Jenni Fagin (2022) Hex.

Hex is a novella. To be read comfortably in one sitting. The premise is history that resonates. Jenni Fagin chose the North Berwick Witch trials.

She has twin narrators in different centuries meeting in a cell three levels below the current city of Edinburgh on the 4^th December 1591. Gellis Duncan, a fifteen-year-old girl, is to be executed that morning for being a witch. Iris, via a séance, comes to offer comfort.

Iris:

‘I was out in the Null. In perpetuity, it seemed. I was bodiless and formless until things began to emerge…

A witch will die here in the morning.’

Gellis Duncan has named other witches. Agnes Simpson, garrotted and burnt at the stake. Barbara Napier.

Euphame MacCalzean is the target of David Seaton. But the latter is wealthy. She is the sister of Seaton’s wife. They are in debt. He craves his sister-in-law’s wealth and feels himself entitled to it.

Gellis Duncan is a servant to David Seaton. A good and able worker. Too good and too able.

King James I and VI is effeminate, but to be married to a child bride. He prefers men to women but fears witches. King James held a strong belief in the threat of witchcraft, particularly after personal experiences, such as being near drowned and private conversations being heard by invisible beings and reiterated by known witches.  The 1590 North Berwick witch trials in Scotland had the Royal seal of approval.

Daemonologie  in dialogue form, explained the practices of witchcraft and necromancy, the nature of demons, and the methods to detect and prosecute witches. A scholarly tract written (ghost-written) by King James that suggested the best ways to entrap poor women that proved to be difficult and different. Kings were little Gods. Witch hunts had a legal basis.

Gellis Duncan is difficult and different. She does not kowtow to men. David Seaton is paid for his work of torturing and raping his former servant to find out what she knows. Cruelty, putting words in her mouth is a job he and others enjoys.

Duncan wants to recant. She remains innocent enough to believe anyone would listen. Iris listens. Iris has turned into a crow. Thousands crowd into Edinburgh and make their way to the gallows on High Street to watch Gellis and Bessie, another young girl, hanged. It is a popular entertainment. The hangman checks his ropes.

Other corvine gather. ‘Non-action is a form of approval. I will not be passive.’

‘I am so full of rage.’

Like the moron’s moron Trump, nothing good comes from Seaton.

 Donald Trump's inauguration for his new term as U.S. president 20^th January 20, 2025, Washington, D.C.

‘I place a hex on every witness who takes glee in this—may a plague arrive one day to cast down every last one, may it pursue their children, and their children’s children. If your grandmother took pleasure in this, may you pay for her sins.

Hex!’

Read on.

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