Day Eight!

Prompt: Four kids go to their teacher's house.  Why?  Reveal the teacher's personality and the kids'.

Anneliese Rose was a more curious girl than had ever lived before.  She was not strange like most of the other “different” children in her class (she did not eat bugs like Billy Jenkins, thank you very much!), but in a way all her own.  You see, Anneliese Rose was one of those girls who had somehow unburied a part of the universe most couldn’t fathom.  She was an enchantress.

                It was the middle of February when a letter, rolled up and sealed with scarlet ink, arrived in her mailbox.  Anneliese was quite bewildered, for she had never received such a message before.  It was written in cursive with so many spirals and flourishes she had to squint to read it, and she had to read it at least four times.

                It seemed that Ms. Frist, the eccentric fourth grade teacher at her school, wanted her to come calling the following evening.  Most children would have stuck out there tongues or been scared by the strange invitation, but Anneliese was, of course, very different from most children.  If, she reasoned, there’s any danger, I’ll just protect myself with magic.  So she nodded her head, and confirmed in her mind she would go.

All day, the sky had been a solid layer of gray.  The trees were bowing down as their leaves fluttered in the blustery wind, chilling Anneliese to the bone.  She pulled a knit cap further down over her ash blonde hair, biting her bottom lip.  The spindly trees around Ms. Frist’s home were dark and dead.  They looked awfully like skeletons that wanted to reach out and grab her.  She looked away and squared her shoulders, marching up the cracked sidewalk towards her teacher’s house.

                Anneliese’s own home was a cozy cottage, painted cheery red and blooming with flowers during the summer.  She felt distinctly out of place at this rundown shack.  The colors repulsed her- some sort of orange and eggplant purple that had no business being combined, let alone on the exterior of someone’s home- and she very much doubted that there were ever flowers blooming in the blackened beds of bark.

                The three stairs creaked, each louder than the next.  She hesitated, then pulled open the screen door.  She held it open with one boot clad foot.  The golden door knocker was shaped like a griffin, and cold to the touch, even through a layer of fleece gloves.  Before Anneliese had even knocked once though, the door flew open.  She stumbled forward.

                “Dear!  Come in!”

                Anneliese looked up.  Ms. Frist’s tight spirals of red hair were even more wild than usual, though it seemed she had tried to tame them with a flowery hair comb.  As it was tangled up in the back, Anneliese assumed Ms. Frist’s struggles had been fruitless and she’d simply forgotten about it, as was so often the case with the class’s homework.

                The girl coughed.  “Hello, Ms. Frist.  If I may ask-”

                “Okay, the other children are right this way, in the sitting room!” Ms. Frist interrupted, as if she had not heard Anneliese at all.  “Of course, one still to arrive, so you aren’t late at all!”

                Ms. Frist had always seemed enormously tall to Anneliese, but as they walked through the creaky hallways, she was dwarfed by skyscrapers of books, piled high along every spare wall.  Anneliese shrunk downward into her boots.  If a gust of wind escaped in through a window, it sure felt like all the hard backed volumes would come toppling down.

                The sitting room, if it could indeed be called such a thing, was even more bizarre than the rest of the house.  There were more books, occupying the majority of floor space.  Cramped against one wall was a table, draped with a rug- one that would normally lie on the floor- as well as five chairs, two of them upside-down.

                Sitting in two of the chairs (not the upside-down ones, obviously) were two faces Anneliese recognized.  Jeffrey and Jeremy Dale were the most almost identical twins she knew.  Jeffrey’s hair was a little browner, a little more unruly, and a little longer.  Jeremy was a smidgen shorter, with a dash more freckles across his nose.  They really didn’t have many friends other than each other.

                Ms. Frist clapped her hands together and smiled joyfully, then tilted her head to the side.  “Excuse me one minute, children.  I believe the final member of our little party is walking up the lane right about now!”

                Anneliese stood awkwardly for a moment as their teacher scuttled away.  She eventually decided to crawl onto a magnificent green plush throne, the only remaining right-side up chair in the room.

                “Um…  Hello,” Jeffrey said.  His face flushed red.  “How are you , Anneliese?”

                She pulled at a strand of straight hair.  “I’m alright, Jeffrey.  And you?”

                Jeremy made a repulsed gagging noise before his almost identical twin could answer.  “Ew.  Jeffrey, don’t talk to girls.”

                Anneliese crossed her arms indignantly, trying to ignore Jeremy.  “Jeffrey, do you have any idea why we’re here?”

                He shrugged, glancing over at Jeremy, who was popping his fingers unpleasantly.

                Ms. Frist’s fluttery voice carried through from the entry hall.  “I’m so very glad you’re here!  Follow me, the others are all waiting.”

                Anneliese craned her neck backwards, watching the figure trailing after Ms. Frist.  The girl was much less waifish than Anneliese; she was tall with very shiny hair and clothing quite wrong for the current winter weather.  As soon as she saw who the girl was, Anneliese ducked into her scarf, looking at Jeffrey nervously over the shield.

                The new girl flipped her curtain of oil-black hair over one shoulder and appraised those present.  She nodded curtly to each of the twins and ignored Anneliese entirely.

                “Now, now, Katrina, please, do have a seat,” Ms. Frist chirped.

                Katrina looked admonishingly at one of the upside-down lounge chairs before struggling to flip it around.  The teacher sat right down on the last chair, not bothering to turn it.  Once they were all situated, Ms. Frist stared at each of them in turn.  “So,” she clapped again, eyes bright with excitement.  “I assume you all know why you’re here?”

                Jeffrey shook his head, acting for all of them.

                “But surely…  You must have guessed by now?  No?  Oh, heavens, this must be might strange!”  Ms. Frist smiled at tiny Anneliese, who one would have expected to look the most frightened.  Instead, however, she looked bold and brave, sitting tall in her throne like she was royalty that belonged there.  “Why, my children!  You all have magic.”

                Katrina jumped up.  “Ms. Frist!  You’re joking, right?!  Are you crazy?”

                Ms. Frist chuckled.  “I’m not joking.”  She stood up.  “And I can prove it.”  From her flowing paisley sleeve, she pulled a silver dagger.  She stared at her reflection for a long moment, and, unexpectedly, threw it.

                Anneliese watched it turn, front over back, on course straight towards her heart.

                Everything happened at once.  Katrina shrieked and Jeremy cursed.  Anneliese stared at the blade with so much ferocity that it hardened into ice.  And Jeffrey leapt to his feet, faster than should have been possible, and pushed the blade away.

                It tumbled to the ground.  All four children turned on Ms. Frist at once.

                “What was that?!”

                “How insane are you?!”

                “What the heck do you think you’re doing?!”

                “You’re crazy!”

                She shook her head seriously.  “Anneliese, what did you do to that knife?”

                Anneliese looked down.  She would not talk to someone who tried to kill her, that was common sense.

                “Yes, you froze it!” Ms. Frist exclaimed, as if Anneliese had indeed responded.  “You’re a witch, a sorceress, an enchantress.  Whatever you may choose to call it, my dear, it is not precisely, ah, normal.”  She turned on Jeffrey.  “And I noticed you moving very quickly to stop that knife.  A little too quickly, wouldn’t you say?”

                “No!” Jeffrey blustered.  “I was trying to save Anneliese from you!”

                “You and your brother, you have very unique abilities.  Jeffrey, it is no wonder you are a track star, and you, Jeremy, are so unnaturally good at lifting weights for one your age.  Need I say more than implications?”

                Both the Dale boys had faces whiter than chalk.  Ms. Frist obviously saw no need to say anything more after all, because she turned to Katrina then.  “Sing,” she demanded.

                Katrina shook her head.  Like the twins, her face had drained of all pallor.  “No.  I won’t.”

                “Why?  I think we’ll all find your music quite… enchanting.  You’re a siren, are you not?”

                Katrina and Anneliese stood at the same second.  The former was endlessly popular, the latter just a shy nobody, but when their eyes met, they finally shared a thought.

                “We’re leaving.”  Anneliese was proud at how confident her voice sounded.

                The twins stood as well, crossing their arms.

                Ms. Frist leapt towards the door.  “No!  Children, please, I’ve brought you all here for a reason!  You’re all very, very special!  I can teach you!”

                “We don’t want help from a crazy old lady!” Katrina said, stomping one foot angrily.

                “Don’t leave!” Ms. Frist wailed, fluttering around like a wounded bat.

                Jeremy growled, “You can’t stop us!”

                Smoothing down her wild mane of hair, Ms. Frist took a few steps backwards.  Her throat bulged as she gulped.  “But I can try!”