The School for Good and Evil (16 page)

“Ugh. The ‘Mistake,’” Beatrix groaned. “Good has never been so wrong.”

“You wouldn’t know Good if it crawled up your dress!” Agatha yelled.

Beatrix gasped so loudly Tedros cracked a grin.

“Don’t talk to Beatrix that way!” a voice said—

Agatha turned to find blond-haired Tristan—

“
Beatrix?
” Agatha exploded. “You sure you don’t want Tedros? He’d love to marry himself!”

Tedros stopped smiling. Dumbstruck, he glanced between Agatha, Tristan, Beatrix . . . He lost patience and punched Tristan in the mouth. Tristan drew his dulled training sword, Tedros whipped out his, and they clashed in public duel. But Tristan had been studying Tedros in Swordplay, so they both used the exact same ripostes, the same retreats, even the same fight calls, until no one knew who was who—

Rather than intervene, Swordplay professor Espada twirled his long mustache. “We’ll dissect this thoroughly in class tomorrow.”

The Nevers had a more immediate response.

“
FIIIIGGGHHHHHT!
” Ravan roared.

Nevers rushed Evers, steamrolled stunned wolves, and dive-bombed into the dueling swordsmen. Whooping Everboys charged in, inciting an epic playground brawl that splattered Evergirls with mud. Agatha couldn’t help but laugh at girls brought to their knees by dirt, until filthy Beatrix pointed at her.

“She started it!”

Screaming Evergirls charged after Agatha, who climbed a tree. Nearby, Tedros managed to reach his head from under boys and saw Sophie spring past. “Help!” he yelled—

Sophie stepped on his head as she ran to help Agatha, who was being pelted with pebbles by Beatrix. Then she caught Hort out of the corner of her eye.

“You! Give me back my wart!”

Hort scooted around the brawling mass, Sophie in pursuit, until she got close enough to pick up a fallen branch and hurl it at his head—Hort ducked and it hit Lady Lesso in the face.

Students froze.

Lady Lesso touched her cold, gashed cheek. Staring at the blood on her hand, she grew eerily calm.

Her long red nail rose and pointed at Agatha.

“Lock her in her tower!”

A swarm of fairies seized Agatha and dragged her past smirking Tedros towards the Evers’ tunnel—

“No, it’s my fault!” Sophie cried—

“And this one.” Lady Lesso stabbed her bloodstained finger at Sophie. “To the
Doom Room
.”

Before Sophie could scream, a claw covered her mouth and pulled her past petrified classmates into the darkness of trees.

Sophie couldn’t live through torture! Sophie couldn’t survive true Evil!

As fairies flew her upstairs, Agatha welled panicked tears and glanced down to see teachers surging into the foyer.

“Professor Sader!” she cried, clinging to a banister. “You have to believe us! The Storian thinks Sophie’s a villain! It’s going to kill her!”

Sader and twenty teachers looked up, alarmed—

“How do you see our village?” Agatha yelled as fairies wrested her away. “How do we get home? What does a princess have that a villain doesn’t!”

Sader smiled. “Questions. Always in threes.”

Teachers chuckled and dispersed. (“
Seen
the Storian?” Espada mused. “She’s the one who eats candy,” Professor Anemone explained.)

“No! You have to save her!” Agatha begged, but the fairies dragged her to her room and locked her in.

Frantic, she scaled her bed canopy past paintings of lip-locked heroes and lunged for the broken ceiling tile. . . . But it wasn’t broken anymore. Someone had sealed it tight.

Blood drained from Agatha’s cheeks. Sader was her only hope and he refused to answer questions. Now her only friend would die in that dungeon, all because a magic pen had mistaken a princess for a witch.

Then something flashed in her head. Something Sader said in class.

If you do have questions . . .

Breathless, Agatha emptied her basket of schoolbooks.

A gray wolf, stoic and efficient, tugged Sophie by a long chain fixed to a tight iron collar around her neck. Skirting the dank sewer walls, she couldn’t fight her leash; one wrong step and she’d slip off the narrow path into roaring sludge. Across the rotted black river, she saw two wolves drag moaning Vex from the direction in which she was headed. His eyes met hers, red-rimmed, hateful. Whatever happened to him in the Doom Room had left him more a villain than when he entered.

Agatha
, Sophie told herself.
Agatha will get us home.

She bit back tears.
Stay alive for Agatha.

As she approached the sewer’s halfway point, where sludge turned to clear lake water, she felt the wall’s solid stone become rusty grating. The wolf kicked the door open and shoved her in.

Sophie lifted her head to a dark dungeon, lit by a single torch. Everywhere she looked were tools of punishment: breaking wheel, rack, stocks, nooses, hooks, garrote, iron maiden, thumbscrews, and a terrifying collection of spears, clubs, rods, whips, and knives. Her heart stopped. She turned away—

Two red eyes glowed from the corner.

Slowly a big black wolf rose from shadows, twice the size of all the other wolves. But this one had a human’s body with a thick, hairy chest, sinewy arms, bulging calves, and massive feet. The Beast cracked open a scroll of parchment and read in a deep growl.

“You, Sophie of Woods Beyond, have hereby been summoned to the Doom Room for the following sins: Conspiracy to Commit Untruth, Disruption of Assembly, Attempted Murder of a Faculty Member—”

“
Murder!
” Sophie gasped—

“Incitement of Public Riots, Crossing of Boundary Lines During Assembly, Destruction of School Property, Harassment of Fellow Students, and Crimes Against Humanity.”

“I plead not guilty to all charges,” Sophie scowled. “Especially the last.”

The Beast seized her face in his claws.
“Guilty until proven innocent!”

“Let go!” Sophie screamed.

He sniffed her neck. “Aren’t you a luscious
peach
.”

“You’ll leave
marks
!”

To her surprise the Beast released her. “It usually takes beating to find the weak spot.”

Sophie looked at the Beast, confused. He licked his lips and grinned.

With a cry, she lunged for the door—he slammed her to the wall and cuffed her arms to hooks above her head.

“Let me go!”

The Beast slunk along the wall, hunting for just the right punishment.

“Please, whatever I did, I’m sorry!” Sophie wailed.

“Villains don’t learn from apologies,” the Beast said. He considered a cudgel for a moment, then moved on. “Villains learn from pain.”

“Please! Someone help me!”

“Pain makes you stronger,” said the Beast.

He caressed the tip of a rusty spear, then hung it back up.

“
Help!
” Sophie shrieked.

“Pain makes you grow.”

The Beast picked out an axe. Sophie’s face went ghost white.

He walked up to her, axe handle in his meaty claw.

“Pain makes you Evil.”

He took her hair in his hands.

“No!” Sophie choked.

The Beast raised the axe—

“Please!”

The blade slashed through her hair.

Sophie stared at her long, beautiful gold locks on the black dungeon floor, mouth frozen open in silence. Slowly she raised her terrorized face to meet the big black Beast’s. Then her lips quivered, her body hung from its chains, and the tears came. She buried her shorn, jagged head in her chest and cried. She cried until her nose stuffed up and she couldn’t breathe, spit caking her black tunic, wrists bleeding against her cuffs—

A lock snapped. Sophie lifted her raw, red eyes to see the Beast unhook her from the wall.

“Get out,” he growled, and hung the axe up.

When he turned, Sophie was gone.

The Beast lumbered out of the cell and knelt at the midpoint between roiling muck and clean water. As he dipped the bloody chains in, currents smashed from both directions, rinsing them clean. Scrubbing the last spots of blood away, he caught his reflection in the sludge—

Only it wasn’t his.

The Beast spun—

Sophie shoved him in.

The Beast thrashed in water and slime, grunting and flailing for the wall. The tides were too strong. She watched him gurgle his last breaths and sink like a stone.

Sophie smoothed her hair and walked towards the light, swallowing the sickness in her throat.

The Good forgive
, said the rules.

But the rules were wrong. They had to be.

Because she hadn’t forgiven.

She hadn’t forgiven at all.

14

The Crypt Keeper’s Solution

T
he cover was silver silk, painted with the glowing Storian clutched between black and white swans.

A Student’s History of the Woods

A
UGUST
A. S
ADER

Agatha opened to the first page.

“This book reflects the views of its author ONLY. Professor Sader’s interpretation of history is his alone and the faculty does not share it. Sincerely, Clarissa Dovey & Lady Lesso, Deans of the School for Good and Evil.”

Agatha felt encouraged the faculty disapproved of the book in her hands. It gave her more hope that somewhere in these pages was the answer to the riddle. The difference between a princess and a witch . . . the proof Good and Evil were balanced. . . . Could they be the same?

She flipped the page to start, but it didn’t have words. Splashed across it were patterns of embossed dots in a rainbow of colors, small as pinheads. Agatha turned the page. More dots. She tore through fistfuls of pages. No words at all. She dumped her face to the book in frustration. Sader’s voice boomed:

“Chapter Fourteen: The Great War.”

Agatha lurched up. Before her eyes, a ghostly three-dimensional scene melted into view atop the book page—a living diorama, colors gauzy like Sader’s paintings in the gallery. She crouched to watch a silent vision unfold of three wizened old men, beards to the floor, standing in the School Master’s tower with hands united. As the old men opened their hands, the gleaming Storian levitated out of them and over a familiar white stone table. Sader’s disembodied voice continued:

“Now remember from Chapter One, the Storian was placed at the School for Good and Evil by the Three Seers of the Endless Woods, who believed it the only place it could be protected from corruption . . .”

Agatha gawked in disbelief. Sightless Sader couldn’t write history. But he could
see
it and wanted the same for his students. Every time she turned a page and touched the dots, living history came alive to his narration. Most of Chapter 14 recounted what Sophie had told her at lunch: that the School had been ruled by two sorcerer brothers, one Good, one Evil, whose love for each other overcame their loyalties to either side. But in time, the Evil brother found love give way to temptation, until he saw only one obstacle between him and the pen’s infinite power . . . his own blood.

Agatha’s hands swept over dots, scanning exhaustive scenes of Great War battles, alliances, betrayals to see how it all ended. Her fingers stopped as she watched a familiar figure in silver robes and mask rise out of the burning carnage of battle, Storian in hand:

“From the final fight between Evil brother and Good brother, a victor emerged beholden to neither side. In the Great Truce, the triumphant School Master vowed to rise above Good and Evil and protect the balance for as long as he could keep himself alive. Neither side trusted the victor, of course. But they didn’t need to.”

The scene flashed to the dying brother, burning to ashes as he desperately stabbed his hand into the sky, unleashing a burst of silver light—

“For the dying brother used his final embers of magic to create a last spell against his twin: a way to prove Good and Evil still equal. As long as this proof stayed intact, then the Storian remained uncorrupted and the Woods in perfect balance. And as to what this proof is . . .”

Agatha’s heart leapt—

“It remains in the School for Good and Evil to this very day.”

The scene went dark.

She turned the page urgently, touched the dots. Sader’s voice boomed—

“Chapter Fifteen: The Woodswide Roach Plague.”

Agatha flung the book against the wall, then the others, leaving cracks in painted couples’ faces. When there were no more to throw, she buried her face in the bed.

Please. Help us.

Then in the silence between prayers and tears, something came. Not even a thought. An impulse.

Agatha lifted her head.

The answer to the riddle looked back at her.

It’s just a haircut
, Sophie told herself as she climbed through a cornflower thicket.
No one will even notice.
She slid between two periwinkle trees into the West Clearing, approaching her group from behind.

Just find Agatha and—

The group turned all at once. No one laughed. Not Dot. Not Tedros. Not even Beatrix. They gaped with such horror Sophie couldn’t breathe.

“Excuse me—something in my eye—” She ducked behind a blue rosebush and gulped for air. She couldn’t bear any more humiliation.

“Least you look like a Never now,” Tedros said, bobbing behind the bush. “So no one makes my mistake.”

Sophie turned beet red.

“Well, this is what happens when you’re friends with a witch,” the prince frowned.

Now, Sophie was a pomegranate.

“Look, it’s not
that
bad. Not as bad your friend, at least.”

“Excuse me,” said Sophie, eggplant purple. “Something in my other eye—”

She darted out and grabbed Dot like a life raft—“Where’s Agatha!”

But Dot was still staring at her hair. Sophie cleared her throat.

“Oh, um, they haven’t let her out of her room,” Dot said. “Too bad she’ll miss the Flowerground. If Yuba can call the conductor, that is.” She nodded at the gnome, grumpily jabbing at a blue pumpkin patch. Dot’s eyes drifted back to Sophie’s hair.

“It’s . . . nice.”

“Please don’t,” Sophie said softly.

Dot’s eyes misted. “You were so
pretty
.”

“It’ll grow back,” Sophie said, trying not to cry.

“Don’t worry,” Dot sniffled. “One day, someone Evil enough will kill that monster.”

Sophie stiffened.

“All aboard!” Yuba called.

She turned to see Tedros open the top of an ordinary blue pumpkin like a teapot and vanish inside.

Sophie squinted. “What in the—”

Something poked her hip and she looked down. Yuba thrust a Flowerground pass at her and opened the pumpkin lid, revealing a thin caterpillar in a violet velvet tuxedo and matching top hat, floating in a swirl of pastel colors.

“No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the Flowerground,” he said in the crabbiest voice imaginable. “Violations will result in removal of your clothes. All aboard!”

Sophie whipped to Yuba. “Wait! I need to find my frien—”

A vine shot up and yanked her in.

Too stunned to scream, she plunged through dazzling pinks, blues, yellows, as more tendrils lashed and fastened around her like safety belts. Sophie heard a hiss and wheeled to see a giant green flytrap swallow her. She found her scream before vines jerked her out of its mouth into a tunnel of hot, blinding mist and hooked her onto something that kept her moving while her feet and arms dangled freely in the ivy harness. Then the mist cleared and Sophie saw the most magical thing she’d ever seen.

It was an underground transport system, big as a whole village, made entirely of luminescent
plants
. Dangling passengers hung on to vine straps attached to glowing, different-colored tree trunks covered in matching flowers. These color-coded trunks wove together in a colossal maze of tracks. Some trunks ran parallel, some perpendicular, some forked in different directions, but all took riders to their precise destinations in the Endless Woods. Sophie stared in shock at a row of unsmiling dwarves, pickaxes in belts, clinging to straps off a fluorescent red trunk labeled
ROSALINDA LINE
. Running in the opposite direction was the glittery green
ARBOREA LINE
, with a family of bears in crisp suits and dresses among the riders hanging off shamrock vines. Flabbergasted, Sophie peered down her
HIBISCUS LINE
to see the rest of her group swinging from an electric-blue trunk. But only the Nevers were strapped into harnesses.

“Flowerground’s only for Evers,” Dot called out. “They have to let us on ’cause we’re with the school. But they still don’t trust us.”

Sophie didn’t care. She would ride the Flowerground for the rest of her life if she could. Besides its strong, soothing pace and delicious scents, there was an orchestra of lizards for each line: the
TANGERINE LINE
lizards strummed bouncy banjo guitars, the
VIOLET LINE
ones played sultry sitars, and the lizards on Sophie’s line piped up-tempo jingles on piccolos, accompanied by caroling blue frogs. Lest riders grow hungry, each line had its own snacks, with bluebirds fluttering along the
HIBISCUS LINE
, offering blue-corn muffins and blueberry punch. For once, Sophie had all she needed. Muscles unclenching, she forgot about boys and beasts as vines pulled her up, up, into a churning wind wheel of blue light. Her body felt wind, then air, then earth, and arms unfurling into the sky, Sophie bloomed out of the ground like a heavenly hyacinth—

And found herself in a graveyard.

Headstones the color of the bleak sky swept over barren hills. Shivering classmates spouted from a hole in the ground next to her.

“Wherrre arrre wweee?” she stammered through chattering teeth.

“Garden—of—Good and Evil,” Dot shivered, nibbling a chocolate lizard.

“Doesn’ttt look likke a garrrden to meee,” Sophie chattered back.

Warmth thawed her skin as Yuba sparked a few small fires around the group with his magical staff. Sophie and her classmates exhaled.

“In a few weeks you will each be unlocked to perform spells,” said the gnome to excited titters. “But spells are no substitute for survival skills. Meerworms live near graves and can keep you alive when food is scarce. Today you’ll be finding and eating them!”

Sophie clutched her stomach.

“Off you go! Teams of two!” the gnome said. “Whichever team eats the most meerworms wins the challenge!” His eyes flicked to Sophie. “Perhaps our black sheep can find redemption.”

“Black sheep can’t find anything without her
girlfriend
,” Tedros murmured.

Sophie moped miserably as he paired up with Beatrix.

“Come on,” Dot said, pulling Sophie to the ground. “We can beat them.”

Suddenly motivated, Sophie started searching the ground with Dot, careful to stay close to the fire. “What do meerworms look like?”

“Like worms,” said Dot.

Sophie was deliberating a retort when she noticed a figure in the distance, silhouetted atop a hill. It was a massive giant, with a long black beard, thick dreadlocks, and midnight-blue skin. He wore only a small brown loincloth as he dug a row of graves.

“Does it all himself, the Crypt Keeper,” Dot said to Sophie. “That’s why there’s such a backlog.”

Sophie followed her eyes to a two-mile line of bodies and coffins behind the Crypt Keeper, waiting for burial. Immediately she could see the difference between the Nevers’ dark stone coffins and the Evers’ coffins made of glass and gold. But there were also some bodies without caskets, just lying untended on the hillslope beneath circling vultures.

“Why doesn’t he have help?” she said, nauseous.

“’Cause no one can interfere with the Crypt Keeper’s system,” Hort said softly. “Two years my dad’s waited.” His voice cracked. “Killed by Peter Pan himself, my dad. Deserves a proper grave.”

Now the whole group was watching the Crypt Keeper dig his graves, before pulling a big book from his mass of hair and studying one of its pages. Then the giant picked up a gold coffin with a handsome prince inside and heaved it into the empty plot. He moved down the line of waiting bodies, picked up a crystal coffin with a beautiful princess, and laid it beside the prince’s coffin in the same grave.

“Anastasia and Jacob. Died of starvation while on honeymoon. Avoidable deaths had they paid attention in
class
,” Yuba snapped.

Grumbling, the students went back to meerworm hunting, but Sophie kept her eye on the Crypt Keeper, who studied his book again before picking up a coffinless ogre and plunking him in the next plot. Back to the book, and then he rested a resplendent queen’s silver tomb beside a matching king’s.

Sophie’s eyes drifted around the graveyard and saw the same pattern on every hill and valley. Evers buried together with twin headstones—boy and girl, man and wife, prince and princess, together in life and in death. Nevers buried all alone.

Ever After. Paradise together.

Nevermore. Paradise alone.

Sophie froze. She knew the answer to the School Master’s riddle.

“Perhaps we should search Necro Ridge,” Yuba sighed. “Come, students—”

“Cover for me,” Sophie whispered to Dot.

Dot swiveled. “Where are you—wait! We’re a—”

But Sophie was scampering through distant gravestones towards the Flowerground entrance.

“Team,” Dot sulked.

A short while later, in the Blue Forest, five stymphs looked up from their billy goat to see Sophie brandishing an egg.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?”