فصل 11

Chapter 11

Double Crossings

“You two are very codependent,” Beatrix yawned from bed, squinting at Sophie perched on the blue-glass windowsill.

“Just want to make sure she’s safe.” Sophie peered down at the two armored knights, one short, one tall, standing in the blue pumpkin patch near the Woods gate.

“You sound . . . like . . . a . . . prince . . . ,” Beatrix babbled before her breaths turned heavy, untroubled by the angry chants echoing outside.

Sophie could barely see the source of these chants over the spiked gates, just snatches of the princes’ shadowed, distorted faces and shredded clothes. Nothing in this world was ever certain. Princes could become as frightening as ogres. Princesses could become villains. Best friends could become enemies.

Sophie’s eyes watered. After returning home, all she had wanted was to be Good. She wasn’t perfect, of course—her father could attest to that—but she’d been a true friend to Agatha and tried to live by her example. Every day she’d fought to keep her Evil thoughts at bay, the rages and storms that swelled in her heart. And what had she earned in return? Betrayed for a prince. Branded a witch. Avoided like a plague. And now Agatha was one kiss away from abandoning her forever. Sophie wiped her eyes, sniffling. Who was the Evil one now?

But hours passed, and neither Dot nor Agatha budged from the pumpkins, enduring the princes’ blind threats and their weapons fired and absorbed into the enchanted shield over the gates. Midnight came and went, then two o’clock . . . four o’clock . . .

Agatha made no move towards Tedros’ castle.

Finally, as the moon sank into the glow of a new sun, Agatha still in place, Sophie colored with shame. This school had turned both of them distrustful. After what happened during Forest Groups, Agatha must have come to her senses. It was natural for both of them to have doubts about the other, Sophie consoled herself. But their friendship was stronger than doubt. Soon they’d wish for each other and mean it, ready to leave this place behind. Soon they’d be back home like Agatha promised, Tedros gone forever.

Resting her head against the glass, Sophie realized how exhausted she was. Adrenaline had kept her up for two days straight, but now her thoughts thinned to fragments and flowed into dream. . . .

Her mittened hand picking moss from a neglected grave . . . a butterfly, carved into its stone . . . two swans etched into the graves beside it . . . one swan white . . . one swan black . . . black like a shadow torn apart by his Good twin . . . black like dead feathers strewn across the ground . . . black like the unnatural sky . . .

Sophie’s eyes flared open. The sky over the Woods gate had gone pitch-dark—torches extinguished, moonlight snuffed. The princes howled with confusion before the torch and moon suddenly returned, leaving them dumbstruck at the passing eclipse. But Sophie knew it wasn’t an eclipse at all. It was a Lights-Out Jinx. She’d seen one used in last year’s Trial. . . .

It was Agatha’s favorite spell.

Sophie leapt to her feet—but neither of the knights had shifted from their post. Sophie groaned and plopped down on her bed. Enough paranoia. Time to sleep. She pulled back her bedcovers but felt herself hesitate. Slowly she turned to the window again.

The taller knight had lost an armored shoe. The orphaned shoe was clearly visible a few feet away, but neither the taller nor the shorter knight made an effort to retrieve it.

Sophie squinted closer and saw that shoeless Agatha was having trouble standing, while Dot tried to prop her up. But the more Dot tried to help, the more Agatha flailed and flubbered, until finally the two knights fell to the ground, Dot’s sword slipping from its sheath as she squealed in horror. Dot lunged to grab it, but it was too late—Agatha crashed face-first on the sword in a terrible heap and impaled on the blade, severing her neck.

Sophie opened her mouth to scream, watching Agatha’s head roll out of its helmet— Agatha’s big, blue pumpkin head.

Sophie froze. Dot slowly looked up from the Forest, covered in pulp and seeds.

Blood roared through Sophie’s veins.

She’d been tricked.

“By the time Dot restores the light, you should be at the Turquoise Thicket,” Hester had drilled Agatha again and again. “Sophie won’t be able to see you through the trees. Just mogrify into something small and get to Tedros as fast as you can.” Yet when the light returned over the princes, Agatha was sprinting back to the girls’ castle instead. For one thing, Agatha still didn’t trust her magic enough to mogrify, given what happened at Stefan’s wedding. For another, surely the boys protected their school against magical entry, given they’d spent an entire unit in Chivalry last year on Castle Defense.

But most of all, she knew what she’d heard. No matter what the witches said, her heart put its faith in Tedros.

Stealing back into the girls’ castle on bare feet, Agatha knew there was only one way to Halfway Bridge. A stream of patrolling butterflies zoomed out of the foyer before Agatha skittered from behind the obelisk of girl’s portraits and slipped up the Honor steps, past darkened dorm rooms, candied classrooms, and the two-floor Library of Virtue, and through the frosted door onto the roof.

The hedges of Guinevere’s menagerie had a cold green glow under the moon, which lit up the queen’s sleek frame in each scene. Though she’d been young when Sophie’s mother died, Agatha remembered she had the same slender hips and bony build, so different from Callis, Honora, or the other mothers of Gavaldon, who lived on meat and mash. Together, she and paunchy Honora must have made an odd sight as best friends, Agatha thought.

Just like her and Sophie.

Agatha squashed her guilt. How many times will you make the same mistake?

Pushing forward, she kept her eyes peeled for water. That was the secret portal last year to the bridge between schools. Find the scene with water . . .

Across the roof, a torch suddenly sparked in the highest floor of Charity’s glass tower. The Dean’s office. Did the Dean know she’d escaped guard?

Agatha stifled her panic and quickly wove through the hedges—Guinevere ruling from her throne, Guinevere with the Knights of the Round Table, Guinevere beheading a giant with her sword. . . . As if she’d ruled Camelot all by herself, Agatha thought, feeling strangely defensive of Tedros’ father. Keeping an eye on the Dean’s office, Agatha didn’t catch any hint of water as she neared a high wall of sharp purple thorns at the end of the menagerie. But just as she lost hope and set to turn back, she heard shallow burbling behind the thorned wall.

In a pond shimmering with reflected stars, Guinevere bathed baby Tedros in his baptismal robes. Agatha felt touched by the sight of her prince, helpless in his mother’s arms . . . until she saw his mother’s face. For even though the hedge leaves softened the details of it, it was crystal clear what Arthur’s once-queen thought of her new son. Glaring at Tedros, Guinevere’s mouth snarled with hate.

She wasn’t bathing him. She was drowning him.

Agatha blanched. Whatever happened tonight, whatever happened in her story from here, Tedros couldn’t ever see this.

She wheeled to see torch flare spilling through the Dean’s office, the door swinging open. . . . With a prayer, Agatha jumped into Guinevere’s pond and instantly felt a blast of white-hot light— A moment later, she stood dry in a crystal-blue archway on Halfway Bridge, panting with relief. But as she looked out at the long, narrow stone span into the School for Boys, Agatha’s relief vanished.

Now she saw why the witches said not to use it.

Sophie’s pink feathers shivered in gusty wind as her hawk flew across the sky towards the School for Boys. She’d been scared to mogrify again after the cat incident, but rage blasted away any fear. She had to get to Tedros before Agatha kissed him.

Angry tears dripped onto Sophie’s wings. She’d lost her mother. She’d lost her prince. She couldn’t lose her only friend too. Why did everything she love try to leave her?

I can’t lose Agatha, she prayed. Not the one person who kept her Good. Not the one person who kept the witch dead.

Not Agatha.

With an anguished caw, she ripped towards the boys’ jagged red towers— CRACK!

An electric shock stabbed through her and she plummeted out of the sky. Sophie tried to flap her wings, but every inch of her body was paralyzed. Mogrif shield, Sophie gasped. Hurtling towards Evil’s shore, her feathers violently sloughed to skin, her beak to lips, her body to human, preventing any return to bird—before she belly-flopped into mulch, fifty feet from Evil’s entrance tunnel. Sophie’s groans snuffled against wet earth, her legs sticky and cold. For a moment, she was grateful the shield had reverted her without any trouble, given what happened in Lesso’s class. Then reality set in.

She was splayed bare in dirt, outside the School for Boys.

How could she be so stupid! Of course they enchanted the school against Mogrifs! Tedros wouldn’t just leave his tower unprotected! She was too scared to move or look up. How long until the boys came for her? How could she stop Agatha and Tedros now? And how would she find clothes?

Sophie willed herself not to faint or throw up. All she needed to find was a few leafy vines or ferns; she’d made wearable ensembles out of far less. She looked up determinedly to the boggy field and froze.

On the ground under her face was a crinkly blackish sheath of scales . . . like a snake’s shed skin, only twice as long and thick. Sophie’s eyes slowly moved to another shed sheath a few feet in front of her. Then two more . . .

Sophie raised her head. She was surrounded by snakeskins. More than she could count.

Through darkness, she saw their makers rise from the mulch. Acid-green eyes glowed under misshapen, flattened black heads, their thick, eel-like trunks speared with needles through every scale. Sophie scrambled back, only to see more rising behind her. They curled higher, in a perfect circle, trapping her right and left, front and rear, high and low. With identical grins, they silently flicked tongues and glared down at the intruder, waiting for her move.

There was only one to make.

Sophie flung out her glowing finger—the snakes lunged instantly and pinned her body to the ground, spread-eagled to sacrifice. Needles slashed into her wrists and ankles as the snakes unleashed ugly, screeching hisses, drowning out her cries. Sophie heard boys’ voices echo through the entrance tunnel, following the alarm, and knew she was doomed.

“Why can’t I kill her!” a weaselly voice said.

“Get back to your guard,” retorted a harsh deeper voice.

“But I heard the spiricks first!” the weaselly voice mewled. “Suppose it’s her—” “Shut up!” barked the deep voice. “Boys, weapons ready!” Sophie’s nails clawed at dirt. Please . . . I don’t want to die. . . . But now she could see the glint of swords and hooded shadows down the tunnel. They were seconds away.

Then suddenly out of pain, a memory came back like a song. . . .

Snakeskin under her hands as Professor Manley spoke of its magical properties in an Uglification class . . . sounds of her Evil cackles high in a tower as she pulled that same snakeskin over her body . . . the cries of Evers and Nevers all around . . . “Where’d she go!” “Where’s the witch?” “But I want to kill Sophie!” the weaselly voice said, eliciting a chorus of snickers.

“As if you could kill a toad,” said the deep-voiced boy. “Or a girl you’re soft for.” “I’m not soft for anyone!”

Sophie’s fingerglow flickered as snake needles stabbed into her palm. She gasped in agony, trying to visualize the spell.

“Shhh! I hear her!”

Snakeskins shivered on the ground around her—

“Ready . . . set . . .”

Hundreds of skins rose into air over the snakes—

“Charge!”

Four enormous boys in red hoods and black uniforms dashed from the tunnel, swords aimed— “Holy hell,” growled their strapping, deep-voiced leader, a gold badge over his snake crest. In the dirt pit, confused snakes hissed at each other—nothing pinned beneath. The leader shot a spell at them and the snakes fled, shrieking. He ripped off his hood, revealing spiked black hair, ghostly pale cheekbones, throbbing blue veins, and lethal, violet eyes. “Stupid spiricks.” Needle cuts burning, Sophie endured the pain, invisible under the mound of sheathed skins.

A last scrawny hood bumbled from the tunnel. “You think I’m soft?” the weaselly boy cried, tearing off his mask. “Wait until I win the treasure! Just wait!” Sophie held in a gasp. Hort had grown in her time away, now sporting whiskers on his chin, wilder black hair, and beady brown eyes that no longer looked like a little boy’s. “I’ll buy Dad a gold coffin. Two years he’s waited for a grave. Killed by Peter Pan himself, my dad.” He glowered at the empty pit. “You’ll see, Aric! I’ll be the one to kill Sophie. You don’t know my villain talent!” “Turnin’ to a man-wolf for three seconds at a time?” said Aric, and his henchmen chuckled.

“That’s not true!” Hort howled, chasing them towards the tunnel. “I can last long now! You’ll see!” Watching them go, Sophie sighed with relief—

Aric whirled, sword thrust out. Sophie stiffened like a corpse as he stared at the spot where she lay naked, his violet eyes narrowed.

“What is it, captain?” his henchman asked.

Aric listened to the silence.

“Come on,” he grunted at last, and led his troops into the boys’ castle, Hort runting at the rear.

None of them saw the flash of pink glow in the bog behind, turning invisible skins into an invisible cape.

Halfway Bridge had been blown up.

From the towers, all Agatha had seen was the swirling fog cloaking its midpoint. But now, standing in the cold, thick haze, she gazed down at the splintered rock around a gaping hole. The Bridge had been shattered with such force that the stone on either side drooped limply towards the rusted red moat below. Jagged slivers shed off both ends into the white crogs’ thrashing snouts, sensing a girl above.

How stupid she was to ignore the witches, Agatha gritted, dashing blindly back into fog towards the portal. She glanced up at the lightening sky. She had an hour at most to find another route that wasn’t the sewers, moat, or— A butterfly exploded towards her out of fog and squawked with discovery. Agatha gasped and shot it with her lit-up finger but missed, and it surged yelping through the portal, back to the Dean.

Agatha froze in terror. If she was caught here, Tedros’ and her story would be over before it began. Sophie’s witch would kill them both.

Hands shaking, she slowly looked back at the boys’ castle across the broken Bridge.

“Cross the Bridge,” Tedros had ordered.

There’s no way, Agatha thought, panicked—

Cross the Bridge.

Cross it.

Agatha stared down at the blown-up hole. Last year, against all odds, she’d done what no one else had been able to do: move between Good and Evil. Tedros had faith she could do it again.

Cross the Bridge.

Heart rattling, Agatha charged towards the broken gap. As her bare feet curled over the stone’s cliff edge, she thrust out her hand, praying she was right— Nothing but cold, empty breeze.

Jaw clenching, Agatha reached her fingertips farther, right foot leaving stone, only to feel more air skim uselessly through fingers. Sweat streamed down her ribs. Reach any more, and she’d fall into the moat. The spiny crogs snapped and splashed in red waves below, jostling for first feed.

Agatha welled frantic tears, knowing the Dean would be here any moment. She only had one choice left. . . .

Trust Tedros with her life.

Agatha exhaled slowly. Her left foot skated over the edge as she tilted forward on her right, surrendering to faith. Her right toes slid farther across the pockmarked stone, then her arch, then her heel, hands grasping at nothing . . . nothing. . . . Her foot lost the edge, and with a cry she toppled towards the moat, hands blindly flailing— Something.

Agatha’s palms smashed into a hard, invisible barrier and she ricocheted back, falling to the girls’ side of the Bridge.

In the hidden barrier, a reflection fogged into place. Her own face glared down at her, crystal clear.

“Girls with Girls

Boys with Boys

Back to your castle

Before you’re destroyed.”

Agatha paled with surprise. Why was everything in this school so much worse than before?

“Told you last year, didn’t I? Good with Good, Evil with Evil,” her reflection grinned. “But you thought you were better than the rules. Now look what you’ve gotten yourself into.” “Let me pass,” Agatha demanded, glancing back anxiously for the Dean.

“We’ll be happier on this side,” said her reflection. “Boys ruin everything.” “And a witch will ruin even more,” Agatha retorted. “I’m saving both schools—” “So this is all about Good now, is it?” her face smirked. “Not about a Girl who wants a Boy.” “I said let me pass.”

“Try all you want. You won’t trick me again,” her reflection said. “You’re obviously a Girl.” “And what makes a Girl?” Agatha asked.

“All the things a Boy is not.”

Agatha frowned. “And what makes a Boy?”

“All the things a Girl is not.”

“But you still haven’t told me what a Boy or Girl is.”

“I know someone who wishes for a Boy must be a Girl,” her reflection said confidently.

“And why’s that?”

“Because Girls wish for Boys and Boys wish for Girls and you wished for a Boy so that makes you a Girl. Now back to your castle or—” “And what would that make someone who kissed a Girl?”

“Kissed a Girl?” her reflection said, suddenly wary.

“Kissed a Girl to life like all the best princes,” Agatha glowered.

Her reflection glowered back. “Definitely a Boy.”

Agatha’s lips curled. “Exactly.”

Her image gasped, deceived once again—and vanished into thin air.

Agatha glanced down at the red moat churning beneath the deadly high gap. Trembling, she reached her pale, naked foot over thin air and this time felt it land on an invisible step.

Agatha looked down at herself, floating magically over the crogs gnashing in fury. In disbelief, she took another step forward over the gap, then another, until she crossed back onto the other side of the stone bridge, Tedros’ call answered.

Sophie would never catch them now.

Fear leeched out of Agatha’s chest, giving way to hope. Tedros had saved her from the witch, and now she would save him.

Stomach filling with butterflies for their meeting to come, Agatha sprinted towards the boys’ castle, armed with the deepest faith in her prince.

Far behind, in the shadows of the Girls’ blue archway, Dean Sader’s green eyes pierced the fog. But watching her student vanish into the rotted towers, she made no move.

Sophie chasing Agatha. Agatha chasing her prince.

Two friends once unbreakable and now torn apart.

The Dean turned and sauntered back to her castle.

Be careful what you wish for, girls.

Her gap-toothed grin gleamed through darkness.

Be careful what you wish for, indeed.