A mirror for witches

by Esther Forbes

‘Then I will,’ she said. Of a sudden her body was filled with lightness and (at first maintaining her horizontal position) she was elevated from off her bed. Thrice around the room she floated and, looking down, she saw her own vacant body as it lay still and flat as any corpse. ‘If I am going out to walk wet fields,’ she thought, ‘I should put on slippers.’ Then the red slippers Mr. Bilby once had bought her in Boston appeared upon her feet. She floated through the window, but once this was cleared she was set in vertical position. However, she felt no contact with the grass, and she took no steps. She floated on.

The moon was big upon the hills. The night air shook ravishing perfumes from the flowers and new leaves. The air was full of birds’ songs (although it was dead of night), of voices, strange music, laughter. She floated on. The silver birches twinkled and bowed to her. Her name was called by a thousand little voices. A million gleaming eyes watched her. At last she was thus conveyed to the fiend, who was seated upon a hillock, as on a throne. He raised her up when she would prostrate herself to him. He bade her have no fear, for, although in Hell he was indeed a great prince, upon earth he was as mortal man and her true love.

In the morning, when she awoke in her own bed, she believed that the adventure of the night had been but another dream. She drew her body from between the sheets, and set her feet upon the floor. Upon her feet were the red slippers, and they were wet. Upon the sheets were green stains from the grass crushed beneath her feet.

Now could she know truth from dreams and dreams from truth.

5

We are informed that there is no marriage nor giving in marriage in Heaven, but in Hell it well may be otherwise.

She never saw her fiend by day. He came at dead of night. He went by cock crow (yet, as already pointed out, sometimes delaying this same crowing). He ruled by love and not by terror. She gave him soul and body, both as act of impious homage, and of true love. So a month wore away—the month of June.

At every turn and in every way he comforted and charmed her. She confessed to him how greatly she dreaded that day, which he said must now soon come, when he would be summoned back to Hell. She begged him to take her with him—for without him she had no use for this dull earth. She begged him to slay her now, and thus, her spirit released, she would take her way with him to Hell, and there live with him, once more with her parents—whom the French burned in Brittany. So she fitted his hands to her throat. He would not. He only promised her again and again that when she lay dying he himself would come to her once more, and stand at her bed’s head. He promised her a short life, and life everlasting.

So this young woman, who had often shown a need for true religion, found great comfort in a false one. It was a fiend that fed, it would seem, her soul’s hunger. By him and by the hopes of Hell she was comforted, as the true Christian is by his Lord and the hopes of Paradise. She became reconciled to life, to death, to adversity, loneliness, and despair.

There was no problem that he could not answer for her, no doubt he did not lay. For instance, she was distressed to think that when her true life should begin (that is, when she died and entered Hell) she would not see the kind foster father, but would undoubtedly encounter his disagreeable wife. No, explained the demon, she was wrong, for he knew that Jared Bilby was already there, well and at peace. He had committed mortal sin by saving her when a child, for she was already a witch, and it is mortal sin to save a witch. ‘But at the time he did not know I was a witch. I do not think he ever believed it.’ The demon said that made no difference. Mortal sin was mortal sin, but Satan, grateful to him for saving the life of Doll, had never carried out the cruel sentence which had been meted out to him at the Awful Judgement Seat. Doll wanted to know what this sentence was. He said it was of so revolting a nature he could not tell her. His words made her hate Jehovah, and she felt Satan was a kinder ‘god.’