Transcreation Triptych

I walk the forest, tying hair in knots,

I breathe the night air, clinging to the

Shadows, circling me, it’s all the same;

I am a cast-off poppet of a girl

Alone in a disgraceful world, and I,

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know.

​

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know.

There’s something in this village that is not Quite right for me, so subtle, though, that I Walked timidly, for fear that I’d capsize the

Boat, and be drowned, the one unscreaming girl

Floating on the water all the same.

​

John, Father, God, you three are all the same.

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know.

You dig your ropes into a tender girl

And bind her to a stake to burn, and not

Repent, for she deserves it, because the

Ground is quaking, something coming, I

​

Hear it too, but will not waver, I

Can ride the earthquake, using all the same Artifices that have tied me to the

Village and to you, and You, I’m not,

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know.

Though I’d be iron, I am just a girl,

​

Sob in my dresses, shattered earthware girl,

I glue myself together, swear that I

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know (throatwrenching whisper), I am not the same

As when I came here, You know that I’m not,

Or else was destined for this, and all the

​

Things I do are God’s will, and all the

Promises you made to naïve girls

Are holy plans–– but I don’t think so. I

Am master of my fate, though they are not;

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know,

But I’ll take on that duty just the same.

​

I know the end is coming, don’t remind me. We’re all in the same ship, and I’m the captain.

I’ve never been the sanest girl I know.

   

    .

We are the witches they believe us to be. Meeting by night, alone in the forest, old man and unwed woman – this is the fantasy that they have of us. We will be the picture stirred up in the minds of judges, and, I do not doubt, behind Abby’s every lie about the tortures that befall her, poor, innocent, un-Satanic Abby. 

 

She is hesitant. Like this, drawn back in the shadows, back against a tree, she is like a deer. She is innocent and fragile. What damage could a creature like her possibly do? I am the danger, and she the frail victim of a ruthless hunter.

 

“I must speak with you, Abigail.”

 

She softens my voice against my will, and my words disappear into the rattles of branches and whippoorwills and whatever else is just beyond the circle of my light, which barely touches her.

 

“Will you sit?”

 

She edges forward half a step. The light of the lantern pours over her, milky and golden, and I see I was wrong again. A deer – no, she is antique purity in nightgown and shawl. She is an idol, a Minerva, a Madonna, a thin and delicate earthenware form vibrating with an incandescent otherworldly energy. Her eyes are pale in the light, and wary. None of the hard-featured pride she wore when we met, only the vulnerability that I’d caught when no one else had. None of what drew me to her – and all of it.

 

“How do you come?” 

 

“Friendly,” and would that it were a lie, would that I came with a musket to shoot down the deer and a cudgel to smash the idol, but Abby is my lover in the dark. She reaches out, fingers trembling in the shadows, reaching for the light and heat of my lantern, or of me behind it, as if she’d never pointed them at an innocent woman to condemn her to death, her lips part in a silent whimper as if she’d never curled them in a sneer at a soul begging for mercy, her eyes well with tears that will never fall except when she screws her eyes shut and screams that she is tormented, and her voice is as weak as a dying animal’s last breath.

 

“I am so alone in the world now.”