فصل 33

33

An Unexpected History Lesson

With the ceiling closed and no warmth seeping in from the theater, the dungeon turned lethally cold.

The two girls stumbled to their feet and recoiled against opposite walls, lit by the frosty blue light of the tombs. Each held out her glowing fingertip, trying to catch her breath as they glared into the other’s eyes.

“What are you going to do? Kill me?” Agatha panted, shivering in her black cloak. “Still won’t get you out of this place alive.” “And you can?” Sophie scowled, fingertip smoking through the frigid air. “You who will do anything to make me destroy my ring? Chase me, bully me, hurt me . . . bet you have a wand in that pocket, ready to hold to my head. Go on. Threaten me, Aggie. Threaten me with life or death. I’ll die rather than destroy this ring for you.” Agatha went quiet, weak from the stun spell and the cold. She looked past Sophie at the long rows of graves leading into the darkness. She couldn’t help but snort at the irony of it all.

Sophie simmered. “You think this is funny?”

“It’s just . . . this is how Tedros and I started when we came back to rescue you,” said Agatha. “Trapped in a grave.” “And now you’re here with me, trying to find a way to rescue him,” Sophie snarked. “Always rescuing, Aggie. Always so Good. How could I ever match up?” “Friendship isn’t a competition.”

“Says the friend who made it one,” Sophie retorted, pointing her fingerglow at Agatha’s heart. “You and your old minions want me to destroy my true love, so you can keep yours. What if I destroy you instead?” “He’s not your true love,” Agatha said, struggling to stay calm. “He’s using you to get his ending.” “Just like you’re trying to use me to get yours,” said Sophie, finger glowing hotter. “Even if I end up alone.” Agatha matched her gaze. “My ending has you in it, Sophie. Even if I’m with Tedros. I’ll never leave you behind, no matter how Evil you are, how many boys come in our way, or how old we get. We’re stronger than Good and Evil, Boys and Girls, and Old and Young. We’re best friends.” The fury drained out of Sophie’s face. “And yet, we can’t find a happy ending together, no matter how hard we try,” she said, softer now. “Every path leaves us trapped.” Agatha clung to Cinderella’s words. “Don’t give up on us, Sophie.”

“Do you know what you’re asking me, Aggie?” Sophie’s fingerglow dimmed, her eyes shimmering like cut emeralds. “You’re asking me to throw away my Ever After for yours, and still be happy. You’re asking me to end just like my mother, only worse, because you want me to come live with you two. It would be like Cinderella’s stepsisters shacking up with her and the prince at the palace like one big, blissful family, Happily Ever After. You know why we never saw that in a storybook? Because it could never happen.” Agatha stared at her, her own fingerglow dimming too.

Sophie’s face hardened again. “But it would also be foolish to kill you right now,” she said, ice-cold. “Help me find a way out of here and maybe you’ll see your precious prince again.” She tightened the ring on her finger and headed further into the Brig.

Agatha’s heart withered, watching Sophie’s black-leathered silhouette recede into the mist.

Where was Tedros right now? Is he even alive?

The sun must be on its last drips, no more than an hour left . . .

No. I can’t think like that.

A hero always finds a way out.

Tedros would find a way out.

Agatha took a shallow breath and forced herself after Sophie.

“There must be a secret door somewhere,” Sophie’s voice echoed.

Agatha couldn’t keep up, her legs still throbbing, her teeth starting to chatter. Limping behind, she scanned the coffins sunken into opposing walls, filled with those who’d betrayed their duties to Evil. Professor Espada, the Swordplay teacher . . . Professor Lukas, the boys’ Chivalry teacher . . . Albemarle, the spectacled woodpecker in charge of the Groom Room . . . each freshly entombed when they’d refused to serve the young School Master’s new school. Lesso and Dovey hadn’t had the time to rescue them, but all three were still alive and healthy, their wide eyes blinking through the ice like trapped puppets. Guilty that she didn’t have time to free them either, Agatha slunk further into the Brig, promising herself she’d come back if she could. At least they were still alive, she thought, because now she could see older coffins ahead, murky and cobwebbed, with dead bodies decaying inside of them. Each was labeled on the outside with a small steel placard, blank and awaiting inscription.

Yet as Agatha moved past the grave of a rotting teenaged boy with curly black hair, she suddenly noticed the placards weren’t blank at all. There were carvings embedded in the steel . . .

A series of raised dots, small as pinheads, arranged in neat rows.

Her heart drummed faster. Blind Professor August Sader couldn’t write history in words like a normal historian. But he had seen history in a way no one else could and found a way to help his students see it too, using magic dots like the ones Agatha was looking at right now. Breathless, she couldn’t resist brushing her fingertips across them— A swoosh of silver air rocketed off the placard, contorting into a floating human silhouette, three-dimensional and the size of a fairy. Professor Sader grinned back at Agatha as he hovered in midair, wearing his customary shamrock suit, his wavy silver hair neat and clean, his hazel eyes twinkling with life. For a moment, Agatha beamed in surprise, thinking he was looking at her, before Sader’s focal point scanned past her, addressing a larger audience.

“The next betrayer on our tour is Fawaz of Shazabah, a henchman ordered by an Evil sultan to hide a magic lamp where no one could find it, before Fawaz secretly tried to keep it for himself. The sultan caught him and had him killed, before he was brought here to the Brig for permanent display. You won’t need to know which sultan he betrayed for your second-year exam, but keep your eye on Fawaz, who plays a crucial role in how Aladdin came to find his magic lamp . . .” Of course he didn’t see me, Agatha sighed, quickly moving on. One, Sader was blind; two, he was dead; and three, he was nothing but a phantom now, on a recorded loop. No doubt he’d left these placards behind for future History classes after he foresaw his own death, just as he’d once amended the class textbooks to include his obituary.

Agatha couldn’t see Sophie anymore through the mist.

What would Sader have told me to do?

Sun setting . . . shield falling . . . Tedros struggling . . . a ring on her best friend’s finger the only way out . . .

A happy ending is right under your nose.

That’s what he’d say.

Tears sprung to her eyes. He’d always felt like a father to her. Sometimes in her dreams, she’d see him, with his silvery hair and light eyes, looking down at her, with the gentlest of smiles. But when she woke up, she knew he wasn’t real, just as he wasn’t real now. Just as there was nothing under her nose except darkness and snow.

As she hurried past more tombs, she ran her fingers over the placards, so she could see his face pop up again and again, the voices overlapping as Sader’s phantom explained each one, until the entire dungeon chorused with Professor Sader’s deep, measured tones. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t real, Agatha thought. There was something soothing about hearing him, as if she was safe and protected as long as Sader was talking . . .

Only she could see Sophie’s shadow again now, looming in front of one of the graves ahead. Agatha’s gut tightened.

“Did you find a way out?” she pressed. “Is that a secret doo—”

Sophie didn’t answer.

She was staring at a beautiful woman in a silky white dress, her eyes closed inside her coffin, her face serene, like a princess waiting to be kissed. Unlike the other decaying corpses, she had flawless, vanilla skin, luscious lips, and the most beautiful long, blond hair, like hand-spun gold. From the pallor of her mouth and the waxy complexion of her skin, it was clear she was dead and embalmed long before she was ever placed into her frozen grave.

“Who’s that?” Agatha said.

Sophie didn’t answer.

Behind them, Sader’s recorded voices had all gone quiet.

Agatha frowned. “Sophie, we don’t have time to sit here and ogle random dead women who happen to look like you—” Her heart dropped. No.

“That’s . . . that’s her?” Agatha blurted. “That’s—”

“My mother,” said Sophie, her voice flat and numb. “Her body was here in the Woods all along. The grave on Necro Ridge wasn’t a mistake. Someone must have moved her here.” “But that’s impossible!” said Agatha, before she looked up at Vanessa again and saw just how much she resembled Sophie. “Isn’t it?” “Only one way to find out,” Sophie rasped.

Agatha followed her gaze to the placard on Vanessa’s tomb and the silver dots carved into the steel.

“Her story is inside those dots,” said Sophie shakily. “The answer to why she has a headstone on Necro Ridge. To why she’s here in Evil’s dungeon.” Sophie looked at her friend. “And maybe to why the both of us are in this fairy tale together.” Agatha held her breath, watching Sophie reach out a quivering hand and brush her fingers across the dots.

A cloud of silver leapt off the placard, melting into Sader’s miniature silhouette once more. Only this time he was no longer smiling or at ease. His shoulders were stiff, his jaw tight, and his glassy hazel gaze locked on them.

“We don’t have much time, girls. If you’re seeing this, then my visions held true and you are nearing the end of your story.” Agatha reddened. “But Professor Sader, what happens at—”

“Dead seers still can’t answer questions, Agatha, though I knew you would ask one because I am a seer and foresaw it. But from now until this recording runs out, neither of you will interrupt me again. There is no time for interruptions.” Agatha and Sophie glanced at each other.

This means everything turns out happily, Agatha thought, hope swelling. Sader sees the future . . . he knows we come out alive— “I do not know how your fairy tale ends,” Sader said starkly.

Agatha snapped back to him.

“My visions stop after you and Sophie appear in front of me, listening to this very message. From here, I do not know whether you live or die, end as friends or enemies, or whether either of you will find a happy ending at all.” Agatha felt hope shrivel away.

“What I do know, however, is that you cannot find the ending to your fairy tale unless you know how it began,” said Sader. “And it began long before you two ever came to the School for Good and Evil. Every old story sets off a chain of events that leads to a new story. Every new story has its roots in the old. Your story most of all.” He conjured a storybook twice as big as his fairy-sized body and let it float towards the girls. It had a red cherrywood cover, just like The Tale of Sophie and Agatha that the Storian was writing in the School Master’s tower right now. Only as Agatha looked closer, she realized this wasn’t her and Sophie’s fairy tale. The title of this one was: The Table of Callis & Vanessa

Agatha saw Sophie’s whole body seize up.

“She was in a fairy tale,” Sophie gasped.

Sader spread open the storybook to its first page. A puff of mist erupted over it, along with a ghostly scene of an ordinary cottage. “And now it’s time for you to go inside,” he said.

Agatha and Sophie stared at his tiny image, confused.

“I was never fond of my sister Evelyn’s spells, but there was one that I quite liked,” Professor Sader explained, with a growing grin. “Because say what you will of her, when Evelyn Sader told you a story . . . she made you feel like you were there.” He raised the open storybook and blew on the phantom scene. With a fizzling swish, the scene shattered into a million glittered shards and crashed over the two girls like a glass sandstorm. Agatha shielded her eyes, her body drifting through space, until her feet touched ground next to Sophie’s. Slowly they both looked up.

They were standing inside the cottage they’d seen on the page, the air thick and hazy around them, giving the room a vaporous feel, as if it wasn’t quite real. Agatha recognized the effect at once, for this was how Evelyn Sader had brought them into her adulterated fairy tales a year ago. Now August Sader had brought them into one they never knew existed.

Agatha scanned the intimate kitchen and white, round dining table . . .

“Wait a second—” she started.

“This is my house,” said Sophie, realizing it too.

Agatha furrowed. “But if it’s your house, then who’s that?”

Sophie followed her eyes to a skinny black-haired girl in the corner, scowling out a window. She had a sharp nose, big brown eyes, and thin pink lips. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“It’s . . . you . . . ,” said Sophie, studying her. “Only not you.”

Definitely not me, thought Agatha, because this girl had a cruel mouth and a vicious gleam in her eye. There was something dark and venomous about her that made Agatha afraid of her, even if she was just a phantom. She’d never seen the girl in her life. She had no idea who she was and why she was in Sophie’s house. But one thing was for sure. Whatever the girl was looking at through the window had her unwavering focus and utmost contempt.

“Once upon a time, in a land beyond the Woods, there lived a girl named Vanessa,” said Professor Sader.

Sophie and Agatha froze dead still, eyes wide, breath misting.

Neither looked at the other. Neither spoke.

They gaped at the dark-haired girl, who looked starkly different than the blond-haired woman they’d just seen in the frozen tomb.

Because if this was Vanessa, then they had this story all wrong.

“Vanessa was a foul, miserable soul, who thought herself far better than the town she lived in,” said Sader. “Perhaps she would have made a fair student at the School for Evil, except for one ray of light amidst the darkness of her heart . . .” The scene magically zoomed in, so now Sophie and Agatha could see what the girl was looking at through the window . . .

A young and strapping teenager strutted by, with thick, wavy, golden blond hair, a tall, sturdy frame, blue-green eyes and a devil-may-care smile.

Stefan, thought Agatha, struck once more by his resemblance to August Sader, even as a young boy.

But it wasn’t Stefan who Vanessa was glowering at, as he passed by her house. It was the plump, scraggly-haired, sweet-faced girl walking with Stefan, hand in hand.

“Honora,” Sophie whispered.

Sader continued: “Since the day she laid eyes on him, Vanessa had been in love with young Stefan. Not that they knew each other. Vanessa fantasized about him from afar, waiting for him to rescue her from her dreary life. Day after day, he was her only source of happiness. This despite the fact their souls were mirror images. Where Vanessa was calculating, controlling, and disdainful of her fellow villagers, Stefan was jovial, gregarious, and a favorite of the Elders. Not that he didn’t have his faults: Stefan was rakish and carefree in a way that made mothers keep their daughters away from him. But if Vanessa thought this cleared the way for Stefan to choose her, that would soon change. For Stefan had fallen in love with a girl named Honora, who despite her plain looks, had his same blithe and playful spirit. Stefan had eyes for no one else.” Vanessa glared harder at Honora, who was ruffling Stefan’s hair, until Honora noticed Vanessa through the window. Vanessa quickly pretended to be doing dishes.

“Needless to say, Vanessa saw no such Goodness in Honora, and thought of her only as an Evil witch. Vanessa spent most of her days plotting how to tear the witch and Stefan apart, before she hatched the perfect plan. For what better way was there to get closer to her true love than to make friends with the witch?” The cottage vanished around them, instantly replaced by the town square, where Vanessa and Honora walked hand in hand through the lanes, as Stefan traipsed beside them.

“And Honora, who was just as affable as Stefan, was more than receptive to a new best friend. Meanwhile, Vanessa finally had her chance at the boy of her dreams . . .” Vanessa scooted closer to Stefan on the path and smiled up at him . . . He shifted away, ignoring her.

“Only there was one flaw in Vanessa’s plan: Stefan didn’t like her. And there was nothing Vanessa could do to change that,” Professor Sader declared.

The town square melted away and now Vanessa was kneeling in the graveyard at night, near the Forest’s edge, praying into the darkness with clasped hands.

“So young Vanessa did the one thing storybooks taught her to do when you love someone who is out of reach. She wished into the Woods for a magic spell that could help her win her one true love.” The scene started to evaporate around the two girls.

“Yet Vanessa’s isn’t the only love story that matters in this fairy tale . . . ,” Sader’s voice echoed.

Phantom colors melted in around them and now they were in the School Master’s tower, as the masked sorcerer flew in through his window, carrying a young, attractive woman in his arms, with short brown hair, big, beautiful eyes, and tanned, gangly limbs.

“Because while Vanessa prayed for Stefan’s heart, the School Master was trying to win Callis’.” Agatha choked on her own tongue. “Callis?” She ogled the woman’s elegant posture, olive-brown locks, and bright, freckly skin. “But that can’t be Callis. It doesn’t look anything like—” Something hopped out of the woman’s black dress onto the floor.

A tiny, bald, wrinkled kitten.

Reaper.

Agatha blanched.

Merlin had told her part of this story—that the School Master sought her mother’s love—but the woman in his arms didn’t look anything like her mother . . .

Or did she?

For as Agatha looked closer at her wide, lucid eyes and long nose, she started to see bits and pieces of her mother, like a sculpture that had been deliberately altered.

Something floated back to her that Merlin had said her first time in the Celestium with him . . . something about Callis being quite pretty, before Tedros snorted incredulously . . .

Agatha watched the School Master bring the woman deeper into his chamber, Reaper pattering beside her.

It was her mother.

But then why didn’t it look like her?

She broke out of her trance, for Sader had already moved on.

“The School Master was curious about a new teacher, Callis of Netherwood, who the Storian had chosen for its latest tale shortly after she took a position teaching Uglification at school. According to the Storian, Callis had long dreamed of finding her one true love, even though she taught at the School for Evil. In truth, Callis was having doubts as to whether she was Evil at all. So when the School Master took a shine to her—a School Master everyone thought was Good at the time—Callis saw her way out. A chance to switch sides to Good and find her true love at last.” The masked School Master pulled a golden ring from his pocket and took one knee before her. Slowly she reached for the ring . . . and stopped cold.

For now, as she looked closer at the ring, she could see the inky, black streaks swirling beneath its gold, like a poison waiting to latch on to its wearer.

“Until she realized what the School Master really was.”

The scene flashed to Callis fleeing through the dark Woods in the rain, a bald, wrinkled kitten wrapped in her arms.

“She held him off for a night, but the next evening after classes, she made her escape. She had to warn Merlin that he’d been right about the School Master being Evil and using her as a weapon against Good. All Callis had ever wanted was real love, and instead she’d found a villain trying to use that love to start war. She cursed herself for not accepting Merlin’s help when he’d tried to see her at school. There was no time to find the wizard now. Once the School Master realized she’d escaped, he’d surely find and kill her, since she’d discovered the secret behind his mask. Except there was nowhere to hide that he wouldn’t find her. Nowhere that he didn’t have power over . . .” Callis suddenly stalled, hearing a chorus of low, urgent whispers floating in the wind.

I wish.

I wish.

I wish.

“Like all witches, Callis could hear the pleas of those truly desperate enough to pay a price. Yet this wish wasn’t coming from the Woods, but beyond it, where the School Master had no power. Callis wouldn’t ask a price for choosing to answer this wish, she told herself—only a chance to turn the page and live a life free of Evil. Answering this wish would be her very first Good deed. And so a witch who dreamed of her one true love followed the wish . . .” Callis tracked the whispers to Necro Ridge and an unmarked, open grave at the top of the hill. She dug through the bottom of the empty grave, Reaper helping her, deeper, deeper, deeper . . .

“. . . all the way to a girl in the Reader World, dreaming of her one true love.”

As Callis came out the other side of the grave, she found herself in Gavaldon’s graveyard, standing in front of a dark-haired girl kneeling in the weeds. Slowly Vanessa looked up at Callis and smiled, knowing her wish had been granted at last.

All at once, Sophie and Agatha were back in the School Master’s tower, as the masked sorcerer studied the open storybook on the altar table, the Storian frozen above it.

“During this time, the Storian had been writing Callis’ fairy tale, but when she vanished, the pen went still, as if it’d lost the connection to her. Suspecting he’d been betrayed, the School Master commanded his stymphs to find Callis and bring her back to him alive. But when they didn’t retrieve her and there was no sign of her going to Merlin’s side, the School Master assumed Callis was dead. His suspicions were confirmed when the Storian abandoned her fairy tale and moved on to another. To the School Master, Callis’ story was over and forgotten.” The scene disappeared and the girls were in pitch-darkness, Sader’s small figure levitating over them.

“But unlike the School Master I had the power of sight, which meant I could see what happened after the Storian stopped writing. For unbeknownst to the School Master, Callis wasn’t dead and her story wasn’t over. Not in the least.” Sophie and Agatha glanced at each other, shaken.

“After leaving school, Callis wanted nothing to do with Evil or witchcraft ever again. But she hadn’t given up on her dreams of true love. Seeing how safe and quaint Gavaldon was, she harbored fantasies of starting over and finding a new start as a Reader,” Sader went on. “Yet, she still owed Vanessa a wish, since choosing to answer that wish had given her safe haven from the School Master. Callis promised herself it would be her very last deed of magic before she settled into ordinary life. And so she made the love potion that Vanessa had desperately wished for. But Callis warned her: it would only last one night, for matters of love were too delicate for magic, and use of a love spell for any long-term goals would only lead to the unhappiest of endings. Magic always had its price.” A new scene melted in and Sophie and Agatha were in a crowded pub, as Stefan caroused with his friends.

“Vanessa paid no heed,” Sader said.

Stefan put his drink down on a table and a hooded shadow slipped by and poured a vial of smoky red liquid into it, just before Stefan picked it back up.

“She tricked Stefan into drinking the spell and he instantly fell in love with her. And even though the spell soon wore off, as Callis had warned, the potion had a far more enduring effect. For it wasn’t long before Vanessa knocked on Stefan’s door and told him she was bearing his child. Which meant by Council Law that he had to marry her.” The scene changed to Honora and Stefan arguing heatedly on Honora’s porch.

“Furious, Honora broke ties with Stefan. How could he betray her trust? And with her best friend, no less? Stefan swore it was black magic. He had no love for Vanessa, and when he’d returned to her house to confront her, he’d noticed a strange houseguest huddling in her room. It was she who did it, he told Honora. The stranger. He could see the guilt in her eyes. That witch had cast a spell over him—he was sure of it! How could Vanessa do such a heartless thing? Trap him into marriage with a child? An innocent child? He feared the spell would backfire somehow. . . . But Honora wouldn’t listen. Stefan begged her not to give up on him, but it was no use. No matter what he said, Honora didn’t believe his story and wanted nothing further to do with him. So Stefan took his story to the Elders instead.” Now the girls were outside in the square at night with a mob of onlookers, watching Callis tied to a torchlit pyre, as the three bearded Elders presided from the stage.

“The Elders believed him, for Stefan had always been a beloved son. Moreover, the Elders had been leading witch hunts for years, searching for anyone who might be responsible for the child kidnappings that continued to happen every four years. So when Stefan pointed his finger at Callis—a strange, unmarried woman they’d never seen in town before—the Elders finally found their witch.” The executioner reached for the torch over Callis’ pyre. Sophie and Agatha could see Stefan at the side of the stage, glaring at Callis as the executioner lowered the flame to the wood sticks under the witch. Callis’ face flooded with tears of terror and regret; she’d tried to do one last act of magic in exchange for the chance at a life of Goodness and love and now she’d be slaughtered as an Evil witch instead. As she wept for the mistakes of her life, the flames spreading under feet, Stefan watched her, his own face beginning to soften.

“When he saw her in that moment, a human-hearted soul just like him, Stefan realized he didn’t have it inside of him to be responsible for another’s death,” said Professor Sader. “Though he still believed Callis was a witch, he recanted his story and agreed to marry Vanessa in order to save Callis’ life. Per the Elders’ conditions for sparing her, Callis had to move to the graveyard and stay out of the townspeople’s affairs forever. She could never marry a man from town, never have a shop in the square or a house in cottage lane . . . but she would keep her life, even if it was a loveless one. As would Stefan, who in the process of saving her, had doomed himself to a loveless life with Vanessa too.” Agatha couldn’t breathe, watching Stefan free Callis off the pyre. “The debt,” she whispered. “That was the debt she owed him.” Sophie shook her head. “But she looks so different from your mother, Aggie.”

“So does yours,” said Agatha.

Both girls turned back to the story as the scene melted into a lavish, sun-drenched wedding at the town church. Stefan stood at the altar next to a pregnant Vanessa.

He’d never looked more miserable.

“Stefan married Vanessa, while Honora’s parents soon forced her to marry the odious butcher’s boy. Now Vanessa had everything she’d always wanted. Her one true love and his child on the way to keep him. The girl he once loved married off and out of their lives. A perfect fairy-tale ending. Or so she thought. Because Vanessa hadn’t counted on one thing . . .” The church dissipated and now the girls were on Graves Hill in the middle of the night. Grim-faced, Stefan shoveled dirt to fill the last of two small graves. Vanessa watched him, weeping.

“Stefan’s fear that the spell would backfire came true. Vanessa gave birth to two boys. Both born dead.” The scene shifted and Sophie and Agatha were back where they began: in Sophie’s cottage, lit by a red sunset, with Vanessa glowering through her kitchen window. Her eyes were on Stefan in a hooded coat, hustling down the lane, before Honora snuck him into her cottage.

“In the years that followed, Vanessa tried everything she could to have a child with Stefan, but her efforts failed again and again. Soon, Honora suspected that Stefan was telling the truth all along: Vanessa had tricked him into marrying her. With Honora just as unhappy with her husband as Stefan with Vanessa, Honora and Stefan began to see each other in secret once more.” Brightness leeched out of the scene and now the girls were in Agatha’s house on Graves Hill, watching Vanessa fuming at Callis.

“Vanessa visited every doctor in Gavaldon, who all agreed she’d never have a child. Enraged, she returned to Callis and demanded a new potion that would help her bear Stefan’s baby. Unless she had his child—a child that could prove their love was real—Stefan would never believe in their marriage. Callis refused, insisting she was done with magic forever and just wanted to keep to herself, per the Elders’ orders. But Vanessa threatened her: she said she’d go to the Elders and tell her she’d cursed her to never have children; that she was cursing other townswomen as well; that she was the one responsible for the kidnapped children . . . Callis knew then that there was no stopping Vanessa. Her only choice was to help her.” The scene skipped ahead and the girls watched as Vanessa drank a smoking black tonic from a wooden bowl.

“Callis warned her that magic could not force the union of souls into a child, as love does, just as magic could not force true love itself. Try to unite two souls into one child through magic and you would only split those souls even more,” said Sader. “But just as before, Vanessa didn’t listen, determined to have Stefan’s baby. And soon enough, a healthy child was growing inside of her.” Night fell darker over the house. Vanessa was in painful labor now, as Callis comforted her.

“’The Miracle Child,’ the doctors named it. Vanessa promised Stefan it would be a boy as handsome as him. Seeing Vanessa carrying his child again and how much it meant to her, Stefan tried to give his wife another chance. In his heart, he knew sneaking off to Honora’s was wrong, for they’d both taken wedding vows to other people. Besides, it didn’t matter what Vanessa did in the past; they were about to be a family. She was his wife now and forever and that meant if Vanessa had his baby, he would love it and its mother as much as he possibly could. Stefan even let himself name the child before it was born: ‘Filip’ after his own father,” said Sader. “And in time, the night came where Vanessa finally had Stefan’s child, thanks to the secret power of Callis’ magic. Only it wasn’t a boy at all. It was a fair, luminous girl that looked just like Stefan.” Weak and sweating, Vanessa stroked the blond, beautiful girl in her arms, before she suddenly felt strong pains again— “But just as the witch predicted, the souls of Stefan and Vanessa never fused, for there was no love between them. Each soul produced its own child, which meant Vanessa delivered not one baby, but two. This second girl, then, looked nothing like Stefan. Instead, she looked just like her mother.” Vanessa gasped as Callis held out the baby: raven-haired, with bulging big eyes and a hideous face. Vanessa recoiled in disgust, shoving it back at the witch.

“She ordered Callis to dump the baby in the Woods and leave it there to die. She could never take such an ugly child home to Stefan, she scoffed, before bundling up her beautiful, blond daughter and hurrying off, sure that everything between her and her husband was about to change,” said Sader. “But Callis, who only saw beauty in the girl Vanessa threw away, kept the child for herself. She named her Agatha, which meant ‘Soul of Good.’ Finally, after so many years of loneliness, Callis of Netherwood had found her one true love.” Callis glanced into a mirror as she studied the child’s big, insect-like eyes. Slowly, Callis magically made her own eyes bigger.

“To ensure no one asked questions as to whether she was the child’s mother, Callis gradually transformed herself over the years, using her Uglification skills to look more and more like Agatha. Soon the villagers began to notice Callis’ child lurking on the hills, a practical duplicate of her. The Elders asked Callis questions, of course, but she gave no answers, and in time, the town simply shunned the young girl just as they shunned her mother.” Morning streamed through the house’s rickety windows, as black-haired, sallow-skinned, scraggly Callis read storybooks to her black-haired, sallow-skinned, scraggly daughter.

“When new fairy tales appeared in Gavaldon year after year, with Good still winning every story, Callis began to question whether she had it all wrong. Perhaps the School Master hadn’t been Evil at all. She even wondered: had she made a mistake by not taking his ring? As the years went by, she began to wish that her daughter would be taken to the School for Good and Evil so that Agatha could have a future filled with magic, adventure, and love, instead of being trapped in a lonely, ordinary life because of her mother.” The scene flashed to Stefan in his cottage, sitting at the dining table with Vanessa and young Sophie. He was eying his three-year-old daughter warily, no tenderness in his face.

“Meanwhile, as young Sophie grew, Stefan had an instinctive stiffness towards her. He tried so hard to love her: taking her to Battersby’s for cookies, reading her storybooks at bedtime, smiling when passerbys said his young Sophie looked just like him. . . . But deep down, all Stefan could see in his daughter was Vanessa’s soul.” Now Stefan was carrying lumber to the mill. He paused on the path, noticing five-year-old Agatha playing alone in the weeds on a nearby hill. She looked up at Stefan and smiled toothily. Stefan smiled back.

“And yet, when he’d see the strange urchin girl that skulked around Graves Hill, he’d feel such affection towards her, even as the other mill workers noticed her striking resemblance to Vanessa,” said Professor Sader. “With two girls born to her, one ugly, one beautiful, Vanessa had kept the one she thought Stefan would love. The one who would bring her closer to him. But it was the one she threw away who imprinted herself on Stefan’s heart.” Stefan’s scene disappeared and the girls were alone with Vanessa in her bathroom, filled with hundreds of beauty potions, creams, and elixirs, as she thickened her lips with a special paste, made her eyes green with herbal drops, and dyed her hair golden-blond with a homemade brew. Seven-year-old Sophie mimicked her mother, rubbing honeycream from a bottle into her own cheeks.

“Vanessa couldn’t understand why Stefan still seemed cold to her, even after Sophie’s birth. Was Sophie not pretty enough? she thought. Am I not good enough either? Panicked, Vanessa obsessively tried to make herself more beautiful. Her daughter too. But no matter what she did, Stefan seemed to shirk from the both of them.” Sharply, the scene pivoted to Vanessa standing with young, ten-year-old Sophie at the kitchen window, each of them blond and gorgeous, watching Stefan playing with two young boys in Honora’s front yard. Vanessa no longer looked angry anymore. She looked defeated and heartbroken.

“Eventually, Vanessa died alone, while her true love abandoned her for a girl she once thought an ugly witch. She lived to see Honora have two children of her own. Two boys Vanessa knew were Stefan’s until the day she died, even if Honora pretended otherwise. She knew it from the way Stefan loved them. From the way Stefan held the boys at Honora’s husband’s funeral after he was killed in a mill accident. And from the way Stefan stared so distantly at Sophie, the daughter he had at home.” As Stefan played with Honora’s children, he looked up and saw Agatha, hunched and gangly, stalking up Graves Hill. He smiled fondly.

“Yet Stefan never forgot about the girl in the graveyard, who he looked for whenever he passed by . . . because deep inside, she felt more like his child than any of them.” The story washed away like a painting in the rain, and Sophie and Agatha were in vast, silent blackness, listening to the sound of their matching breaths.

“Two sisters,” said Sader’s voice. “But sisters in name only, for there was no love in their making. Two souls, forever irreconcilable, since each soul was a mirror of the other: one Good, one Evil. Indeed, if fate ever brought these girls together, they’d be mortal enemies, even as their hearts yearned to find a bond. There would be no path to happiness, just as there had been no path to happiness for their parents. They were old souls made new, doomed to hurt and betray one another again and again, like Stefan and Vanessa, until they too were torn apart forever. And for anyone to think these two girls could defy that ending and find an Ever After together . . . well, that would be a fairy tale, wouldn’t it?” Slowly the Brig filled in around them and the two girls were in the frozen dungeon, their bodies slack, their faces ash white. Professor Sader floated in front of Vanessa’s tomb, gazing back at them.

“But I had hope, even if I couldn’t see what your ending was. Look at how far you’ve come already, against all odds. That’s why I moved your mother here, so you could see the truth about your story. That’s why I sacrificed my life for the both of you. Because by breaking all the rules of our world, you have the chance to save it when we need it most. To find a bridge between Good and Evil. To put love first, whether it’s a Boy’s or Girl’s. To shatter the chain between your parents’ Old story and your New one. No one knows if you will succeed, children. Even me. But the Storian chose you for a reason and it’s time to face it. No more running. No more hiding. The only way out is through your fairy tale.” His hazel eyes sparkled with tears. “Now go and open the door.”

Professor Sader smiled at the two girls one last time. Then his phantom dissipated to darkness, like the last tears of a sun.