1692 - Salem, Massachusetts

The trees shook in the cool evening wind. The leaves were beginning to fall to the ground, mixing with the bare earth to add a fresh new layer to the forest floor.

Soon, although the trees didn’t know it, that new layer would be trampled down by the hooves of horses giving chase to a woman in a dark dress.

She was being hunted down by a mob of enraged townspeople chosen by their god (or, more appropriately, by the Court of Oyer and Terminer) to capture anyone in the town suspected of witchcraft, no matter how opposite their reputation or how delusional the evidence. They pursued her through the small forest, but they lost her among the trees; she often retreated there to spend her free time, and as a result she knew every nook and cranny, every hidden path.

Eventually, the mob got tired of searching and left the forest. But in all of their frenzy, they had unfortunately forgotten to do one very important thing: look up. Perched on a tree branch high above them was Joan Blakely, the woman in the dark dress, her red eyes glowing in the night. A grim smile dawned on her face as she silently remembered all the other women that had been falsely accused of witchcraft before her, and their identical fiery fates. The true irony of the situation never failed to amuse her.

With that, she stretched out her feathery wings and disappeared into the night sky, her silhouette bleeding into that of a raven.