Beauty that lies Within

Chapter 2 - Callis of Netherwood

Like an ominous storm coming, the Village was laced with anticipation of the night to come and all the Villagers were busy undergoing preparations for the dreaded eleventh night of the eleventh month.

Men gathered and prepared weapons, organising patrols and formations for tonight's watch against the School Master. The Women of the Village set to work, children all in a neat line to undergo transformation. Handsome ones ("Although not nearly handsome enough." Sophie remarked) had hair hacked into uneven pieces, teeth blackened and rags for clothes ("Positively hideous now." Sophie moaned).

Ugly ones were scrubbed thoroughly to the point Cinderella would be proud, fitted with an assortment of garments, veils shoved unto newly cut hair and red scalps peeking just underneath ("They're still ugly." Sophie sniffed before Agatha elbowed her).

Mothers begged well-behaved children to curse or kick their sublings, the worst were bribed to pray in church and the rest were led in choruses of the Village Anthem: "Blessed Are The Ordinary." Sophie grumbled: "Cursed are the Ordinary!" (Agatha didn't reprimand her this time)

The air was thick with tension in the Village. Already, Agatha and Sophie could already see preparations underway for the School Master's arrival and it spread like wildfire.

Parents swapped storybooks in hushed voices to save their sons, fearing the School Master would take them; parents prayed in church for their children to be safe tonight; two girls listed fairy-tale villain names to hunt for patterns beneath the crooked clock tower (Agatha wondered how villain names could help hunt for patterns); boys chained themselves together (Sophie wondered how they would go home or go to the toilet); some girls hid on the School roof (both girls wondered how they would get down).

A masked child jumped out from the bushes to scare passers-by before evidently being caught by his frantic-now-furious-looking mother and earning a spanking on the spot.

Even the infamous homeless hag that Belle helped was caught up in the commotion, hopping around the Village Square with a meagre lit torch, squawking: "Burn them! Burn the storybooks! Burn them all!" But no-one listened and no storybooks were burned.

It was after all that, did they finally see her.

Head brutally shaved, dress torn to (respectable) rags and filthy, Belle kneeled in the dirt and grabbed fistfuls of dirt, frantically muddying her face. Holding her breath, Agatha looked up towards Sophie.

Sophie, on the other hand, was smiling imperiously. For Belle never wanted to go the School for Good, better than Sophie or not (she wasn't). Belle wanted a boring, loveless marriage to a man who would grow fat, lazy and demanding, she wanted to cook, clean and sew garments for her beastly children in future, she wanted to wake up at the crack of dawn and tend to farm animals, all for what?

Only to finish work well into the evening and to have a repeat of that cycle again and again and again, probably for the rest of her life until she was as liver-spotted, toothless and wrinkled as the old hag in the square she "helped."

The School Master would never take someone like Belle. For she was just another ordinary Villager. Belle was no princess. Belle was... nothing.

Sophie preened triumphantly, basking in all the stares of the Villagers. Agatha instead, on the other hand, looked worried. For she knew what the Villagers saw: two girls, standing side-by-side, heads that had remained definitely unshaved and face spotless in inconspicuous pink and peachy yellow. Two girls, two schools, one for each.

The perfect pair for the School Master's taking.

Agatha hurried on, practically having to drag Sophie onwards and away from the prying eyes of the Villagers, eyes that never stopped staring until the two girls disappeared around the corner, out of sight.