Good or Evil

Every four years, on one very specific day (the eleventh night of the eleventh month, to be exact), two children from the town of Gavaldon would disappear, kidnapped and whisked away by one mysterious cloaked shadow, whom everyone called the School Master. Every four years, two families would be grieving the loss of their child, and strangely, the two kidnapped children always seemed to be carefully picked. One would always be kind and beautiful, the other would always be mean and ugly. Two children, two opposing traits and personalities.

The townspeople of Gavaldon didn't know where the School Master took the kidnapped children, for all the kidnapped children never returned. Most fear them to be dead, but some would claim to see their faces appear in storybooks and fairy tales.

Nevertheless, it didn't matter where the kidnapped children were now. The doomed eleventh day of the eleventh month had finally arrived, and no one wanted to be the next kidnapped child. Mothers fretted and refused to let their children out of their sights, fathers boarded up homes, and children behaved the opposite of how they would normally behave. The cruel ones forced good deeds and the nice ones would stomp and steal food from the homeless. Those under the age of twelve and above the age of eighteen were safe.

Unlike most villagers, one family didn't find a reason to worry. The father was a baker and the mother was the town seamstress. They had three children: Roger, Angela, and Harvey. Roger was the eldest of the lot at twenty-three, Angela the second child at nineteen, and Harvey was the youngest at sixteen years old. All three children were quite similar with one another; they all had brown hair and boring gray eyes. They were neither kind and beautiful nor cruel and ugly. They were all mediocrely unspecial. And so, with two children out of the danger zone, everyone knew that it was unlikely Harvey would be chosen next.

As the sun began to set and the dreaded midnight crept closer, Harvey decided to pay his terrified friend a visit. He knocked on the doors of Leonard's house and waited.

"Who's there?" came a tremulous voice that Harvey recognized as his friend's.

"Leonard, it's me. Harvey," Harvey said patiently. In response, Leonard peered cautiously through the peephole before reluctantly opening the front door.

"The School Master won't come until midnight," Harvey reminded him calmly. "No need to be so afraid now."

"Easy for you to say," Leonard said, stepping aside so Harvey could walk in. "Unlike me, you're not exactly a target."

"There's still a chance you won't get picked," Harvey pointed out, but even he didn't believe himself. Leonard was popular among the girls with his big blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. He was handsome and always kind to everyone, even the mean ones. He would stand up to bullies and protect the bullied. This year, everyone was silently betting Leonard would be one of the chosen.

"Oh for goodness sake!" Leonard exploded. "I can see you trying to hide a smile, Harvey! If you're so happy about my soon-to-be disappearance, then get out!"

"What? No! I—"

"Out!"

Next thing he knew, Harvey was back outside, barely indoors for more than a minute. Dejected, he started his way home, his mind a jumble of thoughts. What would he do if Leonard was chosen? He could continue on with his life here in Gavaldon, but as he slowly came to realize, his life had no purpose here. Everyone in this town would grow up to be a bunch of nobodies and die as a bunch of nobodies. But the kidnapped children—they were taken to serve a purpose of some sort. A purpose Harvey would probably never have. Everything about him and his family was so painfully average it bites. Never had this bothered Harvey until now.

Harvey went to bed early that night, and while everyone else stayed wide awake out of fear and kept watch for the School Master, he slept.

His dream that night was like no other. Harvey dreamed in flashes depicting scenes; first a crooked shadow, then a dense, black fog, then a pair of absurdly wicked red eyes, and finally—

There was a loud crash that Harvey could hear in his dream. At first he thought the crash was part of his dream. Except then he began to dream of a tulip with sharp teeth, and even tulips with sharp teeth obviously don't make crashing noises. Only too late did he realize that the crash was reality, and he opened his eyes right in time to see a shadowed figure hop through his broken window and grab Harvey from his bed.

Harvey let out a gasp when he felt the strong fingers grip his arm. Then when he was dragged out the bedroom window, he screamed. The scream attracted villagers holding torches, and they ran after the shadow and Harvey, determined to save him from the School Master's clutches. But just as the School Master reached the never-ending forest circling Gavaldon, thick vines and ivy sprung up from the ground, barricading the villagers in and preventing them from reaching Harvey.

When Harvey realized this, he tried to free himself from the School Master's grip; he clawed, scratched, and kicked, but the fingers stayed locked. By now Harvey was being dragged deep into the heart of the forest. Then he realized something was missing.

"Where's the second child?" he asked the shadow, but it only responded by leaping easily into a tree, branch to branch, dragging Harvey along until they reached the very top. There, the School Master dropped Harvey into an abnormally large bird nest situated on top of the tree. Then when Harvey turned to the School Master to repeat his question, it disappeared in a poof.

Confused and dumbstruck, Harvey turned to see a large spotted egg sitting in the nest beside him. He staggered back in horror just as a crack ran down to the center of the monstrous egg. With a splintering noise, loose, slimy eggshell bits exploded everywhere, showering Harvey. Shuddering in disgust, he shielded his face with his arm, but not before he got a glimpse of what had freshly hatched from the egg.

It was a bird. That wasn't surprising—all birds hatch from eggs. But it was a gargantuan bird, taller than Harvey's house back in Gavaldon. And it was hideous, with bony wings and legs, razor-sharp claws and beak, a glinting red eye, and a misshapen bald head. Then the bird snatched Harvey up in its claws and took flight.

Harvey was too stunned to scream. And besides, how could he with the sharp wind slapping him violently in the face?

Then, far below him, something came into view. Two majestic conjoined castles among a dense forest of trees. One castle was shrouded in fluffy pink mist, its many towers and turrets pink and blue reflected off a glittering, glass blue lake. The other castle was black and vicious, with dense black fog and crooked black turrets. A thick, bubbling black moat surrounded it.

Two castles. One Good, one Evil.

With a jolt, realization flooded into Harvey. This must be where all the kidnapped children of Gavaldon were brought to. This place—according to the rumors back in Gavaldon—was called the School for Good and Evil.

The bird carrying Harvey circled the school for a while, hovering over the Good towers, then over the Evil towers, and back again. Harvey assumed either the bird was being awfully indecisive or it was confused. The second one made more sense. Harvey was nothing special. He wasn't Good nor Evil. Why he was chosen struck him as odd, and where was the other child? Yes, that must be it. The School Master had simply made a mistake. It had taken the wrong child and only took one instead of two.

After a few more impatient minutes of circling, the bird finally seemed to make up its mind. It flew to where the fluffy pink mist met the dense black fog (but never quite mixing together) and dropped Harvey down the exact middle.

Harvey let out a short shriek as he fell, confident his death was near. But instead of hard cobblestones, he was met with water. Thick, slimy, sludgy black water on his left and clear, sparkling blue lake water on his right. Harvey looked up as he struggled to stay afloat. Above him—but not exactly over him—was a thin stone bridge connecting the two schools.

Without warning, the dark, sludgy water on his left began churning violently, and like a giant vacuum, it sucked Harvey over to the dark side. The Evil side.

Welcome to the School for Evil.