A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Chapter 6

This chapter was one of the more fascinating ones in the book. This time, Charles Wallace is assigned to go Within Brandon Llawcae, the son of a carpenter living in the 1600s as a pioneer. Brandon can scry, meaning he can see the future in pools and puddles and other. I am surprised the Llawcae family can keep his secret from all the other colonists, having to depend so heavily on one another and all. In this time period, he may have been burned at the stake, or like Zylle's near fate, hanged, even IF he was just 11 or 12 years old.

This Pastor Mortmain acts like a hothead, which is quite contrary to his religious beliefs. I think he's just looking for a reason to get rid of Zylle. Many colonists, as our country's history can testify to, were of the mindset that the natives were "heathens." We saw them as a plague on what was "rightfully" our land. We learned quite a deal later that what we had done was very wrong. Zylle's strange ways didn't help her case at all, either. I've never heard of a woman shedding no tears during delivery, at least without some serious anesthetic.

The assumption that Zylle was a witch reminded of so many days sitting in history class reviewing the Salem Witch Trials. In the town of Salem, a group of girls accused a woman of bewitching them. The woman was charged with a decision: Failure to admit her guilt would result in her immediate death, and her admission would have her burned or hanged. Either way, a person accused of witchcraft would die. Most of this injustice resulted from the panic of the citizens. It proves that a person may be smart, but in a group, people are only as smart as the dumbest person around. Logic and reason be hanged with the accused!