The School for Good and Evil

by Soman Chainani

  “Go,” she said.

  Tedros couldn’t look at her and angrily turned away—his gashed leg buckled. Sophie lunged and thrust her shoulder beneath his arm, gripping him by the chest. The prince recoiled at her touch.

  “Please, Teddy,” Sophie whispered through shamed tears. “I promise I’ll change.”

  Tedros pushed her away, struggling to stand. But then he saw Agatha behind Sophie, her gaze reminding him of his own promise.

  Tedros tried to fight himself . . . tried to tell himself promises could be broken . . . but he knew the truth. He went limp against Sophie’s chest.

  Surprised, Sophie helped him forward, afraid to say a word. Tedros looked back at Agatha, who slackened with relief and shambled behind them on her own. Resigned, the prince exhaled and hobbled ahead under Sophie’s arm.

  Sophie pulled him towards the lake with all of her strength, panting, sniffling. Little by little, she felt Tedros surrender to her grip. With a shy glance at him, she smiled through tears, her delicate face repentant. Finally the prince managed a grudging smile in return.

  The half-moon glided from behind clouds, showering them with cleansing light. As he and Sophie reached the lake, bodies intertwined, Tedros looked down at their two shadows in perfect step, at his boots beside her glass slippers, at his bloody reflection in glimmering waters, glowing next to—an ugly, old hag’s.

  Tedros spun in horror, but there was only beautiful Sophie, shepherding him gently to Good. He glanced back at the lake, but the water had clouded. His skin burst into chills.

  “I can’t—” he choked, wrenching free—

  “Teddy?” Sophie gasped.

  He staggered back and hoisted Agatha, who hacked with surprise.

  Sophie blanched. “Teddy, what did I d—”

  “Stay away from us!” he said, clutching Agatha to his chest. “Stay away from us both!”

  “Us?” Sophie shrieked.

  “Tedros, wait—” Agatha begged—“What about—”

  “Let her find her way to Evil,” the prince spat, and raised his glowing finger to call the fairies.

  Sophie shrank in shock. Agatha looked back at her from Tedros’ arms, flushed with apology. But her friend’s face had no forgiveness. Instead it swelled red with feral fury and hate—

  “LOOK AT HER!”

  The echo blasted across the lake.

  Agatha went white.

  “SHE’S A WITCH!” Sophie screamed.

  Slowly Tedros turned, his eyes cutting through her. “Look closer.”

  Sophie watched in horror as fairies swirled around the two Evers. In Tedros’ arms, Agatha had the same expression.

  For now she saw they were in the right schools all along.

  As Sophie watched the fairies fly Agatha and her prince away, she stood frozen on the lakeshore, panting warm breath, alone in the darkness. Her muscles knotted with tension, then her fingers curled to crackling fists. Her blood boiled hotter, hotter, her body blazing with fire, and just as she thought she’d explode into flames—a sharp pain stabbed her chin. Sophie put her hand to it.

  Something there.

  Her fingers crawled over it, trying to understand, until she felt wet drops splash onto her arm. She stepped back as the wave rose high, swathing her in shadow—

  Sophie crashed through the window of Room 66 in a heap of sludge.

  Hester and Anadil leapt off the bed. “We searched everywhere—where were you—”

  Hand to her face, Sophie crawled past them to the last shard of mirror left on the wall and stopped cold.

  There was a thick black wart on her chin.

  Sophie frantically picked at it, pulled at it—then saw her roommates in her reflection, both white as sheets.

  “Symptoms,” they gasped.

  Dripping, shaking, Sophie dashed up the stairs to the top-floor study and blasted the lock open with her glowing finger. Lady Lesso exploded from her bedroom in her nightgown, finger thrust out. Sophie instantly levitated off the floor, strangled for breath.

  Lady Lesso lowered her hand, bringing Sophie gently to the floor. Eyes wide, she slunk towards Sophie and took her trembling face in her sharp red nails.

  “Just in time for the Circus,” she said, fingers caressing the swollen black wart. “The Evers are in for a surprise.”

  Sophie flailed for words—

  “Sometimes our henchmen know us better than we do ourselves,” Lady Lesso marveled.

  Sophie shook her head, not understanding.

  Her teacher’s lips grazed her ear. “He’s waiting for you.”

  As the torches in the castles went dark, only a pregnant moon remained, lighting up a shadow slashing through the Blue Forest. Shrouded in her black snakeskin cape, Sophie smashed through ferns and oaks, shivering uncontrollably. When she arrived at the giant stone well, she slammed her body against the rock blocking its shaft, over and over before it budged. Climbing into the bucket, she lowered herself deep into darkness, until a piece of moonlight lit up the bottom.

  Against a smooth, milky wall, Grimm waited, cheeks and wings blackened with grime. The walls around him were covered in thousands of drawings of the same face. A face carved in bloodred lipstick. A face she couldn’t make out in her dreams. But here, in the dead of night, her Nemesis had a name.

  And it wasn’t Tedros.

  26

  The Circus of Talents

  “To Professor Dovey’s office,” Tedros ordered the fairies as he and Agatha trailed blood into the sky.

  “To my room,” Agatha ordered the fairies flying her.

  “But you’re hurt!” Tedros said, shivering—

  “We tell anyone what happened and things will be worse than they already are,” said Agatha.

  The fairies pulled them apart. “Wait!” Tedros yelled—

  “Tell no one!” Agatha called back, receding towards pink spires.

  “Will you be at the Circus?” Tedros shouted, dragged towards blue—

  But Agatha didn’t answer as he and his fairies diminished into twinkles of light.

  As her own fairies lifted her into dark sky, she looked out at the silver tower shadowed over the bay, heartsick and numb. The School Master had warned them. He had seen who they were.

  She wrapped Tedros’ bloody shirt around her as fairies flew her higher, higher into knifing wind. But as Agatha gazed up at lantern-lit windows, aglow with silhouettes dressing for proposals, guilt and shock burned to anger.

  Villains are the ones closest to us.

  Villains in the cloak of best friends.

  Oh, yes, she’d be at that Circus.

  Because Sader was right.

  This was never Sophie’s fairy tale.

  It was hers.

  “So there was no attack after all?” Professor Anemone asked, sipping steaming cider.

  Standing at her study window, Professor Dovey looked out at the School Master’s tower, burnished red in sinking sun. “Professor Espada said the boys found nothing. Meanwhile, Tedros spent half the night uselessly scouring the grounds. Perhaps that was Sophie’s tactic. Rob our best players of sleep.”

  “The girls barely slept either,” Professor Anemone said, dabbing cider off the swan on her camel-fur nightrobe. “Let’s hope they look decent for their proposals.”

  “What is he so afraid of us seeing?” Professor Dovey said, peering at the tower. “What is the point of us preparing students for these trials if we cannot be there for them?”

  “Because we won’t be there for them in the Woods, Clarissa.”

  Professor Dovey turned from the window.

  “It is why he forbids us to interfere,” Professor Anemone said. “No matter how cruel children are to each other, nothing can prepare them for how cruel their stories can be.”

  Professor Dovey was quiet for a moment.

  “You should go, dear,” she said finally.

  Professor Anemone followed her eyes to the sunset and jumped. “Goodness! You’d be stuck with me all night! Thank
you for the cider.” She swept to the door—

  “Emma.”

  Professor Anemone looked back.

  “She scares me,” said Professor Dovey. “That girl.”

  “Your students are ready, Clarissa.”

  Professor Dovey managed a smile and nodded. “We’ll hear their victory cries soon enough, won’t we?”

  Emma blew a kiss and closed the door behind her.

  Professor Dovey watched the sun smothered by the horizon. As the sky went dark, she heard a lock snap behind her. Quickly, she shuffled to the door and yanked at it—then blasted it with her wand, shot it with her finger. . . . But it was sealed shut by magic greater than hers.

  Her face contorted with nerves, then slowly relaxed.

  “They’ll be safe,” she sighed, trudging into her bedchamber. “They always are.”

  At 8:00 p.m. on the night before the Ball, the students entered the Theater of Tales to see it had been fully enchanted for the occasion. Above each side floated a chandelier of ten swan-shaped candles, burning white over Good and blue-black over Evil. Between them hovered the steel Circus Crown, brilliant in flame light with seven long, sharp spires, awaiting the night’s winner.

  Evergirls arrived first, primed for their Ball proposals in colorful evening gowns and nervous smiles. As they entered the west doors, waving flags with white swans and banners blaring TEAM GOOD!, glass flowers spritzed them with fragrance and crystal friezes came to life.

  “Greetings, fair maiden, will your talent win us the Crown?” puffed a crystal prince as he fought a dragon spewing scalding mist.

  “I hear this Sophie child is quite formidable. Can you defeat her?” interjected a crystal princess next to him on a glittering spinning wheel.

  “I didn’t make the team,” Kiko admitted.

  “Always one who’s left behind,” the prince said, stabbing the dragon through.

  Through the east doors, roaring Nevers shoved in, waving hideous signs scrawled TEAM EVIL! while Hort flapped a black swan flag so eagerly it broke stalactites off the ceiling, sending Nevers stampeding for cover. As he lunged for a seat, Hort took in the scorch marks on walls, contorting to shadows of monsters eating peasants and witches cooking children, while nearby pew friezes had come alive, with woodcut princes shrieking as carved villains stabbed them, spurting black sap everywhere.

  “Who did all this?” he goggled, splattered with sap.

  “The School Master,” Ravan said, plugging his ears from the shrieks. “No wonder he doesn’t let teachers in.”

  Meanwhile, as the last Nevergirls and Everboys arrived, herded by wolves and fairies, they too felt the thrill of a room without adults. Only Tedros looked unimpressed, the last to limp through in creamy white breeches, chest gashed through the undone laces of a royal blue shirt. Face sprinkled with angry scratches, he scanned the Evers seats for someone, then slumped with disappointment into his own.

  Watching him, Hester tensed. “Where’s Sophie?” she hissed to Anadil, ignoring Dot’s glares down the pew.

  “She never came back from Lesso’s!” Anadil whispered.

  “Maybe Lesso cured her?”

  “Or maybe the symptoms got worse! Suppose she attacks Tedros!”

  “But he doesn’t have any symptoms, Ani,” Hester said, gazing at the prince. “When a villain’s symptoms start, their Nemesis grows stronger!”

  But slouched in his seat, Tedros just looked ashen and weak.

  Anadil gaped at him. “But if he’s not Sophie’s Nemesis, then who is?”

  Behind them the Ever doors opened and into the Theater glided the most beautiful princess they’d ever seen.

  She wore a midnight-blue gown glittering with delicate gold leaves, long velvet train trailing down the aisle. Her lustrous ebony hair was swept up high with a tiara of blue orchids. Around her neck was a ruby pendant that dripped over fair skin like blood on snow. Her big dark eyes flaunted gold shadow, her lips a dewy rose sheen.

  “A bit late in the term for new students,” Tedros said, ogling.

  “She’s not new,” said Chaddick next to him.

  Tedros tracked his stare to black clumps peeking beneath the gown and choked.

  Smiling slyly, Agatha passed Beatrix, who turned to stone, boys who dribbled into their laps, girls who suddenly feared for their Ball dates, and nestled in next to Kiko, whose eyes were wide enough to pop.

  “Black magic?” Kiko peeped.

  “Groom Room,” Agatha whispered, spotting Sophie’s empty seat. She saw Tedros noticing it too. He looked back and his big blue eyes met hers.

  Across the aisle, Hester and Anadil went white with understanding.

  “Welcome to the Circus of Talents.”

  Students all looked up to see the white wolf onstage, a fairy hovering beside him. “Tonight will consist of twenty duels, in order of ranks,” he boomed. “The 10th-ranked Ever will perform his talent, followed by the 10th-ranked Never. The School Master will anoint a winner and publicly punish the loser.”

  Students eagerly scanned the Theater for him. The wolf snorted and continued.

  “We’ll proceed through the 9th pair, then the 8th pair, then all the way down to the 1st-ranked pair. At the end of the Circus, whoever the School Master deems the most impressive talent will win the Circus Crown and his school will win the Theater of Tales for the next year.”

  Good chanted, “OURS! OURS!” while Nevers added, “NO MORE! NO MORE!”—

  “Just ’cause there are no teachers here doesn’t mean you can act like animals,” the wolf growled, fairy chiming agreement. “I don’t care if I have to beat a princess or two to get out of here faster.”

  Evergirls gasped.

  “If you have questions, keep them to yourself. If you need the toilet, go in your pants,” the wolf boomed. “Because the doors are locked and the Circus begins now.”

  Agatha and Tedros exhaled relief. Hester and Anadil too.

  Because for all the acts they’d see tonight, Sophie’s wouldn’t be one of them.

  Evers won the first four Circus contests, leaving Nevers to suffer the School Master’s punishments. Brone started hiccuping butterflies, Arachne blindly chased her bouncing eye all over the theater, Vex had his pointy ears swollen to the size of an elephant’s, all victims of the Circus’ unseen judge, who seemed to delight in punishing Evil.

  Watching another of Evil’s swan candles extinguish, Agatha felt ill. Only three more duels until her turn.

  “What’s your talent?” Kiko nudged.

  “Does wearing makeup count?” Agatha said uncomfortably, noticing Everboys still sneaking awed glances.

  “Doesn’t matter how they look at you, Agatha! No prince will propose to anyone who loses to Evil!”

  Agatha stiffened. Her mind was fogged with a thousand things, but only one mattered. Because if no one proposed to her . . .

  You fail.

  Breath shallowing, Agatha turned to the stage. She needed a talent now.

  “Presenting Never Ravan!” the wolf called, and the phoenix carved into the stage front glowed green.

  With his oily black mane and big black pupils, Ravan peered down at yawning Evers, ready for another lame curse or villainous monologue. He nodded down at his bunk mates, who pulled drums from beneath their pews and gave him a beat; Ravan started to hop from one foot to another, then added sharp arm poses, and before the Nevers knew it, one of their best villains was . . .

  “Dancing?” Hester said, gaping.

  Drumbeats grew faster, Ravan’s stomps louder, and his eyes turned malevolent red.

  “Red eyes for a villain,” Tedros muttered. “Groundbreaking.”

  But then came a sharp crack. At first they thought it was Ravan’s feet, then they saw it was his head, for there was a second one next to the first. He stomped again and a third head appeared, then a fourth, a fifth until ten snarling heads balanced on his neck in a sickening row. Drums deafened, stomps climaxed, and Ravan leapt from the stage to a wide-legged squat, stuc
k out ten swollen tongues, and burst into screaming flames.

  Nevers launched to their feet, whooping wildly.

  “Who can beat that!” Ravan spat, restored to one head as smoke cleared.

  Agatha noticed the wolf guards of Evil didn’t look impressed. Instead it was the fairies who buzzed excitedly. Perhaps they made a bet on the final score, she thought, refocusing on her missing talent. Each Never was getting better and unlike the Evers who’d won so far, she couldn’t twirl ribbons or do sword tricks or charm snakes. How could she prove herself Good?

  Agatha saw Tedros stare at her again and she felt her insides twist, squeezing away her breath. All along, she had thought getting home with Sophie was her happy ending. But it wasn’t. Her happy ending was here in this magical world. With her prince.

  How far she’d come from her graveyard.

  Now she had her own story. Her own life.

  Tedros’ eyes pinned on her, glowing, hopeful, like there was no one else in the world.

  He’s yours, her reflection had promised, dressed just as she was now. She had gone to the Groom Room hoping to feel just like that princess smiling back at her on the Bridge.

  But why wasn’t she smiling, then? Why was she still thinking of . . .

  Sophie?

  Tedros smiled brighter and mouthed through cupped hands. “What’s your talent?”

  Agatha’s stomach sank. Her turn was coming.

  “Presenting Ever Chaddick!” the white wolf announced, the carved phoenix now glowing gold.

  Nevers assaulted Chaddick with boos and fistfuls of gruel. The Evil decorations got into the act too, with the walls’ scorch marks depicting him beaten, burned, beheaded, while villains carved into the pews shot him with splinters and sap. Chaddick, blond furry arms folded to his barrel chest, drank all this in with a placid smile. Then he drew his bow and fired an arrow into the seats. It ricocheted off pews, grazing Nevers’ ears and necks, boomeranged through walls and bled scorch marks red before it bounced off carvings, impaling each one until they moaned in chorus and went dead quiet.

  Another candle burnt out in Evil’s chandelier.

  Ravan’s smile vanished. Immediately he was yanked into the air by an invisible force. A pig nose exploded onto his face, a tail burst from his bottom, and he fell to the aisle with a loud oink.