"Come on, Sybil!" she said, "If the new girls aren't at Walker's Gate by five o'clock, they get locked out!"
'Cause at five o'clock, they take me to the gallows...
I'm definitely reluctant to follow Clarice, but I pick up my satchel and walk along behind her, dragging my feet and desperately wishing that I could be somewhere else. All I can think of are my sister's final words of encouragement:
"and don't forget what I told you"
As if she thought I could ever forget the things she had told me. She had told me every possible hideous thing about this wretched academy. It's her fault that I'm so frightened, but of course, that's exactly what she wants. She didn't want me to come to this school at all.
Ethel Hallow is ashamed to have me as her sister.
She thinks that I don't know that and perhaps I pretend that she is right. But I would be a fool not to notice that it is so true. The only reason I pretend that it isn't is because I don't want it to be true.
I don't want to be the shame. I don't want to end up as the outcast embarrassment to my family which they already say that I am. That is why I don't particularly feel like I want to be a witch.
Standing outside the gate, I look around at the girls who were soon to become my classmates. For a moment, it is ok. They don't know who I am, they don't know that I'm a Hallow. They haven't yet made the false assumption that I am like Ethel.
We line up as a terrifyingly tall woman that could only be Miss Hardbroom began to read out a list of names. When she gets to my name she pauses for a slight moment, and I dare to meet her gaze. For a second I think that my name isn't on her list; or else that she's not going to read it out. What a fantastic (yet, I suppose, disgraceful) occurrence it would be if I hadn't really been accepted into the Academy, and she sent me home!
Can it be that there's some sort of error?
Hard to stop the surmounting terror...
But of course that's not the case. She definitely knows who I am, and even if she didn't, my name was right there in front of her.
"Sybil Hallow?"
I take a deep breath and reply, "Yes, Miss" in what is possibly the quietest voice in existence.
Maybe I hoped that she wouldn't hear me and assume that I was not there.
Of course, though, I am here, soon being marched through the gates to the courtyard where the older students are waiting for us.
"Walker's Gate, Walker's Gate, bite your nose off if you're late! Mummy won't come when you cry, time you witches learnt to fly!"
Tears fall but why am I crying?
After all, I'm not afraid of flying.