Amelia couldn’t stall her fate for much longer. She slid the small amount of food she had on her plate around and crushed her peas with her fork, only taking bites every now and then so she wouldn’t have to leave her asylum. The guard in front of her room had an agitated expression lain out on his face, not trying to conceal it at all.

“Hurry,” the guard hissed, letting his annoyance seep into his already cold tone.

Amelia glared at him from her place on the icy stone floor, her thin dress not providing much warmth. Most of her thigh and the entirety of her calf was pressed against the ground, sending chills up her spine whenever she moved. Her forearms were out in the open air, causing all of the hair on them to stand up straight. Her ankle was tucked under the crook of her knee, the warmest part of her on-the-brink-of-hypothermia body, hiding her sign of magic, one of the reasons she was caught.

She had been walking down her small cobbled street whenever she felt the fists on her arms and the scratchy scarf covering her eyes. She had felt her tears seeping through the fabric covering most of her face. Amelia could vividly remember the feeling of her cries of help stuck in her throat because of the gag in her mouth. The memory of being carried, her arms and legs desperately attempting to make contact with something while they flailed through the air tormented her sleep. Her capturer’s muscular stature made this helpless task impossible. She had remembered nothing after that.

She had finally woken up to water droplets splashing down on her bruised face.

Amelia had been there for forty-three days now. She had celebrated her fourteenth birthday in that very room. But today was even scarier than when she had been taken. Today was the day of her trial.

September 13, 1692. She had been dreading this day ever since the trials had began. Amelia’s parents had been very cautious about when they went outside, or even when they opened their curtains. They had began dressing more modestly, making sure to cover their signs of magic, or SMs, whenever they were around others. Amelia was forced to wear a bandage around her ankle and say she had burned it on a fallen torch.

There were only around five-hundred people in her village, but out of those there were only nineteen witches and wizards. In the entire town, though, there were hundreds. 

Many people had already been tried, and most of them were humans. Only three people had been executed so far, but just one of them was actually a witch. Amelia and her parents had gone to her hanging, but they had hidden behind the tree line so they wouldn’t be spotted. It was the most horrific scene she had ever witnessed. She had watched the woman’s lifeless body twitch and flail while she tried to get oxygen into her desperate lungs, until her body could handle no more.

“I said hurry,” the guard snapped, his sneer growing by the second, “You have three minutes.”

Amelia stood up gingerly and pressed out the wrinkles of her tattered dress with her hands. She held her head up as she walked over to the small set of bars in the iron doors of her cell, trying to be as confident as she possibly could without having bathed since she had arrived in this place that supposedly served justice.

“I’m ready,” she announced in the most self-assured voice she could muster up.

“Finally,” the guard mumbled as he stole the key from his trouser pocket and unlocked the cell. He wrapped his hand around her upper arm and pulled her down the hallway jerkily.

The only other time she had been down this hall was with fabric shielding her vision, but now she thought that it might have been protecting her. Blood splatters were on the floor and walls. People called out for help from inside of their cells with voices near extinction. Amelia forced herself not to cry while keeping her disguise of cool composure on her face.

At the head of the hall was a thick, heavy door that led into the courtroom. It was full of people disputing, some on her side, some against her. Actually, most people were against her. 

The judge was sitting at his podium, his icy gaze settling on Amelia from across the room. The girls who had accused her were sitting on the front bench, glaring towards her with smirks plastered on their smug faces. They were friends with the girls who had told the entire village that they were possessed by the devil and they knew what people were performing witchcraft, and now they were trying to act like them by accusing someone, too. Amelia was convinced that their parents were just telling them to accuse their family enemies.

She walked up to the raised platform at the front of the room, making sure to look confident in herself, and making sure that her bandage was secure on her foot. She had slipped it on quickly as the guard let her out of the room, hoping he wouldn’t notice the yellow sparks that shot out of her bony fingers as she did so. She was surprised that he didn’t see the tattered fabric wrap itself around her SM, her ankle showered in glistening sparkles as it happened. But then again, she was sure he was studiously ignoring her as much as he could.

But now, as she faced the crowd, she kept herself clear of all signs of magic, even though it hurt to hide who she truly was.

“Amelia Margery Ascima, you are being tried for witchcraft,” the judge said in his booming voice, “We shall first hear the accuser’s side of the story. Jalica?”

A small girl stepped forward, a ringlet of dark hair spilling out of her bonnet. Her gray eyes were too big for her face, making her look innocent, but Amelia could see the traces of her sly falsehoods.

“Marie, Cecilia, and I saw a sign of magic on her ankle, right underneath that bandage. We also saw her take bread from a shop using magic,” Jalica said, using her eyes to her advantage. Amelia saw the crowd sympathise with her immediately, even the few that had been defending Amelia just a few seconds earlier.

The judge looked pleased with her story. He had been known to avoid all evidence from the accused and finding a way to prove them guilty, even if there was an infinite amount of evidence that they weren’t. 

“Guard, please remove the bandage from Miss Ascima’s ankle,” the judge said, gesturing towards the platform where Amelia stood.

The guard nodded and strided over to the girl, his cold expression replaced with an evil grin. He definitely wanted to see Amelia found guilty.

He crouched down next to her and started unraveling the bundle of fabric. Amelia knew her SM was down there, and she knew that the other girls had found out, but she had never stolen anything. Beads of sweat were appearing on her hands, but she kept them pressed against her sides so no one could see. She kept her false expression of confidence on her face as her mind was running in a hundred different directions. 

She wanted desperately to get the man off of her foot, to rip his chilling touch off of her. She could do it so easily, just one movement of her hand and he would go flying across the room. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to be sentenced to death, she couldn’t end up like the others who had been convicted. 

She hoped that some kind of miracle would occur, that she would just vanish into thin air and no one thought she was guilty would find her.

She could feel the last of her bandage falling off of her foot, could hear the thud of her heart in her ears as it hit the floor like it was a boulder falling off of a mountain.

Amelia heard gasps from the crowd. She looked down and saw her bare ankle. No mark. No ink-colored mark obstructing the tanned skin above her shoe.

But she displayed no signs of surprise. She looked into the crowd as if she had known that nothing would be on her foot once the bandage was gone. She reveled in the amazement of the audience.

The judge leered at Amelia, and then turned his head towards Jalica. “Do you have anymore evidence, Jalica?” He hissed that last word.

The smaller girl gawked at the accused. It was Amelia’s turn to smirk, now.

“Um,” she said, clearly trying to come up with another lie but failing. She looked towards the other girls that she had set next to, all just as mystified. They couldn’t think of anything, either. “It was there before!”

Amelia almost laughed. Seeing the small, un-intimidating child yelling in such an angry manner was extremely gratifying.

The judge was fuming. “Check her other foot,” he ordered the guard.

The man switched to her other side, manhandling her foot as he yanked it off of the ground and twisted it in his hands.

“Nothing,” he replied.

The trial went on like this for hours, the judge and girls throwing false proof in her direction, but it was proved wrong every time. Once the night had won against the day, the judge begrudgingly pronounced her innocent.

But the strange thing was, once she was back at her house with her parents, the mark reappeared. But it didn’t come back alone.