فصل 18

Chapter 18

Sader’s Secret History

Eight hours earlier, three witches had perched on Agatha’s bed. “Tell us everything Dovey and Lesso said,” ordered Dot.

“In detail,” said Hester.

“In as few words as possible,” said Anadil, nodding at her three black rats guarding the gap under the door with gnashed teeth and ready claws. “They can only kill so many butterflies before one gets through.” Agatha stared back at them, head swimming. After her secret meeting with Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso, she waited until all the girls were in their first sessions. Then she delivered identical notes to the witches’ room and hid in her own’s closet, avoiding patrol butterflies zooming through and Beatrix swinging in and out between classes, until the notes were opened and obeyed. Now Agatha told the witches what the teachers had said in the sewers, her heart thumping faster and faster, reliving every word— “They know the Dean?” Dot blurted finally, spewing a mouthful of artichoke.

Hester scrunched her fists. “I knew Dovey and Lesso were acting funny that first month of school. Lesso looks like a wounded puppy every time the Dean’s around.” Agatha couldn’t think of a better description herself. Something about Evelyn Sader managed to turn the most terrifying teacher in school . . . human.

“And remember when you said the Dean punished Dovey for questioning her?” Hester added. “Sounded like she was settling an old score.” “Lesso said Evelyn Sader was evicted ten years ago,” Agatha went on. “And that if you’re evicted, you can’t ever come back.” “That’s because only the School Master can admit students or teachers to the School for Good and Evil,” said Hester. “If he banished her, it’s irrevocable—unless he let her back in himself. And that would be difficult, considering he’s dead.” “If a boy broke the princes through the shield, why couldn’t Evelyn break through too?” Agatha countered.

“Even if she did, the castle would have evicted her the moment she stepped inside,” said Anadil. “Besides, I still find it hard to believe a boy cracked that shield open. Someone surely helped him who knew Lady Lesso’s spells.” “But if Evelyn Sader isn’t allowed in the castle, how is she here?” Agatha asked, still baffled.

“The question isn’t how—it’s why. Remember what Dovey and Lesso told you. She’s part of your fairy tale somehow,” said Hester. “So what do we know for sure about Evelyn Sader? First, she’s Professor Sader’s sister. Second, she hears things. Third, your and Sophie’s kiss let her back in this school. Somewhere in there is the answer to why she’s in your story.” Agatha saw Dot thinking hard, nibbling on an artichoke leaf. “Dot?”

“When I wrote Daddy last year about History of Villains and how boring Professor Sader was, I remember him writing back that he thought ‘she’ was long gone,” said Dot. “Been ages since Daddy was at school, so I figured he got mixed up. But now I wonder . . .” She turned to the girls. “Do you think Evelyn used to be a teacher here?” Hester was already ripping a textbook out of her bag. “Chapter 28 on Notable Seers in our history book—it mentions August Sader and his family. I remember thinking it odd a teacher wrote about his own relatives. . . .” “Only you would be looking at chapters that weren’t assigned,” Anadil murmured.

“Because I don’t want to end up in an oven like my mother or impaled in a barrel like yours!” Hester fired back, flipping pages until she finally reached the one she wanted— “Of course. ‘Chapter 28: Notable Female Seers,’” Hester growled, and snapped the cover shut on A Student’s Revised History of the Woods. “Yuba was right about her tampering with the books.” She peered up at Agatha. “Best way to avoid someone finding out your history is to rewrite it, don’t you think?” “Here’s what I don’t get,” Anadil proffered. “Dovey and Lesso say she caused Sophie’s witch symptoms?” “They said either it’s her or Sophie, and we know it’s not Sophie,” Agatha answered, equally puzzled. “But why would the Dean want me to think my friend was a witch?” “Unless she wanted you to go to Tedros all along,” mulled Hester, gnawing on her lip.

Even the rats went quiet.

Hester turned to Agatha. “Look, we’re stuck in Trial Tryouts for the next three days. But the teachers are right. You have to follow Sader and find out what she’s up to. Let’s reconvene Book Club each night to go over what you’ve found.” “But how?” Agatha pressed. “How can I possibly follow the Dean without being . . .” Her voice suddenly petered away, her gaze drifting towards Beatrix’s bed.

“What is it?” Hester said.

Screeching hisses and crackles erupted at the door, and all the girls swiveled to see rats gobbling up butterflies trying to slip into the room. “Hurry,” Anadil snapped at the witches, “the Dean will know something’s up!” “Sorry we can’t help you,” Hester groused to Agatha, shoving Dot towards the door— “You can help me use this,” Agatha’s voice said behind them.

The witches turned to see Agatha holding up a shimmering snakeskin cape.

“Seems like Beatrix has been keeping secrets,” Agatha said, brows raised.

Hester’s mouth curled into a wide grin.

Though the butterflies heard four people leaving the room, witnesses in the hall would later insist to Pollux they’d only seen three.

With the Dean teaching her version of History in Good Hall most of the day, Agatha detoured to the Library of Virtue, hoping to find out more about the history of Evelyn Sader.

Under her new invisible cape, still reeking of lavender perfume, Agatha slipped through Hansel’s Haven—past Professor Sheek’s class, undergoing a Sword Shrinking tryout to magically whittle down a boy’s blade; past Professor Anemone, barking at Yara for traipsing in late to a Spell Sparring tryout; and past Professor Dovey, who seemed to glance in her direction while forcing girls in a Boy Diplomacy tryout to talk down blood-hungry phantoms with compassion and common sense.

Agatha hustled up the back stairs to the library’s entrance, where the sundial clock glittered high over the two stories of fiery red and gold bookshelves in the early afternoon light. She rushed past the librarian’s desk—and froze.

For the first time in her two years here, the tortoise was awake. Stooped over his giant library log, the reptile slowly spooned a runny salad of tomatoes and cucumbers into its mouth with the feathered end of his pen, spilling a fair bit into its lap. Between old age, arthritic limbs, and a tortoise’s nature not to hurry, each bite took as long as a normal three-course dinner. Impatient, Agatha tiptoed past him, careful to time her steps with the tortoise’s chomps, and hurried to the back of the first floor, where the history books were kept.

There had to be something here, Agatha thought as she scanned the shelves, a few butterflies circling overhead. Something about the school’s history that Evelyn hadn’t doctored or expunged. But as she read the books’ spines, Agatha’s stomach sank: The History of Princely Failures

Rapunzel: The Real Giant Killer?

A Chronicle of Fraudulent Prince Rescues

The Fragile Male: The Decline of a Redundant Species

The Hidden History of Snow White’s Divorce

Agatha slumped to the floor. The Dean had covered her tracks even better than she thought.

Agatha looked up, discouraged, and saw the tortoise glaring right where she was sitting. Agatha didn’t budge, knowing it couldn’t possibly see her under her cape—and yet its shiny black eyes stayed fixed on her very spot, blinking heavy lids, the reptile’s body motionless. Still watching her, the tortoise slowly reached back with stubby arms and pulled off its mottled shell. From inside its body, it silently drew out a single thick book and slipped it onto the edge of the desk. Then it replaced its shell and resumed chewing, eyes on the remaining heap of his lunch.

Agatha gaped at the book, haloed by the sun streaming through the second-story windows.

Giggles echoed outside, along with nearing footsteps. Instantly Agatha flung up and raced towards the desk, scooping the book under her cape just as Arachne and Mona entered, too immersed in gossiping to notice the breeze that ruffled their hair.

Under her invisible snakeskin, Agatha sprinted upstairs to Honor’s rooftop and closed the frosted door behind her. Braving the icy winds, she wove through Guinevere’s hedges, peppered with idle doves, to find the last one, the pond scene near the balcony, secluded behind a wall of purple thorns. She sat on its shores and pulled the book from under her cape.

A Student’s History of the Woods

AUGUST A. SADER

Agatha let out a rush of air and gripped her old history textbook to her chest. Leave it to a librarian to find the book she needed, she thought, silently thanking the tortoise. What did he want her to find in its pages? Agatha caressed the book’s silver, silk-clothed cover, embossed with the glowing Storian clutched between black and white swans.

She thumbed open the thick textbook to see no words, but a familiar rainbow of raised dots in neat rows, small as pinheads. Though Professor Sader was blind and couldn’t write history, he had seen it and found a way for his students to do the same. As Agatha ran her fingers across the rows of dots, ghostly scenes magically unfolded atop the book page in three dimensions, playing out to Sader’s narration—the same scenes the Dean had revised in her new edition, so girls no longer knew what was true and what wasn’t.

Agatha swept her fingers across pages, fast-forwarding scenes until she found the page she wanted: “Chapter 28: Notable Seers,” boomed Professor Sader’s warm, deep voice.

A small, silent scene fogged into view atop the book page—a vision of three old men, beards to the floor, standing in the School Master’s tower with hands united. Agatha hunched over to watch the scene as Sader’s disembodied voice continued: “As we learned in Chapter 1, with the Three Seers of the Endless Woods, seers commonly share three traits: they live double the life span of ordinary humans; they age ten years as punishment if they answer a question about the future; and their bodies can host spirits, with deadly effect. . . .” Agatha’s hands scanned through the chapter, past scene after scene, until her fingers stopped suddenly in the middle of the page, finding a few rows of polished dots that looked newer and shinier than the rest.

Curious, she touched the first new dot.

Instantly a man’s handsome face sprung into the mist—a face Agatha recognized immediately, with silvery-gray hair and hazel eyes. Her throat tightened as she gazed at her old history professor from the School for Good, blinking back at her in phantom blue glow. Agatha swallowed and forced her fingers to keep moving. . . .

“The Saders are the longest and most successful line of seers. The most recently deceased member of the Sader family is the youngest son, August, who perished during The Tale of Sophie and Agatha.

“After the Great War between the two School Master brothers of Good and Evil, August Sader had long believed the Good brother created a spell against his twin before he died—a way to prove the balance of Good and Evil still intact—and hidden the spell in the uniform crests of the students. When the Evil brother destroyed this balance by killing a student under his protection, the spell unlocked, bringing the Good brother’s ghost back to life. As a seer, Sader sacrificed his body to the ghost, allowing the Good brother to slay his Evil twin and restore the Woods to balance.” Agatha’s hand stilled on the page, her heart sinking. That’s why the dots were new. He’d added his own death before it happened. She watched Sader’s ghostly face, frozen atop the book, smiling softly at her, the way he had when she first entered the School for Good. Perhaps he’d foreseen even before she’d arrived that he’d die for her. And still he’d smiled at her. Still he’d helped her.

Agatha could feel her chin quivering. She’d never regretted not having a father. She’d never let the thought in . . . not until this fleeting moment, when she realized what it must mean to have one.

A tear splashed through the misty vision, dissipating her dead professor’s face.

Agatha wiped her eyes and forced her hand to keep moving along the rest of the new dots.

“In addition, August Sader is believed responsible for the arrival of unenchanted Readers into the Endless Woods. After the Evil School Master killed his Good brother in order to control the Storian, the magic pen instead responded by making Good win in every new story—an eternal reminder that Evil was incapable of true love. To find a weapon even stronger than love, the Evil School Master sought out every seer in the Woods until he found August Sader, who, in exchange for a faculty position at the School for Good and Evil, revealed that the weapon the School Master sought would come from beyond the Woods. Sader’s prediction would come to be known as the Reader Prophecy, the most famous prophecy to emerge from the all-male Sader lineage of seers.” Agatha bolted straight. A lineage of boys? She reread the line, agape. How could August Sader have a sister in a lineage of boys?

She flipped pages anxiously, the dots no longer new, scanning dense Sader family trees and visions of Professor Sader’s brothers and nephews . . . until she reached a blank page, signaling the end of the chapter and the end of the trail.

Apparently Sader didn’t think his sister was worthy of mention, Agatha thought, grimacing. Frustrated, she was about to fling the book into the pond—when she suddenly noticed a row of teensy, shiny new dots, footnoted at the bottom of the blank page.

Squinting closer, her nose practically to the book, she touched the first dot, and a small two-dimensional portrait melted into yellowing mist, small as a postage stamp. A ravishing, gap-toothed woman smiled through the portrait frame, with flowing chestnut hair, bee-stung lips, and forest-green eyes.

Agatha’s pulse quickened and her fingers raced on.

“There is one more member of the Sader family that deserves mention. As a condition to the School Master for answering his question, August Sader asked that he teach history at the School for Good—and that his half sister, Evelyn, teach history at the School for Evil. However, as the illegitimate daughter of Constantin Sader, Evelyn Sader is not considered part of the Sader line, nor possessed seer powers.

“Evelyn Sader taught for two months before she was evicted from the school forever by the School Master for crimes against students.

“August Sader took over teaching her classes in the School for Evil until his death.” The Dean’s portrait hovered in mist as Agatha’s hand shook on the last dot of the page, her old professor’s words ringing in her ears.

Crimes against students.

Crimes so terrible, so unforgivable that an Evil School Master had banished a teacher from his own side.

Agatha’s heart stopped.

What had Evelyn Sader done?

Suddenly the Dean’s phantom portrait glowed hot red over the book and her face spun sharply to Agatha— “UNAUTHORIZED BOOK!” she hissed. “THIS BOOK IS UNAUTHORIZED—”

Instantly the page turned razor sharp and flew shrieking out of the book, slicing Agatha’s chest with a vicious paper cut. Terrified, Agatha tried to make her finger glow, but more screeching pages sharpened and tore from the book, cutting her from every direction. Agatha backed against a hedge, batting pages away, trying to focus on her fingerglow, but there were dozens of pages now, slicing at her arms, belly, legs, until her whole body was on fire. Gasping, she tried to scream for help, only to see hundreds of pages rip from the book and fly at her face, turning knife-edged for the kill. With a cry, Agatha finally felt her finger burn gold and stabbed it at the pages— A thousand white pages turned to white daisies in midair and fluttered down into the pond.

Panting, Agatha stared at the floating flowers, flecked with her own blood.

A booming crash exploded from the Library of Virtue below, sending the doves in the hedges scattering. Agatha’s eyes flared wide. She swept on her invisible cape and staggered out the frosted door, stumbling down the stairs, and lurched into the library . . .

But its keeper was gone from the desk, his feathered pen left behind with a half-eaten lunch dripping off his log. In the center of the room, Mona and Arachne sat white-faced at a library table, parchment and books strewn in front of them, gaping up at the second-floor window.

Agatha slowly tracked their eyes to the giant smashed hole in the glass . . . shaped like a tortoise.

Soft scratching sounds etched behind her, and Agatha turned to see the feathered pen magically writing in the log, dragging and sputtering with each stroke as if in pain, before collapsing to the desk, dead still.

Heart skittering, Agatha stepped closer, until she could read the tortoise’s last words.

BEWARE THE TRIAL

Hurry, Sophie, Agatha prayed.

Sitting in her window, she looked out at the School for Boys as the sun set, her blue bodice splotched with blood, her arms and legs scraped and bruised. Next to her, a green flame glowed inside a circular lantern she’d made out of parchment.

Sophie would flash her lantern back any minute now, green if she was safe too, red if she wasn’t.

Agatha watched the clock: 7:15 . . . 7:30 . . . But still no glow came from the Boys’ school.

Agatha could still feel her heart beating, the tortoise’s warning tattooed in her skull.

Two days until the Trial.

Two days.

She and Sophie had to get out of this school now.

Her eyes darted back to the clock . . . 7:45 . . . 7:50 . . .

No light from the boys’ castle.

. . . 7:55 . . .

Sophie was alone in there with her prince. . . .

Her Evil prince . . .

Her Evil prince who she dream-kissed this morning, not looking Evil at all . . .

Shut up, Agatha berated herself, whipping back to the clock.

. . . 8:00 now . . .

She heard swelling buzz in the halls, girls returning from supper. . . .

Agatha broke into a sweat. Wherever Sophie was, she was in trouble! She lunged towards the door, panting with pain—she had to rescue her friend!— Agatha froze. Slowly she turned back to the window, eyes wide.

High in the sky, across the bay, a green flare flashed behind thin clouds. Agatha stepped closer, squinting as the mist broke apart. The green glow wasn’t coming from a balcony or a boy’s castle spire.

It was coming from the School Master’s tower.

Agatha’s breath left her. She waved her hand in front of her lantern, flickering the flame.

Far away, Sophie did the same.

Agatha’s eyes popped, relief crashing over her. Sophie was already in the tower! She’d free the Storian any minute!

Breathless, Agatha slung on her cape and raced out of the room, leaving symptoms, dream kisses, and Evelyn Sader behind. As she rushed down steps, she could feel the pen getting closer, “The End” spilling from its nib. She’d hover by the shore for Sophie’s return, a wish waiting on the tips of their tongues. The tower would chase her, the boys mobbing behind for war, only to see two girls splinter to light and vanish hand in hand . . . a Trial thwarted, a happy ending restored, two friends home, stronger than before . . .

But the night came and went in gusts of cold, and Sophie didn’t come back.