The unnamed boy narrator explains the difference between witches in fairy tales and witches in real life. In the former, witches regularly wear black capes and hats and travel on a broomstick. In the latter, witches dress normally and look like normal women. They also have normal jobs and homes. They blend into society, so they’re difficult to spot.

What defines real witches is their hatred for kids. They hate them feverishly and think about harming them 24/7. A witch doesn’t hurt children conspicuously—that’s how inept criminals operate. A witch carefully hunts their selected child and surreptitiously crushes them.

There aren’t a lot of real witches in the world, but every country has its share. Witches have a specific gender: They’re women. Men can’t be witches. Men are evil spirits or monstrous dogs. These things are threatening, but they’re nowhere near as menacing as real witches. Nothing is more dangerous than a real witch, and their talent for looking harmless—they could be anybody, even a kind teacher—makes them all the more dangerous.

The narrator has had two encounters with witches before the age of eight. In the first encounter, the boy managed to evade harm. The second encounter didn’t turn out so well, but the boy, thanks to his grandma,