A World Without Princes

The instant she was free, Sophie covered Agatha’s mouth with ice-cold hands. Agatha followed her wide, bloodshot eyes …

There was something on all the trees ahead, flapping milky white in the darkness. Agatha held up her glowing finger.

Parchment scrolls crackled in the wind like dead leaves, tacked to the trunks. Each one was the same.

The face on the posters was Sophie’s.

“That’s impossible!” Agatha cried. “He’s dea—”

She froze.

Between trees she caught glints of red. Something was coming.

Agatha grabbed Sophie’s wrist and dragged her behind a trunk. Muffling Sophie’s moans with her hand, Agatha slowly peeked out.

Through tangled branches, she saw men in red leather hoods, eyeholes cut away. They carried fire-tipped arrows, which lit up their sleeveless black leather uniforms and bare, muscular arms. She tried to count how many there were—10, 15, 20, 25 … until she counted one whose violet eyes glared right at her. Grinning, he raised his bow.

“Down!” Agatha yelped—

The first arrow singed Sophie’s neck as both girls dove into dirt. Neither spoke as they floundered through snarls of black briars, dozens of flaming arrows barely missing them and igniting trees left and right. Hand in hand, the girls fled deeper into the Woods, looking for somewhere to hide, red hoods gaining, until they came to a break in the trees and finally glimpsed the forest path, serene in moonlight. Wheezing with relief, they ran for it and stopped short.

The path forked into two. Both trails were thin and sooty, crooking away in opposite directions. Neither looked more hopeful than the other, but from reading storybooks, the girls knew.

Only one was correct.

“Which way?” Sophie rasped.

Agatha could see just how weak and shaken her friend was. She had to get her to safety. Hearing the skimming of arrows again, Agatha swung her head between the paths, burning trees growing nearer … nearer …

“Aggie, which way?” Sophie pressed.

Agatha’s eyes darted uselessly back and forth, waiting for a sign—

Sophie gasped. “Look!”

Agatha swiveled to the east path. A glowing blue butterfly flapped in darkness, high above the trail. It beat its wings faster and nosed forward, as if urging them to follow.

“Come on,” Sophie said, suddenly strong again, and surged forward.

“We’re following a butterfly?” Agatha retorted as she chased Sophie past WANTED signs on trees ahead.

“Don’t worry. It’s leading us out of here!”

“How do you know?”

“Hurry! We’ll lose it!”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through—” Agatha heaved, puffing behind.

“Let’s not play who’s had it worse, shall we!”

The butterfly sped up as if nearing its destination and veered around a bend, wings brightening to blinding blue. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the wrist, dragged her faster around the curve—

Into a dead end of fallen trees.

The butterfly was gone.

“No!” Sophie squeaked. “But I thought—I thought—”

“It was a special butterfly?”

Sophie shook her head, eyes welling, as if her friend couldn’t understand. Then, over Agatha’s shoulder, she saw a torch-lit shadow inch across the trees, then two more …

The hoods had found their path.

“We had our happy ending—” Sophie backed against a trunk. “This is all my fault—”

“No …,” Agatha said, looking down. “It’s mine.”

Sophie’s heart clamped. It was the same feeling she had alone in the church, thinking about how her friend had changed. A feeling that told her none of the last month was an accident.

“Agatha … why is this all happening?”

Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie … I—I—I—made a—mistake—”

“Aggie, slow down.”

Agatha couldn’t look at her. “I opened it—I opened our fairy tale—”

“I don’t understand—”

“A w-w-wish!” Agatha stammered, reddening. “I made a wish—”

Sophie shook her head. “A wish?”

“I didn’t mean it—it happened so fast—”

“A wish for what?”

Agatha took a deep breath. She looked into her friend’s scared eyes.

“Sophie, I wished I was with—”

“Tickets,” a voice said.

Both girls turned to see an alarmingly thin caterpillar with a top hat, curled mustache, and purple tuxedo poking out of a tree hollow.

“Thank you for calling the Flowerground. No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the flowertrains. Violations will result in the removal of your clothes. Tickets?”

Sophie and Agatha gaped at each other. Neither had the faintest idea how to call the Flowerground.

“Look, mister,” Agatha pressured, glancing back at shadows nearing the dead-end turn, “we need to ride right now and we don’t have—”

“Leave it to me,” Sophie whispered, and twirled. “Such a pleasure to see you again, conductor! Remember me? We met when you graciously escorted our class to the Garden of Good and Evil. And look at that lovely mustache! I just love a good mustache—”

“No ticket, no ride,” the caterpillar crabbed, and withdrew.

“But they’ll kill us!” Agatha cried, seeing red hoods turn into view—

“Special circumstances can be presented in writing on Form Code 77 at the Flowerground Registry Office, open on alternate Mondays from 3:00 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.—”

Agatha grabbed him from the tree. “Let us in or I eat you.”

The caterpillar bleached in her grip. “NEVERS!” he called. Vines shot out and sucked Agatha and Sophie into the hollow as arrows set the tree aflame.

The two girls fell through a pit of swirling pastel colors until vines flung them over a snapping Venus flytrap into a tunnel of blinding-hot mist. Shielding their eyes, the girls felt their vines cinch around their chests like straitjackets and hook on to something above them. Both peeked through their hands to see that they were dangling in midair from a luminescent green tree trunk stenciled:

“The butterfly called the train somehow!” Sophie yelled from her tight harness as the track propelled them ahead. “See! The butterfly was trying to help us!”

Coming out of the mist, Agatha gaped at the Flowerground for the first time, speechless. Before her was a spectacular underground transport system, big as half of Gavaldon, made entirely of plants. Color-coded tree trunks crisscrossed like rail tracks in a bottomless cavern, whisking passengers dangling from vine straps to their respective destinations in the Endless Woods. The conductor, perched in a glass-windowed compartment inside ARBOREA’s green trunk, grumpily called stops into a willow microphone as flowertrains flitted by: “Maidenvale!” “Avalon Towers!” “Runyon Lane!” “Ginnymill!”

Whenever passengers heard their stop, they pulled hard on their vine strap; the strap fastened around their wrist, unfurled off their track, and ferried them high to one of many windwheel exits that churned them out of the Flowerground and up onto land.

Agatha noticed their green line’s trunk was jam-packed with women in twittering conversation, some well dressed and cheerful, others oddly haglike and unattractive for Evers, while the red ROSALINDA LINE running perpendicular had only a few glum, scraggly-looking men. Under those two tree tracks, the yellow DAHLIA LINE buzzed with groups of beautiful and homely women, while its crisscrossing pink PEONY LINE had only three rumpled, dirty male dwarfs. Agatha didn’t remember the caterpillar saying anything about women and men sitting apart, but then again she couldn’t remember half his stupid rules.

She was distracted by two parakeets, feathers the color of a rain forest, who fluttered up with glasses of celery-cucumber juice and pistachio muffins. On the illuminated tree trunk above her head, an orchestra of well-dressed lizards struck up a baroque waltz on violins and flutes, accompanied by a chorus of caroling green frogs. For the first time in weeks, Agatha managed a smile. She inhaled the sweet, nutty muffin in one bite and washed it down with the tart green juice.

In the harness next to her, Sophie sniffed and poked at her muffin.

“You going to eat that?” Agatha said.

Sophie shoved it at her, mumbling something about butter and the devil’s work. “It’s easy to get home,” she said, watching Agatha scarf it. “All we have to do is ride this line in the opposite direct—”

Agatha had stopped chewing. Slowly Sophie followed her friend’s eyes to her own punctured palms … to the raw marks around her wrists left by the Elders’ reins … to the scarlet letters faint on her chest …

“We can’t go home, can we?” Sophie breathed.

“Even if we prove the Elders lied, the School Master will still hunt you,” said Agatha miserably.

“He can’t be alive. We saw him die, Aggie.” Sophie looked up at her friend. “Didn’t we?”

Agatha didn’t have an answer.

“How did we lose it, Aggie?” Sophie said, looking so confused. “How did we lose our happy ending?”

Agatha knew this was the time to finish what she’d started at the hollow. But gazing into Sophie’s big doe eyes, she couldn’t bear to break her heart. Somehow there had to be a way to fix this without her friend ever knowing what she’d wished for. Her wish was just a mistake. A mistake she’d never ever have to face.

“There has to be a way to get our ending back,” Agatha said, determined. “We just need to seal the gates—”

But Sophie was staring past her, head cocked. Agatha turned around.

The Flowerground was empty behind them. All its passengers had disappeared.

“Aggie …,” Sophie wheezed, squinting into the distant mist—

Agatha saw them now too. Red hoods swinging across the tracks, straight for their train.

Both girls tore at their harnesses, but the vines yoked them tighter. Agatha tried to make her finger glow, but it wouldn’t light—

“Aggie, they’re coming!” Sophie yelled, seeing the hoods leap onto the red line two tracks above.

“Pull on your vine!” Agatha shouted, for that’s how she’d seen the others get off the ride. But no matter how hard she or Sophie tugged, the track just whisked them along.

Agatha fumbled for Radley’s dagger and cut herself free, eyeing the red hoods getting closer. “Stay there!” she screamed at Sophie, measuring the distance to her friend’s vine. Dangling from her strap, Agatha winced at the giant flytraps snapping out of the bottomless pastel pit below. With a cry, she kicked and swung herself into the tunnel wind for her friend—

Agatha’s hands missed the strap and she crashed into Sophie, grappling her like a tree.

The green tree trunk turned bright orange and started flashing. “VIOLATION,” a crabby voice boomed over a speaker. “NO SWINGING. VIOLATION. NO SWINGING. VIOLATION—”

A flock of green parakeets flew in and started pecking at Agatha’s dress, trying to pull it off. She dropped her knife. “What the—”

“Get off her!” Sophie shrieked, slapping the birds away.

“VIOLATION,” the crabby voice blared. “NO SLAPPING. VIOLATION. NO SLAPPING.”

The lizards and frogs atop their track skittered down the green-flowered vines and started tugging at Sophie’s clothes. Aghast, Sophie smacked at them, sending lizards and flowers flying. Agatha inhaled the pollen and sneezed.

“VIOLATION. NO SNEEZING. VIOLATION.” Birds, lizards, and frogs from other lines descended to denude both girls as punishment—

“We need to get off!” Agatha cried.

“I know! I only have two buttons left!” Sophie squealed, slapping the frog away.

“No! We need to get off now!”

Agatha pointed at the red hoods swinging onto their track—

“Follow me!” she cried to Sophie, shaking off a rainbow of lizards, and swung to the next strap. She glanced back to see Sophie still grappling a canary on her collar. “Shoo! This is handmade!”

“NOW!” Agatha roared—

Sophie gasped and swung for the next vine. She missed and plunged screaming towards a gnashing flytrap. Agatha blanched in horror—

Sophie belly flopped onto the blue HIBISCUS LINE below, running parallel at high speed. Hands and legs wrapped around the glowing trunk, she looked up at Agatha, who heaved with relief.

“Aggie, watch out!” Sophie yelled—

Agatha wheeled to a hood on her vine. He grabbed her throat.

Hearing Agatha’s choked gurgles above her, Sophie tried to stand on her trunk, then saw a thorn tunnel ahead about to decapitate her and plastered down just as her train whooshed through. Suddenly she heard a twinkly sound and swerved her head down the tunnel to see the glowing blue butterfly, hovering in place above the track.

“Help us!” Sophie begged—

The butterfly beat its wings and whizzed forward. As her train came out of the tunnel, Sophie scooted down the tree trunk to follow it, shadows of the hood strangling Agatha darkening the track ahead. Frantic, Sophie tried to keep up with the butterfly, but two red hoods landed in front of her, bows and arrows in hand. Just as they aimed, she looked back with terror and saw the hood about to snap Agatha’s neck—

The butterfly dove and yanked the vine under Sophie’s hand. In an instant, the vine snared Sophie’s wrist, ripped her off the track, and lassoed Agatha’s hand on the way up. The hoods whirled in shock, spewing their knives and arrows at them, but the vine coiled like a whip and launched both girls upwards into a blue windwheel of light. The rush of air sucked them towards the light portal in a storm of loose petals, pulling up, up, up—

And into a lush field.

Kneeling in a bed of tall red and yellow lilies, Agatha and Sophie heaved for breath, faces scratched, petals in hair, and dresses barely still on. Both looked down at the dirt-plugged hole they’d just spouted from, broiled with arrows from below.

“Where are we?” Sophie said, searching for the blue butterfly.

Agatha shook her head. “I don’t—”

Then she saw a red lily and a yellow lily whispering to each other, giving her strange looks.

She’d seen flowers talking about her once before, she thought. In a field just like this, until they’d tugged her by the wrist and yanked her up to …

Agatha lurched to her feet.

The School for Good soared above them, shimmering in red-orange sunrise over the crystal-clear side of Halfway Bay. Its four glass towers, once divided between pink and blue, were now only blue, with flags bearing butterflies of the same color billowing from sharp minarets.

“We’re back,” Sophie gasped.

Agatha went white as snow.

Back to the one place she’d tried to forget. Back to the one place that could ruin everything.

Ahead, the closed doors to the Good castle lay atop a hill. Golden spiked gates barred the path up the Great Lawn, mirrored words arching over them:

THE SCHOOL FOR GIRL EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Agatha closed and reopened her bleary eyes, for she had seen wrong.

It still said “GIRL.”

“Huh?”

Sophie stood up beside her. “That’s strange.”

“Well, ‘Good’ and ‘Girl’ aren’t so far apart,” Agatha said. “Maybe one of the nymphs got confused.”

But then she saw what Sophie was looking at. At the halfway point across the bay, Good’s lake slimed into Evil’s moat. Only the moat wasn’t black, like it used to be. It was rusted red, the color of the cesspool in the Woods and guarded by the spiny white crocodiles she had seen eat the female deer—at least twenty of them, lurking in the sludge, black shark teeth glinting.

Slowly Agatha looked up at the School for Evil looming above the moat. Three bloodred towers, jagged with spikes, flanked a smooth silver tower, twice as tall as the others. Atop the four towers, black flags crackled in the fog, emblazoned with scarlet snakes.

“There used to be three Evil towers,” Sophie said, squinting. “Not four …”

Voices rose across the bay and the two girls ducked into the lilies.

Out of the Woods stormed men in black through Evil’s castle gates.

They were wearing red leather hoods.

“The School Master’s men!” Sophie cried as they faded into the fog.

Agatha whitened. “But that means—”

She whirled back to the bay.

“It’s … gone,” breathed Agatha, for the School Master’s sky-high silver tower, once guarding the halfway point between moat and lake, had simply … disappeared.

“No, it’s not,” Sophie said, still eyeing the School for Evil.

Now Agatha saw why there were four towers there instead of three.

The School Master’s tower had moved to Evil.

“He’s alive!” Agatha cried, gaping at his silver spire. “But how—”

Sophie pointed. “Look!”

In the tower’s single window, veiled by fog, a shadow stared down at them. All they could see of its face was a gleaming silver mask.

“It’s him!” Sophie hissed. “He’s leading Evil!”

“Agatha! Sophie!”

The girls swiveled from the lilies to see Professor Dovey running from Good castle in her green high-necked gown.

“Come quickly!”

As the two girls hurried behind her through Good’s golden gates, Agatha glanced back at the School Master’s tower and the masked shadow in the window. All they had to do was kill him again, and her mistake would be hidden forever. They’d go home safe, her promise to Stefan kept, and Sophie would never know what she’d wished for. Looking up at that shadow lording over Evil, Agatha waited for her heart to rage with purpose, to propel her into battle … but instead her heart did something else.

It fluttered.

The way a princess’s did in storybooks.

When she saw her prince.

As she and Sophie sprinted behind Professor Dovey into the mirrored corridor, Agatha tried to find her breath. Professor Dovey was a famous fairy godmother, who’d always looked out for her. She had to give them answers.

“Who are those red hoods?” Agatha asked.

“How did the School Master survive?” said Sophie.

“Why are the Nevers on his side?” said Agatha.

“Quiet!” Professor Dovey snapped, erasing their footsteps with her magic wand. “We don’t have much time!”

“You don’t seem surprised to see us,” Agatha whispered, but her fairy godmother didn’t respond as she rushed them into Good’s deserted foyer, magically bolting doors behind them.

Only months ago, Sophie had eviscerated the hall in her witch’s revenge on Agatha and Tedros, blasting its stained glass windows, spiral staircases, and marble floors to shards. But now the two friends drew breaths at its redone facade. Where there used to be two pink staircases and two blue, all four stairwells were now the same royal blue as the castle. Lit by high stained glass windows, the staircases spiraled up to the dormitory towers, names tattooed on richly decorated balusters: HONOR, VALOR, PURITY, and CHARITY. Agatha had loathed the prissy princess pink of the Purity and Charity towers, but seeing them turned the same color as the prince towers gave her an unsettled feeling.

Sophie nudged her, and Agatha turned to see her peering curiously at the Legends Obelisk in the center of the foyer, a soaring crystal column blanketed with portrait frames. Inside each of the frames was a painting of a past student, next to a storybook illustration of what the child became upon graduation. But looking up at the gold-framed Evers on top who became princesses and queens, the silver-framed ones in the middle who became helpers and sidekicks, and the bottom-rung lot who became cinder sweeps and servants, the two girls noticed something peculiar …

“Where are the boys?” Sophie said, for all their portraits had been removed.

Agatha swung her head to the Honor staircase: the frieze of knights and kings had been replaced with a frieze of sword-brandishing, chain-mailed princesses. Sophie swiveled to the Valor staircase, once decorated with burly hunters and their trusty hounds—now huntresses in houndskins and decidedly female dogs. Both girls twirled to the lettered murals across the walls that once spelled E-V-E-R … and now spelled G-I-R-L.

“It is a School for Girls!” said Agatha, thunderstruck. “What happened to Good?”

“We can’t fight the School Master without boys!” cried Sophie.

“Shhhh!” Professor Dovey hissed, rushing them up the Valor staircase. “No one must know you’re here!”

As the girls chased her elegant silver-haired bun through Valor’s princely blue arches and murals, they gawked at the once virile visions of princes destroying demons and saving helpless princesses, now flaunting different endings: Snow White smashing out of her glass coffin with her fists, Red Riding Hood slitting the wolf’s throat, Sleeping Beauty setting her spindle on fire … The red-blooded princes, hunters, men who rescued them, who saved their lives … gone.

“It’s like Everboys never existed!” whispered Agatha.

“Maybe the School Master killed them all!” whispered Sophie.

She suddenly heard soft tinkling and twirled to see three glowing blue butterflies peeking from behind a wall. They caught her looking and with a high-pitched meep! ducked and disappeared.

“What is it?” Agatha said, glancing back.

“Hurry!” Professor Dovey scolded, and the two girls scampered to follow, stooping past the Laundry, where two seven-foot, floating nymphs scrubbed sudsy blue bodices, through the Supper Hall, where enchanted pots stewed saffron rice and lentil soup, and past the Valor Common Room to the rear stairwell. Exhausted and aching from their torments in the Woods, Sophie and Agatha tried to keep up, but Professor Dovey was sprier than she looked.

“Where are we going?” Agatha panted.

“To the only other person who can keep you alive,” her fairy godmother shot back, bustling up the stairs.

Sophie and Agatha instantly ran faster, up five long flights to the lone white door on the sixth floor—

“Professor Sader’s office?” Agatha puffed. “But he’s dead!”

Professor Dovey ran her fingers over the raised blue dots on the former History teacher’s door. It swung open without a sound, and Sophie and Agatha scrambled in behind her.

A thin woman stood at the window, long black braid dangling over the back of her pointy-shouldered purple gown. “Did anyone see you?”

“No,” said Professor Dovey.

Lady Lesso spun to Sophie and Agatha, violet eyes flashing.

“Then it’s time they learned what they’ve done.”

“We did this?” Agatha blurted.

“But we weren’t even here!” said Sophie, turning between the Dean of Evil at the window and the Dean of Good at Professor Sader’s old desk, overflowing with open books.

Lady Lesso glowered at their dirt-smudged faces. “In this world, actions have consequences. Endings have consequences.”

“But our fairy tale ended happily!” Sophie said.

Professor Dovey let out a groan.

“Why don’t you tell us how it ended?” Lady Lesso sneered, blue veins throbbing.

“We killed the School Master and solved his riddle!” Sophie said.

“That’s how Sophie and I went home!” said Agatha.

“Clarissa, show them how it really ends,” Lady Lesso growled.

Professor Dovey flung a book across the desk. It was heavy and thick, bound with brown sheepskin and spattered with mud. Agatha opened to the first soggy page. Black calligraphy, slightly smeared, spilled across fresh parchment.