From the novel Hurricane Season, which will be published this month by New Directions.
They say she never really died, because witches don’t go without a fight. They say that, at the last minute, just before those kids stabbed her, she transformed herself into something else: a lizard or a rabbit, which scurried away and took cover in the heart of the bush. Or into the giant raptor that appeared in the sky in the days following the murder: a great beast that swept in circles above the crops and then perched on the branches of the trees to…