The Coven

“I swallow[ed] past the surge of emotion that seemed to clog my throat. The humans in town often called it a frog in the throat because of the hoarseness. I’d never understood the analogy, instead feeling as if it were grave dirt coming to claim me from the inside.”

When Willow attends her mother’s funeral, her sorrow and worry become so intense that her emotions have a physical effect. To “have a frog in one’s throat” is an idiom that refers to the way in which grief or fear can make it difficult to speak or swallow. In this passage, Willow complicates a common metaphor by adding a more sinister comparison to choking on grave dirt. This image hints at her future powers of necromancy and also helps to establish the menacing sense of danger that pervades the novel’s mood.

“I was nothing but a means to an end to the man who had sired me for one purpose only.”

With the unadorned bitterness of this straightforward declaration, Willow indicates her deep scorn and sublimated hatred of her father, Samuel, and makes it clear that her father does not love or value her for who she is as a person. Instead, he sired and reared her for the express purpose of forcing her to wield her magic—the very magic that he lacks—to avenge the death of his sister, Loralei. This description demonstrates that their father-daughter relationship is cold and transactional at best.