His mother, his father, the parents of his friends, all had their eyes sealed shut, crucifixes of all kinds held to their chests, mumbling words that the child didn’t understand as they gazed towards the clouded heavens. “Is the witch dead?” he stammered, a burst of cool air fluttering down his shirt. The peaceful atmosphere of the persecution endured until a boy in the front, of only about nine years of age, broke the deafening silence.
The hair, so fair and angelic, seemed to be but a wig unscathed on top of the lifeless girl, glistening in the breeze like an amber lily drifting through a nightmarish swamp. No one in the audience moved, the smouldering flames left to dwindle into nothingness, leaving behind a singed ebony figure with heavenly golden hair resembling the body of a doll.
