her best to act like she enjoyed it. When he was spent, he rolled away, immediately falling to sleep.
Terrified and ashamed, Agnes waited until she was sure he was fully asleep before she placed a hand on his back and muttered the hex. Tomorrow he would meet a grisly end, but to all it would look like a terrible accident.
“Stop. I never wanted to do that.”
Not at first. But you soon got very good at it.
More memories. The night she took two of them to bed at the same time. By that time, she had let go of the shame and had started to enjoy the power she held. She grew bolder, hexing them as they both pawed at her naked body. The next day, they got into a fight and shot each other dead.
“Please stop,” she begged.
Why? It is your life. You did all those things. Are we really that different?
Agnes sobbed into the sand. At the time, she told herself she was protecting her fellow witches, but that soon changed, and she started to enjoy it. Maybe they weren’t that different at all.