Earlier that morning, when the children had circled her in the yard outside the school, Lucy Bishkoff had pulled up her dress and pulled down her underthings to see if she bore the mark of the devil on her skin. Jane felt something breaking inside. A dam letting go, her fury pouring through, overtaking her. And then, for the first time in her life, she heard a voice, loud and clear: not the voice of a spirit, but the voice of her own rage. Punish them, it said. Punish them all.

When everyone was still outside, she went into the schoolhouse, snuck back to the supply cupboard, made a nest of crumpled paper, lit the edges with a match. Then she went back out and waited. Once everyone was inside, sitting down for lessons, she used the strongest branch she could find to bar the door.

Crouching in the root cellar hours later, her heartbeat pounding in her ears, she smelled the smoke on her clothing. Heard the screams of the children. They screamed and screamed and screamed in her mind. But she told herself they deserved what they got. The whole town deserved to be punished.

She waited in the dark root cellar, listening to the echoes of the screams, waiting. But Mama did not come for her.

Eventually, she grew tired of waiting; her legs had turned to pins and needles and she was cold all over. She cracked open the door, stepped outside, the afternoon sun blinding. She staggered, squinting like a mole-girl, and moved toward home, willing herself to be slow and cautious. Where was Mama?

When she got to the bog, she saw that what was left of their little house was smoldering. Gone. All gone. There was a crowd gathered at the opposite end of the bog, by the big white pine. She moved closer, stealthily, and saw what they were all looking at.

. . .

At first, when she ran away from Hartsboro as a girl of twelve, she didn’t know who she was without Mama.

She’d spent her whole life being Jane Breckenridge—daughter of Hattie, the witch of the bog, the most powerful woman in the county.

Then she was a no one. A street urchin with no last name. Smith, she said when she had to make one up. I’m Jane Smith. I come from downstate. By the Massachusetts border. My parents, they died when I was a baby and I was raised by an aunt, then she died. Now I’ve got no one.

People take pity on you when you are young and pretty and have a sad story to tell. People are drawn to sorrow.