Jeanette's Sentencing

"Taking a witch's power from them is extremely hard, but not impossible. It is used only in the most gravest circumstances, and their power is absorbed into the other witches. It takes many witches to absorb the power of one, and once the offending witch's power is gone they will be nothing but pure mortal." Father explained. Mother was silent, but I could feel her conflicting emotions emanating from her. She felt hopeless yet angry, but she would often get mad at me for asking about what she was feeling, so I held her hand and squeezed it, making a new feeling of reassurance fall over her.

Church bells started to chime off in the distance, calling for a town meeting. We all stood up, leaving the food on the table, and rushed to the door. The townspeople were already dashing to the meeting hall, and we followed. Adult men and women do not run in Salem, but we were pretty close with how fast we were walking. We pushed our way into the meeting hall with people in front of and behind us. We quickly found our seats, as did everyone else. The Governor was at the front of the room, and the Pastor and village doctor were at his sides. He called the hall to order and began to speak.

"The investigation regarding the local woman Jeanette, has found her guilty of witch craft," he began. "We found these dolls in her shamble of a residence on the outskirts of town, along with drawings of pentagrams and depictions of the devil. And we as well found these," he showed us the spirit dolls, which were used in healing magic, and dumped a cloth bag full of crystals on the floor, which were also used in healing mental and physical ailments. 'I didn't know Jeanette was a healer,' I thought. But the people in the pews saw these objects as signs of the devil, and Jeanette's tired, tear streaked face was met with awful shouts of godlessness. Shrieks and howls came from the Pastor's daughters, sitting in the front rows, and pointing fingers and yelling came from everyone else. The Governor shouted above the people to get their attention, and then said in a booming voice, "The punishment for one found guilty of witchcraft is execution by hanging. It will be a public execution and will be done in the town square immediately."