The Eye Of The Storm

Chapter Three

I was ecstatic to move into Shadow House. I had all my things packed up in half an hour.

"Well. Pumpkin, we're gonna miss you." Geoff said, expressionlessly and monotonously.

"I think I'll miss you, too." I hugged him awkwardly.

"Hey!" Elijah called as he caught up to me on the mountain trail. "How are you so fast!?"

"Long legs." I answered, laughing.

"I'm taller than you!" Elijah said, outraged.

"Well, then maybe I'm just super fast, and you're living in slow motion compared to me." I suggested, gaining a small punch on my arm. We both stopped laughing and focused on climbing Shadow Mountain, which was 6.5 miles to the top, and to Shadow House. It would take us about an hour, with the short trail we used. For others, it was a three-to-four hour long hike.

Once we finally made it to the top, we were greeted by nine of the other residents and a House Councilor. Three kids stuck out as different from the rest: one, a tall blonde girl with lightning blue eyes, another, a girl shorter and younger, had a soft shade of brown hair and aquamarine eyes, and the last one, he had black hair and hazel eyes, which you could easily mistake for yellow, or orange. They looked like they thought they owned the place. The boy stepped forward.

"Welcome," He growled in a deep voice. "To Shadow House. My name is Felix, this is Sophia," he pointed to the youngest girl, "and, this is Skye." He said, motioning distantly to the tall blonde girl. "We are the oldest residents of Shadow House, and we will be your temporary mentors." I smiled excitedly at Elijah. "What are your names?"

"I'm Elijah." Elijah smiled at them, jutting out his hand to shake. It was rejected.

"I'm Katherine." I said coolly, not breaking eye contact with the boy. He smiled a little bit.

"Welcome to Shadow House." He said again, being a bit more friendly.

My mentor ended up being the tall, blonde girl, Skye.

"Here is the library, dining hall, classrooms..." She said as we walked through the halls. "This," she said, stopping at a door. "Is the Girls' Dormitory. No boys can come in here, and girls are welcome no matter what time of day it is. There are no teachers up here, just Thena." Thena was the councilor at Shadow House. She was blonde, like Skye, but her eyes were different colors. Her right eye was blue, like Skye's, but her left eye was pale green. "So, all the work here is independent study. You choose what you learn, and how you learn it. If Headmaster Delmann doesn't like what you do, you'll be sent back to the regular Academy." Skye tried to sound cheerful, but it didn't suit her. She was hard and to the point. I liked her already. "Now, here is my room. I bunk with Felix, so, you bug us whenever you need, cause he doesn't need sleep." She laughed. I joined her, thinking she was joking. Apparently, with all the work assigned to us, people rarely got much sleep during the week. 

It took Elijah and I about two weeks to be fully moved into our small dorm room. It had two separate bedrooms, and a little lounge space by the entrance. It was lovely. We were happy in our little home. The work was weird. We had to study a god of our choice from mythology. Zeus, Hera, etc, etc. I chose Hera for my first project, but got quickly disinterested. I did Apollo next, and that was a bit more fun. Elijah did Dionysus, the god of wine and sexuality. Typical. I eventually got bored of Apollo, as well, and moved on to an unbelieveable amount of different gods and monsters. Finally, I found one at the bottom of a pile of research papers named Iris: the goddess of rainbows. Fricking rainbows. She was literally the most boring goddess ever. At least the others had something going for them.  This crazy old lady just wanted everyone to be happy, and love each other. She was the most pacifistic and boring goddess ever. After a week of jumping from god to god, I settled on Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, even though someone else was studying her already. She was the most interesting one yet. Her life was full of term oil and hardships. I felt bad for her. Her family hated her, and the people did too.

Another two weeks of deeply studying her went by, and Felix approached me.

"I see you are very invested in Athena." He said nonchalantly. I nodded enthusiastically. "Follow me." I did, knowing that to disobey one of the big three was like submitting yourself to being expelled. I followed him to the west side of Shadow House. There, Sophia and Skye were waiting.

"What..." I started

"You're ready." Skye smiled genuinely for the first time since I'd met her. "It's time you learned the real purpose of Shadow House."