by M. A. Larson
“Should you fail to complete any of the three missions, you will be discharged. Should you still be on the course by morning, you will be discharged. Should you be one of the last twenty cadets to complete your missions, you will be discharged. The path to the first class runs directly through Witches’ Night.”
The cackle of a witch sounded from somewhere in the distance.
“Your first mission is Advance. Make your way through that wood and get to Schummel Tower. There you will be given your second mission. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant!”
“Good. Then move out!”
The ranks dissolved into a mass of panic. Everyone sprinted southward across the Green, straight to where they’d seen the witches. Schummel Tower was on the opposite end of a wide, unused grove that sat between the barracks and the campus proper. In this darkness, with those creatures lurking within, the trees loomed before them like an impenetrable fortress.
“Maggie, wait!” shouted Evie. Maggie, who was several yards ahead, slowed and allowed Evie to catch up. “Where are Basil and Demetra?”
Maggie looked around. “There,” she said, pointing to her left.
“Come on!” They ran over to intercept their friends. “We need to work together. The four of us. It’s our best chance to make it through.”
One by one, they all nodded.
“Good. Let’s move out. And be ready for anything.” As they crested the hill where the dancing figures had been, they could still see the trail of black through the grass where their robes had wiped away the frost. “I don’t know if they’re real witches or not, but we’ve—”
Suddenly, just as they reached the edge of the wood, the silent night was rent with a deafening crackle.
“Down!” screamed Evie, dragging Demetra to the dirt. “Down!”
A swirling black cloud shot through the trees and splattered against a boulder. Within seconds, there was a chorus of sizzling pops coming from all directions. Dark magic flew everywhere. Cadets screamed from the depths of the grove. The voices of the staff shouted over the top of it all.
“Over there! Stretcher near the oak!”
“Nurse! Bitter velvetleaf, three doses!”
“Get off the course, Cadet, you’re finished!”
Evie frantically looked for a way off the hill. Everything was so dark, so confusing. The crackling of witches’ magic echoed through the trees, mixing with the shouts of cadets and staff. During a momentary lull, something cackled in the darkness.
“Come on,” she said. “They must have placed witches near the finish, too.” Then, holding her breath, she and the others raced across the grass and took cover behind the stump of a toppled tree. “We’ve got to go straight up the middle. That way we maintain our options for cover and escape. If we get trapped in these trees, we’re dead.”
The other three nodded in agreement. Evie peered around the tree trunk and saw several members of staff standing at the edge of the grove. They were talking casually with one another, as though they were evaluating the cadets’ dancing technique at the Grand Ball. It was surreal to see them so calm while witches’ dark spells were flying all around the woods.
“Right, next blast. Basil and Maggie, there’s an oak about fifty yards ahead. Can you make it?”
Basil, looking a bit green, nodded. So did Maggie.
“We’ll go for one a little farther up on the right. Climb the ladder. Hand signals only until we’re through. Stay low and stay quiet. Remember, witches can’t see well in the dark, so don’t give them a target.”
A swirling stream of black crackled over their heads.
“Go! Now!”
Suddenly, she and Demetra were out in the open, sprinting down a hill through ferns and brush. There were explosions in every direction, and Evie kept expecting the horror of feeling her skin slowly harden to stone. Finally, they reached a sprawling oak and dove behind its trunk.
“All right?”
“All right.” Demetra’s eyes were filled with fear. “I saw one. Up on a little outcropping. About seventy yards in that direction.”
Evie inched forward, her hands scraping against the rough bark of the oak. They were at the bottom of a small ravine, with only one hill to climb until they were through. There, standing beneath a huge, swooping tree, she saw the faint outline of a figure. It was obscured by black haze.
“Well spotted, Demetra.” She peered across the ravine to where Maggie and Basil were. Or at least, where she hoped they were. She signaled them with the witch’s position, but couldn’t tell if they’d seen her or not. “All right, I’ve told them we’ll try to draw the witch’s fire so they can get through.”
“Draw the witch’s fire?” said Demetra. “Which one?”
“You! Cadet Hawthorn! Stay down, you’re dismissed!” And another fairy drillsergeant ended another princess cadet’s dream. “Nurse! Over here!”
Evie did her best to block it out. Despite the frantic atmosphere in the forest, she was well aware that the witches weren’t the only threat. So, too, was the coming sunrise.
When another spell sizzled past, Evie and Demetra swept out from either side of the tree and zigzagged from tree to boulder beneath the witch’s position. She could only hope that Maggie and Basil had seen her signals and were advancing behind them. They both made it to another oak tree, where they huddled for cover and tried to catch their breath. After several seconds, with more screams and spells splitting open the night, Evie peered around the tree trunk. There was Maggie, halfway up the hill, signaling to her.
“Maggie says there’s another witch on the far end,” she whispered. “But she thinks we can make it through. She wants us to move.”
Demetra nodded, and they tore off into the night once again. Spells splattered at their feet with rippling pops. There were screams and shouts and explosions as branches cracked and thudded to the ground. Evie had only one thing on her mind. Get to that tree.
She raced up the hillside behind Demetra. Just as they were about to reach the tree where Basil and Maggie waited, she glanced over and saw a witch smiling down with wide yellow eyes and a thorn-sharp smile. She dove, but the dead leaves slipped out beneath her, and she sprawled awkwardly into the undergrowth. Black smoke began to churn in front of the witch’s chest.
“No!” screamed Maggie.
Crackity-crackity-crackity! came the spell, which spiraled toward her like a hungry snake. She flinched and waited for the pain to hit her . . .
Then she opened her eyes and looked back to the witch. The spell was there, still coming for her, but something was blocking it. A vaporous barrier. She looked around and found Maggie standing above her. She was facing the witch with a look of determination unlike any Evie had seen before. Her compassion had turned to magic, and her magic had blocked the witch’s spell.
Basil reached for Evie, pulling her to safety behind the tree. The ravine they’d just crossed was crawling with activity. Nurses ran through the battlefield, treating cadets who had been hit. Others had twisted ankles or torn flesh. Fairies darted through the trees, shouting at frightened girls. No one would make it through unscathed.
“Go!” shouted Maggie.
Evie, Demetra, and Basil sprang from behind the tree and raced to the top of the hill. Evie glanced back and saw the witch who was pouring her spell out on Maggie.
“Evie, what are you doing?” shouted Basil, but she was already halfway back down the hill. She glared at the witch, using her fear and anger to try to find the courage inside her own heart. Instead, she found a song.
With chaos raging around her, Evie’s mind went to a particularly inspiring song that her company liked to sing during free hours. As she stared at the witch on the hill, the lyrics marched through her head like an army of princesses:
Though nighttime be dark and nightmares roam free / When the people stand up, then the
people can see / That our courage is stronger than terror may be / And we’ll not live to cower, we’ll fight to be free.
She could hear their voices, the girls she’d been serving with for nearly two years. She could hear the words echoing through her heart, and she no longer felt alone.
Flares of light sparked across the thicket. She saw the yellow eyes of the witch turn away from Maggie to focus on her. She could feel the witch looking inside of her, disrupting those beautiful voices and their song of victory. Her courage began to falter.
“Run!” screamed Maggie as she raced up the hill. “Go, Evie!”
The yellow eyes hovered coldly in the darkness. There was an earsplitting sound, as though the air itself were fracturing around them. Evie fell to the ground, her courage evaporating into the black of night. The spell exploded next to her. She scrambled through the brush, racing as fast as she could toward her friends. It wasn’t until she had reached them, reached the cold night and the big sky on the far side of the grove, that a wave of panic crashed over her.
“It’s all right, Evie, we made it,” said Maggie, hugging her. “We made it. Thank you.”
Evie looked from one of her friends to the next. The sounds of battle were distant now. Behind them.
“We did it?”
“We did it.”
“Mission two accomplished,” said Basil. “I’m sure the others will be just as easy.”
After several moments, Evie’s panic subsided and the thoughts ricocheting through her head began to slow. “All right,” she said, nodding. “All right. Let’s go.”
Leaving the shrieks and cackles of the woods behind them, the four friends raced through the crisp night air to the edge of campus, where the Schummel Tower stood. A small collection of cadets in gray and purple uniforms were already racing inside, their faces a mixture of exhilaration and terror.
Evie glanced up at the clouds, ghostly blue and cottony with silver bottoms. Daylight couldn’t be far off.
“Get in my tower, cadets!” screamed a fairy drillsergeant with billowing red hair. Her voice was squeakier than the others, but no less intimidating. “Mission three is Escape! Get to the top, recover the enchanted apple from the princess’s bedchamber, and get out before you’re turned to stone!”
Without hesitation, the cadets ran for the door. It was an open archway of red brick with a portcullis inside. Once they passed beneath those spiked iron teeth, there were two entrances to choose from, one on either side. Half the group ran to the left, half to the right. All around them, more fairies were screaming.
Evie broke for the right. Once she was inside, she looked up and found a spiderweb of staircases stretching up the tower. She paused in the antechamber and turned to her friends.
“She said ‘before you’re turned to stone.’ That means there’s a witch in here.”
“Got it,” said Maggie.
“Let’s try this one,” said Demetra, pointing to an enclosed spiral staircase on the wall to the right. “She said we’re looking for a bedchamber. Those usually face south.”
“Good thinking,” said Evie.
“But what if the witch is in there?” said Basil.
“We’ve got to get up somehow,” said Evie. “If she’s in there, scatter and retreat, all right? Let’s look out for one another.”
The other three nodded, then ran into the staircase. Round and round they went, choking on the smoke from the rapidly burning torches that lit the way. The staircase was small and the stones were uneven, but they didn’t dare slow down. Finally they reached a landing, which emptied into an inner corridor. It followed the wall to the right, and to the left was an open drop back to the bottom of the tower. There was no rail, no balustrade, and the walkway was wide enough for only one person at a time. Similar walkways crisscrossed the inside of the tower, and each had cadets carefully racing across.
“Let’s go!” yelled Demetra. As they neared the end of the walkway, Kelbra and Sage emerged from the staircase there.
“Step aside!” yelled Kelbra.
“We can’t, there’s no room. Just let us pass!” shouted Evie.
“Get out of the way, you imbeciles!” Kelbra pushed past Evie, nearly knocking her off the walkway. She somehow made it past the rest of them, then turned back. “Come on, Sage! Let’s go!”
Sage stood aside and let Evie, Maggie, Demetra, and Basil pass, then ran to join Kelbra.
“If you ever make me wait again, I’m going on without you—”
There was a shriek of laughter, followed by the deafening crackle of magic. Evie wheeled to see the sinister grin of a witch in the far staircase just as her dark magic slammed into Kelbra’s back.
“AAAAH!”
“Nurse!” called a fairy drillsergeant from the shadows. “First landing!”
Kelbra grimaced. Sage bent down to help, but Kelbra pushed her away, nearly forcing her over the side. “Aah, my back! Why are there bloody witches in a training exercise?”
The shimmering dust of a fairy’s wings appeared next to her. “Up you go, Cadet!” It was their own fairy drillsergeant. Kelbra staggered to her feet. Sage held her arm to steady her, but Kelbra shook it off.
“It’s not fair to have actual witches in a training exercise,” she said through gritted teeth.
“If that were an actual witch, I’d be talking to a statue instead of a former princess cadet.”
Evie and her friends watched from the base of the staircase as other cadets streamed past, headed for the top. Kelbra’s nostrils flared. She stared at the Fairy Drillsergeant with fury.
“You are dismissed, Cadet Kelbra. See your way down my tower.”
“No!” shouted Kelbra. “This isn’t fair!”
“Fair or not, you are still dismissed.” She turned and began to float away.
“I’m not through with you!” shouted Kelbra. “I want to talk to Beatrice!”
The Fairy Drillsergeant stopped, then turned and floated back until she was only inches in front of Kelbra’s face. “By all means, Cadet. Do you know the first step to talking to the Headmistress?” She somehow managed to float even closer. “Getting out of my tower.”
Kelbra’s face twisted in rage. Then she stalked past the fairy and went to the far staircase. “You’ll regret this. You’ll all regret this.”
The Fairy Drillsergeant brandished her wand, and Kelbra scurried away down the staircase.
“And you, Cadet Sage? Will you be going up or down?”
Sage scrambled up the tower.
“Come on!” whispered Maggie. “Before she sees us!”
Evie hesitated. She looked into the shadows where the witch had been. There was nothing there.
“I think this is it!” came Demetra’s voice from above. “I think we’ve got the right one!”
After endlessly looping up the staircase, with legs that burned like hearths’ fires, they finally emerged into the princess’s bedchamber. It resembled Demetra’s from the Blackmarsh, though the furnishings were much more modest. There was a four-poster bed with silk hangings, several oak chests, candles in iron sconces, and a dressing table. An earthenware bowl filled with red-skinned apples sat atop it. They each ran across and took one, then hurried back to the staircase. The staccato reverberations from the witch’s magic spells echoed up from below.
“She’s in there!” said Basil. “We can’t go that way!”
“But it’s the only staircase,” said Demetra.
Evie looked around the room. That staircase did appear to be the only way back down. But there had to be another. “Our mission is Escape, right? Not Escape by Staircase.” She went to one of the windows, covered in oiled parchment, and opened it with an iron rod. There, sixty feet below, a green moat ran around the entirety of the tower base.
Basil peeked out next to her. “That’s quite an escape.”
A scream echoed up from the staircase, followed by a cackle, and the decision was made for them. Evie stepped onto the windowsill, the cold night air whipping across her face.
“You lot are mad,” said a cadet in Bramblestick purple, racing back to the staircase with her apple.
The other three looked at Evie with uncertainty. “Look, I’ve been in a lot of bogs in my day,” she said. “You’ll be fine, but don’t muck about in there. Get to the surface as quickly as you can. You’ll be surprised how thick the water is.” She jammed the apple into the pocket of her dress. “Come on! Bravely ventured is half won, right?” She held her breath and leapt out into the air. Her stomach lurched as she plummeted down. Moments later, she splashed into the frigid moat. Her legs slammed into the muddy bottom, sending jolts of pain through her back. Still, she managed to kick off, swimming to the top. The water stank of rot and sulfur. It was as thick as sludge, much more difficult to swim in than water. She ran her hand down her dress and found the bulge of the apple still inside.
There were bubbles and splashes beneath the slime, and she realized it was her friends struggling for air. She saw Basil’s hand appear, then slide back under. More bubbles showed where Maggie was. None of them could stay above the surface of the thick liquid. She swam to each of them as her dragon sister had taught her in the bogs near the cave. First Maggie, then Basil, then Demetra. With her soggy uniform dangling from her like a fishing net, she dragged them to the far bank, slopping each of them ashore before climbing out herself.
“Everyone still have their apple?”
They did. Three cadets, sobbing loudly, marched past them, headed for the carriage coach and the long ride home.
“Well done, Evie,” said Basil, gasping for breath. “Well done.”
“Well done indeed, cadets,” came the fiery rasp of the Fairy Drillsergeant. “That would make it all the more tragic for you to go home now, wouldn’t it?”
They clambered to their feet, sulfurous water dripping off of them.
“Nice work with the apples,” she continued. Then, with a flick of her wand, the apples flew out of their hands and into the moat. “Mission four, pick up a log and get moving.” She pointed to the road on the far side of the tower, where cut logs were standing on their ends like begging dogs.
