Prologue:

The date was August 1, 1971; I was in my room minding my own business reading a book about wizards and dragons. I am a huge fan of the magical and could always be found reading a book about witches, unicorns, elves, fairies, or something along those lines. This particular book though, was by far my favorite; it had all I loved in a book; adventure, romance, danger, an evil villain, and even some comedy, not to mention that elves, dwarves, and even a new kind of creature, the Kull, were in the book, it was amazing. I was so engrossed in the book that I didn't even notice an owl fly by, which was strange because it was the middle of the day; 2 o'clock to be exact and owls are nocturnal, they sleep during the day and come out at night. However, like I said I didn't notice anything strange at all, until later in day when I would get the mail.

Now we have a system in our house about chores and household activities. For example one day my mom would throw out the trash, the next day my dad would throw it away and then of course it would be my turn the next day and then the cycle begins again with my mom the next day, this is how it was for all the household chores we had to do. So as I was getting to the part where the hero of my book was going to reveal his feelings my mom yells out,

"Aria, it's your turn to take out the trash!" So groaning and complaining I get up from my bed and head downstairs to get the trash from the kitchen. As I head into the kitchen my mom points to the bags of trash that she has all set and ready for me to take,

"Thank you sweetheart," She says to me.

"No problem mom," I reply. So I go on my merry way to take the trash to the dumpster and as I was coming back from the dumpster, I thought that I might as well get the mail too. As I was getting the mail I noticed that there was a card on the ground next to the mailbox, this wasn't strange as the mailman would occasionally leave some letters on the ground, we never complained because the mailman was a very busy individual and most days he was running late on his schedule, the poor man. So we cut him some slack now and then, besides he always gave us our mail and we didn't really care what time of day it arrived. No, what was strange was that it was addressed to me. I mean, I was only eleven years old, I didn't get many letters in the mail, aside from the occasionally letter on my birthday from relatives. So I was pretty excited to see a letter addressed to me, but as I looked closer, I saw the address and that freaked me out a little, the address on the letter said:

Ms. A. Seaton

The bedroom to the right of the stairs

13 Heatherdale Road

Camberley

Surrey

How did they know where my room was, that was so strange. I immediately went inside to tell my dad about the letter. However, when I went inside my dad was on the phone so I decided to wait until he got off the phone to tell him about the letter. I know I could have told my mother, but in situations like these, where I might be in danger, I always ran to my dad. Besides if I told my mom she would run to tell my dad too, so I was just skipping a step. So I'm just about to go into the living room and sit down to wait for my dad, when I hear my name. Now my dad or my mom are always talking to relatives and sometimes they mention me as well, but by the tone of voice that my dad was using, I knew this was no relative. He was always so happy talking to relatives, which really only consisted of my grandparents and an uncle on my father's side. I lived a rather lonely life, I was an only child and I didn't have any cousins because my uncle decided early on that he was going to be a life-long bachelor and so far he seems to be doing a pretty good job of doing that. Here he is at 34 years old and every time I see him he is either alone or with a women, a different women every time. My mother was an only child as well, so no cousins on that end either. Whenever they spoke, they never sound as serious as my father does right now, I wonder who he is speaking to.

Now I know that it's bad to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help it. I'm eleven years old for crying out loud and curious by nature.

"No, she hasn't received any letter, why would she?" The moment I heard that question, I immediately knew they were talking about the letter I now held in my hand. So I knew that I had to go in there and show my dad the letter.

"Dad, I did receive a letter," I told him as I stood in the doorway to the living room. My dad slightly jumped as if I had scared him and I probably did, I was pretty good at sneaking around. Not to mention that he didn't know that I was in the doorway. I mouthed "sorry" to him and handed him the letter. He looked at it in wonder as if the letter he held in his hand wasn't real and he was just imagining it. After a moment he looked at me and then back at the letter, me, letter, me, letter, me when finally he said into the phone,

"What does that mean?" Suddenly there was a loud 'POP' sound and in the living room there materialized a man in purple robes with a beard so long it touched the buckle on the belt he wore. He had kind blue eyes that twinkled as if he enjoyed scaring the beejezus out of my father and me and perched on his nose were the coolest half-moon spectacles I have ever seen, in my opinion. This strange man opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something and he did. But the words that came out of his mouth were words I have never expected to hear. Those five words changed my life completely.

"It means, she's a witch."