"Agatha..."
Agatha opened her eyes to rays of sun. She looked down and gasped.
"It's real."
Far beneath them, two soaring castles sprawled across the forest. One castle glittered in sun mist, with pink and blue glass turrets over a sparkling lake. The other loomed, blackened and jagged, sharp spires ripping through thunderclouds like the teeth of a monster.
The School for Good and Evil.
The bony bird drifted over the Towers of Good and loosened Sophie from its claws. Agatha clutches her friend in horror, but then Sophie's face, glowing with happiness.
"Aggie, I'm a princess!"
The bird dropped Sophie leading her to plummet into pink cotton candy mist.
"Sophie!"
The bird swooped savagely towards the Towers of Evil, it's jaws reaching up for new prey.
And without a beat, Agatha was dropped into hellish darkness.
(Para Skip)
Agatha opened her eyes to find herself floating in a foul-smelling moat, filled to the brim with thick black sludge. A gloomy wall of fog flanked her on all sides. She tried to stand, but her feet couldn't find the bottom and therefore sank; sludge flooded her nose and burnt her throat. Choking for breath, she found something to grasp, and saw it was the carcass of a half-eaten goat.
She gasped and tried to swim away but couldn't see an inch in front of her face. Screams echoed above and Agatha looked up. Streaks of motion then a dozen bony birds crashed through the fog and dropped shrieking children into the moat. When their screams turned into splashes, another wave of birds came, then another, until every inch of sky was filled with falling children. Agatha glimpsed a bird dive straight for her and she swerved, just in time to get a cannonball splash of slime in her face.
She wiped the flip out of her eye and came face-to-face with a boy. The first thing she noticed was he had no shirt on. His chest was puny and pale, without the hope of muscle. From his small head jutted a long nose, spiky teeth, and black hair that dropped over beady eyes. He looked like a sinister little weasel.
"The bird ate my shirt." he said.
He dog-paddles towards Agatha and in turn she froze.
"Maybe we could be bunk-mates or best mates or some kind of mates." he said, inches from her now. It was like Radley, the boy who was always enchanted by Sophie, had turned into a rodent and developed courage. He reached out his scrawny hand to touch Agatha and she punched him in the eye before a screaming child dropped between them. Agatha took off in the opposite direction and by the time she glanced back, Weasel Boy was gone.
Through the fog, Agatha could see shadows of children treading through floating bags and trunks, hunting for their luggage. Those that managed to find them continued downstream, towards ominous howls in the distance. Agatha followed these floating silhouettes until the fog cleared to reveal the shore, where a pack of wolves, standing on two feet in blood red soldier jackets and black leather breeches, snapped riding whips to herd students into line.
Agatha grasped the bank to pull herself out and collapsed from exhaustion. After five terribly short minutes she was yanked up and kicked into line. She followed the line miserably and joined the shadowed children, dragging their trunks through the fog. If any dawdled, a wolf delivered a swift crack, so she kept an anxious pace, all the while picking out worms from her pockets.
The tower gates were made of iron spikes, crisscrossed with barbed wire. Nearing them, she saw it wasn't spikes at all, but a sea of black vipers that darted and hissed in her direction. Agatha grinned at them and looked back at the rusted words over the gates, held between two carved black swans:
The School for Evil Edification and Propagation of Sin
Agatha shivered with delight.
Sauntering forward, the wolves grunted in shock because amongst the miserable, misshapen bodies of the children that were trudging through the mist there was a pandemonium.
Amongst the tortured faces there was a girl with her eyes shining and smile cruelly bright. She beamed at the grotesque towers and hallway of dimly lit torches with a maniacal look in her eye.
And at that very moment, as the other students and this mystery girl were rounded up into a grim chamber of highly decorated pillars that depicted giants and trolls, and all manners of gruesome evil.
Each pillar spelt out a letter and Agatha tracked them all down to reveal a word.
N-E-V-E-R
The teachers that had actually bothered to gather around the stairway to greet the students stared curiously at the spellbinding girl with the crazed facial features.
The rose amongst thorns.
The wolves cracked their riding whips menacingly as a fanfare of sorts as a lady with a billowing, crimson dress and highly styled hair descended down the crumbling, stone stairway.
The lady's eyes were lowered until she arrived at the bottom of the steps. She looked up and battered her eyelids, revealing piercing purple eyes. The woman rebelled in elegance as her voice rang clear throughout the chamber and echoed slightly.
"My name is Lady Lesso. My colleagues and I welcome you to the School for Evil as it is commonly known. This school offers you the chance to explore your talents, receive first class Evil Education and hopefully, after you have completed our detailed syllabus, graduate into your own fairytale. More information will be given to you at a later time. Your uniform and supplies will be issued to you and you may become acquainted with your fellow students. On the behalf of myself and the School for Evil, I welcome you to our ranks. That is all."
And with that Agatha is whisked into the crowds of children and to the front of the queue where she is greeted by a hag.
"Agatha of Woods Beyond." The hag croaked.
The dark-skinned hag thrusts a sheet of parchment into her hands.
Agatha of Woods Beyond
Evil, First Year
Malice Tower 66
————————————————
Session
1: Uglification
2: Henchmen Training
3: Curses and Death Traps
4: History of Villainy
5: Lunch
6: Special Talents
7: Surviving Fairytales
(Forest Group #3)
Faculty
1: Prof. Bilious Manley
2: Castor
3: Lady Lesso
4; Prof. August Sader
5: Lunch
6: Prof. Sheeba Sheeks
7: Yuba the Gnome
Agatha grinned and the hag looked taken aback. She moved forward and an ogre dumped a ribbon-tied stack of books in her hands.
Best Villainous Monologues, 2nd ed
Spells for Suffering, Year 1
The Novice's Guide to Kidnapping & Murder.
Embracing Ugliness Inside & Out
How to Cook Children (with new recipes!)
If the books were anything to go on, Agatha felt like she would enjoy some of those topics (especially the embracing ugliness one). Agatha noticed that the ribbon tied around her books was actually a live eel. She petted it's scales before letting it free, hoping it would terrorise Weasel Boy.
A spotted saytr foisted musty black fabric at her. Unfurling it, Agatha gasped in delight to see that it was exactly like her beloved robes at home.
She gazed at the other girls surrounding her and saw them gleefully putting on the putrid uniform, combing through books, comparing schedules. Agatha flushed with excitement. This is where she belonged.
Her whole life had finally changed for the better.
YOU ARE READING
Purely Wicked (discontinued)
RomanceEvery four years two children are stolen away from Gavaldon, never to return. Most children fear being taken to the School for Good and Evil. But not Sophie... She has dreamt all her life of being a princess and believes the school could be her chan...
