~5.27~

“So… I’ve got two choices,” Laurie said. “Stop or go. If I don’t want the magic to stop, I just have to keep going… but I don’t know what will actually happen if I do that.”

Woe stood there, saying nothing while she reasoned aloud.

“But… I don’t know what will happen if I don’t,” Laurie said. “I mean, even if it were safe to assume that I could get out of here without any kind of misadventure and go back home to my normal life, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the day after that. No matter how monotonous it seems… or secure… things are really not more certain outside this maze than they are inside it. I’ve spent most of my life trying to minimize risks, trying to control my exposure to danger.”

She laughed to herself.

“I read this book once… Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber,” Laurie explained. “It’s kind of dated and sexist, but also kind of timeless in a depressing way. The idea was that all women are witches, though most don’t talk about it. According to the book, we… or they, the women in this fictional version of the world… all do spells as to protect themselves and their husbands, try to advance the men’s careers. It’s like ‘behind every good man’ mixed with a lot of old-fashioned misogynistic wisdom fearing. But we all do have little rituals, don’t we? Lock your doors, look both ways, don’t go here after dark, don’t go there alone. We come up with all these little taboos, and if somebody gets struck down we assume they broke one, because that means we are still safe. She wore a short skirt… she had it coming…”

“Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe,” the girl recited. “I never saw a brute I hated so; he must be wicked to deserve such pain.”

“Is that a poem?” Laurie asked her.

“I think it must be,” Woe said. “The first parts rhymed.”