Footnote Parts One and Two

…he most greviously afflected me a great many times by pinching pricking and beating me allmost choaking me to death urging me vehemently to writ in his book. 
The deposition of Elizabeth Hubbard against John Proctor Senior (Salem Witchcraft Papers)

Each day fell into the delicious hysteria and stench of death. We shrieked in their incredulous faces and they believed everything we said. Everything. I have to say it twice just to believe it for myself but it’s true.
It began as a game, a childish distraction from the boredom of winter. The Minister’s daughter and her strange, orphan cousin, chanced to idle away the drudgery with the Venus Glass I taught them. They were so easy to mould, loving my weavings, conjuring the forbidden in their braided little heads. We knew our futures without any need of divination; chattels handed from impatient parent to husband, pausing momentarily to breed before they packed us into the cold uncompromising earth, a muttered prayer sending us off to greet our makers. My mama and papa had known an early grave but I didn’t remember them.
‘Death.’ A muttered monosyllable in that curiously low voice few were granted and my head snapped.
‘What? Don’t be so stupid,’ I’m gabbling at her, attempting to disguise age as authority. ‘All you did was crack a few eggs, what’s the harm in that? What were you after? Your husbands’ names?’
An imperceptible nod.
‘But you’re far too young for that, you goose,’ I chide, still laughing. ‘What put that nonsense into your heads?’
‘We just wondered..’ embarrassed they look away, unsure how to continue. Paddling innocent toes into the sea of maturity was proving dangerous, but she would easily find a willing husband, unlike her cousin. Nobody approached that inscrutable and unflinching green gaze.
It was never difficult. All we had to do was squeal and tear our hair and watch them fall into credulity. History may record us as the pawns of adult manipulation, factions and land disputes, but I’m not so sure now. Of all, it was probably the cousin who actually believed all she claimed she saw. No one else was as violent in her writhings, howls and accusations. Like butter they slid between our fingers, convened a court and pushed too many into oblivion. Occasionally I find myself wondering why we did it; for some it was cheap avarice and ambition, for others the seduction of shattering a bleak existence.
        Snow blanketed the ground when it began, and as ever I had to hammer the ice encrusted water barrel. My winter-veined uncle refused to employ even a daily maid because they had me, the adopted daughter. At least he didn’t touch me, barely noticing my presence unless I transgressed.  Even the minister had slaves, two jabbering savages. I knew both of them could speak English as well as any other, but they relished the power their strange tongue exerted over us. Power, the great aphrodisiac and it became ours. For the first time we tasted freedom and feasted. No more ordering to bed, whippings and enforced silences. No more turgid psalms and sermons, sacrilegiously relishing our juvenile triumph over the minister. 
      That slave was the first; she was even more of a commodity than us in spite of her maturity. Suspicion sires superstition and soon they were indulging in the old ways, baking witch cakes and feeding them to that poor hound. How I laughed when I saw it gobbling the sour concoction, and for what? All we did was thrust skinny fingers into the empty air, and another bedraggled unfortunate was hauled away to fester in damnation and the filth of a rat-infested dungeon. Anyone was vulnerable, anyone, we didn’t discriminate, but I was always uneasy about the old woman and the farmer whose single error was to attend his wife’s examination. That cousin had never even breathed the same air, never rested those unflinching green eyes on his open face before that April morning, but she didn’t care. The woman he’d attempted to support was his third wife, thirty or so years beneath him, barely older than his first son, and they weren’t always happy. I heard they named the hanging hill after him eventually, but there’s no trace of me because I didn’t really die.
        For six months we flew, thrilling the tired population with salacious detail. We were puppets made to dance to ambition’s tune, a song we barely comprehended, instruments in a fatal orchestration of our own fashion. The cousin’s smile was lethal. When she laughed we knew the end was inevitable.