31 January 1691, Monday
The branches of the tree outside reach like decrepit fingers for the frozen ground. Not one person has passed for more than two hours. I know we are not the only inhabitants in Salem Town, but it feels as though we are. On my way home from Father’s I studied the one room structures with thatched roofs and precariously leaning chimneys and windows with oiled paper and no glass. The red barn with the shingled roof, where the blacksmith lives and works, pokes out, a ray of color in the bleak landscape. The wooden boxes people here call houses are brown, the trees are brown, the sea looks brown, and the ground, though frozen, is brown.
And again I wonder—where is everyone in this New World? Perhaps some have been scared away whilst the Pox still rages. People worry ab
