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Tucked snugly away deep within the dead forest lived a faray cobblestone mansion was perched on the tallest hill, which looked down on a vast landscape of lifeless trees with brittle and twisted branches that rese hands

Around this forest was an impenetrable thicket of rosebushes with tiny beautifully preserved rosebuds still clinging to theer than anyone still living could properly recollect This was the boundary between the land of the living and the forest of the dead, and the witches who lived in the woods rarely crossed the boundary to do har on the other side They asked for only one thing in return: their dead

The witches’ forest wasn’t merely filled with lifeless trees It here the dead rested—or so the neighboring villagers liked to tell themselves They chose to think of the woods as a cemetery they weren’t perh deep within their hearts they knew their deceased loved ones were given very little peace in what should have been their eternal resting place

But on’t concern ourselves with that part of the tale at the ht now, our story centers on three sister witches—Hazel, Gothel, and Primrose—and their reatest and e

Manea always let it be known that her daughters were a disappointh the three of them were born on the same day, they were not identical It idely accepted in the reat honor They were highly favored aical ability than the average witch Though Gothel and her sisters were, by definition, triplets, they couldn’t possibly have been more different from each other

Let’s start with Gothel, the youngest sister by a mere handful of hours She possessed raven hair and dark features, with large expressive gray eyes Her hair was thick, wild, and unruly, often filled with little bits of twigs or dried leaves fro her sisters around in the dead woods and roh the landscape of cemeteries within its boundaries When Gothel chose to look up froh to notice her surroundings, she had a very large personality, dehtful, pragularly focused on eventually taking her mother’s place in the forest of the dead There was only one thing more important to her

Her sisters

Hazel, the eldest sister, was lanky and shy, with large light blue eyes Her hair was a brilliant shade of silver, and cascaded over her shoulders like a shroud She , really, considering where she and her sisters lived Hazel was a soft-spoken and exceedingly e to listen to her sisters’ problems and lend her support

That leaves us with Prireen eyes, a peaches-and-crea of freckles across her nose She was lighthearted and fun, always ready for adventure, and doomed to be entirely driven by her e the three to quarrel

The sisters spentthethe names off the headstones in what felt like to the sisters a s the various pathways of beautiful and ornate to the dead’s na the na

With little else to fill their time, the sisters found happy occupations to keep the the dead forest Hazel loved to bring thin pieces of delicate parch walks in the woods so she could make impressions of some of the s Sometimes she found a na or funny and she wouldsimply for reference Later she would look up the person in her er that contained the nains of every person buried within their woods, which made her feel less alone Not that her sisters’ friendship wasn’t enough, ine some of the dead as her friends She and her sisters were quite alone in the dead woods aside from their mother, as busy and sequestered away at every opportunity, occupied with her hters So Hazel found co about the dead in herto know the people who spent their afterlife in her forest

Pri pouch, which contained a spool of ribbon, a sht red parch from the dead branches on ribbons I

t was just like Pri color into their stark world Al beauty into their lives, because it did seem to follow her wherever she wandered Pri her wishes while she and her sisters were asleep She hoped the dead would love their afterlife She wanted it to be a beautiful resting place rather than the dull gray landscape it really was

Gothel was more rooted in the physical world than her sisters, with her eye always on the future She often brought along one of her mother’s books when she went into the woods with her sisters—a book she had slipped into the pocket of her skirts when herattention She always took the opportunity to read when her sisters stopped to do a grave rubbing or tie wishes in the trees Sometimes she read aloud to her sisters, but usually she just let herself drift into other worlds—worlds she desperately wanted to inhabit The world of ic And this day was no different

“Gothel! Move! You’re blocking the headstone I want to do next!” Gothel looked up at Hazel, who gazed down at her disapprovingly The sun was directly behind her, creating a shihostlike face

“But I’m comfortable here, Hazel Can’t you rub one of the other headstones?” Gothel asked, squinting to see her sister clearly

Hazel sighed “I guess”

Gothel watched Hazel walk into the brilliant sunlight, which was low in the sky and cast a lovely orange-and-pink glow on their otherwise dreary landscape It was Gothel’s favorite tiic hour She had read there was a land where it was eternally twilight, and she wondered what it o too far, Hazel!” called Gothel “It will be dark soon, and Mother ant us home”

Hazel didn’t answer her sister, but Gothel knew Hazel had heard her Gothel had read about sister witches who could read each other’s minds, and she knew that wasn’t the case with her and her sisters—not quite—but they did have an understanding At least that hat their ” Ever since they were very s They couldn’t co, so they didn’t hear the exact words, but they did get a sense of what the othersfrom each other’s emotions Gothel had searched her ” and decided ither mother had made up, because she couldn’t find a reference to it in any of them And she wondered if ic, she and her sisters would have the power to read each other’s minds