“Meaning tonight the storybook closes,” said Tedros. “One way or another.”
They looked at one another, the same shade of pale.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promised.
Agatha nodded. “I know.”
But she was the one lying now. Not even a prince could protect her from what was coming.
Tedros forced a gallant smile, hugging her into his flank. “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.”
Agatha feigned a smile back, holding him tight, as they followed Merlin and the rest of Good’s army towards the dark Stymph Forest.
When they’d come through the portal into the Woods, the first thing Agatha and Tedros noticed was how cold it was. After three weeks in the springtime haven of the moors, the return to a sunless winter sent them both into shivers, even under their thick cloaks. But worse than the cold was the new, nasty smell: a stink of dead trees and decomposing animals that made her and Tedros shield their noses with their sleeves for the first hour, before they got used to it.
As the morning dragged on, no warmer or brighter, the group continued on the path, two by two, old with young—except Agatha and Tedros, who paired with each other to avoid their respective mentors. At first, the teams were lulled into a sense of safety by the deserted Woods. The Ever kingdoms had sealed themselves away, just as Merlin predicted, while the Never kingdoms like Ravenbow and Netherwood knew better than to attack Good’s army, however small, until the School Master proved that Evil could win.
The safe feeling didn’t last much longer.
Soon the pairs began to notice makeshift graves off the path, topped with smoking white stars on which Merlin had written fallen heroes’ names. Walking with the White Rabbit, Yuba made a note of them in a small notebook and whispered a prayer for each. By the time he and the rest stopped for lunch a few hours later at a dried-up pond, they all had the same grim faces, knowing they were drawing closer and closer to graves of their own.
And yet, they still had faith that their leader had a plan to save them. So when Merlin lit a fire in the middle of the pond-bed and handed out turkey sandwiches, his audience settled into the dirt, relieved they were about to finally, finally hear how a small gang of heroes and students could beat an Evil army twenty times their size.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Merlin declared, licking a bit of mustard off his upper lip, “where exactly does the food come from? Is there a fourth dimension where a magic hat goes to fetch it? Or does it simply summon turkeys and bread out of thin air? In which case, what is this sandwich really made of?”
Forty eyes gaped at him.
“Merlin,” said Lancelot, simmering, “it’s clear we’re headed straight for the Stymph Forest, otherwise you would have turned us east hours ago. Is there a reason we’re going there instead of the school?”
“Certainly,” said Merlin, digging in his hat for a toothpick.
He didn’t elaborate.
“So? What is it?” Peter Pan snapped.
“The Stymph Forest is where the School Master plans to attack us, of course,” said Merlin, as he picked his teeth. “Shall we have some coffee? Though twenty mugs of it is a bit much to ask, given all of you are no doubt fussy about how you take your milk and sug—”
“Merlin, for God’s sakes!” growled Jack.
“When I said, ‘Leave the plan to me,’ I meant it,” the wizard retorted. “All of you have enough to worry about without the intricacies of war: a war that will be all for naught if even one of our most famous heroes dies. The shield over the Readers is almost broken now. Peter, Cinderella, Jack, Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding Hood, Hansel, Gretel, Pinocchio—you are all that’s left between the School Master and the end of Good as we know it. So let me worry about the battle plan while you and your young lieges worry about how to keep all of you alive.”
Tedros gave Agatha a sharp look, questioning whether leaving the plan to Merlin sounded as faulty to her as it did to him.
Agatha cleared her throat. “Merlin, you just said you’re taking us into the Stymph Forest because the School Master will attack us there. Given the School Master controls the Stymph Forest, don’t you think that warrants some details?”
“Details?” Merlin asked, pursing his lips. “How’s this. The School Master plans to ambush us with the old villains before we get to school. Given I know this before it happens, I had to choose where I want this ambush to take place. The Stymph Forest seemed the best option.”
Rumbles rolled through his audience.
“He’s finally lost it,” Tedros mumbled to Agatha.
“Merlin, first off, the Stymph Forest is the worst place we can go if it’s under the School Master’s control—” Lancelot snorted.
“Forget the stymphs,” Hester jumped in. “He’s ambushing us? With two hundred zombie villains?”
“How would wizard even know they ambush us?” Hansel scoffed.
“For once Hansel is right,” Gretel agreed. “‘Ambush’ means attack with surprise, so if there is no surprise, then there is no ambush—”
“What’s surprising to me is that our future queen is worried about me,” Merlin boomed, eyes still on Agatha, “when she is the one ultimately responsible for winning this war and yet has no idea how to make Sophie destroy her ring.”
Everyone shut up.
Agatha slowly looked up at Merlin.
“Either the School Master dies or we die, Agatha,” the wizard impressed. “So if I were you, I would be wholly focused on Sophie instead of stymphs.”
His echo resounded across the Woods.
Agatha could see Tedros staring at her.
The rest of the group frowned at her too, dead silent.
“Might as well kill ourselves now, then,” Cinderella cracked.
Agatha twirled to her. “Or kill you since you’re a vile, black-hearted beast who no one can stand!”
Cinderella went beet red.
A stillness fell over the group, with everyone looking away.
Agatha glanced at Tedros, but he couldn’t meet her eyes either.
Merlin lumbered to his feet, brushing his hands of crumbs. “Another reason I’ve stayed a bachelor all these years . . . ,” he said, heading towards the path. “The joy of eating alone.”
“I’m not apologizing,” Agatha declared.
Tedros chomped on an apple, ambling beside her.
“I’m not. She deserved it,” Agatha pushed, trying not to look back at Cinderella with Pinocchio, a ways behind. “You would have done the same thing.”
Tedros didn’t answer.
“Look, if you’re going to make a scene about it, I’ll apologize, but only if she apologizes first,” said Agatha.
Tedros gnawed at the apple core and tossed it aside. “What is she apologizing for, exactly?”
“Tedros, she’s done nothing but torment us since the day we met her.”
“None of it bothered you before. If anything, you’ve gone out of your way to be civil to her until ten minutes ago.”
“Because I can only take so much!”
“Or because you found a convenient whipping girl during a moment of self-doubt.”
“What?”
“Agatha, do you remember first year we were in Dovey’s Good Deeds class and you told me I was dumb as an ass and then—”
“You threatened to kill me?”
Tedros pointed at himself. “Self-doubt.” He pointed at her. “Whipping girl.”
The prince cocked a smile. “Takes one to know one.”
Agatha folded her arms. “Well, you didn’t apologize to me back then, so why should I apologize to her?”
“Because you’re a better person than me, obviously.”
“Is that the defense you’re going to use in every argument from now until we die?”
“Works, doesn’t it?”
Agatha groaned. “Fine. Given that it’s impossible to get her alone at the moment, I’ll wait until t
here’s a more suitable time and plac—”
“Hey, Long Nose!” Tedros shouted to Pinocchio. “Mind walking with me for a bit?”
Pinocchio grimaced. “I’d rather not, given your air of entitlement, but seeing you’re a spoiled brat who will heckle me with emasculating taunts if I don’t, I’m sensing I don’t have a choice,” he said, shuffling towards the prince.
Tedros blinked at him. “It must be exhausting to always tell the truth.”
“Why do you think I’m not married?” said Pinocchio, walking off with him.
And just like that, Agatha was alone with her mentor.
She expected the old princess to attack her and make a public spectacle of this, but instead, Cinderella trudged ahead, slouched and shifty-eyed, looking like a shamed child.
“Um, hello again,” said Agatha, a bit thrown. “I wanted to say sorry. I guess I felt defensive and took it out on—”
“You think I’m a bad person,” Cinderella mumbled. “Everyone thinks I’m a bad person and that I’m bitter and frigid and rude. But no one in this group will ever understand, least of all you.”
“That’s not true,” said Agatha. “People used to think I was pretty rude too. Truth is I was afraid of their judgments, until I learned to—”
“Oh, no one gives a hoot what you learned,” Cinderella grouched. “You got it all wrong anyway. This ain’t about me being scared of stupid judgments or people like you. Forget I said anything. I accept your apology and now you can go away, all right?”
She crossed her arms and looked away, done with this conversation.
Agatha sighed. “All right.”
She started to leave . . . but then she heard it. A quiet voice inside of her.
Don’t go.
Only it wasn’t her voice.
It was Cinderella’s.
Once upon a time, Agatha could hear the wishes of souls in need. Since then, she thought she’d lost her talent.
But perhaps she hadn’t lost it after all.
Perhaps she’d just stopped listening.
Slowly Agatha turned back to the old princess.
“Tell me,” she said.
Cinderella looked at her, startled. “Still here, are you,” she said, trying to sound annoyed.
“Look, Merlin thinks we can help each other,” said Agatha. “And I have a feeling you know why.”
Cinderella shifted her eyes to the ground. “What’s the point?” she muttered softly.
“Please,” said Agatha.
They walked in silence for a long time.
“I never thought in a million years I’d get into the School for Good,” said the old princess. “I grew up with a stepmother who told me I was ugly and stupid and paunchy and wasn’t worthy to scrub her toilet, let alone be an Evergirl. ‘Cinderella,’ she named me: the girl who would be lucky to marry a stableboy. All her attention was focused on her two daughters, who she knew would marry eligible princes after graduating from the School for Good. So when I got a Flowerground ticket to school and my stepsisters didn’t, I felt so ashamed, as if there’d been some great mistake. Surely someone would see it was my sisters who belonged there, not me. But then I got my uniform and schedule and portrait on the wall . . . and there I was, a real student just like the others. Ella. Sweet, cinderless Ella of Charity, Room 24.
“But I wasn’t happy at school. By the end of my first year, I was horribly homesick. Because here’s the thing no one knows about me: I loved my stepsisters. And they loved me! The storybooks never tell you that, because it would mess up everything, wouldn’t it? I mean, sure, they were silly and spoiled and prince-obsessed, but they were also clever and bawdy and sassy like me. Plus, they’d saved my life. When my father died and I was orphaned to my stepmother, she’d wanted to sell me to Bluebeard, who was looking for a new wife at the time. But knowing that Bluebeard had a reputation for hacking up his wives, my stepsisters came up with the idea of making me the housemaid instead. I could tell they felt guilty about having me wash their underpants, but I was happy as a clam, knowing they’d spared me from a terrible end. Besides, they usually were at my side while I did the sweeping and cooking, telling me all about the legendary School for Good and how glorious it would be once they got their Flowerground tickets, along with relaying the latest town gossip and carping about their troll of a mother. The three of us were so close. So to then be whisked off to school without them, especially when I always thought of that school as theirs . . . well, by the second month, I was moping over a bucket of ice cream before bed every night, wishing I could go home.”
She took a deep breath. “But graduation finally came and while other students went off into the Woods in search of their fairy tales, I dashed back to my stepmother’s cottage in Maidenvale. At first, my sisters wouldn’t speak to me, still furious that I’d ‘stolen’ their place at school. But I was careful never to mention my life as a student and in time, they began giving me chores all over again. Meanwhile, my stepmother tore up any letters that arrived from my schoolmates and burned my old uniforms and textbooks, and soon it was like I’d never gone to the school at all. Which was a relief, honestly, because I was just happy to be laughing with my sisters like it was old times.
“But my stepmother was a jealous wretch and began warning her daughters to keep their distance from me—I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and would one day betray them, just like I had when I’d taken their spots at school. The bonds between girls who weren’t blood could never last. My stepsisters didn’t believe her, of course. I was family to them. And the truth was, I wanted them to be happy. After seeing my father marry that she-devil and seeing all the stupid energy that Evergirls put into boys at school, I was more than happy to leave marriage and love and princes to my stepsisters, while I lived life in their shadows, perfectly fine with their company and my own.”
Cinderella paused. “So you have to understand, when Professor Dovey came to my house on that famous night and granted my wish to go to the Ball, she—and everyone else who knows my story—thought I wanted to go to the Ball to meet the prince. I never wanted to meet the damn prince! I wanted to go to the Ball because I wanted to see my stepsisters meet the prince! Their whole lives had been building towards the night Prince Keelan would see the eligible girls of the kingdom. And after all those years of me listening to them gush about what they’d say to him and what they’d wear and how they’d win his heart, now they’d finally get their turn in front of him. How could I not be there! They wanted me there too, of course, but they couldn’t dare admit it to stepmother. You should have seen their faces when I cornered them at the Ball and revealed myself, magic slippers and all. Just as I’d played down my time at school to keep us together, now they saw again how much I really loved them: for I’d used a magic wish to see their moment with the prince.”
Her mentor’s eyes slowly dimmed. “When Prince Keelan chose me, I could see the shock in their faces, as if in a single moment, they realized they should have listened to their stepmother all along. The things they called me in that moment, with so many people listening, were so horrible that I can never forget them. I tried to explain to them that I didn’t want the prince—I even ran away from the Ball to prove it. But princes always find their princesses, even when they don’t want them to. He tracked me to my stepmother’s house like a snoop and fit me with the glass slipper I’d left behind. When he proposed to me, I gave him one condition: my stepsisters would come and live at the palace with me, because if I was marrying a man I hardly knew, at least I could live it up in style with my best friends. But he’d seen how my sisters behaved towards me at the Ball and when his men fitted me with the slipper. He couldn’t see in them what I did. Instead, he demanded I choose: either I’d go to the palace alone as his wife or be left behind at the house with my sisters forever. He gave me until the morning to decide and left with his men.”
Cinderella paused. “That night, my stepmother tried to kill me in my bed with an axe, but my prince had hidde
n outside my window, knowing I wasn’t safe under her roof. He killed her on the spot with his sword and swept me away. The last thing my stepsisters ever saw was me riding away with the prince they’d both dreamed of, their mother dead on the floor.”
Cinderella teared up. “First I took their place at school. Then I took their prince. Then I took their mother. How could they see the Good in me now? How could they see me as anything but an enemy?” she rasped. “For years, they plotted against me until my prince had them both killed, without my knowledge. When I discovered what he’d done, I left him forever. Because what my stepsisters never knew was that I would have stayed the next morning and given up my crown for them. Because they were my Ever After. More than any boy could be. And if I had to be alone the rest of my life in order to keep them in it . . . I would have. But it was all too late.”
She finally looked at Agatha, racked with pain. “That’s why I told you to just stick that wand to Sophie’s head and threaten her and make her do what you want. That’s what my story taught me at least—might as well be a big fat bully and get what you want, ’cause love doesn’t mean anything in the end. Not when a boy’s gonna swoop in and ruin it forever.” She broke down in sobs.
“Oh Ella,” Agatha whispered, tears sliding down her face.
“It’s why I’m never happy,” Ella wept, the harshness gone from her now. “Because everyone thinks my fairy tale was about finding a fairy godmother and a dress and a prince, when I never wanted any of that! I just wanted my stepsisters to be happy! I just wanted to keep my best friends!”
Agatha touched the old princess’s back and let her cry as they walked in silence on the path.
“You really love Sophie?” Ella asked finally. “After everything she’s done?”
Agatha nodded, suddenly overtaken by emotion. “As much as you love your stepsisters.”
Ella stopped on the path, a quiet awakening in her eyes. “That’s why Merlin paired us together. Because I let my story go. I gave in to despair and anger and let it steal my life from under me. But you can fix my fairy tale by fixing yours, Agatha. You can still fight for Sophie. You can still fight for your friend.”