Chapter 7: Terror of Gavaldon... oh! And the Director.
After four years, the dreaded eleventh night of the eleventh month had arrived.
In the last rays of sunlight, the square was bustling with preparations for the director's arrival.
The men sharpened swords, set traps, and planned the night watch, while the women lined up their children and got to work.
The most attractive had their hair cut, their teeth blackened, and their clothes cut to shreds; the ugliest ones were cleaned, wrapped in bright colors and veiled.
Mothers implored their best sons to curse or kick their sisters; the worst were bribed to pray in church, while the rest of the line sang in chorus the village hymn: "Blessed are the common people."
Fear spread like a contagious mist.
In a dark alley, the butcher and the blacksmith traded storybooks for advice on saving their children.
Beneath the crooked clock tower, two sisters named the villains of fairy tales to spot patterns.
A group of children chained their bodies together, some girls hid on the roof of the school, and a masked boy jumped out of the bushes to scare his mother and was spanked on the spot.
Even the old homeless woman participated in the performance, jumping in front of a small fire and shouting: "Burn the storybooks! Burn them all!
But nobody paid attention to him and no book was burned.
Agatha gaped at the scene, unable to believe it.
- How is it possible that an entire village believes in fairy tales?
- Because they're real.
Agatha stopped walking.
- You will not really believe that the legend is true.
-Of course I do - said Sophie.
- That a director kidnaps two children, takes them to a school where one of the children learns Good and the other learns Evil, and when they graduate they receive a degree in Fairy Tales?
- Yes, it is more or less like that.
- Let me know if you see an oven.
- So that?
-To put my head in it. And please tell me, what exactly do they teach in this school?
-Well, in the School of Good they teach boys and girls to become heroes and princesses, to rule kingdoms with justice, to live happily ever after - Sophie answered - In the School of Evil they teach them to become wicked witches and hunchbacked trolls, to cast curses and hexes.
- Hexes? - Agatha said, laughing out loud - Who came up with all this? Even a four-year-old?
- Agatha, the proof is in the storybooks! You can see the lost children in the drawings! Jack, Rose, Rapunzel, they all had their own stories...
- I don't see anything, because I don't read those silly storybooks.
- Then why do you have a pile of books next to your bed? - Sophie asked.
Agatha frowned.
- Look, who says books are real? Maybe it's a bookseller's joke. Or maybe it's the Elders' way of keeping children away from the forest. Whatever the explanation, there is no director or hex.
- So, who kidnaps the children?
- No one. Every four years, two idiots run off into the woods to scare their parents, but they get lost or eaten by wolves, and that's what happens, and the legend goes on.
- Doesn't make much sense, I mean, look at them - Sophie gestured towards the villagers in front of them.
Agatha watched as all the boys and girls her age desperately put on their "camouflage" and stared out into the woods with terror that seemed to touch their souls.
- Does anyone seem brave enough to do something like that? - Sophie asked skeptically.
- No, not really - Agatha accepted - But that a director of a magical school comes to kidnap children, for a forced enrollment, in a school for heroes and villains of fairy tales - she said pausing between sentences while she counted the fingers for emphasis – is even less believable.
-True - she admitted.
For a moment, the two of them were thinking about the mystery, but from different perspectives.
Agatha wondered what was really going on, while she feared that the villagers were right.
Sophie wondered, why the kidnapping system hadn't been modernized? In her Gavaldon she understood it, but as far as she knew in all the kingdoms of the forest it was the same, would it be to not discriminate?
- Let's just forget it - she concluded aloud -There will be some answer, but we won't know until I've passed.
Agatha snapped out of her thoughts and, after a moment, she shrugged and agreed with Sophie.
-I know what we can do now-said Sophie when she saw that they were already near her house.
A twinkle passed through her emerald eyes.
- what? - Agatha asked cautiously, raising the lair.
- Beautification session!! -she proclaimed happily.
Then she jumped on her friend who was trying to escape.
She didn't get it.
A certain blonde had modified her stats just before she blurted out her "brilliant" idea.
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SOPHIE
LEVEL: 1 EXP: 6 / 20
RACE: HUMAN
CLASS: -
STRENGTH (S): 5 (+2)
DEXTERITY (D): 9
RESISTANCE (R): 5 (+2)
CHARISM (C): 22
INTELLIGENCE (I): 7
HEALTH(S): 10
MANA (M): -
LUCK: INFINITE.
SKILL POINTS (SP): 0
STATUS POINTS (SP): 2
MAGIC POINTS (MP): 0
ACTIVE SKILLS (HA): sewing LV. 10, potions LV. 20, makeup LV.10.
PASSIVE SKILLS (HP): Cooking LV.6.
SPELLS (HE): -
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AGATHA
LEVEL: 1 EXP: 0 / 20
RACE: HUMAN
CLASS: -
STRENGTH (S): 4
DEXTERITY (D): 9
RESISTANCE (R): 6
CHARISM (C): 14
INTELLIGENCE (I): 7
HEALTH(S): 10
MANA (M): -
LUCK: 200
SKILL POINTS (SP): 0
STATUS POINTS (SP): 5
MAGIC POINTS (MP): 0
ACTIVE SKILLS (HA): sewing LV. 2, potions LV. 9.
PASSIVE SKILLS (HP): Cooking LV.5.
SPELLS (HE): -
FRIENDSHIP: 50% / 100%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Wahaha - he whispered as she had a good grip on her prey.