Razorback

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Author’s Note: The story of Rawhead and Bloody Bones originated in Europe but migrated to the American South and underwent a local transformation. The definitive folklore version is likely S. E. Schlosser’s and is very much worth reading on its own.

There was a witch who lived up in the mountains, and I never heard but that she was a good one.

Some people will tell you she was old, but I don’t think she was. She just had one of those faces full of lines. With a face like that, you look a lot older than everybody else, but as time goes on, they all look older and you don’t, and you end up looking younger than everybody else by the time you die.

And you do learn early on not to get by on your looks, so there’s that.

I never did learn who her people were or if she had any. A whole lot of people wound up in the mountains—Lumbee and Cherokee and escaped slaves and the grandkids of people who lit off into the hills for one thing or another. Little bitty scraps of this group and that, all of ’em living together and having kids. Leftover people.

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