The Merkwood Chronicles

Chapter 2

The summer went so excruciatingly slowly, which Mabel would normally be absolutely elated about, but not right. She desperately wanted the summer to go by as fast as possible. She desperately wanted to go to Merkwood.

She had already been shopping for all of her school supplies, Michael had even taken her to get all of her uniform. Mabel had been forced to wear a uniform at her old school, the one where she was pretty miserable and she hated it, the grey blandness and itchy shirts. But the uniform for Merkwood seemed like a whole new world. The cardigans/jumpers were a dark red colour with golden embroidery around the collar and hems, the school emblem sat majestically on the right side of the article of clothing. They also bought some new trousers and skirts as well as some of the shirts they had in that same shop before paying for the uniform and leaving, Mabel clutching the shopping bag tightly to her side, not letting go under any circumstances.

Since that very moment the uniform had been hung up in Mabel's bedroom, just waiting to be worn. Mabel understood that Merkwood was a boarding school, meaning that she would be needing to leave her home and live at the school until the next school holidays at the end of the first term in the autumn. This also meant that she had to pack up a lot of her things but at least they didn't have to buy any suitcases or trunks, they'd be able to use the things that they used when they moved around all of those times before finally settling here. She had just gotten used to how mundane everything was and now she was being whisked off to this school that was anything but ordinary. She was desperate for her new life to begin.

When the day finally rolled around that she would be taken by Michael to a place that he called 'The Stables' which didn't really mean anything to her, she just hoped he knew what he was doing and where he was going, but she trusted him enough to follow.

Over the summer, Michael had told her about what it was like when he, Saffron and Mabel's parents were there at Merkwood. Once Mabel had managed to get over the fact that Michael had some sort of power that had qualified him for getting into Merkwood in the first place, he told her about how both he and Saffron had been friends with her parents from the day they met when they were eleven and just starting at the school, and how their friendship carried on throughout the whole of the time they were at Merkwood and beyond. A spark of excitement flashed inside of her, perhaps she would gain friends like that, hopefully.

* * *

The journey to 'The Stables' was quiet, both of them lost in their own heads for the first time since the letter had arrived. It had finally hit the two of them that they were being separated; Mabel would be leaving to go to the boarding school of her dreams, Michael would be alone in the house for the first time. As they approached the place that Michael called 'The Stables' Mabel was confused, it just looked like a regular train station, a large and dull grey brick building. She didn't know exactly what she had been expecting it to be, but somehow, it wasn't what she saw.

They parked the car and hauled all of Mabel's trunks and bags and suitcases and found their way to where they were supposed to be. Mabel's stomach churned with nerves, the uniform itching to be worn in the bag that she clutched tightly by her side. Honestly, Mabel would have worn the uniform from the get-go that morning, but according to Michael, she wasn't allowed to wear the uniform out in public because of school privacy reasons. He explained to her how generations ago, before Merkwood Academy was even founded, the kinds of kids who now attended Merkwood would have just been in amongst the ordinary kids at ordinary schools. There they were always taught not how to use their given powers, they were taught how to suppress them and pretend like they never existed in the first place. Michael explained how the theory that 'we are all scared of what we don't understand' fit into place, how people usually fear what they are unable to comprehend or what they don't relate to, Mabel nodded, understanding him completely.