A Kingdom Of Honey And Demons

The Opening

Although few people know about it, there is a boarding school for girls to go and become elite ballerinas. It was such a great school you could enroll knowing nothing of ballet and then in just a year be accepted into any dance troop in the world. The school was not willing to give up on any student, until they reached their dream. The school was in a beautiful place out in a place that you couldn't just run into, you had to be going there. It was a Greek revival style of mansion but the town surrounding it looked as if it were trapped in the sixties. Needless to say, this kingdom is definitely an odd place in the world.

How did it come to be about? A man who was never seen by anyone built the house in 1848 and opened up the ballet school when he was just 19. As more people came to the school more schools for other majors like acting and singing were built. Not only were the schools majors for creativity and expressing themselves, they were also finishing schools, those two things don't really go together but somehow they made it work. The town grew, changing the architecture of everything except the schools with each new decade. After the sixties less people showed up, people started to move, and they decided to stop changing the style of the town. Ever since then the only way to enter this place came through your dreams. This way it ensured no one would leave and only certain people who chose to stay would know it was a real place.

How do the students get so good so fast? In the early years up until the 1930s the students typically enrolled at age 14 to 16, ever since then they have enrolled at ages 18 and 19. The students had certain dresses from the 1840s they had to wear when they weren't wearing their ballet costumes. They were to wake promptly at 4:00 in the morning, get dressed, eat breakfast, and be to their first class at 4:30. They took all the classes required for finishing school before 12:30. They then went to lunch, after lunch at 1:00 They were given freetime when they could leave the house for the only time that day. They had to be sure to return at 1:30 to get changed and go to their ballet class at 1:45. They stayed in that class until 6:45 when they would return to their rooms to change back into their regular dresses and head off to dinner at 7:00. After dinner they had to read at least one chapter of Pamela, take a bath, brush their hair, and be in bed with the lights off at 9:00. If they were late to a single class they would be severely punished. Sure they had a tight schedule but the thing that made them good at ballet so fast was for every mistake they made they would be taken to a certain room at night to be punished and would have to endure 2 minutes of each number of punishments corresponding with the number of mistakes they made. They often left with several bruises and cuts all over their bodies, sometimes it was so bad their bones had broken, but they couldn't take the time off to let it heal. By being punished their brain connected the pain with the mistake so they would fix it and not make it again. 

Why didn't the students leave? Once a student was enrolled in the school they could only leave if they got a job in a dance troop or if they died. Their parents wouldn't even know about all the horrors of the boarding school since all the letters sent out of the town were checked by the headmaster of the school to make sure his secrets would not be exposed. Not only were the ballet students trapped, everyone else who went to a school or owned a shop were trapped too. They chose when they first saw the place to stay and he wasn't going to let them go easily, but everyone felt free and didn't want to leave. Maybe they'll figure out the truth someday, but it's highly unlikely.

One night a girl had somewhat of a nightmare. She first dreamt about a different place with a shed. Going into the shed, the door locked and it was dark, but everywhere she stepped there was a light following her, even though she herself held no light. She eventually found a key; she tried going back to the door she came through, but it had disappeared. So instead, she went forward, finding another door and unlocking it. Stepping out of the shed, she saw the ballet school right in front of her.

It looked as though people were touring it and she went onto the porch. She looked up to find the cover of the porch to be painted a pretty, light, blue underneath, "Like it should be," she thought to herself. The time seemed to be one o'clock as there was a line of girls headed out to the town. They were all dressed in the 1840s fashion and she saw someone she thought she recognized. Finally, she went inside the house for a tour. Throughout the tour, she was told all the horrors of this place. She even got to see several portraits of the person who had built the house. Sure no one had ever seen him before, but they had all heard stories of him, so a group of artists got together one time and decided what he looked like. Then she stepped into the final ballet studio. The volunteers asked if anyone would like to try dancing there, no one answered. So after a while they were shown the exit, but told they could stay in there as long as they wanted. Quickly everyone left except her, she started dancing for it had come naturally to her. She never danced in front of anyone, dance was the one thing that her sister wanted to only be her thing. So only when she was alone did she dance.

After dancing so beautifully, she left with the exit she was told, only as she had gotten to where she would be led straight out, it was closed off. So she continued to walk; she eventually went down a staircase into a dim hallway with a door at the end. Walking down the corridor, she looked straight ahead, not noticing that the borders all about the hall were not doorways. Just her luck, the door shut right when she got there. She turned to go into one of the fake doorways only to look up and turn to another one which then made her want to scream even more than the first one. Looking into the doorway, there was glass blocking the entrance. For inside them were some girls who looked as if they were frozen in the glass cages of theirs. Of course when she turned back the staircase was blocked off with no way of going back, she had to go forward. She decided to bang on the door and hope it would eventually open, which it did. This time it led her into a dark room filled with fog. Suddenly a light flashed onto what seemed to be a man, but it quickly left and went to a different part of the room. The door was shut by now, and she was scared of what the men in the room might do. After a little bit of the lights flashing in the different places and nothing moving, she realized they were only statues. She found a wall and decided to walk along feeling up and down to find a door. After walking across half the circular room, she found a door. She decided that despite what had happened so far, it was her only chance at being free. She turned the knob and the door actually opened showing her a bright light.