"Tell me, my girl," The dour-faced judge drawled, his face set in a scowl that would've made Arthur proud. "When did you become a witch?"

Amelia Jones's small breasts were practically heaving. She had never been so scared in her entire life, as short as it had been so far.

"I am not a witch, sir." She whimpered.

How had it come to this? It had only started out as a simple practice of the crafts Arthur had begun to teach her. He said he had seen a potential in her for magic and had begun to teach her. When he had sailed back to London, she had thought to practice a bit, so she could impress him when he came back. She liked hearing Arthur's praise.

Soon, among the village of Salem, she began to hear of the activities that Reverend Parris's girls had been engaging in, along with the household servant Tituba. Some of the girls said that Tituba had special powers, could foresee the future and tell you who your future husband would be. So Amelia decided to attend the midnight gatherings in the woods with the other girls, in hopes that she might learn something from the Barbados servantwoman.

"Amelia Jones, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?"

"N-none, sir."

"Have you made no contract with the devil?"

"No."

Amelia may have been a very young colony, her age of 85 considered as still just an infant in the eyes of the nations several thousand years her seniors, but she was by no means stupid. She could tell by the cold, uncompassionate nature of his gaze that he believed nothing she said. He was convinced of her guilt.

The one night Amelia had joined in the gatherings had been not what she had been expecting. The girls had gathered together in a circle around the cauldron, certain runes and a ring around the pot had been drawn in salt. Many of the girls had begun to dance wildly, despite the fact that the Puritan communities had forbidden it. Amelia had danced too, until the situation began to get out of hand. Herbs and frogs had been thrown into the pot, and Abigail Williams, the 13 year old spitfire, had brought a cock which had been spun around and its neck snapped.

That had been the night that the good Reverend himself had found them.

Soon, rumors of witchcraft began to circle the village.

"How far have you complied with Satan?"

Amelia, never allow anyone to tell you that magic is evil. Arthur had told her. Magic has nothing to do with the devil.

"I have never met Satan." Amelia sobbed, the tears beginning to roll down her face. Her hands clenched into fists and the irons that bound her wrists together shook slightly. "I am innocent!"

"Amelia," a small voice whimpered. "Why do you hurt us so?"

Amelia's head snapped towards the benches where the girls of the village sat. Her eyes locked onto Abigail Williams's. Her face spoke of terror and pain, but Amelia knew better. Abigail Williams was nothing more than a snake of a girl, a spoiled brat who would do anything to get attention. Amelia had been there when Tituba, Sarah Goode, and Sarah Osborne had been accused of witchcraft, to cover up the "Sabbath" in the woods. She had been there at each of the trials that had taken place, and she had seen how Abigail had spearheaded the girls' accusations. She knew what Abigail was up to, why could the judge not see this?

Amelia hadn't expected these events to happen, she hadn't expected things to have progressed so much. All she had wanted was to impress Arthur. A few nights ago, she had taken down one of his old tomes, in hopes of finding some spell to stop the madness.

It had not gone well. Her own governess, Goody Addams, had reported her to the authorities as a witch. Arthur had trusted the woman with Amelia's life, had told the woman of who they were and had sworn her to secrecy. He had made the woman promise that no harm would come to Amelia under her charge.

Amelia could now feel her eyes boring holes into her back, feel her accusation.

The girls had begun to join in Abigail's accusation. They pointed at her and cried, claiming that she was hurting them now, sending her spirit to torture them.

"Abigail, stop it!" Amelia cried, her voice hitching in sobs.

"Abigail, stop it!" the girls repeated, shrieking and clawing at their faces.

"Why do you harm these girls, Amelia?" The judge said, raising his voice above the ruckus that the girls were making.

"I'm not harming them!" Amelia shrieked, and the girls repeated her. In the courts, this was spectral evidence that Amelia was sending her spirit into the girls, and therefore a witch.

"She has a witch's teat!" Her former governess cried, jumping to her feet. "High on her left shoulder! I have seen it when I bathe her!"

Before Amelia could even resist, the guards grabbed her by the arms and turned her around, ripping the back of her dress open. There they poked and prodded at the strawberry-pink birthmark located on her left shoulder with a blunt needle. She wriggled in their hold.

"Stop it, please!"

She cast her eyes back to the judge, hoping beyond hope that perhaps he would take pity on her. Her heart felt like it had sunk to the pit of her stomach when she saw the slight quirk of his lips. The smallest, barest smile that spoke of righteous victory. She glanced over to Abigail and saw the young girl's smirk, the devilish glee in her eyes. And she knew then that her fate had been sealed.

"Amelia Jones, you have been found guilty of the crime of witchcraft. You are to hang at Gallows' Hill on the morrow."

Arthur Kirkland felt deep down in his heart that something was wrong when Amelia had not appeared at the harbor to greet him. Usually, when he came back from London, his adoptive daughter and her governess were there to welcome him back. Amelia would bounce on her toes, trying her hardest to control her joy until she could stand it no longer. She would run to him and practically tackle him in her death-grip hug. She would tell him how much she had missed him and "please, oh please Arthur, would you teach me more?" The girl had been displaying such an aptitude for the magic arts that Arthur could barely contain his glee.

But today, the harbor had been absent of the little preteen girl with her sky blue eyes and her wild, wheat colored hair. Arthur's mind immediately made the excuse that perhaps Amelia was caught up in her studies. But his heart had a certain weight upon it that only grew as the carriage drew closer to Salem.

The carriage had drawn up to the house in the village, where he had found it to be dark and empty. Goody Addams and Amelia were nowhere to be found. The table looked as though it had been set for supper, but the plates had been scattered to the floor and a cup found on its side. Down in the basement, Arthur had found one of his tomes lying open on the ground. It was when he had inquired among the villagers as to their whereabouts when he learned about the witch hunts.

It was nearing nightfall now, and the villagers had told him of the trial that had taken place yesterday, and how a young girl had been scheduled to hang earlier this very morning. His throat had tightened and he seemed to lose his voice in that very moment. By chance, he had glanced to the side, where he saw Goody Addams. They had made eye contact, at which point she had avoided his gaze and scurry about her business. He knew then that she had not protected his little girl as she had promised.

Without further ado, he ran for all his worth towards the gallows hill.

His heart stopped at the sight that awaited him there.

He knew that his kind did not die so easily. There would be no corpse if she were truly dead, but… God, he couldn't stand to see his little girl hanging from that tree by her neck with her hands bound behind her back. She made no movement, except for the gentle sway of the rope.

Arthur had lived under the rule of the Roman Empire and the Vikings, had fought many wars, had looked the Spanish Armada in the face and brought it down to its knees, but never had he known such terror as he had then. He didn't even realize that fat salty tears were traveling down his cheeks as he raced forward and cut the rope free. He caught Amelia's body in his arms and held her gently as he sunk to his knees. He fumbled with the noose until her broken neck was free of it and he tossed it aside.

"Please wake up," he sobbed like never before. "Please Amelia, wake up." He vowed to any higher power listening that he would make the village pay for what had happened. He had trusted these people to care for their colony, to treat her like one of their own. He had trusted Goody Addams to protect her.

He was brought out of his reverie when he heard the broken bones in Amelia's neck begin to heal. Not a moment later, she took in a sudden gasp of air and her blue eyes snapped open.

"Amelia!"

In the next second her breath was expelled in a piercing scream.

He brought her close and muffled her cries in the crook of his throat, where it joined with his shoulder. He pet her dirtied hair and shushed her soothingly as she muffled her sobs and screams into his shoulder. She chanted "I'm sorry, Iggy. I'm so sorry." Over and over again.

When Amelia's had calmed down and she fell into a gentle sleep, Arthur had decided then and there to flee the village of Salem. He would make sure that Amelia never set foot in this accursed place ever again.

And in the morning when she woke, Amelia made a promise to herself. She would go so far as to deny it even existed if need be, but she would never again practice any sort of magic.

BLARG, this is probably the shortest, crappiest piece of work I've ever done. There I was, sitting comfortably in my living room, faffing about on tumblr and watching a documentary on witches, when it hit me. Why can England perform magic, why can Russia cast curses, but America does nothing of the sort.

I hold the headcanon that Native America was America and Canada's mother, and the native tribes are very spiritual, so I believe that she would've passed some of that on to her children. Their spirituality would've been viewed by the Puritans as something akin to witchcraft.

Not just the Native American tribes, but many other cultures in the "New World" had traditions and beliefs that the Puritans would believe to be Satanic in nature. This was one of the prime reasons that the Parris's servant Tituba had been suspected of witchcraft.

Now! Onto a bit of history lecture!

Tituba, Reverend Parris, and Abigail Williams were all real people. Reverend Parris had been the head of the church in Salem, but it's believed that he had many enemies. Many of the villagers had not taken kindly to his ministry and believed him to be a vain man. (At least, that's what my 11th grade English teacher taught us when we were studying "The Crucible".)

Abigail Williams was his niece. I don't know exactly what had happened to her parents, but she ended up living with him and his daughter Betty Parris. Tituba was a servant from Barbados.

There are many stories about how the Salem Witch Trials got started, but the most popular story is this: Tituba was teaching the two girls a game or something along those lines that she had learned in her childhood in Barbados. What you did is you took a glass of water and then you cracked an egg and dropped the raw yolk into the water, and you were supposed to be able to see the face of your future husband. Word of this "game" got out to the other young girls of the village and they began to play along too.

Well, one day, it's rumored that one of the girls saw the image of a coffin instead of her future spouse. Soon the other girls claimed that they were having visions of death from these games and became stricken with fits. And soon enough, witchcraft was diagnosed as the cause of it all.

Three women were originally arrested; Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. It's said that the first two pleaded innocent, but Tituba pleaded guilty. Back then, it was really screwed up; if you pleaded innocent, then you were more than likely a witch, but if you pleaded guilty, then that meant that you had broken free of Satan's hold and could be saved. Really messed up, right? Well, Tituba's guilty confession is what really helped spark the madness of the witch hunts. In that year, 19 men and women, some of which were children, were convicted of witchcraft and hung. It's widely recognized now that all the girls who had been "afflicted" by the witches were all frauds, and only one of the girls ever apologized for what they had done.

Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible" had been written during the 1950's, at the height of the Cold War and McCarthyism. The point of the play was to compare the similarities between the hunt for Soviet spies and the witch hunts of 1692. The play had some differences from actual history, though. In reality, Abigail Williams had only been a girl, maybe 13 at the most, but in the play, Miller portrayed her as a young woman, perhaps 18 or 20 years old. In the play, she also had had a past affair with John Proctor, who later was hung for witchcraft. And back in those days, adultery was a very, very serious deal.

Also in the play and the movie adapted from it, the girls were shown to be dancing and shrieking in the woods, gathered together around a cauldron, where they threw herbs and small animals such as frogs into it. Puritan life was very very strict, especially for the girls and women of the faith, and dancing like they were was strictly prohibited. For the girls, it would've been a sort of release from their strict upbringing, but for the others, particularly the Reverend, it would've been seen as a Witch's Sabbath. A Witch's Sabbath was basically supposed to be a really wild party where a coven or several covens of witches would gather together and dance and shriek, and summon the Devil where they would then have an unbridled orgy with him.

Also, "spectral evidence" was used in court back then as a form of proof of witchcraft. If there was a suspected witch on trial, and the witnesses began to writhe or flinch in their presence or repeat everything they said, then that was proof that the defendant was sending their spirit to harm the witnesses, and was therefore a witch. A witch's teat, or witch's tit was also a sure sign that someone was guilty of witchcraft. It was supposed to be some sort of blemish or mole on her skin, where the Devil himself was supposed to have suckled on her. They would poke it with a dull needle, and if it did not bleed or cause any sort of harm, then that meant it was definitely a witch's teat. It didn't have to be any sort of particular shape or even resemble a tit, it was just supposed to be some sort of unusual mark on the poor girl's body. In this story, Amelia's birthmark resembles the shape of Chesapeake Bay.

So, that's pretty much how I came to this headcanon: America at one point was learning how to use magic, because she had the potential, but the Salem Witch Trials affected her so much that it scared her away from ever using it. (Oh, and as far as I'm aware, Goody Addams never existed. I made her up.)

Also, do I suck at portraying Iggy? I've never really been able to grasp his character very well, I think.

Reviews would be lovely