فصل 4

Chapter 4

Red Hoods Ride

Agatha heard the men’s shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.

A few distant hoots and skitters muffled to silence. Agatha didn’t move, her spine throbbing where the rock hit her. All this time she had focused on rescuing her best friend and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Sophie gone?

She thought of innocent women burnt publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over. How can we ever go home? Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now. To go home, she couldn’t just rescue Sophie. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.

But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her friend. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormed into the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she and Sophie had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end. They had been the lucky ones to return, sealing the gates between reality and fantasy forever . . . or so she’d thought. One wish, and the gates had reopened.

Wherever Sophie was, she was in terrible danger.

Rising from a crouch, Agatha stepped into the Endless Woods, clumps crunching on dead leaves. Inching forward, she probed blindly with her hands, feeling splintered bark, cobwebbed branches. . . . Her head smacked into a tree and a shadow flung out, spewed something wet at her face, and vanished with a hiss. In response came a chorus of grunts and groans, all through the woods, like a sleeping enemy called to arms. Dazed, Agatha scraped the goo off her face and pulled Radley’s dagger from her pocket. Scuffling sounds came from beneath her feet.

Through dead leaves, she saw pupils open and shut in the undergrowth, yellow and green, glinting in one place, reappearing in another. Agatha shrank against the tree, trying not to blink. Little by little, her eyes adjusted, just in time to see eight slinky shadows unfurl from the ground in a circle around her, like coiling trails of smoke.

Snakes.

Only they were thicker than snakes, black as ash, with flattened heads and needle-sharp barbs through every scale. They rose higher, higher around Agatha, angling towards her with long, overlapping hisses, opening their full-fanged jaws wide— All at once, they spat.

Gobs of mucus pinned Agatha to the tree, and she dropped the dagger. She tried to wrench free, but sour film smacked into her mouth and eyes so all she could see was a ring of blurry, spiny silhouettes. They all aimed at different parts of her body, then curled their trunks around her, barbs piercing into her skin. Flailing silently, Agatha saw a last one, bigger than the rest, lower from a branch and loop its cold, black tail around her neck. As its barbs pricked her throat, she gasped for more breath, but the monster’s head was slithering up her face now. It pressed its fat nose against the film over her cheeks, glaring at her through thin, acid-green pupils . . . and started to squeeze. Agatha choked and closed her eyes.

She felt no hurt, only her soul searching for a memory. . . . She was sitting on a lakeshore, head on someone’s shoulder. Arm in arm, they held each other, sun drenching their skin, breaths quietly matched. Agatha listened to the silence of happiness, Ever After in a single moment. . . . Then sharp, stabbing pain flooded her body and she knew the end had come. Gripping the arm beside her, Agatha gazed into their lake’s reflection, needing to see her happy ending’s face, one last time— It wasn’t Sophie’s.

Light speared the darkness. The snakes recoiled with screams and scudded back under dead leaves.

Agatha opened her eyes. Dazed, she looked around for the source of light. Through the veil of goo, she saw it was her fingertip, burning gold for the first time since the wedding. She was at once relieved and sickened. Both times it had happened thinking of him.

Magic follows emotion, Yuba had warned. She’d lost control of both.

This time, however, her finger didn’t dim. Agatha held it up, confused. She focused on her need to get off this tree, and suddenly the glow pulsed brighter, as if waiting for instructions. Agatha’s heart pumped faster. She’d crossed into the fairy-tale world. Her magic was back.

Bursting with pain and stuck to a tree, Agatha was hardly in shape to remember spells from school. But when her breaths settled, she managed a basic melt jinx, and the mucus rinsed away with the blood, leaving her black dress sticky and soaked. Still, she was alive somehow, and with a wretched groan, Agatha picked up Radley’s dagger and pried off the soggy bark.

Finger aglow, she swept it like a torch through knotted trees, searching for a path, like Yuba had taught them. Like all the group leaders at the School for Good and Evil, the old gnome had used the Blue Forest, a lush, tranquil training ground meant to mimic the Endless Woods and prepare students for what they’d face. Agatha squeezed between two rotted tree trunks, trying to ignore the burning cuts all over her body. Now the Blue Forest seemed like the School Master’s cruel joke.

Agatha wrenched between more webbed trees towards a gap in the thicket, hoping it’d be the path. She didn’t dare call Sophie’s name and signal the assassins she was on their trail.

With each step, Agatha felt a growing sense of doom. She’d been in the Endless Woods twice before, but this time it was different. There was no school to save her. There was no Tedros.

Her fingerglow pulsed brighter.

Tedros of Camelot.

Finally she said his name to herself, here, alone in the Woods. The last time she’d seen her prince was in the twilight of her and Sophie’s kiss, a kiss he thought would be his. As he watched her disappear into thin air, he reached for her, choking a scream—“Wait!” She’d had the choice to take his hand. She’d had the choice to stay as his princess. She felt it as her body glowed to light, trapped between worlds.

But she chose Sophie, and then Agatha was gone.

She was so sure she’d made the right choice. It was the only ending she ever wanted. But the more she tried to forget him, the more her prince came. In dreams, day and night . . . his pained blue eyes . . . his body lunging . . . his big, strong hand, reaching for hers . . .

Until one day she reached back.

Just find Sophie, she gritted, remembering her promise to Stefan. All she wanted was Sophie home alive—charming, maniacal, ludicrous Sophie. She’d never doubt her happy ending again.

As she waded through a mess of fallen branches towards the gap in the trees, Agatha held up her lit finger and saw it wasn’t a path at all. It was a vast cesspool of mud, rusted red, stretching east and west as far as she could see. She picked up a rock and lobbed it into the pool. The splash wasn’t shallow.

Suddenly Agatha noticed two shadows down the bank, probing at the red mud with dark hooves: a horned stag with his female deer. After a few more testing prods, the stag seemed satisfied, and both slid into the mud side by side, swimming towards the distant bank. Relieved, Agatha rolled up her dress to follow them— Something snatched the female deer and Agatha stumbled back in shock. Three long, spiny white crocodile snouts rose from the mud, thin and rectangular, with enormous round nostrils and black shark teeth, tearing into the thrashing female. They pulled her under, ignoring the bigger male completely as he flailed whimpering to the far shore.

Agatha didn’t try to cross.

Tears in her eyes, she staggered back the way she came, sweeping her fingerglow across the maze of trees. Where was her friend? What had they done with her? Trying to stifle her sobs, she limped towards the forest edge, seeing nothing but the shadows of skeletal branches . . . slivers of dark clouds . . . a hot glow of pink. . . .

She stopped her finger on it, pulsing like a beacon to bad behavior. Anyone else would have mistaken it for an animal’s eye. But Agatha knew.

Only one animal on earth made a pink like that.

She tore through trees, fighting her pain, following the pink glow fading weaker in the distance. As she neared, she began to see smears of blood on trees, like the trail of a wounded beast. She plowed through broken branches and ripped away vines, hair snaring on nettles, until she caught wisps of lavender perfume. Agatha jumped over a log, heart bursting from her chest, and charged into the small glade— “Sophie!”

Sophie didn’t respond. Facing away, she was slumped on her knees behind a far tree, arms over her head. The second finger on her right hand pulsed her signature pink glow a few last times and dulled to pale.

“Sophie?” Agatha said. Her own gold fingerglow went cold.

Sophie still didn’t move.

Agatha approached the tree, dread rising. She could hear her friend’s shallow breaths. Slowly Agatha reached out and touched bare shoulder through Sophie’s torn dress.

There was blood on it.

Agatha spun her around. Sophie’s hands were lashed to a branch with braided horse reins. There were shallow knife pricks in each of her palms, from which the Elders had taken blood and smeared a scarlet message on Sophie’s chest.

TAKE ME

Frantic, Agatha cut Sophie down with her knife, trying in vain to think of a spell to wash away the blood. She scrubbed at her friend’s skin with shaking palms. “I’m sorry—” she choked, severing the last rein. “I’ll get us home—I promise—” The instant she was free, Sophie covered Agatha’s mouth with ice-cold hands. Agatha followed her wide, bloodshot eyes. . . .

There was something on all the trees ahead, flapping milky white in the darkness. Agatha held up her glowing finger.

Parchment scrolls crackled in the wind like dead leaves, tacked to the trunks. Each one was the same.

The face on the posters was Sophie’s.

“That’s impossible!” Agatha cried. “He’s dea—”

She froze.

Between trees she caught glints of red. Something was coming.

Agatha grabbed Sophie’s wrist and dragged her behind a trunk. Muffling Sophie’s moans with her hand, Agatha slowly peeked out.

Through tangled branches, she saw men in red leather hoods, eyeholes cut away. They carried fire-tipped arrows, which lit up their sleeveless black leather uniforms and bare, muscular arms. She tried to count how many there were—10, 15, 20, 25 . . . until she counted one whose violet eyes glared right at her. Grinning, he raised his bow.

“Down!” Agatha yelped—

The first arrow singed Sophie’s neck as both girls dove into dirt. Neither spoke as they floundered through snarls of black briars, dozens of flaming arrows barely missing them and igniting trees left and right. Hand in hand, the girls fled deeper into the Woods, looking for somewhere to hide, red hoods gaining, until they came to a break in the trees and finally glimpsed the forest path, serene in moonlight. Wheezing with relief, they ran for it and stopped short.

The path forked into two. Both trails were thin and sooty, crooking away in opposite directions. Neither looked more hopeful than the other, but from reading storybooks, the girls knew.

Only one was correct.

“Which way?” Sophie rasped.

Agatha could see just how weak and shaken her friend was. She had to get her to safety. Hearing the skimming of arrows again, Agatha swung her head between the paths, burning trees growing nearer . . . nearer. . . .

“Aggie, which way?” Sophie pressed.

Agatha’s eyes darted uselessly back and forth, waiting for a sign— Sophie gasped. “Look!”

Agatha swiveled to the east path. A glowing blue butterfly flapped in darkness, high above the trail. It beat its wings faster and nosed forward, as if urging them to follow.

“Come on,” Sophie said, suddenly strong again, and surged forward.

“We’re following a butterfly?” Agatha retorted as she chased Sophie past WANTED signs on trees ahead.

“Don’t worry. It’s leading us out of here!”

“How do you know?”

“Hurry! We’ll lose it!”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through—” Agatha heaved, puffing behind.

“Let’s not play who’s had it worse, shall we!”

The butterfly sped up as if nearing its destination and veered around a bend, wings brightening to blinding blue. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the wrist, dragged her faster around the curve— Into a dead end of fallen trees.

The butterfly was gone.

“No!” Sophie squeaked. “But I thought—I thought—”

“It was a special butterfly?”

Sophie shook her head, eyes welling, as if her friend couldn’t understand. Then, over Agatha’s shoulder, she saw a torch-lit shadow inch across the trees, then two more . . .

The hoods had found their path.

“We had our happy ending—” Sophie backed against a trunk. “This is all my fault—” “No . . . ,” Agatha said, looking down. “It’s mine.”

Sophie’s heart clamped. It was the same feeling she had alone in the church, thinking about how her friend had changed. A feeling that told her none of the last month was an accident.

“Agatha . . . why is this all happening?”

Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie . . . I—I—I—made a—mistake—” “Aggie, slow down.”

Agatha couldn’t look at her. “I opened it—I opened our fairy tale—” “I don’t understand—”

“A w-w-wish!” Agatha stammered, reddening. “I made a wish—” Sophie shook her head. “A wish?”

“I didn’t mean it—it happened so fast—”

“A wish for what?”

Agatha took a deep breath. She looked into her friend’s scared eyes.

“Sophie, I wished I was with—”

“Tickets,” a voice said.

Both girls turned to see an alarmingly thin caterpillar with a top hat, curled mustache, and purple tuxedo poking out of a tree hollow.

“Thank you for calling the Flowerground. No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the flowertrains. Violations will result in the removal of your clothes. Tickets?” Sophie and Agatha gaped at each other. Neither had the faintest idea how to call the Flowerground.

“Look, mister,” Agatha pressured, glancing back at shadows nearing the dead-end turn, “we need to ride right now and we don’t have—” “Leave it to me,” Sophie whispered, and twirled. “Such a pleasure to see you again, conductor! Remember me? We met when you graciously escorted our class to the Garden of Good and Evil. And look at that lovely mustache! I just love a good mustache—” “No ticket, no ride,” the caterpillar crabbed, and withdrew.

“But they’ll kill us!” Agatha cried, seeing red hoods turn into view— “Special circumstances can be presented in writing on Form Code 77 at the Flowerground Registry Office, open on alternate Mondays from 3:00 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.—” Agatha grabbed him from the tree. “Let us in or I eat you.” The caterpillar bleached in her grip. “NEVERS!” he called. Vines shot out and sucked Agatha and Sophie into the hollow as arrows set the tree aflame.

The two girls fell through a pit of swirling pastel colors until vines flung them over a snapping Venus flytrap into a tunnel of blinding-hot mist. Shielding their eyes, the girls felt their vines cinch around their chests like straitjackets and hook on to something above them. Both peeked through their hands to see that they were dangling in midair from a luminescent green tree trunk stenciled: ARBOREA LINE

“The butterfly called the train somehow!” Sophie yelled from her tight harness as the track propelled them ahead. “See! The butterfly was trying to help us!” Coming out of the mist, Agatha gaped at the Flowerground for the first time, speechless. Before her was a spectacular underground transport system, big as half of Gavaldon, made entirely of plants. Color-coded tree trunks crisscrossed like rail tracks in a bottomless cavern, whisking passengers dangling from vine straps to their respective destinations in the Endless Woods. The conductor, perched in a glass-windowed compartment inside ARBOREA’s green trunk, grumpily called stops into a willow microphone as flowertrains flitted by: “Maidenvale!” “Avalon Towers!” “Runyon Lane!” “Ginnymill!” Whenever passengers heard their stop, they pulled hard on their vine strap; the strap fastened around their wrist, unfurled off their track, and ferried them high to one of many wind-wheel exits that churned them out of the Flowerground and up onto land.

Agatha noticed their green line’s trunk was jam-packed with women in twittering conversation, some well dressed and cheerful, others oddly haglike and unattractive for Evers, while the red ROSALINDA LINE running perpendicular had only a few glum, scraggly-looking men. Under those two tree tracks, the yellow DAHLIA LINE buzzed with groups of beautiful and homely women, while its crisscrossing pink PEONY LINE had only three rumpled, dirty male dwarfs. Agatha didn’t remember the caterpillar saying anything about women and men sitting apart, but then again she couldn’t remember half his stupid rules.

She was distracted by two parakeets, feathers the color of a rain forest, who fluttered up with glasses of celery-cucumber juice and pistachio muffins. On the illuminated tree trunk above her head, an orchestra of well-dressed lizards struck up a baroque waltz on violins and flutes, accompanied by a chorus of caroling green frogs. For the first time in weeks, Agatha managed a smile. She inhaled the sweet, nutty muffin in one bite and washed it down with the tart green juice.

In the harness next to her, Sophie sniffed and poked at her muffin.

“You going to eat that?” Agatha said.

Sophie shoved it at her, mumbling something about butter and the devil’s work. “It’s easy to get home,” she said, watching Agatha scarf it. “All we have to do is ride this line in the opposite direct—” Agatha had stopped chewing. Slowly Sophie followed her friend’s eyes to her own punctured palms . . . to the raw marks around her wrists left by the Elders’ reins . . . to the scarlet letters faint on her chest. . . .

“We can’t go home, can we?” Sophie breathed.

“Even if we prove the Elders lied, the School Master will still hunt you,” said Agatha miserably.

“He can’t be alive. We saw him die, Aggie.” Sophie looked up at her friend. “Didn’t we?” Agatha didn’t have an answer.

“How did we lose it, Aggie?” Sophie said, looking so confused. “How did we lose our happy ending?” Agatha knew this was the time to finish what she’d started at the hollow. But gazing into Sophie’s big doe eyes, she couldn’t bear to break her heart. Somehow there had to be a way to fix this without her friend ever knowing what she’d wished for. Her wish was just a mistake. A mistake she’d never ever have to face.

“There has to be a way to get our ending back,” Agatha said, determined. “We just need to seal the gates—” But Sophie was staring past her, head cocked. Agatha turned around.

The Flowerground was empty behind them. All its passengers had disappeared.

“Aggie . . . ,” Sophie wheezed, squinting into the distant mist— Agatha saw them now too. Red hoods swinging across the tracks, straight for their train.

Both girls tore at their harnesses, but the vines yoked them tighter. Agatha tried to make her finger glow, but it wouldn’t light— “Aggie, they’re coming!” Sophie yelled, seeing the hoods leap onto the red line two tracks above.

“Pull on your vine!” Agatha shouted, for that’s how she’d seen the others get off the ride. But no matter how hard she or Sophie tugged, the track just whisked them along.

Agatha fumbled for Radley’s dagger and cut herself free, eyeing the red hoods getting closer. “Stay there!” she screamed at Sophie, measuring the distance to her friend’s vine. Dangling from her strap, Agatha winced at the giant flytraps snapping out of the bottomless pastel pit below. With a cry, she kicked and swung herself into the tunnel wind for her friend— Agatha’s hands missed the strap and she crashed into Sophie, grappling her like a tree.

The green tree trunk turned bright orange and started flashing. “VIOLATION,” a crabby voice boomed over a speaker. “NO SWINGING. VIOLATION. NO SWINGING. VIOLATION—” A flock of green parakeets flew in and started pecking at Agatha’s dress, trying to pull it off. She dropped her knife. “What the—” “Get off her!” Sophie shrieked, slapping the birds away.

“VIOLATION,” the crabby voice blared. “NO SLAPPING. VIOLATION. NO SLAPPING.” The lizards and frogs atop their track skittered down the green-flowered vines and started tugging at Sophie’s clothes. Aghast, Sophie smacked at them, sending lizards and flowers flying. Agatha inhaled the pollen and sneezed.

“VIOLATION. NO SNEEZING. VIOLATION.” Birds, lizards, and frogs from other lines descended to denude both girls as punishment— “We need to get off!” Agatha cried.

“I know! I only have two buttons left!” Sophie squealed, slapping the frog away.

“No! We need to get off now!”

Agatha pointed at the red hoods swinging onto their track— “Follow me!” she cried to Sophie, shaking off a rainbow of lizards, and swung to the next strap. She glanced back to see Sophie still grappling a canary on her collar. “Shoo! This is handmade!” “NOW!” Agatha roared—

Sophie gasped and swung for the next vine. She missed and plunged screaming towards a gnashing flytrap. Agatha blanched in horror— Sophie belly flopped onto the blue HIBISCUS LINE below, running parallel at high speed. Hands and legs wrapped around the glowing trunk, she looked up at Agatha, who heaved with relief.

“Aggie, watch out!” Sophie yelled—

Agatha wheeled to a hood on her vine. He grabbed her throat.

Hearing Agatha’s choked gurgles above her, Sophie tried to stand on her trunk, then saw a thorn tunnel ahead about to decapitate her and plastered down just as her train whooshed through. Suddenly she heard a twinkly sound and swerved her head down the tunnel to see the glowing blue butterfly, hovering in place above the track.

“Help us!” Sophie begged—

The butterfly beat its wings and whizzed forward. As her train came out of the tunnel, Sophie scooted down the tree trunk to follow it, shadows of the hood strangling Agatha darkening the track ahead. Frantic, Sophie tried to keep up with the butterfly, but two red hoods landed in front of her, bows and arrows in hand. Just as they aimed, she looked back with terror and saw the hood about to snap Agatha’s neck— The butterfly dove and yanked the vine under Sophie’s hand. In an instant, the vine snared Sophie’s wrist, ripped her off the track, and lassoed Agatha’s hand on the way up. The hoods whirled in shock, spewing their knives and arrows at them, but the vine coiled like a whip and launched both girls upwards into a blue windwheel of light. The rush of air sucked them towards the light portal in a storm of loose petals, pulling up, up, up— And into a lush field.

Kneeling in a bed of tall red and yellow lilies, Agatha and Sophie heaved for breath, faces scratched, petals in hair, and dresses barely still on. Both looked down at the dirt-plugged hole they’d just spouted from, broiled with arrows from below.

“Where are we?” Sophie said, searching for the blue butterfly.

Agatha shook her head. “I don’t—”

Then she saw a red lily and a yellow lily whispering to each other, giving her strange looks.

She’d seen flowers talking about her once before, she thought. In a field just like this, until they’d tugged her by the wrist and yanked her up to . . .

Agatha lurched to her feet.

The School for Good soared above them, shimmering in red-orange sunrise over the crystal-clear side of Halfway Bay. Its four glass towers, once divided between pink and blue, were now only blue, with flags bearing butterflies of the same color billowing from sharp minarets.

“We’re back,” Sophie gasped.

Agatha went white as snow.

Back to the one place she’d tried to forget. Back to the one place that could ruin everything.

Ahead, the closed doors to the Good castle lay atop a hill. Golden spiked gates barred the path up the Great Lawn, mirrored words arching over them: THE SCHOOL FOR GIRL

EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Agatha closed and reopened her bleary eyes, for she had seen wrong.

It still said “GIRL.”

“Huh?”

Sophie stood up beside her. “That’s strange.”

“Well, ‘Good’ and ‘Girl’ aren’t so far apart,” Agatha said. “Maybe one of the nymphs got confused.” But then she saw what Sophie was looking at. At the halfway point across the bay, Good’s lake slimed into Evil’s moat. Only the moat wasn’t black, like it used to be. It was rusted red, the color of the cesspool in the Woods and guarded by the spiny white crocodiles she had seen eat the female deer—at least twenty of them, lurking in the sludge, black shark teeth glinting.

Slowly Agatha looked up at the School for Evil looming above the moat. Three bloodred towers, jagged with spikes, flanked a smooth silver tower, twice as tall as the others. Atop the four towers, black flags crackled in the fog, emblazoned with scarlet snakes.

“There used to be three Evil towers,” Sophie said, squinting. “Not four . . .” Voices rose across the bay and the two girls ducked into the lilies.

Out of the Woods stormed men in black through Evil’s castle gates.

They were wearing red leather hoods.

“The School Master’s men!” Sophie cried as they faded into the fog.

Agatha whitened. “But that means—”

She whirled back to the bay.

“It’s . . . gone,” breathed Agatha, for the School Master’s sky-high silver tower, once guarding the halfway point between moat and lake, had simply . . . disappeared.

“No, it’s not,” Sophie said, still eyeing the School for Evil.

Now Agatha saw why there were four towers there instead of three.

The School Master’s tower had moved to Evil.

“He’s alive!” Agatha cried, gaping at his silver spire. “But how—” Sophie pointed. “Look!”

In the tower’s single window, veiled by fog, a shadow stared down at them. All they could see of its face was a gleaming silver mask.

“It’s him!” Sophie hissed. “He’s leading Evil!”

“Agatha! Sophie!”

The girls swiveled from the lilies to see Professor Dovey running from Good castle in her green high-necked gown.

“Come quickly!”

As the two girls hurried behind her through Good’s golden gates, Agatha glanced back at the School Master’s tower and the masked shadow in the window. All they had to do was kill him again, and her mistake would be hidden forever. They’d go home safe, her promise to Stefan kept, and Sophie would never know what she’d wished for. Looking up at that shadow lording over Evil, Agatha waited for her heart to rage with purpose, to propel her into battle . . . but instead her heart did something else.

It fluttered.

The way a princess’s did in storybooks.

When she saw her prince.