Monday 29 March 2010

The Witch's Trinity




It is 1507 in Tierkinddorf, a medieval village in the woods of Germany. On the brink of a famine, peasants are convinced a witch has cast a spell on the village affecting their crops and animals.

When Gude Muller's son, Jost, leaves with a hunting party, her vile daughter-in-law, Irmeltrud, locks her out of the hutte grateful for one less mouth to feed. Confused and hungry, Gude wanders the snow covered forest and begins to see mysterious apparitions and hear garbled voices resembling the devil in the forms of animals. Shadows and voices appear tormenting Gude and forcing her to question her own reality.

Along comes an itinerant friar claiming he can extract confessions from the afflicted and save the village. And everyone is a suspect. Using the witchcraft manual, Malleus Maleficurm - The Witch's Hammer, the friar relentlessly interrogates villager after villager determined to identify the guilty and burn them at stake.

Erika Mailman takes a dark historical period and adds an element of mystery and supernatural. She paints a stark picture of life in a medieval village and peppers the tale with German language adding folklore. As the plot evolves and the characters develop, an intensity of paranoia grows with villagers using any deceptive means to escape the stake.

No comments:

Post a Comment