Where Questions Become Crimes

When questions spark terror, a town must choose between mercy and safety.

The meetinghouse smelled of wet wool, tallow smoke, and fear that had nowhere to go. It clung to the beams, the benches, the very air, thick as breath on a winter morning. Outside, March mud swallowed boots whole, but inside the town of Mistwood had gathered itself into rigid rows, backs straight, hands folded, eyes fixed forward as if looking away might invite judgment.

At the front stood Mercy Hale, seventeen years old, her fingers red and raw from the rope that bound them. She kept her chin high, though her knees trembled. Beside her was Thomas Weaver, nineteen, broad-shouldered and pale, staring at a knot in the floor as if he could bore through it with his gaze.

They had been children here. Everyone knew that. Mercy had sung psalms too loudly as a girl. Thomas had once fallen asleep during a sermon and been rapped on the knuckles by Deacon Fowler himself. These were not strangers hauled in from the forest. These were the town’s own.

Reverend Caleb Browne cleared his throat. He was not an old man, though grief had carved him that way. His wife had died in childbirth two winters prior; his hands still shook when he spoke of God’s mercy, as if he feared saying the wrong word might invite another loss.

“We are gathered,” he said, voice steady despite the tremor in his hands, “not in cruelty, but in care. Scripture commands us to guard our flock. If there is corruption among us, we must bring it into the light.”

A murmur rippled through the benches. Care. Guard. Light. Words that had once felt comforting now pressed down like stones.

Mary Carter sat rigid beside her husband, Samuel. Their daughter, Eliza, sixteen, was one of the girls who had cried out. Eliza’s head lolled against her mother’s shoulder, her eyes unfocused, lips murmuring nonsense. Mary stroked her hair, fighting the urge to weep openly. She had prayed for patience, for faith, for strength. She had not prayed for this.

Eliza had been well until Mercy and Thomas began meeting by the river after chores, talking of things they had read, books borrowed, not owned, about stars and herbs and the nature of the soul. Eliza had begged to join them. Mary had said no. Proper girls did not wander at dusk. Proper girls did not ask questions that led nowhere good.

Then Eliza began to scream in her sleep.

“Tell us again what you saw,” Magistrate Jonathan Price coaxed gently. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his gray hair neatly tied back. He had argued cases over fence lines and inheritance disputes for decades. This was different.

Eliza’s eyes fluttered open. “The fire,” she whispered. “I saw fire in Mercy’s hands. I saw Thomas call it from the ground.”

Mercy swallowed. “I never…Eliza, you know I never…”

“Silence,” Deacon Fowler snapped, though not unkindly. He was Mercy’s uncle, and the word tasted bitter in his mouth. He had argued against bringing her here. He had lost that argument.

Thomas finally looked up. “Sir,” he said, voice cracking, “we talked. That’s all. About why things are the way they are. About whether God might be larger than we’ve been taught.”

A hiss rippled through the room. Larger than taught sounded dangerously close to smaller than God ought to be.

Magistrate Price raised a hand. “Questions are not crimes,” he said. “Nor is curiosity.”

“Until it leads souls astray,” Reverend Browne replied softly.

Mercy felt something snap then, not rage, but despair. “We wanted to understand,” she said. “Is that so wicked? You taught us to read. You taught us to think. And now you say the thinking itself is sin.”

Samuel Carter stood abruptly. “My daughter writhes as if burned from within,” he said, voice thick. “She speaks in voices that are not her own. If this is not wickedness, then what is it?”

Thomas turned to him. “I helped her breathe when she panicked. I held her hand when she cried. I swear on my life, I never harmed her.”

Mary Carter looked up, eyes hollow. She wanted to believe him. She remembered Thomas as a boy who once returned a lost lamb to her doorstep, apologizing as if he’d done something wrong by finding it. But Eliza’s screams still echoed in her ears.

“What if they don’t know they’ve done it?” someone whispered from the back. Fear had a way of inventing logic where none existed before.

Magistrate Price closed his eyes briefly. He had seen sickness before, fevers that twisted the mind, grief that fractured reason. But Mistwood had lost two infants this winter, and a cow had been born dead and misshapen. Coincidence began to feel like mockery when piled too high.

“We must consider all causes,” he said. “Natural and otherwise.”

That was the trouble. Otherwise left too much room.

The trial stretched into hours. Witnesses spoke haltingly. Some defended the accused, voices shaking as they did so. Others accused, voices shaking just as much. No one sounded certain. Everyone sounded afraid.

At dusk, the candles burned low. Reverend Browne bowed his head. “We must decide,” he said. “Not because we crave punishment, but because indecision leaves us vulnerable.”

Mercy met Thomas’s eyes. In them, she saw the same question she felt hollowing her chest: When did love for a place turn into terror of it?

The verdict was cautious, hedged with mercy and dread alike. Mercy and Thomas were to be confined, questioned further, prayed over. Not condemned. Not freed. Suspended between possibilities, like the town itself.


Word Count: 932
Written for: "The Writer's Cramp 24th Birthday" 
Prompt: Write a poem or story about a witch trial, like those in Salem. Depict both sides (accused and accusers) sympathetically, each with admirable intentions and goals and each with faults.