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 whi
le 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?”
It was there all along, Agatha thought as she gazed at the walls. The weapon that made Good invincible against Evil. The thing a villain could never have but a princess couldn’t do without. The task that would send her and Sophie home.
If Sophie is alive.
Agatha felt another wave of powerless dread. She couldn’t just sit here while Sophie was being tortured—
Screams pealed outside. She spun to see Sophie hurled through her window by a bucking stymph.
“Love,” Sophie panted.
“You’re alive! Your hair,” Agatha gasped—
“Love is what a villain can never have but a heroine can’t live without.”
“But what did they—are you—”
“Am I right or not?”
Agatha saw Sophie had no intention of talking about the Doom Room.
“Almost.” She pointed to the paintings on the wall with visions of heroes and heroines, lips pressed in climactic embrace.
“True love’s kiss,” Sophie breathed.
“If your true love kisses you, then you can’t be a villain,” Agatha said.
“And if you can’t find love, then you can’t be a princess,” said Sophie.
“And we go home.” Agatha swallowed. “My half is taken care of. Yours isn’t so simple.”
“Oh, please. I can make any one of those disgusting Neverboys fall in love with me. Just give me five minutes, an empty broom closet, and—”
“There’s only one, Sophie,” Agatha said, voice fraying. “For every Ever, there’s only one true love.”
Sophie met her eyes. She collapsed onto the bed.
“Tedros.”
Agatha nodded sickly. The road home led through the one person who could ruin everything.
“Tedros has to . . . kiss me?” Sophie said, staring into space.
“And he can’t be tricked, forced, or duped into it. He has to mean it.”
“But how? He thinks I’m a villain! He hates me! Aggie, he’s a king’s son. He’s beautiful, he’s perfect and look at me—” She grabbed her shorn hair and flaccid robes. “I’m—I’m—”
“Still a princess.”
Sophie looked at her. “And the only way we’ll get home,” said Agatha, forcing a smile. “So we have to make this kiss happen.”
“We?” said Sophie.
“We,” rasped Agatha.
Sophie hugged her tight.
“We’re going home, Aggie.”
But in her arms, Agatha sensed something else. Something that told her the Doom Room had taken more from her friend than just her hair. Agatha squelched her doubts and clasped Sophie tighter.
“One kiss and it will all be over,” she whispered.
As they embraced in one tower, in another the School Master watched the Storian finish a magnificent painting of the two girls in each other’s arms. The pen added a last flourish of words beneath it, closing the chapter.
“But no kiss comes without its price.”
15
Choose Your Coffin
Whenever Tedros was stressed, he worked out. So to see him sweating at 6:00 a.m. in the Groom Room, throwing hammers, pumping dumbbells, and swimming laps, meant he had a lot on his mind. It was understandable. The Snow Ball invitations had been slipped under doors during the night.
As he scaled climbing ropes made of braided blond hair, he cursed the fact he would spend Christmas at a Ball. Why did everything with Evers revolve around oppressive formal dances? The problem with Balls was that boys had to do all the work. Girls could flirt and scheme and wish all they wanted, but in the end, it’s the boy who had to make his choice and hope she said yes. Tedros wasn’t worried about the girl saying yes. He was worried there was no girl he wanted to ask at all.
He couldn’t remember the last time he actually liked a girl. And yet, he always had one following him, claiming to be his girlfriend. It happened every time. He vowed to forget girls, then noticed one getting attention, set out to prove he could get her, got her, and discovered she was a fatuous prince hunter who had had her eye on him all along. The Beatrix Curse. No. There was a better name for it.
The Guinevere Curse.
Tedros was only nine when his mother, Guinevere, made off with the knight Lancelot, leaving him and his father alone. He heard the whispers that followed. “She found love.” But what about all those times she said “I love you” to his father? All the times she said it to him? Which love was real?
Night after night, Tedros watched his father slip further into heartbreak and drunkenness. Death came within the year. With his last breaths, King Arthur gripped his son’s hands.
“The people will need a queen, Tedros. Don’t make my mistakes. Look for the girl who is truly Good.”
Tedros climbed higher and higher on the golden braids, veins straining against muscle.
Don’t make my mistakes.
His hand slipped and he fell off the rope, crashing to a soft mat. Cheeks red, he glowered at the taunting waterfalls of hair.
All the girls here were mistakes. Guineveres who confused love with kisses.
Daylight flecked across Agatha’s pillow. She stirred and saw Sophie hunched on Reena’s old bed.
“Why are you still here! If the wolves catch you, it’s the Doom Room again! Besides, you should be home writing that anonymous love poem to Tedr—”
“You didn’t tell me there’s a Ball.”
Sophie held up a glittering snowflake invitation, Agatha’s name in pearls.
“Oh, who cares about a stupid Ball?” Agatha groaned. “We’ll be long gone. Now make sure that poem talks about who he is as a person. His honor, his valor, his cour—”
Sophie was smelling the invitation now.
“Sophie, listen to me! The closer we get to the Ball, the more Tedros looks for a date! The more he looks for a date, the more he falls in love with someone else! The more he falls in love with someone else, the more he leaves us here to die! Got it?”
“But I want to be his date.”
“YOU’RE NOT INVITED!”
Sophie pursed her lips.
“Sophie, Tedros has to kiss you now! Otherwise we’ll never get home!”
“Honestly, do they even check invitations at a Ball?”
Agatha snatched the invitation. “Stupid me. I thought you wanted to stay alive!”
“But I can’t miss the Ball!”
Agatha shoved her towards the door. “Use the Tunnel of Trees—”
“Marble hall, glittering gowns, waltzing under stars . . .”
“If a wolf catches you, just say you’re lost—”
“A Ball, Aggie! A real Ball!”
Agatha kicked her out. Sophie scowled back.
“My
roommates will help me. They’re true friends.”
She slammed the door on Agatha’s shocked expression.
Ten minutes later, Hester stamped her foot, nearly killing Anadil’s rat.
“HELP! YOU WANT ME TO HELP A NEVER KISS AN EVER! I’D RATHER STICK MY HEAD UP A HORSE’S—”
“Sophie, no villain ever finds love,” Anadil said, hoping reason might save her rats. “To even look for it is to betray your own soul—”
“You want me to go home?” Sophie snapped, picking away tunnel leaves. “Then put a hex on Tedros so he asks me to the Ball.”
“THE BALL!” Hester screeched. “HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW ABOUT THE BALL?”
“A villain at a Ball?” said Dot.
“A villain waltzing!” said Anadil.
“A villain curtsying!” said Hester, and all three collapsed into howls.
“I’m going to that Ball,” Sophie fumed.
“Presenting the Witch of Woods Beyond!” Hester cackled through tears.
By lunch, she wasn’t laughing.
First, Sophie was twenty minutes late to class after trying to find a solution to her jagged hair. She disguised it with berets, bows, combs before settling on a daisy wreath.
“Not hideous,” she sighed before she walked into Uglification and saw students’ hair turned gray from bat wing potions. A “1” suddenly exploded over her head.
“Hideous!” Professor Manley beamed, ogling her hair. “Your greatest beauty. Gone.”
Sophie sobbed as she left class, but then heard Hester scream. In the hall, Albemarle, a studious, spectacled woodpecker, was chipping Sophie’s name just below hers on the Evil rankings board.
“One little love spell, Hester,” Sophie reminded sweetly. “And then I’m gone forever.”
Hester stomped away, reminding herself that Nevers kissing Evers couldn’t be encouraged no matter how extreme the circumstances.
At the start of Curses, Lady Lesso swept into the ice chamber, jaw tighter than usual.
“Impossible to find good torturers these days,” she muttered.
“What is she talking about?” Sophie whispered to Dot.
“Beast went missing!” Dot whispered back.
Behind her, Sophie looked nauseous.