... And, with their defeat, the glue that held the Allied Lands together was also gone.
Appendix: Laughter Academy of the Magical Arts
More nonsense has been written about Laughter Academy, also known as Laughter School, than any of the other schools of magic within the Allied Lands. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that it is the only school that refuses to accept male magicians as students (and senior teachers). Rumors of everything from rampant lesbian orgies to forced gender transfigurations surround Laughter, all of which have very little basis in reality. In truth, Laughter is very little different - apart from the female-only student body - from Whitehall or Mountaintop.
Politically, Laughter enjoys the same level of near-complete independence as Whitehall and Mountaintop. The school does follow the White Council’s standard curriculum, wherever possible, with a handful of tiny modifications. The majority of the tutors are accredited by the council well before they’re invited to join the staff. However, it inspires somewhat mixed feelings within the White City. Both aristocrats and magical families are often reluctant to send their daughters to the school, although for different reasons. The former feels the school’s education will give their daughters ideas, and an unhealthy degree of independence; the latter believes Laughter isolates its students from the patronage networks that dominate magical society. This does not, however, keep the school from having more applicants than it can handle.
The origins of the school - and particularly who built the twin castles - are lost somewhere in the mists of time. The officially-accepted story states that a powerful witch called Pendle, the sister of a king, defeated a banshee-like creature that plagued the Howling Peaks and, in reward, was given the region as a personal fiefdom. This witch went on to found Laughter, first as a retreat for her fellow women of magic and later as a full-fledged school. The more dubious stories suggest the founder was, in fact, the banshee herself, who made a deal with the king for reasons of her own. A final version of the story, told by the local men, speaks of a powerful and haughty witch who was bested by the kingdom’s prince and swore herself - and her sisters - to his service for the rest of time. It is difficult to know, now, which version of the story is correct. The only thing known for certain is that the Howling Peaks, and the town of Pendle, have effectively been ceded to Laughter Academy. Those who do not care to live under a witch’s rule have no choice, but to leave.
Laughter Academy consists of four separate buildings, resting on the two highest peaks within the fiefdom. The Keep - a sinister-looking castle - houses the school itself, as well as most of the teachers. The Retreat provides accommodation for Sisters - see below - and other women, mainly magical or aristocratic, who wish to retire from the world. The Guesthouse, positioned between the Keep and Pendle Town, houses male tutors and guests who, by law, are not allowed to be within the castle after dark. The Redoubt - a ruined castle of uncertain purpose - dominates the other peak. It is normally deserted, save for martial magic-style training sessions. The girls claim the castle is haunted and make a habit of daring their fellow students to spend the night in the region. This is officially discouraged, but - in practice - tolerated as long as it doesn’t get dangerous.
On the western side of the castle, a narrow road leads down to Pendle, a town resting within the valley. Home to many former students - and merchants who make a living from selling to them - it is a peaceful place to live, even during the worst periods of unrest. It is generally self-governing, although the headmistress has the right to step in if matters are deemed to be getting out of hand. In recent years, the New Learning has spread to the town, bringing with it ideas and concepts from the outside world.
On the eastern side, a rocky path leads down to the Silent Woods, a valley that cannot be reached save by passing through the school itself. The hidden forest represents both a source of potions ingredients and a place for the girls to test themselves against nature. Men are not barred from the woods, but their presence is strongly discouraged.
By long-established custom - precisely who established the custom and why is hotly debated - the school is ruled by the headmistress, who is known as the Old Woman (this is more of a nickname than a formal title). Her deputy, and presumed successor, is known as the Young Woman. The Young Woman is elected by former students, who will generally confirm her as headmistress when the older woman retires or dies in office. (If there is a challenge, by custom it has to be made before the succession has to be settled one way or the other.) The Head Girl, elected by her fellows as they complete their fifth year, makes up the third of the triumvirate, but she doesn’t have the power to override the other two, merely make her opinions known.
Below the triumvirate, there are the senior tutors, each of whom is a specialist in her subject and has a junior tutor to assist them. The tutors have very little weight individually, but collectively can vote to override, suspend or outright expel the headmistress. Some of these tutors are male, but they can never rise any higher than senior tutor and have a number of other restrictions placed on their behavior. It’s rare for any of them to last more than a handful of years.
The student body is composed of young witches - the term is not seen as derogatory in Laughter, unlike the other schools - who come from all walks of life. Students - Little Sisters - are considered equals once they walk through the doors, although it isn’t hard for students with powerful connections to establish themselves as leaders within the school. The school does go to some effort to make everyone act as equals, from a deliberately bland uniform to a rotating system of chores that everyone, regardless of their birth, has to do. There are no servants within the school, save for the cooks. Their duties are shared amongst the junior students.
There was one boy who studied at the school. It didn’t work out. It is flatly forbidden to bring a boy/man into the school without special permission and no male is allowed to remain in the school after dark. Students have been expelled for trying to sneak their boyfriends into the school (although the horrific tales of what happened to those poor boys are largely exaggerated.)
Junior students - years one to five - are expected to fetch and carry for the senior students, although there are consequences for any senior students who abuse this privilege. Years two and above are allowed to elect their dorm heads; those who do well in the role are generally re-elected, although they know better than to take re-election for granted. They also elect the Head Girl as they complete their fifth year, as well as the prefects. Senior students have a lot more privileges, ranging from being allowed to stay up late to wearing their own clothes outside school hours, though they can lose them quickly if they misbehave.
The school uniform is universally regarded as ugly, although - after graduation - it becomes a badge of honor. Junior girls wear grey: grey floor-length skirt, grey shirt, grey blazer. Senior girls wear black, save for when they attend formal functions when they are allowed to wear aristocratic-style dressers. (Students who enter as senior girls are expected to wear a grey blazer or shirt.) Trousers are explicitly forbidden, outside sports and games.
The lessons themselves are not that different from Whitehall, although there’s more focus on politics, land management and other gaps in more customary (i.e. traditional) forms of female education. (The school is noted for producing more healer candidates than any other.) Outside classes, the girls are free to do what they like - within reason. Senior girls are free to visit Pendle at will and many of them form relationships with boys from the town; junior girls are only allowed to visit on weekends, under supervision.
Unusually for a magic school, the students are taught to levitate - and fly - from a very early age. The dangers inherent in any form of flying spell are noted, and there is usually at least one serious accident every year, but the school refuses to rethink its policy. Indeed, it is often seen as something that sets Laughter apart from the rest. The tutors do, however, maintain careful watch on the students, and any student caught trying to disrupt
someone else’s spell is instantly expelled, without appeal.
Upon graduation, either from the junior or senior school, a student is inducted into the Sisterhood, a quarrel (association) composed of former students. The Sisterhood serves as a combination of Old Girls Network and political pressure group, which - given the number of magical patrons and aristocrats within its ranks - gives it a surprising amount of clout. It rarely shows its hand openly, if only because the Sisterhood is structured to make action difficult without consensus, but is feared by many throughout the Allied Lands. Sisters are expected to help other sisters, although they are also supposed to bear in mind the political consequences of their acts. When Princess Joanna, daughter of King Edwin, married against her father’s will - to a rebel lord, no less - the Sisterhood helped her and her husband to safety, but refused to interfere further. (The Elders reasoned that it would lead to a clash with the aristocracy, which would be a breach of the Compact.) They have far fewer qualms about assisting common-born women.
Appendix: The Magical Community
The magical community does not have, despite the efforts of some political figures, a coherent existence in any real sense of the word. There is no overall unifying authority and, given the nature of magical society, it is extremely unlikely that any will arise. The handful of magical aristocrats who remember the days of the empire, when they ruled magic, are heavily outnumbered by the remainder, who prefer to savor what independence they have from the rest of the world. Magical society, therefore, tends to be touchy, challenging and insistent on respect, even when such respect is undeserved. It is also, in a curious paradox, an association that stretches right across the Allied Lands and beyond.
Geographically, there is no magical “country.” A map of the magical community would look like flecks on paint, scattered over the rest of the Allied Lands. The majority of magicians live within estates - often centered on a nexus point - magic-heavy towns and beside their mundane neighbors. The magical community is more of a collection of bloodlines and schools - and a handful of townships - rather than anything else.
The community rests on four poles. First, the magical families and their bloodlines, carefully tended to ensure newborn magicians add their diversity to the whole. Second, the quarrels - associations of magicians linked together in blood-brotherhood. Third, the guilds, which serve as alliances and unions of magicians in a specific line of magic. Fourth, and finally, the schools, which impart a degree of shared community and cultural understanding into the ever-growing community.
The sexism so prevalent in the remainder of the Allied Lands is rare amongst magicians. Female magicians have full legal rights. To treat a sorceress as somehow lesser, or to assume her husband speaks for her, is to court death. The magical society is also quite accepting of homosexuality, although there is an expectation that powerful magicians will have children to ensure their genes are passed down to the next generation.
As a general rule, magicians are prideful and touchy. A magician is entitled to demand respect within his domain, even from more powerful magicians (who, in turn, are expected to refrain from deliberately undermining their host). To enter a magician’s home is to commit oneself to behaving; the magician, in turn, must extend formal guest-right to his visitors. (A magician is legally within his rights to do whatever he likes to an intruder.) Magicians may enter employment, apprenticeships and patron-client relationships, but only under very precise contracts that detail precisely the obligations of each party to the other. The idea of outright servitude is abhorrent to magicians, at least when they’re the ones in servitude; it is rare, to say the least, to encounter a magician willing to become a servant.
Navigating magical society, therefore, is quite difficult for an outsider. Magicians are often achingly polite, but also willing to push and jostle people to assert their strength and test the newcomer’s strength. It is quite easy to give offense and quite hard to apologize. A magician can issue a challenge to a duel at any time, although the challenged party has the right to determine how the duel is fought.
Magicians rarely admit, openly, that anyone has the right to judge them (unless in very specific circumstances). There are few magicians, therefore, willing to enforce the rules outside their domains, let alone serve in a magical police force. (The White Council’s Mediators are the closest they get to an outright law enforcement body.) Those who openly break the rules, from bad manners to meddling in dark magic, are normally shunned by the remainder of the community, rather than stopped. A handful of magicians believe dark wizards - as opposed to necromancers - should be stopped, but the remainder of the community fears setting precedents that might eventually be used against them.
Magicians assert, if pressed, that they mature slower than mundanes. This may or may not be true. It is also a reflection on their society, an acceptance that a childish mistake need not haunt an adult for the rest of their live. If a child - or someone legally a child, such as an apprentice - commits an offense, they don’t have to face the full consequences. Cynics assert it is a way to keep children and apprentices under control for longer than mundane communities, but it serves a valuable purpose. Newcomers to magical society can learn the rules before it’s too late.
As a general rule, magicians are highly educated. They could generally read and write well before the New Learning reshaped the world. They were also told horror stories about what happened to young magicians who made mistakes, including ‘The Magician Who Made a Foolish Oath’ and ‘The Witch Who Got What She Wanted,’ both warnings of the dangers of entering obligations with other magicians.
The magician community exists slightly apart from the mundane one, under the terms of the Compact (actually a collection of agreements between magicians and aristocrats). Magical families enjoy near-complete independence from the mundane governments, as long as they refrain from any kind of political interference. Magicians who do interfere, directly or indirectly, are regarded as having broken the Compact and can therefore no longer claim its protection. Just how far this goes has never been truly tested, with both magicians and mundanes careful not to put too much pressure on the relationship. As a general rule, magicians who are closely involved with mundane affairs - Queen Alassa, for example - are not considered part of the overall community and therefore free to honor their obligations to their people.
Magicians generally look down on mundanes, even the newborns and those dependent on the mundane community. The belief in magical superiority is not altogether unfounded, given the use of magic to make life easier for magicians and mundanes alike. The average newborn, moving from a village to a magic school, will move from poverty to what might as well be a wonderland; hot and cold running water, magical lightning, etc. It is unusual for mundanes to have any legal rights in magical communities and homes, although magicians who prey on mundanes are generally shunned by their fellows. A magician who kept enslaved mundanes in his home would be looked down upon, which wouldn’t always translate into freeing the slaves. In general, few magicians within the greater community care enough to bother.
Politically, there are three different factions within the community. The Isolationists believe that contact between magicians and mundanes is bad for both sides and therefore they should separate themselves as much as possible, for their own good. Given the power, they would seal off magical areas and encourage the development of a parallel society. The Integrationists believe that magicians and mundanes should live and work together, on the unspoken assumption there are no real differences - besides magic - between the two. The Supremacists believe that magicians have the de facto right to rule mundanes, on the grounds of superior power, and magicians should become (more of) an aristocracy.
Given the absence of any real government, and the pressing need to fight the war against the necromancers, the political strife has been largely muted. Now the necromancers are gone, that may be about to change...
Author’s Note
A certain amount of the backst
ory to Little Witches is told in Nanette’s Tale, a novella published in Fantastic Schools II. Please check it out.
About the author
Christopher G. Nuttall was born in Edinburgh, studied in Manchester, married in Malaysia and currently living in Scotland, United Kingdom with his wife and two sons. He is the author of more than thirty novels from various publishers and over fifty self-published novels.
Current and forthcoming titles published by Twilight Times Books:
Schooled in Magic YA fantasy series
Schooled in Magic — book 1
Lessons in Etiquette — book 2
A Study in Slaughter — book 3
Work Experience — book 4
The School of Hard Knocks — book 5
Love’s Labor’s Won — book 6
Trial By Fire — book 7
Wedding Hells — book 8
Infinite Regress — book 9
Past Tense — book 10
The Sergeant’s Apprentice — book 11
Fists of Justice – book 12
The Gordian Knot – book 13
Graduation Day – book 14
Alassa’s Tale – book 14.5
The Princess in the Tower – book 15
Little Witches (Schooled In Magic Book 21) Page 40