each is also a limb rooted into a much larger body that is an entire forest breathing together.

The left hand was cut because “if mine eye offend me.” The right hand because it was the one she used to take her oath as a midwife. Her breasts and arms were torn because it was believed the devil took away almost all of a witch’s capacity to feel.

xenophobic assholery

cured her pains and agony by giving her a potion of soil, water, and salt.

This is a very old world. You could spend your whole century just trying to count its revolutions.

the Paisley witches were accused of discovering you can hang the horseshoe over your threshold upside down and your presser, your cold-shoe, your mare ride, your sphinx moth, your sweetest sin, your siren song would not be thwarted entry.

After they tortured and burned her, they dumped her ashes in the nearest flowing stream. This last part at least seems right to me.

to be turned into the kind of woman who can hold still and keep her peace.

Among the powers listed in these records kept by the Portuguese inquisitors during their Visitation to the Brazilian colonies was that Maria Gonçalves Cajada could summon storms forcing a ship to port on the pirate islands, using her beloved devil and for the price of two cruzados.