by Chris Colfer
“Overruled! And watch your tone, Defense Deputy!” the Justice warned. “Now, moving on. What penalty does the prosecution recommend?”
This was the moment Brystal had been dreading. With just two words, her own brother would either save her life or cement her demise. Her heart was pounding out of her chest and she forgot to breathe as she waited to hear his answer.
“Your Honor, due to the number of felonies that were committed in such a short period of time, I believe the defendant may commit more crimes if given the chance. We must remove all likelihood of it happening again, and furthermore, we must prevent all possibility of the defendant harming innocent lives in the process. That is why I must recommend you sentence them with a—”
“Barrie, you’ve got to stop!” Brooks shouted.
“DEFENSE DEPUTY, CONTROL YOURSELF!” Oldragaid ordered.
“I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not!”
“GUARDS! RESTRAIN AND SILENCE HIM IMMEDIATELY!”
“Oldragaid is hiding the defendant from you on purpose! Don’t recommend a maximum punishment! Trust me, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life!”
Brystal could hear Brooks fighting off the guards as he tried to convince their brother. He grunted and choked as they pinned him down and stuffed a cloth into his mouth.
“God, you’re pathetic,” Barrie told his brother. “Your desire to sabotage me is so great you’re willing to make a complete fool of yourself in court! But I’m not as daft as you think and I won’t let you jeopardize my career! Father said I needed to show strength if I wanted the court to take me seriously, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do! Your Honor, the prosecution recommends the maximum penalty!”
After hearing her brother’s recommendation, Brystal lost all feeling and collapsed on the floor of the cage like a marionette with severed strings. Brooks screamed at the top of his lungs, but the cloth muffled his words.
“Then without further notice, I hereby sentence the defendant to death,” Justice Oldragaid ruled. “The execution shall take place immediately. Guards, please remove the defendant from the cage and position her for the executioner. But first, please restrain the Prosecution Deputy—this may be unpleasant for him to watch.”
The guards seized Barrie and tied his hands behind his back. He tried to resist them, but they were too strong.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked. “Why am I being restrained? Unhand me at once! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
The sheet was removed from the cage, and with one glance at the blue eyes peeking out from inside, Barrie realized who the defendant was.
“Brystal?” he said in shock. “But—but—but what are you doing in there? You’re supposed to be volunteering at the Home for the Hopeless!”
The executioner placed a thick wooden block on the floor below the Justice’s platform. The guards dragged Brystal out from the cage and positioned her head on the block. As the executioner hovered over her, the reality of what Barrie had just done began to sink in. He became manic and struggled against the restraints with all his might.
“Noooooo!” he screamed. “I didn’t know what I was doing! I didn’t know it was her!”
Justice Oldragaid smiled and cackled at the trauma he was causing the Evergreen family. The executioner raised his axe above Brystal’s neck and practiced swinging it. From the floor, Brystal could see both her brothers frantically trying to fight off the guards holding them back. In that moment, she was almost grateful for Oldragaid’s vengeful tactics—if she was going to die, at least this way she would die looking at the people she loved.
“Brystal, I’m sorry!” Barrie sobbed. “Forgive me! Forgive meeeeee!!”
“It’s going to be all right, Barrie…,” she whispered. “This isn’t your fault.… This isn’t your fault.… This isn’t your fault.…”
WHAM! The double doors suddenly swung open, causing everyone to jump and turn to the back of the courtroom. Justice Evergreen stormed inside with the rage of a hundred men.
“OLDRAGAID, STOP THIS BLASPHEMY AT ONCE!” he demanded.
“How dare you interrupt a trial in progress, Evergreen!” Oldragaid shouted. “Leave the courtroom this instant or I’ll have you removed!”
“THIS ISN’T A TRIAL, IT’S AN ATROCITY!” Justice Evergreen declared.
The executioner glanced back and forth at the sparring Justices, uncertain of who to take orders from.
“Carry on, man!” Oldragaid yelled. “This is my courtroom! Justice Evergreen has no authority here!”
“As a matter of fact, I do!” Justice Evergreen said, and raised a scroll of parchment high into the air. “I have just returned from High Justice Mounteclair’s home in the Western Countryside. He has granted me the power to commandeer this trial and overrule your sentencing!”
The Justice unrolled the scroll so everyone in the courtroom could see it. The document was an official order from High Justice Mounteclair, and his large signature was featured at the bottom.
“This is outrageous!” Oldragaid exclaimed. “Your daughter is a witch, Evergreen! She must be punished for her crimes!”
“And punishment she shall receive, but it won’t be from you,” Justice Evergreen said. “Mounteclair has sentenced her to live at a facility in the Northeast Plains of the Southern Kingdom until further notice. The facility, as I’m told, specializes in treating young women with my daughter’s condition. There is a carriage outside, waiting to transport her as we speak. In the meantime, the High Justice has ordered you to erase any mention of this trial from all records in court.”
Justice Oldragaid went silent as he contemplated his next move. When he realized how limited his options were, Oldragaid became furious and banged his gavel until it broke into two pieces.
“Well, it appears Justice Evergreen has used his connections to manipulate the law,” he told the room. “At the moment, I have no other choice but to follow the High Justice’s orders. Guards, please take the Evergreen witch to the carriage outside.”
Before she had the chance to say good-bye to her brothers, the guards raised Brystal off the executioner’s block and began dragging her out of the courtroom.
“But, Father, where am I going?” she cried. “What facility are they taking me to? Father!”
Despite her desperate pleas, Justice Evergreen refused to answer his daughter’s questions. He didn’t even look her in the eye as the guards pulled her past him.
“Don’t you dare address me as Father,” he said. “You’re no daughter of mine.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE BOOTSTRAP CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR TROUBLED YOUNG WOMEN
By sunrise, Brystal was already so far from Chariot Hills she couldn’t hear the morning cathedral bells. She was shackled in the back of a small carriage that traveled down a long and bumpy road through the Northeast Plains of the Southern Kingdom. True to its name, there was absolutely nothing to see in the plains but the same flat earth that stretched for miles around them. With every passing hour the grassy land became drier and drier and the sky became grayer and grayer, until land and sky blended into one dismal color.
The driver stopped only rarely to feed the horses, and occasionally the guards let Brystal out of the carriage to relieve herself on the side of the road. The only food they gave her was a piece of stale bread, and Brystal was afraid to eat it because she didn’t know how long she was supposed to ration it. The drivers said nothing about an estimated time of arrival, so as their second day of travel began, she started worrying their destination didn’t exist. She convinced herself that the carriage would eventually pull over and the drivers would abandon her in the middle of nowhere—perhaps that was what her Father and the High Justice’s plan had been all along.
In the late afternoon of their second day, Brystal finally spotted something in the distance that suggested there was civilization nearby. As the carriage moved closer to the object, she saw it was a wooden sign that pointed down
a new path:
THE BOOTSTRAP CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR TROUBLED YOUNG WOMEN
The carriage turned onto a dirt road, heading in the direction the sign pointed to. Brystal was relieved to see their destination existed, but as the facility appeared on the horizon, she realized being abandoned might have been a better option. Brystal had never laid eyes on such a miserable place, and just the sight of it sucked all the remaining hope and happiness from her body.
The Bootstrap Correctional Facility for Troubled Young Women sat on top of the only hill Brystal had seen in the Northeast Plains. It was a wide five-story building made from crumbling bricks. The walls were severely weathered and cracked, and all the windows were tiny, covered in bars, and the glass was mostly shattered. There were gaping holes in the thatched roof, and a crooked chimney in the center made the whole facility look like an enormous rotting pumpkin.
The building was surrounded by a few acres of parched land, and the property was bordered by a stone wall with sharp spikes along the top. Brystal’s carriage stopped at the facility’s gate and the driver whistled for a hunchbacked gatekeeper, who limped out from his small post and removed the barriers.
Once the gate was open, the carriage continued down a path that snaked through the facility’s grounds. Everywhere she looked, Brystal saw dozens of young women between the ages of about eight and seventeen sprinkled across the property. Each girl wore a faded gray-and-black-striped dress, a bandanna to keep the hair out of her face, and a pair of oversize work boots. All the young women were pale and emaciated and shared the same expression of utter exhaustion, as if they hadn’t had a decent meal or a good night’s rest in years. It was a haunting sight, and Brystal wondered how long it would be until she, like the other girls, resembled a ghost of her former self.
The young women were separated into groups performing various chores. Some fed chickens in an overcrowded coop, some milked malnourished cows in a small pen, and some pulled wilted vegetables from a withering garden. However, Brystal didn’t understand the point of the other activities she saw the girls performing. Some dug large holes in the ground with shovels, some moved heavy stones back and forth from one pile to another, and some carried heavy buckets of water around in circles.
The girls showed no objections to the pointless exercises and completed their tasks almost mechanically. Brystal assumed they were trying to avoid attention from the wardens who were patrolling them. The wardens wore dark uniforms and kept a hand on the whips dangling from their belts as they supervised the young women.
As if the facility wasn’t grim enough, a peculiar contraption in the middle of the property gave Brystal an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It appeared to be a large stone well, but instead of a water bucket hanging from its roof, there was a thick wooden board with three holes—the perfect sizes to fit around someone’s wrists and neck. Whatever it was, Brystal hoped she would avoid the mechanism during her time at the facility.
The carriage stopped at the building’s entrance. The driver and guards pulled Brystal out of the back and she shrieked because the air was much colder than she’d anticipated. The front doors slowly opened from inside, the rusty hinges screeching like an animal in pain, and a man and woman stepped outside to greet the newcomers.
The man was short and shaped like an upside-down pear: he had an incredibly wide head, a very thick neck, and a torso that narrowed as it lowered into his tiny waist. He was a sharp dresser and wore a red bow tie with a blue suit that was perfectly tailored to his awkward measurements. His mouth was curled into a devious grin that never faded. The woman beside him was shaped like a cucumber: she was almost twice as tall as him, and she was the exact same width from head to toe. She looked more conservative than the man and wore a black dress with a high lacy collar. A permanent frown was frozen on her face, like she had never laughed in her entire life.
“May we help you?” the man asked in a deep, raspy voice.
“Are you Mr. and Mrs. Edgar? The administrators of this facility?” the driver asked.
“Yes, that’s us,” the woman said in a sharp, nasally voice.
“By order of the High Justice Mounteclair of Chariot Hills, Miss Brystal Lynn Evergreen has been sentenced to live at your facility until further notice,” one of the guards informed them.
He handed the man a scroll with the official order in writing. Mr. Edgar read over the document and then eyed Brystal like he had won a prize.
“My, my,” he said. “Miss Evergreen must have done something very naughty for a High Justice to sentence her personally. Of course we would be delighted to have her join us.”
“Then she’s all yours,” the driver said.
The guards unlocked Brystal’s shackles and shoved her toward the administrators. Without missing a beat, the guards and the driver returned to the carriage and raced away from the facility. Mr. and Mrs. Edgar looked Brystal up and down like two dogs inspecting a steak.
“Let me be the first to warn you, deary, that this is a house of the Lord,” Mrs. Edgar said in a spiteful tone. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave your debauchery at the door.”
“You must be tired and hungry from your journey,” Mr. Edgar said in a friendly manner that Brystal didn’t trust. “You’re just in luck—it’s nearly dinnertime. Come inside and we’ll get you changed into something more appropriate.”
Mr. Edgar placed a hand on the back of Brystal’s neck and the couple escorted her inside. The interior of the Bootstrap Correctional Facility was just as cold and battered as the outside. The floor was made of rotting wooden planks, the ceiling was stained from leaks, and the walls were covered in dents and scrapes. The administrators moved Brystal down a corridor and through a large archway into a spacious dining hall.
The dining hall had three long tables that stretched the entire length of the room and a small table at the front for faculty members. More young women in faded gray-and-black-striped dresses were seated at the long tables, hard at work sewing pieces of leather boots together. Just like the girls outside, the young women in the dining hall were gaunt and looked fatigued. Their fingertips were bruised and bleeding from being forced to work with dull needles. Additional wardens paced the hall as they inspected the girls’ work, and they backhanded some of the young women who weren’t sewing fast enough to their satisfaction.
At the front of the room, hanging above the smaller table, was an enormous banner with a message that made Brystal’s blood boil:
Before Brystal could comment on the infuriating message, the administrators pushed her up a rickety staircase at the back of the dining hall. Mrs. Edgar unlocked a heavy barred door and the couple moved Brystal into their office at the top of the stairs.
Unlike the rest of the facility, the Edgars’ office was very elegant. It had carpeted floors and a crystal chandelier, and the walls were painted with murals of beautiful landscapes. The office had large windows that peered into the dining hall and the facility’s grounds. It was the perfect place to spy on the young women as they worked.
Mr. Edgar took a seat in a leather chair behind a cherrywood desk. Mrs. Edgar pulled Brystal behind a privacy screen in a corner of the office and had her remove the clothes and shoes she had arrived in. She tossed Brystal’s things into a wastebasket and crossed to a bulky wardrobe on the other side of the room. The woman opened the drawers and selected a faded gray-and-black-striped dress, a bandanna, and a pair of work boots.
“Here,” she said, and handed the items to Brystal. “Get dressed.”
Brystal had nothing on but her undergarments and was freezing, so she put the new clothes on as fast as she could. Unfortunately, the uniform wasn’t nearly as warm as her old clothes and Brystal shivered in the cold room.
“Ma’am? May I please have a sweater?” she asked.
“Does this look like a boutique?” Mrs. Edgar snapped. “The cold is good for you. It makes you seek the warmth of the Lord.”
She sat Brystal in the chair a
cross from her husband. His devilish grin grew as he watched Brystal shiver, and his double chin turned into four.
“Miss Evergreen, allow me to officially welcome you to the Bootstrap Correctional Facility for Troubled Young Women,” Mr. Edgar said. “Do you know why the High Justice has placed you under our care?”
“They say you’re supposed to cure me,” Brystal said.
“Indeed,” he said. “You see, there’s something inside of you that shouldn’t be there. What may seem like a talent or a gift is actually an illness that must be remedied immediately. My wife and I created this facility so we could help girls with your condition. With some hard work and prayer, we’ll root out all the unnatural qualities you possess, and nothing will prevent you from becoming a respectable wife and mother one day.”
“I don’t understand how manual labor and prayer cures anyone,” she said.
Mr. Edgar let out a low, rattling laugh and shook his head.
“Our methods may seem tedious and grueling, but they are the most effective tools for treatment,” he explained. “You are infected with a horrible disease—it’s a sickness of the spirit that the Lord himself opposes—and it’s going to take time and effort to destroy it. However, with dedication and discipline, we can crush the very source of your symptoms. Our facility will starve the evil from your soul, pump the darkness out of your heart, and drain the wickedness from your mind.”
Brystal knew it was in her best interest to just stay silent and nod, but every word out of Mr. Edgar’s mouth infuriated her more than the last.
“Mr. Edgar, you agree the Lord is all-knowing, all-powerful, and the sole creator of all existence, correct?” she asked.
“Without question,” Mr. Edgar replied.
“Then why would the Lord create magic if he hates it so much?” she asked. “It’s a little counterproductive, don’t you think?”
Mr. Edgar went quiet and it took him a few moments to answer her.
“To test the loyalty of your soul, of course,” he declared. “The Lord wants to separate the people who seek salvation from the people who surrender to sin. By willingly making sacrifices to overcome your condition, you are proving your devotion to the Lord, and to his beloved Southern Kingdom.”
