The Last Ever After

by Soman Chainani

Then they looked at each other and frowned.

  Less than an hour earlier, Edgar and Essa were squashed side by side on a tree stump in the Woods, watching Merlin sprinkle glitterdust on a grove of carnivorous purple thorns, putting the thorns to sleep.

  “When can I turn back?” Tedros demanded in a deep voice, creamy girl cheeks glowing pink.

  “Once you return alive,” the wizard said, poking testingly at a limp thorn.

  “Which means never,” Agatha murmured, squinting ahead at tall, spiked gates that blocked entry to the School for Good and Evil. The lethally sharp slats that once shimmered solid gold now glowed acid green, flashing a familiar sign:

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE KILLED

  Agatha gulped. They’d had a short nap on the clifftop and a hat-made snack of kale omelets and strawberry-vanilla smoothies before Merlin dressed them in Evil’s black-and-green uniforms (“Spies, obviously,” as to how he acquired them) and brought them to the threshold of the school without informing them how a girl and boy—now boy and girl—could get through gates vowing to kill them.

  “Only a teacher can open those gates,” Agatha argued. “If we touch them, we’ll get blasted to pieces!”

  “Gates are the least of my problems. Suppose the counterspell doesn’t work? Suppose I’m stuck a girl forever?” said Tedros.

  “Please don’t use your boy voice in a girl’s body, my child,” said Merlin, picking his teeth with a thorn. “It’s a bad habit and reeks of cheap burlesque. Now you won’t get very far without being able to convince people you’re a girl, so let’s start with your name.”

  “My head itches,” Tedros said, still in baritone. “Why can’t I have my normal blond hair?”

  “Because we need you to look like an Evil assassin, not Goldilocks’ lovelier sister.”

  “You’re a magician. You’d think you could dye hair without giving me lice—”

  The lance of a thorn landed between Tedros’ legs.

  “The finer art of hair care is not a priority when our world is on the line,” said Merlin, searing him with a stare. “Now let’s hear that voice before I really make you itch.”

  Tedros crossed his arms. “My name is Essa,” he squawked in a shrilly, ear-piercing snoot.

  “Goodness, it’s like a schoolmarm from Runyon Hills,” Merlin said, then saw Agatha giggling, her high-pitched cackles mismatching her male frame. Merlin raised his brows. “Really, you two could make a killing in the circus.”

  “My name is Essa,” Tedros repeated angrily, even more strident and prim.

  Agatha was laughing so hard she couldn’t speak. “You’re using too much nose! Breathe from your stomach!”

  Tedros whipped back his hair. “What, you’re the expert on being a girl?”

  Agatha stopped laughing. She stood up, looming over Tedros in her boy’s body. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you have the easy job, since you look and act like a boy most days anyway!” Tedros blared.

  “Oh yeah?” Agatha shoved him with surprising force. “You think this is easy? My hips are so stiff I can barely walk, my Adam’s apple is the size of a small animal, my jaw feels wired shut, and now I’ll have to speak for the both of us, since you clearly can’t handle it.”

  “Handle it? I’m the one rescuing Sophie, not you!”

  “You can’t even say your own name!”

  “I’m the prince and you’re the princess and rescuing our friend is my job. Just ask Merlin!” Tedros yelled, practically a shriek—

  “Yes, now you’ve got it, boy,” Merlin spouted, not looking as he trimmed his beard with a thorn. “Sound perfectly female now.”

  Tedros gaped at him.

  Agatha burst into howls. “Hahahahahahahahahaha—”

  Tedros tackled her.

  “Boys can’t hit girls!” Agatha yelled, grabbing Tedros in a headlock.

  “Lucky for you I’m not a boy!” Tedros shouted, flinging dirt into Agatha’s face—

  A spell zapped them both, ricocheting them to opposite trees.

  “This is the future King and Queen of Camelot? This is whom we’ve entrusted with our future?” Merlin lashed, no longer the friendly old guide. “My spies and I have risked everything so that you may rescue your best friend and find a happy ending that will save Good, old and new. Countless lives are in your childish, untrained hands, least of all yours, only you’re too busy argle-bargling and fiddle-faddling like two monkeys fighting over a spot to poo. So from now until it’s time to go through those gates, I don’t want to hear another word.”

  Agatha and Tedros looked down sullenly, before Tedros’ peeked up. “Then can I be a boy again?”

  Merlin gave him a black scowl and Tedros looked back down.

  “Listen, both of you. My spies will arrive in less than five minutes to break you into school,” the wizard continued. “With guards on the roofs, fairies on the rounds, and who knows what else lurking about, you’ll have mere seconds to cross these gates without being caught.”

  “But we still need a teacher to unlock them, Merlin,” said Agatha.

  “Agatha’s right,” said Tedros. “The gates only opened for us first year because Dovey gave me permission to be in the Woods.”

  “Trust me, my dears, I am smarter than the both of you,” said Merlin. “Now once you safely arrive in the School for Evil, the two of you will split up on two missions. One of you will go to the School for Old and find Excalibur. The other will remain in the School for New and rescue Sophie. As to which one of you will rescue Sophie—”

  “Me!” his charges shouted.

  Merlin sighed. “Uma did warn me this would happen. Nevertheless, the one to rescue Sophie should be the one who knows her best.” He cleared his throat and pulled what looked like a pack of purple playing cards from his star-covered hat. The wizard peered down his spectacles at the first. “What is Sophie’s favorite food?”

  “Cucumbers!” Agatha and Tedros yelled.

  Merlin muttered and shuffled to the next card. “What does Sophie use to wash her face?”

  “Beetroot!” the Evers overlapped.

  “What color is Sophie’s fingerglow?”

  “Hot pink!”

  “What position does Sophie sleep in?”

  “On her back!”

  “What scent is Sophie’s perfume—”

  “Lavender vanilla patchouli!”

  Merlin tugged at his moustache. “It seems switching sexes has improved your brain capacities. Perhaps you should stay this way permanently.” He shouted into his hat like a bullhorn: “HARDER, PLEASE.”

  The hat ejected a single card that Merlin fumbled and caught. “Dearest me,” he said, squinting hard at it. “This seems rather unfair given Agatha practically grew up with the girl, but all right. Which of you knew Sophie’s mother’s name when you were on Necro Ridge?”

  Agatha’s stubbly cheeks grayed.

  Tedros’ girly face grinned.

  “A twist in the tale, indeed! And so it seems Essa will rescue Sophie from the School for New,” the wizard said to Tedros, before turning to Agatha, “which means Edgar will go to the School for Old and find Excalibur. Now listen to me closely. We’ll have only one chance for you to escape the school upon completing your missions. We must meet here at midnight, precisely midnight, in this very spot—Tedros with Sophie; Agatha with Excalibur—and I’ll whisk the three of you to safety. Understood?”

  “What about Sophie destroying the ring?” Tedros asked.

  “For the last time, please use your girl voice, Tedros—”

  “What about Sophie destroying the ring?” Tedros squawked.

  Merlin rubbed at his ears. “I’m afraid destroying the ring is too much to ask of both you and Sophie for one night, my child. Tonight, your duty is to convince Sophie to escape the young School Master and follow you to a place where he will not find her. I am well aware gaining Sophie’s trust would be far easier in your princely form, but remember: as long as you are in the wrong
bodies, the Storian ceases to write your whereabouts. Once you return to Tedros’ body, however, the Storian will tell the School Master exactly where you are and his entire school will murder you on sight. So if you plan on staying alive beyond tonight, don’t do anything stupid.”

  Tedros blanched as Merlin turned to Agatha. “As for you, my girl (or my boy, since we may as well be accurate) you must find a way to break into the School for Old all on your own, as difficult as it might be. Tedros’ sword is hidden somewhere in that castle and it is your duty to steal it back. Remember, we cannot destroy Sophie’s ring nor kill the School Master without that sword—” Merlin’s eyes thinned. “Agatha?”

  She was still glaring sullenly at her girl-faced prince.

  “Agatha, my spies will be here any second and we can’t have you pouting over your assignment like a spoiled cat,” said Merlin.

  Agatha noticed Tedros’ gloating grin. She shoved down her disappointment, determined not to give him the satisfaction. “Look, I’ll find the sword, but you still haven’t told us who these spies even ar—”

  But now she and Tedros saw three ravens flapping out of green fog over the bay, one thin, one fat, and one albino-white. All three were hopeless flyers, with the albino zagging off-track, the fat one snarfing chocolate worms, and the thin one screeching a signal to dive before all three birds crashed into each other and plummeted like failed parachutes into a bush behind the gates.

  “I can’t find the uniforms!” Anadil’s voice croaked from inside the bush. “I left them right here—”

  “Dot’s sitting on ’em,” Hester’s voice grouched.

  “Was wondering why the ground’s so soft,” Dot’s voice wisped.

  “Unmogrify on three,” said Hester. “One . . . two—”

  “With you watching?” Dot gasped.

  “As if we want to see you naked, you idiot!” Hester yelled. “Three!”

  A burst of red, green, and blue light exploded from the bush as it rocked side to side, with flashes of skin through leaves.

  “I think this officially makes us a coven,” Hester’s voice grumped.

  “Has someone got my underpants?” Dot clucked.

  “Let no one question my allegiance to Evil because there is nothing more Evil than what I’m seeing right now,” snarled Anadil.

  All at once, the three witches stood up in the bush, covered in pine needles and fully dressed in Evil’s uniforms. Through the spiked gates, they saw Edgar and Essa blinking at them.

  “I take that back,” said Anadil.

  “You’re the spies?” Tedros blurted in his deep voice (Merlin frowned). “But I thought you were Evil!”

  “And I thought you were a boy. Things aren’t so black and white are they?” Hester huffed. “Merlin, fairy patrol will be here in two minutes. We need to break them in now.”

  “Where’s the wand then?” said the wizard, grimacing at Hester through the gate.

  Hester stared at Anadil and the two black rats peeking out of her pockets. “The wand isn’t here, yet?”

  Anadil went a shade whiter (if that was possible). So did the rats. “H-h-he was s-s-supposed to arrive before us—”

  “One minute until fairy patrol,” Dot warned, listening to jangling chinks in the distance.

  “And now we have an even worse problem,” said Agatha, big boy eyes narrowed across the bay.

  Everyone spun and glimpsed Sophie’s small shadow through the mist, tottering down the Great Lawn, head bent to the ground, as if searching for something in the grass.

  “She’ll see us if the mist clears,” Tedros fretted, voice somewhere between Essa’s and his own.

  “Thirty seconds until fairies,” Dot said, the ugly jangling growing louder.

  “Anadil, we need that wand,” Merlin pressed.

  For the first time, Agatha saw a crack in the wizard’s poise. Hester, too, normally unsinkable, was blotched red, haranguing Anadil.

  “You told Merlin it could find anything . . . that it’d find Dovey wherever she’s imprisoned and get her my message . . . you promised it’d bring back her wand in time!”

  “It’s a talent, not a guarantee,” Anadil said weakly, her two black rats looking just as uptight.

  “Fifteen seconds!” said Dot.

  But now there were green fairy flashes from the east, flitting along the bank . . . while green mist receded along the south shore, about to reveal three Evil witches and a famous Good wizard, breaking in two strangers at the gates . . .

  “Five seconds!” Dot cried—

  “There!” Anadil hissed, pointing behind her.

  Everyone whirled to see a white mouse hurtling out of fog, Professor Dovey’s wand in its mouth. Only as the mouse scuttled towards them, wheezing and sweating, Agatha saw its body engorging, its white fur blackening, its front teeth sharpening, its black eyes reddening, until the white mouse was no longer a mouse at all, but a rabid black rat charging straight for its master. With a last flail of effort, it flying-leapt towards Anadil, flinging the wand through the air in seeming slow motion. The albino witch caught it and whirled to the school gates, stabbing the wand tip at the glowing spikes . . .

  The gates parted magically, opening a thin gap.

  “Thanks, fairy godmother,” Anadil sighed in relief. “Wherever you are.”

  She tossed Dovey’s wand to Merlin and the wizard jammed Agatha and Tedros through before the bars slammed tight behind the intruders. Together, Agatha and Tedros swiveled to see Merlin on the other side of the deadly gates.

  “Midnight,” said the wizard. “Do not fail.”

  Then he pulled off his hat and jumped through its brim like a genie into a lamp, before the hat vanished too with a thundering crack.

  For Agatha and Tedros, being trapped in a witches’ dorm room was a lot like being trapped in a house on Graves Hill.

  The first few hours they simply didn’t speak. Each claimed a bed—Agatha took Hester’s, Tedros’ took Dot’s—with Anadil’s between them like a castle moat. Neither even acknowledged the other, partly because they were embarrassed by their new bodies, but more because both had a lot of thinking to do. Hugging a moldy pillow, Agatha mulled every possible path into the School for Old—Halfway Bridge, sewers between castles, tree tunnels in the Clearing, or a long slog around the bay—while Tedros, charred pillow over his face, racked his brain for ways to get Sophie alone.

  Soon Agatha heard neighbors returning after sessions, then complaining about dinner (stewed sardines and cabbage, she gathered, leaving her extra thankful for Merlin’s magic hat), and before she knew it, the wintry light had dimmed through the window, melting into nighttime. Agatha lit Hester’s claw-shaped candle on the nightstand and pored over some of the witch’s books (Advanced Spells for Suffering, Why Villains Fail, Frequent Witch Mistakes) hoping she’d find something useful. Tedros, meanwhile, was scribbling at Dot’s desk in the dark, balling up pages every ten seconds, breaking quills in frustration, and cursing loudly in his boy voice.

  Agatha ignored him and focused on her task. Her best bet was Halfway Bridge, she thought. It’s how she’d broken into both the School for Evil and the School for Boys. Surely she could find her way into the School for Old the same wa—

  Tedros broke another quill.

  “Oh for God’s sake. What are you writing?”

  Tedros slouched, like a maiden failing to spin straw into gold. “Figured I should write down all the things I want to say to Sophie, but there’s so much I don’t know where to start.”

  “You’ll think of something,” Agatha grumbled, nose still in her book.

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m crap under pressure.”

  Agatha glanced up at him, her prince’s earnest, puppy-dog eyes blinking through his girl’s face. Strangely, he’d never looked more adorable.

  “What happened to ‘I’ll know what to do when the times comes?’” she asked.

  “I know what to do when I’m with you. Never really thought I’d be rescuing her o
n my own. No matter how much I acted like it.”

  Agatha blushed and went back to her book. “You’ve never been at a loss for words when it comes to Sophie. You flirted with her when she was a girl . . . when she was a boy . . . I’m sure you’ll be charming her in no time.”

  “I was me both of those times. This is different.” Tedros stretched his arms and climbed onto Anadil’s middle bed. “Besides, I already have a princess. Even though she picks fights with me for no reason.”

  “And I have a prince who doesn’t listen to me and always thinks he’s right,” Agatha snapped.

  “Because you act like you don’t need me half the time.”

  “Because you act like I’m supposed to do what you say!”

  “Because you’re always trying to be the prince!”

  “Well, I don’t have the faintest clue how to be a princess!” Agatha barked—

  “OBVIOUSLY!” Tedros roared. “WHY DO YOU THINK I LIKE YOU SO MUCH!” He rolled onto his other side.

  Agatha watched him in silence, all the stress she’d been festering slowly seeping away.

  Tedros didn’t flinch as she climbed onto the bed next to him, keeping a space between their bodies. Together, they lay side by side in the dark, staring at the burnt ceiling.

  Girl and boy.

  Boy and girl.

  “Hester’s right. All I’ve ever had going for me is a crown, a fortune, and a face,” Tedros said quietly. “Dovey used to say we’d need more than looks and charm to find our happy ending. Chaddick and the boys made fun of the old bat, and I’d join in. But when I saw Sophie on the shore and I was no longer a prince, I knew she was right. I felt naked, powerless . . . like I was hollow inside. You all think I’m scared of being a girl? It’s not being a girl I’m scared of. It’s that I’ll only be loved for what’s on the outside, rather than the real me. That’s been my biggest fear my whole life. That all anyone sees is a tall, blond prince, straight out of a storybook, and fills in the rest without seeing what’s actually there. But now, for the first time, that outside is gone and I’m in a weird body that isn’t mine . . . and all I have is the Tedros inside me. The Tedros that I don’t know is good enough for anybody to love.”

  He blinked faster. “That’s what happened to my father, isn’t it? He made my mother see the king as long as he could, until she saw underneath the power and good looks and saw what was really inside of him . . . Arthur . . . just Arthur, who wasn’t even worth a goodbye to her. What if I’m the same as my father, Agatha? What if you see what I am when you take away the prince and it isn’t good enough? Maybe that’s why you’ve been fighting with me so much the closer we get to Camelot. Because underneath the prince, you see I’m . . . I’m . . . nothing.” He smeared at his eyes. “I’ve always been the Prince. Without that Prince, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to get Sophie alone. I don’t know what to say to her, I don’t know how to convince her to trust me, I don’t know how to get her out of this castle without the School Master killing all of us.”