Lanterns: The School For Good And Evil

Chapter One: The Witch, The Princess and The Lost Daughter

Elena never understood the commotion around November. It seemed pointless. But tonight, all the other children of Gavaldon writhed in their beds. If the School Master took them, they'd never return. Never lead a full life. Never see their family again. Tonight, these children dreamt of a red-eyed thief with the body of a beast, come to rip them from their sheets and stifle their screams. Elena did not dream of School masters and fairy tale endings. Instead, Elena dreamt of a life outside of this village, back home.

Her home was beautiful. With colourful banners covered in Suns and a gorgeous castle that she lived in. The boats that came in from the harbor. There she could smell fresh bread from the bakery and hear the songs from village below the castle. As she walked the castle she saw him. A man with beautiful blue eyes and ghostly white hair. He was her happy ever after

...the sound of yelling caused all of it fade away before Elena's eyes opened to morning. The yelling was her mother. The yelling was very real, her dream life was not.

"Mama, what are you yelling for?" Elena asked as her mother entered into the room with an apron covered in flour.

"I am yelling because another one of thoes nosey men came and began rattling on about how you're to be taken this year. Which is down right impossible." She exclaimed as Blaise, Elenas father followed after to her into the room.

"It's ridiculous all of them are constantly telling us to shear your hair, muddy up your face. Its nonsense that they believe in all this fairytale junk." Her father exclaimed as her mother rolled her eyes.

"My love, you do realise that you are a sorcerer and that you trained your daughter and I in magic." Helena muttered as she fussed around her daughter's room.

"I don't know why they all think it's you," Blaise said, silver hair slicked with sweat. "It's impossible for you to get taken especially here. They'll take Belle or Agatha or that witchy girl Sophie."

"Sophie isn't a witch, Papa." Sick of this conversation young girl climbed out of bed and wandered into the bathroom to change.

She knew Sophie couldn't be a witch because she knew witches. Agatha's mother was a witch, by all accounts Agatha herself should be a witch. Sophie was not a witch, she may have been cruel like the old witches in fairytales but that didn't matter. She was selfish and obsessed with her own looks. All she ever talked about how beautiful she was or how wonderful of a friend she was. She found Belle who everyone call the perfect child the worst kind of evil. For feeding her father home cooked lunches that caused the man to blimp like a ballon in Sophies words. If Elena had the choice, she would never spend time with the girl but unfortunately she made it her mission spend as much time as possible with Agatha.

Elena shoved down her thoughts of Sophie and changed out of her night clothes into a white blouse and a blue skirt with a small black cardigan. Outside her parents were still discussing the possibility of Sophie being a witch. Her life wasn't going to change. She wasn't going to be taken. Belle or Agatha or Sophie would be and she would be trapped in her ordinary life.

"I'm going to Agatha's," she announced to the room before pulling her boots on and shoving her small wand down the side of her left one. "I'll be back before sundown."

Elena's best friend lived in a cemetery. It was grim, grey and poorly lit so most people avoided it. Which was why it was the perfect place for the pair to meet up. So every day Elena climbed to the house atop Graves Hill every day this week, careful to maintain a smile on her face, since that was the point of a good deed after all. To get there, she had to walk nearly a mile from the bright lakeside cottages, with green eaves and sun-drenched turrets, towards the gloomy edges of the forest. Sounds of hammering echoed through cottage lanes as she passed fathers boarding up doors, mothers stuffing scarecrows, boys and girls hunched on porches, noses buried in storybooks. The last sight wasn't unusual, for children in Gavaldon did little besides read their fairy tales. But today Elena noticed their eyes, wild, frenzied, scouring each page as if their lives depended on it. She had the same desperation to avoid the stupid curse. The School Master took only those past their sixteenth year, those who could no longer disguise as children. Every time she climbed up the hills her thighs burned. Surely by now her legs had at least built up some mussels. She had been hiking up here for years, but then again up until recently she had heavily relied on magic to help her.