Goody Martin's Homestead — Three Months Later
February 1692
Salem Village, Massachusetts
A few months into colonial New England life, and Lilith Proctor had experienced a winter that was colder and more brutal than any she’d yet experienced before in her sixteen years. She sorely missed her centrally-heated, down-comforter life back home. 1691 had quietly turned into 1692, and all she could focus on was the cold.
It was the kind of cold that, even when huddled by Goody Martin’s fire with her hands wrapped around a cup of something that barely qualified as tea, she could still feel deep down. A chill that never quite left.
“Thou art wool-gathering again,” Goody Martin said from across the room, not looking up from the herbs she was grinding. “What troubles thee, child?”
Everything, Lilith thought. I miss my real life, I have no idea if I’ll ever get home or get fully warm again, and I just spent the morning churning butter by hand for almost two hours.
“Nothing, Goody,” she said aloud, having already learned that complaining about physical labor was a quick way to seem suspicious. “Only thinking over spring planting.”
It was a safe topic. Everyone here talked about planting, weather, and God. Those seemed to be the big three. It bored Lilith nearly to tears.
Goody Martin made a skeptical sound but didn’t press. She’d stopped asking difficult questions after the first month, when Lils had finally managed to cobble together a semi-believable story: she was Eliza’s cousin from a distant colony, had arrived just as Eliza fled, and decided to stay and help Goody Martin in exchange for shelter.
It was a thin story, but in a village where people were too busy surviving to interrogate every detail, it held for now. She rarely ventured into town, and no one had appeared to look too closely at her.
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So far.
A crash from the loft above made them both look up.
“Levi!” Goody Martin called, exasperated. “What mischief now?”
“It were an accident!” A small voice piped back. “Mags knocked over the—”
“The boy blames the cat,” Goody Martin muttered, but there was fondness in her voice. She set down her mortar and pestle. “Go see what he’s done, will thee? Before he brings the roof crashing down upon us.”
Lilith climbed the sturdy oak ladder up to the loft, her muscles protesting. Three months of hard physical labor—hauling water, chopping wood, and helping with food prep had buffed her arms in a way she never would have imagined back in 2025; but she was also perpetually sore. Her hands were cracked from working outside in the cold, and her feet ached from standing for long periods. What she wouldn't give for some hand lotion instead of smearing herself with tallow.
The loft was barely tall enough to stand in, with a sloped ceiling and a small window that let in dull winter light. Levi was perched in the middle of a pile of scattered dried corn, looking guilty.
He was around nine years old, gap-toothed and scrawny, with reddish-blonde hair that stuck up in the back no matter how much Goody Martin tried to smooth it down. Mags the cat sat nearby, licking her paw with supreme indifference to the chaos she’d presumably caused.
“It weren’t my fault,” Levi said immediately. “She jumped up!"
“It’s okay,” Lilith said, kneeling to help him gather the corn. “I'll help you clean it up."
Levi’s face brightened. “Truly?”
“Truly. But you owe me. Tell me...what gossip in the village?”
Levi loved telling Lilith gossip. At nine years old, he was beneath notice to most adults, which meant he heard everything. He’d become Lilith’s best source of information about who was feuding with whom, what was happening in the village, and most importantly, who was acting suspicious.
“Well,” Levi said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “Goody Bishop was seen wearing a scarlet bodice at market.”
He said it like it was the scandal of the century.
“Oh no,” Lilith said, deadpan. “Not a scarlet bodice.”
“It’s sinful!” Levi insisted, but he was grinning. He knew she found their rules ridiculous, even if he didn’t quite understand why.
She’d bonded with Levi almost immediately after arriving. He reminded Lilith achingly of a mix of Stevon and her little sister, Luce. He was similarly quick witted and naturally funny.
She would die before she let anything happen to him.
“What else?” she prompted, scooping corn back into the basket.
“Goody Putnam’s daughter, Ann, has having fits. Says the Devil sends specters to torment her in the night!”
He was grinning and giggling again, but Lilith looked pained. Ann Putnam, twelve years old. One of the primary accusers in the trials that would begin in just a few weeks.
It’s starting, she thought, a cold chill running through her. The accusations are starting.
“What kind of fits?” she asked Levi. "Do you know much more?"
He could sense her serious shift and his giggles quieted.