The Merkwood Chronicles

Chapter 11

"How come you never told me about this before?" Headmistress Chase replied, just after Mabel had finished telling the headmistress about the nightmares she'd been having over the past few weeks. Mabel didn't know how to answer that question, not daring to meet the headmistress's gaze. It wasn't like she was scared to tell her, she was just afraid of what they would mean.

"I- I don't know," Mabel eventually managed to stutter out.

"Well, we definitely need to keep track of these dreams, they might give us clues somehow, even if we don't notice them at first. That's usually how Nox works, or at least it was how he used to work," Headmistress Chase then said, getting up from her chair in her office, her greying raven hair messy, but she didn't seem to care, there were more pressing matters at hand than her vanity. Mabel stood, Florence and Evie on either side of her, watching as the headmistress walked over to her bookshelves and pulled out a book with a leather, murky brown cover and handed it to Mabel. In the light coming from the window they could see that the crest of Merkwood was embossed onto the front.

"Wait, what do you mean 'how he used to work?'" Evie asked, trying to not sound like she was being bossy. The headmistress looked at the girls, her eyes saddening as she opened her mouth to speak.

"Nox- he used to be a student at this school, long ago, I taught him, he was one of the most knowledgeable individuals of his age, I had never met any student who was as full of potential as he was, not since your parents attended Merkwood Mabel." She started, the girls stood and listened intently, hanging on the headmistresses every syllable. "He had much potential, but unfortunately he used it in the wrong way. I could sense that darkness was brewing inside of him, I could see that he was going against the morals that had once been implanted inside his heart, the heart turning blacker and blacker by the passing weeks and even days. It was only when one of his teachers reached out to me and informed me of a horrible trick he had managed to perfect that I took matters into my own two hands. I-I was forced to suspend him from the school, against my personal wishes, being left to hope to the founders of these four walls that this cut off in his learning would make the darkness inside him wither up and die. But, sadly, I was wrong." the headmistress turned her eyes to the window, and there she stared as she continued to speak.

"He became bitter, his heart becoming colder and colder until he stopped going by the name he had been given at birth and started going by the name we call today." Mabel caught the sight of a small tear falling slowly down the cheek of the headmistress, before she quickly and swiftly wiped it away.

"It was my fault that he is the way he is now. If only I would've given him a chance I-" The headmistress stopped, her voice cracking.

"It couldn't have been your fault Headmistress, you did what you thought you needed to do to protect the school." Mabel said, everything becoming just that little bit clearer. But there was something even more that scared her, if Nox was scaring the headmistress who always seemed so strong, she dreaded to think what he would be like to hear when the two inevitably met face to face.

Headmistress Chase pulled herself together and then began to speak again, gesturing towards the book that she had given to Mabel as the words came out of her lips.

"That book is not your average notebook. It is a mimicking notebook. Whatever you write inside it will show up in its sister notebook, which I have here in my office. If you are ever in any trouble or if you record the dreams you are having in there in as much detail as you can, so that we try to depict what they mean or why they are happening, they will directly transfer onto the blank pages of my notebook." Mabel nodded. There was a short pause before Mabel decided to ask the question that had been playing on her mind since they first saw the rubble that Nox's attack had left behind. She had been too scared to ask, yet she knew the answer but thought that if she asked she might get a different one and be proved wrong.

"He's after me, isn't he?" she said, her voice still slightly jittery, "he knows where I am," Headmistress Chase looked her dead in the eyes then, which somehow told Mabel everything she needed to know.

During the weeks that followed, they had a whole school assembly in which the headmistress informed all the students and the staff of what caused the 'fire', making sure that everybody got the same message and it wasn't all just gossip.

"The fire wasn't caused by anything usual, as it never is here at Merkwood, but we are going to inform you all of the honest truth about the true cause of the incident that could've possibly cost some of the individuals in this room their lives," The headmistress announced, glancing over at Mabel before she began to speak again. "The cause of the incident was a villain called Nox, yes, yes I'm sure you have all heard of him. He attacked the school for reasons we can only infer, certain prophecies and predictions already being out in the open air and all, but we would like everyone, staff and students included, to be on their guard, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious just in case of anything happening like this again," The students erupted in a sea of excited mumbles, Headmistress Chase heard this and decided another remark was probably for the best, to calm everyone down and also for the dramatic effect.

"And," She shouted above the noise, silencing the entirety of the hall with a single sound coming from her lips, "I believe that everyone should also be paying extra close attention during any classes that you may be learning any small detail about how you could best use your gifts for defence or during any form of physical conflict," She paused, trying not to smile as she amused herself with her use of dramatic pauses, "we never know when we would need to use them." she finished, stepping down from her podium and letting the sound erupt around her.

As her classmates and fellow students spoke and laughed around her, Mabel could only think of the worst. She knew that a war was coming, she could feel it somehow, in the way the headmistress looked around at the happy faces of the students who were supposed to be under her protection, as if she knew something they didn't. It was as everyone around the hall expected that a conflict of any kind was far far away, not taking much note of what the headmistress had just disclosed to the entire school, but Mabel sat there amidst it all, completely aware that a conflict was coming sooner than everyone thought.

The day after the assembly, Headmistress Chase requested that Mabel have a class with her every day of the week, unless told otherwise, trying her hardest to prepare Mabel for what will eventually come, making sure she was ready. Mabel managed to handle these extra classes as well as the classes she already had on her timetable better than she had expected, but she fully expected for stress to come and bite her at some point.

Headmistress Chase tried her hardest to train Mabel for an inevitable war, but there was only so much that she could do. She managed to get in touch with some elementals that she knew, who came in and tried giving Mabel a few classes on their given element. Mabel gained much more control over the gifts she had been born with, as well as she gained confidence in her abilities, and during a fight with a villain such as Nox. Self confidence could mean the difference between winning and losing the battle. But self-confidence wasn't enough, Mabel needed proper formal training by another individual who could teach her everything they knew. The thing was, Mabel was the only full elemental individual that was left in the headmistress's knowledge, therefore it was impossible for Mabel to be taught by any other elemental of her kind. Then, the headmistress smiled gratefully as an idea whittled its way into her mind. Mabel couldn't be taught by a full elemental who was alive. But nobody said anything about not being able to be taught by a full elemental who was dead...