The Witches (Book #1)

𝔚𝔞𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔚𝔥𝔦𝔰𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤

Double Update!

☽🔮🃏🌕🕸✨🍃🕯🧿🌙🍄☾

I head straight to the public library, excitement about the secret study fueling my steps. After a useless search online for that house my grandmother wrote about, I figure my only shot at finding it and the hanging location is to look in the old archives.

The air's crisp with the smell of autumn, and the first few leaves have started to change color. The streets have that family-friendly feel. Store windows already have pumpkins and witches' hats in them. I pass an old pub called Bae's Balefulness and trip on a tree root jutting out of the sidewalk. Fantastic—so everyone in this town knows my relatives.

I stop in front of the library, marked by a handmade wooden sign hanging from a post. It's a brick and brown-stone building with columns supporting the doorway. Apparently, it used to be the home of Captain Boo Jaehyun, a successful merchant and shipowner. He had bad luck, and most of his family died off in the mid-1800s, probably in this very building. I read all about it when I was looking up the address.

I push open one of the heavy wooden doors and make way to the woman at the front desk. She's a small, white-haired lady with reading glasses balanced on the end of her nose.

"I'm looking for some old records of Manyeo from the seventeen hundred," I say quietly.

She inspects me over her glasses in a way that makes me conscious of my posture. "I haven't seen you here before."

Great. I get to be the new girl in Salem School and in the town. "I just moved here."

"You'll be needing a library card. What's your full name?"

"Bae Sooji," I whisper.

"What was that, now? Speak up, girl," she says, and leans a little closer.

"Bae Sooji," I say a little louder, more conscious of my own surname than I've ever been.

"Bae, is it?" she replies at full volume. She raises a disapproving eyebrow at me. "Lots of history here. Not all of it good."

I nod, and can feel eyes staring at my back. I bet there are at least a couple of people here who know about my locker incident today.

"DO you know where I could find information about where people lived in the late sixteen hundred and early seventeen hundred? And maybe a map?" I ask, anxious to leave the onlookers.

"Upstairs to your left, in the back, small room on your right. Have copies of all the original town documents from around the time of the Witch Trials. Come back when you're done and we'll see about that card."

"Thanks," I dart for the stairs without making eye contact with anyone. You can judge me, but I don't have to look at you while you're doing it.

☽🔮🃏🌕🕸✨🍃🕯🧿🌙🍄☾

Two hours with a stack of dusty old books at a small wooden table in a cramped room and I'm finally getting some useful information. I found the address for Son's house that Ryujin referenced in his essay "Where the Manyeo's 'Witches' Were Hanged." But it's unclear if it exits anymore. It doesn't line up with the current streets.

I run my hand along a pile of books about my relatives Bae Changbin and Bae Ilsung. If my surname is going to be such an issue here, I want to know why. I mean, they were highly respected members of society. Ilsung even brought over the charter from China saying that Korea was a province.

Unfortunately, Changbin was kind of the thorn. He was crazy smart, graduated KAIST at sixteen, and wrote seven languages, by the time he was twenty-five. Some historians say he was good and honest, but more think he was the main instigator of the Witch Trials. He was so concerned with uprooting "evil" that he was willing to let people hang to do it. I can't help but think how the tables have turned for the Baes in Manyeo.