Eliza was lost in a memory, to a time when gray had not yet streaked her hair:

  She was bent over in a pillory, her hands pinched in iron cuffs, each with a copper cable that ran to a clamp on her tongue. She tried her spark—

  Convulsing in pain, her mouth shot through with tingling numbness.

  Just twenty yards away, stood the church where everyone in this godforsaken village was singing, ostensibly, about her.

  It was frightening how magnificent the verse against witchcraft and other unnatural acts sounded when sung by an entire congregation. That was one of the few hymns in the Enlightened Verses that everyone knew. By contrast, on the few occasions she’d heard a priest sing the verse about feeding the poor, they’d always had to sing alone.

  After the song ended and the crowd settled down, Father Benedict’s voice rose, “Evil is not ugly, evil wears a beautiful face. Evil is not cruel, evil is temptation…”

  As his sermon went on, she was preparing herself for the worst: whipping, ostracism, branding, they all seemed terrible. Whatever it would be, her life, as she knew it, was over.

  A lone figure, a willowy straw-blonde girl in a simple blue dress, stuck her head out the church door before approaching. It was Jo.

  “I’m glad it’s over,” Jo whispered. “It’s good, you know. I’ll finally be able to forgive you.”

  Eliza glared at her.

  “It all makes sense. I never wanted any of this, and you…” Jo shook her head. “You never really cared about me.”

  As Eliza searched the girl’s eyes, looking for her friend, those eyes narrowed in disgust. Jo raised a hand and, gripping Eliza’s neck, forced fingers into her mouth. She twisted the clamp until it opened, and pulled it off her tongue.

  Eliza tasted blood.

  “I wanted to give you one last chance to ask for forgiveness,” Jo said, sounding smugly righteous. “It’s the only way to save your soul. Spark can’t help you now.”

  Eliza took a deep breath. As deluded as this girl was, she was her only hope. “Jo…” she said softly, “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

  “Don’t you mean about what you did to me?”

  Eliza shook her head. “What you asked me to do.”

  “Did I? Did I? None of it was real.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course it was,” said Eliza.

  “A spell doesn’t make it so.”

  “Look, Jo, you asked for a charm, so I charmed—”

  “—I didn’t ask for any of this. It’s unnatural.” The girl’s mouth twisted. “Did you ever really care about me?”

  “Of course, I did… I still do, but I mean, I thought we were both just having fun. I didn’t know you felt that way—”

  “Liar,” Jo spat the word. “I felt exactly the way you made me feel. The spark, ‘my’ spark… did you put that in me too?”

  “No,” Eliza whispered. Jo had always been a bit whimsical, but now she was sounding crazy. “Sparks don’t work that way, Master Gregory—”

  “Is dead.”

  Eliza’s eyes shot wide. “What?”

  “They took him last night. He did not go quietly.”

  “Jo, what have you done?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I grew up. We’re not little kids anymore. It’s Josephine now.” She turned her back and strode into the village.

  As the sermon ended, the congregation began the closing verse…

  —If they caught her with the clamp out—

  Eliza flicked her wrists, flinging it at her mouth until she caught it in her lips. The taste of blood, her blood, was still on it as she bit down.

  The parishioners started filtering out. Some scowled as they passed, but most averted their eyes, not deigning to glance in her direction.

  A few minutes later, two large men, villagers, dragged what looked like a pair of shovels, hinged together like tongs, across the road and began working. They pulled clump after clump of dirt out of the ground, digging a hole straight down.

  Then four more men walked by carrying a large post. One sneered at her.

  Eliza spat the clamp out. “Please! I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again. If you let me go, you’ll never see me again!” she shouted over and over as the men sunk the post into the hole.

  “Please, I’m so sorry!” she repeated and repeated, tears streaming from her eyes, as they packed it in tight.

  From behind, someone grabbed her hair by the roots, immobilizing her head. Then a hand forced its way into her mouth and grabbed hold of her tongue. The clamp bit down in the same hole it’d been pulled from, and the hand twisted it, locking it shut.

  “But if we let you go now, we’d see you again, eventually. You’d just be wearing a different face,” Father Benedict said in a thoughtful voice. “But you’d come back. The Bastard always comes back.” He released her hair and walked away.

  Men were stacking logs around the post when the first of ‘it’ hit her in the back of the head. Her nose was too stuffed from crying to smell ‘it’, but whatever ‘it’ was, ‘it’ was cold, and wet, and sticky.

  “Witch!” a young voice cried. “Harlot!” “Devil!” and much, much worse as more and more of whatever ‘it’ was, hit her from behind.

  The pillory released, and she was grabbed.

  She bucked and kicked, screaming slurred obscenities over the clamp. Young voices cheered on as she was chained to the pole.

  When she looked at the crowd, she knew them. The face of a woman she’d bought rolls from every Saturday was there, as was the man who had helped Master Gregory mend the roof. A boy and girl she’d played skippers with were holding rotten cabbage, the wet sticky ‘it’ they’d been throwing at her.

  Those and a hundred more, they’d all come for the spectacle, without a whisper of mercy. Once they finished piling the wood, the townsfolk disappeared, leaving her to reflect alone.

  Her eyes lifted to the church building, to the three interlinked rings, the symbol of their holy trinity: The Song Mother and the Silent Father above, and the Bastard below. She’d never understood why the Bastard was on it, until then. They love the Song Mother, they fear the Silent Father, and they hate the Bastard. It only works, all of it, if they have someone to hate.

  As the Sun set, the townsfolk reappeared. That was the best time to watch a fire after all.

  “Take no pity on her, for she is a vessel of darkness,” Father Benedict boomed, holding a torch high.

  Desperate, Eliza tried her spark. Her tongue spasmed. Her mouth filled with pins and needles.

  “We offer one last chance at redemption, a light to cleanse the darkness.” Benedict tossed the first torch on the pyre while the villagers sang the Verse of Suffering. Not hers, but their own. To them, they were suffering her.

  In the chill night air, the burning wood smelled like a campfire, the warmth of the flames, almost comforting. But with each torch thrown on the pyre, the fire rose.

  Blood was trickling from her mouth, her fingers numb, when the first lick of flame stung her toes.

  A great crack sounded, and the logs collapsed, pinning her legs under burning wood. The smell of charring flesh forced its way into her nostrils, and somewhere in her scream, her terrible scream, her spark ignited for the very first time.

  Though her legs were still marked by fire, it now passed over her skin like wind, with no burning or pain. Her spark flowed into the flames, becoming one with them, commanding them.

  The cuffs melted, dropping from her wrists, and she spat out the molten remnants of the gag. She laughed, cackling, as her hair burned away, replaced by a plume of flame.

  Fire took the village church that day, but no one died.

  ? ? ?

  Shaking her head, Eliza came back to the here and now, back to Oliver’s shed, weeping into his blanket. Tired, like she would never sleep again, she picked herself up and set off into the early morning mist.

  ? ? ?

  She’d never seen the docks by daylight, and as she paced through them in the rain, searching, Eliza saw what a bleak and desperate place it really was.

  Children huddled under old tarps as a too-thin man cast a fishing line into the water. He smiled as she passed. Half his teeth were missing. And off in a back alley, it sounded like a cat was dying. It would let out a low sickly screech that slowly faded. Then after a minute or two, start again.

  Frustration getting the better of her, she muttered, “Why can’t someone just put that damn thing out of its misery?”

  And then, stepping through an alley, she saw what she thought had been the cat.

  Oliver was doubled over, his head trembling with pain, as a deep cut above his right eye poured scarlet into a puddle of murky water.

  All denial fell away. This was her fault, the rewards of her cruelty visited on the one person—she really cared about. She rushed to him.

  He was in delirium, convulsing as the low sickly screech began again.

  There was no one to help, no city watch, and no carriages went by these docks.

  The boy thrashed when she tried to lift him. Moving him might kill him, but he’d be sure to die if she did nothing.

  Eliza grabbed a discarded sack and rolled him onto it as he screamed. It wasn’t good, but it was the best she could do, dragging him two blocks to the nearest paved road.

  At first, no one stopped; they kept their heads pointed firmly in the opposite direction, but then a wall of fire sprung up between a man in a business suit and a carriage that was no longer his to hire.

  https://discord.gg/fQtFt2sYdf

  "Witches, Boys, and Other Monsters" on Amazon (And if you buy it on Amazon it would be a great favor to me if you'd review it.)