فصل 16

Chapter 16

A Boy by Any Other Name

“It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? A part big enough to hold you!” Agatha prattled, slipping with Sophie through the Tunnel of Trees. “And who better to play a part than you?” Pulling her cloak tighter, Sophie raced ahead into the snow-sprinkled Clearing, dimly lit by two torches on the Blue Forest gate. She’d insisted that the witches stay in the castle tonight. Having a gnome and her best friend there would be humiliation enough.

Yuba had picked 9 o’clock carefully, for most of the girls were bathing, at club meetings, or busy studying for the next Trial Tryouts, while the butterflies tended to settle on rafters or banisters in the foyer, dormant to everything but the most egregious noise. With Beatrix at Elf fluency lessons and the Dean in her office, they’d have enough time to go through with the plan. How Agatha would explain her friend’s disappearance, Sophie asked repeatedly, but her friend shooed the questions away—no doubt because she didn’t have the answers.

“You might even enjoy being a boy,” Agatha gibbered on, clumps crunching onto snow. “Think of it as a costume—think of it as a show—” “Only the audience is trying to kill me,” Sophie growled.

She heard her friend’s clump crunches slow behind her.

“How can I leave you alone with him?” Agatha whispered, shivering in her cloak.

Sophie stood still, listening to the Valor tower clock toll and fade, snowflakes smothering against her neck. “Everything Good in me is because of you, Agatha. Isn’t it time I did something Good for you too?” She turned to see Agatha, snow caked in torchlight and smiling crookedly like she had in those first days as friends, so surprised Sophie wanted to spend time with her.

“I’ll owe you one, all right?” Agatha said, eyes glistening. “Even if I have to sing in your musical.” Sophie cracked a smile back.

They both noticed Yuba’s white staff poking out of a hole in the distance, wagging impatiently.

“Listen, try to get on tower guard—that’s how you’ll get to the pen—” Agatha jabbered again as she gripped Sophie’s hand and pulled her into the Forest. “And watch out for a strange spell—that’s what Tedros used against me—” But Sophie couldn’t hear Agatha’s voice anymore, only the frantic thumps of her own heart, knowing the time had come.

“Any questions about the plan once Sophie transforms?” Yuba whispered to Agatha, his face clear of the magical pox he’d given himself during class. He eyed Sophie, pumping herself a glass of water in the kitchen, and lowered his voice even more. “It is her surest way into the boys’ castle.” “B-b-but are you sure it will work?” Agatha whispered back, appalled by what the gnome was proposing. “Suppose the crogs think she’s a . . .” She held her tongue, for Sophie had stopped pumping water and could hear them now.

“Sophie, we were just waiting for you,” Agatha called quickly, hands shaking as she unfolded a bamboo curtain in the corner of the den. “Remember the spell only lasts three days—” “Which gives Sophie only until the Trial begins,” the gnome said. “Sophie must retrieve the pen and storybook before then.” He stoked the fire with his staff, and his den swathed in hot glow. “Remember, the School Master’s tower will chase Sophie once she takes the Storian, and the boys will know they’ve been tricked. Agatha, you must be waiting the instant she returns, ready to make your wish. The pen will write ‘The End’ in your book, and you’ll both be gone before the boys attack.” Agatha’s throat bobbed. “And Sophie can revert to a girl as soon as she escapes?” “The same way she’d un-mogrify—without any residual effects.”

“Hear that, Sophie?” Agatha said, hanging her friend’s cloak on the curtain hook. “You can revert without any—” But Sophie was still hunched in the kitchen, staring mournfully at her reflection in a glass flower vase.

Agatha came up behind her. “We have to get you there before curfew.” Sophie took one last long look at her face, then forced a smile and huffed past Agatha towards the curtain, blathering to herself. “Boys played girls all the time in old theater, didn’t they? . . . A good old spot of make-believe . . . a tour de force, even. . . . Brava! Brava!” Agatha waved at Yuba to give Sophie the potion as quickly as possible.

A few moments later, Sophie stood behind the bamboo curtain, clutching the vial. “Just a spot of make-believe,” she cooed, starting to feel rather cocksure about all of this.

“Drink it in sips,” Yuba’s voice said on the other side. “It will ease the process.” With a deep breath, Sophie yanked the glass cork from the tear-shaped bottle. A blast of sandalwood, musk, and sweat blinded her, and she recorked it, hacking and wheezing. She held the vial far away from her and stared at the violet potion smoking dangerously. This wasn’t make-believe.

Silence festered in the gnome’s lair.

“I’ll go if you can’t,” Agatha’s voice said gently. “Just say the word.” Sophie thought of all the torments her friend had endured for her last year—flying through flames as a dove, surviving for weeks as a cockroach, risking her life in a sewer, facing the murderous School Master. . . .

“I need more than a friend,” Agatha had told her prince.

Sophie pictured Agatha wrapped in his arms in that tower, so madly in love . . . Sophie banished the thought, panicked. Doing this would show Agatha just how much she needed her.

Doing this would make Agatha never doubt her again.

In a flash, Sophie ripped out the cork and chugged the potion in one gulp. A bitter, acid taste exploded through her and she grabbed her throat in shock, hearing the vial shatter against the floor. She could hear Agatha scream for her and Yuba holding her back, before their voices slowed to syllabic growls, drowned in her choking gasps. The skin over her face stretched tight, like warm putty, remolding itself over her bones as her hair turned coarser, slurping back into her head.

As the rancid potion flooded her chest, Sophie felt her whole body inflate like a cement-packed balloon, shoulders straining against her girls’ uniform, shredding its seams. Her forearms bulged with tight blue veins; her feet swelled and arched, tiny hairs sprouting on her toes; her calves tightened like melons and she careened off-balance, onto her knees. Then came heat, hellish heat, scorching and smoking through every pore, incinerating softness to burn. Every time she thought it was over, the pain spread farther, every part of her demolished and reconstructed until Sophie curled up into a ball on the floor, praying this was all a dream, a dream she’d wake up from in an empty grave as her mother held her and wiped her tears, whispering it was all a mistake.

“Sophie?”

No answer came.

Agatha broke free of Yuba’s grip. “Sophie, are you okay?”

When no reply came, Agatha gave the gnome a worried look and hustled for the curtain— Something stirred behind it and Agatha froze.

Slowly a figure stepped out, hooded in Sophie’s navy girls’ cloak.

The cloak didn’t fit anymore.

Agatha’s eyes drifted down strong knees, muscular calves, hairy ankles . . . to two big, unsteady feet.

She inched towards the figure, holding her breath. She could feel Yuba clinging to the tail of her shirt, peeking behind her. Standing on tiptoes, Agatha slowly reached for the hood and pulled it back. She toppled with a gasp, taking the gnome with her. By the time she looked up, Sophie had already grabbed the glass vase off the table and collapsed against the wall, whimpering in fright at her reflection.

She’d morphed into a powerful, square-jawed version of herself, with short, fluffy blond hair, high cheekbones, straight brows, and deep-set emerald eyes. Long limbed but taut with muscle, she looked like an elfin prince, with big pulled-back ears, a sharp regal nose, and a dimpled chin. Her hands gripping the undersized cloak were hardy and big knuckled, her shoulders broad, narrowing down to a trim waist, and her golden-stubbled cheeks streaked with fiery blush.

Sophie wheezed like a punctured balloon. “I’m—I’m a boy—”

Only her voice didn’t sound like a boy’s at all.

“The spell’s one shortcoming. Still have your old sound,” Yuba sighed. “Breathe from your belly and speak in low tones, and it’ll sound about right.” He chewed his lip, studying her. “But strong face . . . solid trunk . . . jolly good work, I’d say. None of those lads will suspect a thing.” But Sophie’s eyes stayed on her reflection, doubting the gnome. For as she touched her face and form beneath her cloak, she felt the boy on the outside, hard and toughened, like a rock shell. But inside . . . inside she was the soft, scared girl who didn’t want to leave her friend. Look close, and the boys would find her. Look close, and she’d be dead before dawn.

She gazed up at Agatha, who stared speechless at the sculpted, sharp-jawed face in the vase’s reflection.

“Even better looking as a boy, I have to say,” Agatha marveled finally.

Sophie flung the flowers out of the vase at her and Agatha ducked. Sophie turned away, shaking.

“I don’t know how to be a boy,” Sophie said, voice high, tears streaking her stubbled cheeks. “I don’t know how to walk or act or—” “You won the challenge for a reason, Sophie,” Agatha said behind her. “I know you can do this.” “Not without you there,” Sophie rasped.

Agatha touched her friend’s back, feeling unfamiliar muscle beneath her fingers. “I need you to be a boy now,” she said, her voice calm. “Just be a boy and get us home.” Sophie nodded in her alien body and tried to stop shivering. Agatha’s faith slowly seeped into her, steadying her heart. They’d been through so much, trying to hold on to each other . . . but now only she could get them to The End. Her friend was right. She was a boy now, and she had to act like one.

With a deep breath, she braced herself and turned into the light.

“I need clothes,” she said, voice sharp and low.

Agatha stared at the elfin boy’s hardened face and, for the first time, saw a stranger.

Agatha smiled her old, crooked smile. “What you need is a name.”

Hort hugged his pillow, still in underpants, tossing and turning in his smelly bed while a hulking prince snored like a gorilla across the room.

The last week had been miserable. With the Trial approaching, the teachers had taken over, determined that the boys win and restore the School for Good and Evil. Not that Hort cared about any of it anymore. Tomorrow was the first day of official Trial Tryouts, and he didn’t have the faintest chance of making the team. He still hadn’t gotten a new uniform, the new princes called him Wart, the big ones kept stealing his lunch pail, and without Dot here, he didn’t have anyone to talk to.

Why was he at this horrible place? What had the School Master possibly seen in him? He was a bad villain and an even worse son.

Hort rubbed his eyes, thinking of his dad’s body, lying in the Garden of Good and Evil, with a mile-long line of corpses awaiting burial. Hort couldn’t even afford a coffin, so his father lay to waste beneath circling vultures, the Crypt Keeper years away from reaching him.

Hort grated his teeth. If he won the Trial, he’d have the treasure to give his father the most beautiful coffin in the Woods. If he won the Trial, he’d have revenge on the girl who’d broken his heart. No one would ever question him being soft again . . .

A hacking snore snapped his trance and Hort shoved his pillow over his head, tempted to suffocate himself and die. There’d be no treasure. There’d be no revenge. Because that hairy, big-chested prince in the other bed was going to make the Trial team and his scrawny waste of a self wasn’t.

If I could just have one friend here, Hort prayed. One friend who could make him feel like more than a loser. Sniffling, he balled his knees and huddled near the window, pulling the covers over his head— Hort bolted back up, gaping through the window.

There was a body on the boy’s shore, the tattered, wet clothes streaked with blood. Moonlight seeped from behind a cloud, trickling onto the boy’s pale forearm, and for a second Hort saw his fingers twitch.

Gasping, he flung off his covers and raced out of bed.

Surely the best way to make a new friend was to start by saving his life.

“What’s your name?” a familiar voice snarled.

Sophie’s eyes flickered open to her hard stomach against the floor, her thick hands cuffed. Her abundance of new muscles ached, and a bleary haze clouded her vision. She remembered little of how she’d arrived—only fleeting images of her refashioning Yuba’s ragged tablecloth into a tunic big enough to cover her bulky new frame (“I have shoulders like an elephant,” she crabbed), lumbering awkwardly behind Agatha and the gnome onto the girls’ shore (“Why is everything so stiff!”), and managing a histrionic good-bye (“Farewell, dignity! Farewell, femininity!”) before Yuba knocked her out with a stun spell.

She’d pretended not to have heard the plan when he and Agatha had gone over it earlier—the plan where the gnome and her best friend would float her body through the girls’ lake towards the crog-filled red moat, knowing the currents would drag her to the boy’s shore. The gnome promised Agatha the crogs wouldn’t do more than nip a boy, but both parties thought it wiser if Sophie wasn’t awake for the experience, and Sophie certainly saw no reason to argue. She glanced down at the serrated tooth marks and drips of blood across her tunic and was thankful the first few hours of her life as a boy had been mostly spent unconscious.

“What’s your name?”

Sophie slowly lifted her eyes to Castor, standing in front of the male faculty, all clad in black-and-red robes, glowering down at the new boy in front of them.

Sophie lurched to her knees, heart hammering. The return of the teachers wasn’t her only surprise.

The school around them had been completely cleaned up. Gone was the ape regime, with boys swinging from rafters, graffitied doors, and a putrid stench. Evil’s foyer had been repainted blood crimson, the walls decorated with scarlet snake crests. The three staircases in the anteroom had been given fresh coats of black paint, the twisting banisters painted red, like red-bellied snakes. High on the stairs, more than two hundred boys leered down at the new arrival—dozens of familiar Ever- and Neverboys, together with handsome new princes, all showered, scrubbed, and dressed in clean black-and-red leather uniforms.

Sophie’s mouth parched. She’d always dreamed that one day she’d be in a castle full of gorgeous, virile boys.

She should have been more specific.

“YOUR NAME, BOY,” Castor roared, grabbing her throat with his paw.

Agatha thought it was a terrible idea. To give herself the name of the boy her father had always wanted. The unborn boy her father had loved more than he ever loved her.

But Sophie refused any others.

“Filip,” she rasped in his grip.

Saying the name out loud stirred something inside her. She looked up at Castor, hardened.

“Filip of Mount Honora,” she repeated, voice deep and strong. “Lost my kingdom to a hideous witch. I come for a chance at the treasure.” Murmurs rippled through the boys eyeing the elfish prince.

“Is that an Ever kingdom?” she heard Manley whisper to Espada.

“An enclave of Maidenvale, I believe,” Espada said, mustache twitching.

“And how did you get here, Filip of Mount Honora?” Castor barked, releasing his grip on the boy.

“Through a crack in the shield,” said Sophie.

“Impossible,” said a voice high above.

Sophie peered up at Aric and his red-hooded henchmen on Malice’s banister, looming over all the other boys. They had coiled whips at their belt, red soldier jackets over their shirts, and the rest of the boys looked even more scared of them than before. Clearly the teachers had found their replacement for last year’s wolves.

“I’m the only one who can break through Lady Lesso’s shield,” Aric leered, glaring down at the prisoner. “The hole was sealed tight after I let the princes in.” Sophie met his violet eyes. “Perhaps you should have done a better job.” The staircase audience stiffened. Aric and his henchmen looked daggers at this new boy, shorter, skinnier, daring to challenge them in front of the whole school.

But Castor was smirking at the stranger, amused. “Welcome to the School for Boys, Filip.” Sophie exhaled relief. She saw Aric’s glare burning colder.

“In three nights’ time, we face a buffoonish Trial against girls that threatens to leave us all slaves,” the dog declared, looking up at the boys on the staircases. “Win, and we rid ourselves of two Readers who’ve corrupted Good and Evil. Win, and the schools return to tradition.” Boys burst into bellowing cheers. Sophie swallowed, trying to look enthused at the prospect of her own execution.

“For the next three days, Trial Tryouts will determine who will fight against the girls,” the dog continued. “Top nine boys after Tryouts will make the team. The tenth member of the team will be chosen by the first-place leader. Let this encourage you to make friends with the new princes around you and forge Ever-Never alliances.” Boys old and new scanned each other warily, sizing up the competition.

“As a further incentive,” Castor said, “the highest-ranked student at the end of each day has the prestigious honor of guarding the School Master’s tower for the night.” Boys grumbled on the stairs, as if this didn’t sound like much of an honor at all. But Sophie was too busy buzzing with joy to notice. The dog had just unwittingly saved her and Agatha’s lives. Win enough challenges today and she could steal the Storian tonight! She’d be home with Agatha by dawn!

“No bunks available for Filip, Castor,” said Albemarle, the spectacled woodpecker, studying his ledger. “Castle’s at full occupancy.” Castor peered down at the new boy. “Put him in with the runt. Whoever’s ranked lowest between them at the end of each day gets punished.” Sophie’s smile vanished. The boys on the stairs chortled as Albemarle dutifully pecked into parchment. Aric was grinning at her now.

The runt? Sophie thought, tensing. Who’s the runt?

Castor unlocked her cuffs. “Go get yourself settled before class, boy. Anyone want to show young Filip here his room?” Fumbling bootsteps thundered down the stairs, and Sophie squinted up at Hort, crashing through boys like a loon in a new uniform two sizes too big. “That’s me! That’s me, Filip!” He snatched the schedule from Albemarle’s beak and yanked the new boy to his feet— “I’m Hort and I saved you so now we can be best friends even though you’re an Ever,” he gushed, shoving him his schedule. “I’ll explain classes, rules, and you can sit with me at lunch and—” But Sophie wasn’t listening. All she could see was the top of the parchment page, freshly pecked in stiff, unmistakable letters.

FILIP OF MOUNT HONORA

BOY, 2ND YEAR

ROOMMATE: TEDROS

It answered her question about the runt.