Chapter 1
As I awoke one morning, my eyes still getting used to the light pouring in through my window, I glanced outside, to where my father, chopping wood for the roaring fireplace, could be seen on the outskirts of the woods. "Dad!" I yelled. I knew I shouldn't have left the curtain open, especially now in the summer. "What time is it?" he glanced up at the sky, telling in a way I could not, the time of day. "You've slept enough Asia. Come, I need wood chopped for the fire." I groaned and pulled of the cover. I grabbed a string I used to keep my hair back, my hairbrush and an apple. In the twenty seconds I had until I needed to get outside, I quickly brushed my short blond hair, pulled it into a knot and took three bites of my apple before I burst outside. We don't have a lot of apples in my family, but I can sometimes find some. That's because my grandfather was the huntsman that spared Snow White from the Evil Queen. He never went to the school, of course, but he was a fine trapper for the old king, the one who was killed by the Evil Queen. No one in my family has ever gone to the School for Good and Evil as far back as anyone can remember. We live outside of Maidenvale and my father works as a carpenter and farmer. "Asia," my father began, then stopped, as if the subject was to hard to explain in words. "What is it father?" I asked anxiously. I was thirteen now, my birthday was last weekend. I felt I was now in my nature to be impulsive. "your flowerground ticket, it arrived this morning." A flower ground ticket? I thought. But why would I get a flower ground ticket unless I was going to… "I'm going to the school for good." I said, gasping in pure shock. Then I fainted.
I opened my eyes and realized I was still in the woods. "see?" my father said, propping up my head with a piece of wood. "you're a natural at the princess thing." I snorted and stood up, brushing leaves of my pants. "take that back." I said, pushing him into a oak. Now my dad was the one to snort. "We have to go into town. you need some new clothes." I stared at him blankly. "princesses wear dresses." my dad explained. "I know." I said. "but the prospect of you shopping was so odd I had to stare. He laughed and pulled out a letter. "Dear Asia of Maidenvale." I began. "I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the School for Good. Enclosed below is your flowerground ticket." my dad handed me the ticket. It was small, with a pink script that read. "Flowerground ticket, Abora line." I tucked it into my pocket and continued to read. "Your uniform and books will be given to you at the start of term. Class starts on Monday the sixth of August at 6PM sharp. Clarissa Dovey." I laughed and read it again. then my eyes bulged. "Dad." I said turning around. "I have be there later today." The smile erased from his face. "run into the house and pack all your cloths and things!" I ran in and stuffed clothes and items into a small trunk. I lingered over the picture of Mom. It had been two years since she died, but I still missed her. I scanned the now empty bedroom and grabbed the picture. "Come on Asia!" My dad yelled. I ran outside, holding my large trunk with both hands. My dad pulled me to the wagon and we rode into town and to the beauty shop. He slapped a fistful of coins on the desk. " I have a girl who is going to the school for good later today and I need her to look good." A door opened and a woman entered from the back of the shop. She scooped up six or seven of the coins and drummed her bloodred nails on the desk. "Let me see what I can do."
Thirty antagonizing minutes later I was primped, styled and forced, much against my will, into a tight sky blue dress. I looked in the mirror and felt grateful that, while that was probably the worst experience of my life, at least I looked good. "so how do I get onto the flower ground?" I asked as I walked out. He shrugged and replied. "All I know is you throw your ticket onto the ground." I took my ticket out of my pocket and dropped it. A pumpkin shoot out of the ground. I opened the pumpkin lid, revealing a caterpillar in a violet tuxedo and a matching top hat, float in a swirl of what looked like pollon. "No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the Flower Ground," He said. His voice was so crabby I wondered what hour he had gotten up this morning. "Violations will result in removal of your clothes. All aboard!"
The vine shot up and yanked me in. I screamed and tumbled through plants and flowers until I saw the flower ground. I don't know what I was expecting, but this was not it.
It was a huge underground transport system made entirely of huge plants. Dangling passengers so glowing, different-colored tree trunks covered in matching flowers. These color-coded trunks wove together in a colossal maze of tracks. Some trunks ran parallel, some perpendicular, some forked in different directions, but all took riders to their precise destinations in the Endless Woods. I stared in shock at a row of dwarves, clinging to straps off a fluorescent red trunk labeled ROSALINDA LINE. "Hi!" I shouted, as the vine pulled me into the ARBOREA LINE, which I presumed was full of other girls going to the school. I might have been right but I couldn't see any other girls. I was pulled into a churning whirlwind of blue light, brighter than I had ever seen. I felt as if I had become a flower, and I was blooming out of the ground. Colors swirled around me as I bloomed up and out of the ground.