Everett Academy

Chapter 1

Class started at 8 am when the rustle of papers hushed as Professor Bell, a fierce woman with red hair, walked to the podium with heels clicking against the worn panels of the wood floor.

"This is not a game." She thundered. "This is survival of the wittiest." There was a pause. "This is Everett Academy. And none of you deserve to be here. So that is where we begin."

Maisy took out her pen and started writing her observations about Professor Bell. The first class was always the easiest anyway.

She seems to be waiting to fall in love with a knight that is traveling a great distance just to meet her. They could have known each other since they were young, but never considered romance as a possibility. Perhaps he left her too early, or maybe she liked her studies too much.

It is after he has fought too many dragons that he might realize he misses the girl with the flaming red hair who made herself a tyrant of Everett High. Another kind of dragon in the Ministry of Education.

Outside, the gust of autumn leaves drifted past the windows and the colors sparked a shift in attention of the student that sat a few rows in front of her. He was sketching the leaves in his notebook and Maisy wondered why she never thought about sketching her ideas in her notebook. That meant he had things to say that she never thought about before. It also meant that he had to be someone to give names to things that were not made of words, yet with the same inky lines. But how could she ask for his name if she wasn't going to make any friends this time? Asking for a name always caused her a lot of trouble when it came to asking too many questions about people that didn't want to converse in the first place at all. And last time, she had to leave a place she was familiar with all because she couldn't stop being curious about people that had too many stories written and archived in their past. It was always a past in which they were still evading even after so many years. Without realizing it, Maisy was still quietly following their footsteps.

It often felt as if she never left the forest that had led her to many imagined fairytales, a forest made of words and secrets. Like a wolf, the forest saw her as someone that belonged to the wild thorns that kept intruders away from uncertain danger. But to Maisy, she was comfortable alone and with the ability to gaze at others from a distance without having her heart snared in traps. Or in a single gleaming look, conspiring to thwart her ambition, in which she could never escape from again.

Maisy wrote one last thing in her notebook.

I want to go on a quest.

And then, the introductory class to the semester ended precisely as Professor Bell started writing down the books list and required materials to be bought, bartered, and acquired by the lesson tomorrow. This meant a trip to the market in town because there weren't any supplies in the commercial shopping arcade that would do. And that was when the class realized that Everett Academy was like no other high school. It was a high school that taught defense against the dark arts.

Professor Bell did not stop writing in neat, round cursive. But everyone knew she was smiling when the class exploded into a rushed debate whether or not they could get to town later and be back at the dormitory by the time the last bus was scheduled.

Maisy already decided that she would be hunting down used before supplies at the school's thrift shop when she checked her mobile after the notification made a sound. Reading it quickly, she took a snapshot of the required materials list and was the first one out of class.

Meet you outside the school gate.

Aunt Lana rented a car just for this shopping excursion and it turned out to be a Volkswagen Beetle in white.