Sticks & Stones

Condemned as a witch and bound to the stake, a woman casts one final spell to escape death.

But the spell does not save her. It fractures her.

Torn from her body, she is cast into the lives of other women, trapped behind their eyes and forced to witness their pain, silence, and survival. She can feel everything. Remember everything. But she cannot speak, move, or change what is coming.

At first, she believes this is punishment. But with each life, she learns her suffering was never singular.

The stake was only one shape of the cage.

Some cages are built from rope and fire. Others from rooms, names, promises, and hands that claim ownership.

Unable to save the women she inhabits, she is forced to reckon with the limits of rage, when rage has no hands.

Yet witnessing is not passive forever.

Inside every life, something gathers. And, the world may have been right to fear what a woman becomes, when she has carried too much.