"Dear Mrs. Harton,
As terrible as it is for us, we must send our daughter Sarah out of the dangers of Africa and back to the safety of England..."
So began the letter that introduced twelve-year-old Sarah Jane Lyon-White to Isabelle Harton, who with her husband Frederick, ran The Harton School for Boys and Girls in central London. The letter seemed quite simple and straightforward, and to most people, it would have been. But Isabelle could detect the faint glow of "true magic" about the letter-she could tell that its writer, Sarah's mother, was a practitioner of Earth magic. She could even sense in it the presence of a true Earth Master-surely Sarah's father. It was what was not written in the letter that resonated to Isabelle's own finely tuned "extra" senses: "Sarah has gifts we cannot train," the letter whispered to her, "nor can anyone we know. Those we trust tell us that you can...."
