Once upon a story

  A snippet of the first chapter! Still hasn't been edited... There was nothing quite like being glared at by a hundred witches who wanted your heart on a platter and your head on a spike. Looks of disgust, looks of contempt…I’d endured them all throughout my nineteen years, but none came a league close to the loathing burning in each of their eyes like wildfire.  Well, most of their eyes. The dark pair assessing me from the plateau of the box glittered with something far more sinister. Cruel amusement, fading only when one of her subordinates passed her a hefty leatherbound tome, wrinkled with age.   Of course, the witches had defeated such an enemy when shedding away their mortal skins in favour of one tougher, one blessed with the subtle glow of immortal youth. But surveying them all now, the identical sneers twisting their lips…I wondered if excessive age was not a virtue, but a vice. Wisdom mutilating into arrogance. Agnes was proof enough of that. She’d oozed a...