Agatha knew the answer but asked anyway. “Mother, what do I need capes, hats, and frog toes for?”
“For New Witch Welcoming, of course!” Callis trilled. “You don’t want to get to the School for Evil and look like an amateur.”
Agatha kicked off her clumps. “Let’s put aside the fact the town doctor believes all this. Why is it so hard to accept I’m happy here? I have everything I need. My bed, my cat, and my friend.”
“Well, you should learn from your friend, dear. At least she wants something from life,” Callis said, latching the trunk. “Really, Agatha, what could be a greater destiny than a Fairy Tale Witch? I dreamed of going to the School for Evil! Instead, the School Master took that idiot Sven, who ended up outwitted by a princess in The Useless Ogre and set on fire. I’m not surprised. That boy could barely lace his own boots. I’m sure if the School Master could have done it over, he’d have taken me.”
Agatha slid under her covers. “Well, everyone in this town still thinks you’re a witch, so you got your wish after all.”
Callis whipped around. “My wish is that you get away from here,” she hissed, eyes dark as coal. “This place has made you weak and lazy and afraid. At least I made something of myself here. You just waste and rot until Sophie comes to walk you like a dog.”
Agatha stared at her, stunned.
Callis smiled brightly and resumed packing. “But do take care of your friend, dear. The School for Good might seem like a festoon of roses, but she’s in for a surprise. Now go to bed. The School Master will be here soon and it’s easier for him if you’re asleep.”
Agatha pulled the sheets over her head.
Sophie couldn’t sleep. Five minutes to midnight and no sign of an intruder. She knelt on her bed and peered through the shutters. Around Gavaldon’s edge, the thousand-person guard waved torches to light up the forest. Sophie scowled. How could he get past them?
That’s when she noticed the hearts on her windowsill were gone.
He’s already here!
Three packed pink bags plopped through the window, followed by two glass-slippered feet.
Agatha lurched up in bed, jolted from a nightmare. Callis snored loudly across the room, Reaper at her side. Next to Agatha’s bed sat her locked trunk, marked “Agatha of Gavaldon, 1 Graves Hill Road” in scraggy writing, along with a pouch of honey cakes for the journey.
Chomping cake, Agatha gazed through a cracked window. Down the hill, the torches blazed in a tight circle, but here on Graves Hill, there was just one burly guard left, arms as big as Agatha’s whole body, legs like chicken drumsticks. He kept himself awake by lifting a broken headstone like a barbell.
Agatha bit into the last honey cake and looked out at the dark forest.
Shiny blue eyes looked back at her.
Agatha choked and dove to her bed. She slowly lifted her head. Nothing there. Including the guard.
Then she found him, unconscious over the broken headstone, torch extinguished.
Creeping away from him was a bony, hunchbacked human shadow. No body attached.
The shadow floated across the sea of graves without the slightest sign of hurry. It slid under the cemetery gates and skulked down the hill towards the firelit center of Gavaldon.
Agatha felt horror strangle her heart. He was real. Whoever he was.
And he doesn’t want me.
Relief crashed over her, followed by a fresh wave of panic.
Sophie.
She should wake her mother, she should cry for help, she should— No time.
Feigning sleep, Callis heard Agatha’s urgent footsteps, then the door close. She hugged Reaper tighter to make sure he didn’t wake up.
Sophie crouched behind a tree, waiting for the School Master to snatch her.
She waited. And waited. Then she noticed something in the ground.
Cookie crumbs, mashed into a footprint. The footprint of a clump so odious, so foul it could only belong to one person. Sophie’s fists curled, her blood boiled—
Hands covered her mouth and a foot booted her through her window. Sophie crashed headfirst onto her bed and whirled around to see Agatha. “You pathetic, interfering worm!” she screamed, before glimpsing the fear in her friend’s face. “You saw him!” Sophie gasped—
Agatha put one hand over Sophie’s mouth and pinned her to the mattress with the other. As Sophie writhed in protest, Agatha peeped through the window. The crooked shadow drifted into the Gavaldon square, past the oblivious armed guard, and headed directly for Sophie’s house. Agatha swallowed a scream. Sophie wrenched free and grabbed her shoulders.
“Is he handsome? Like a prince? Or a proper schoolmaster with spectacles and waistcoat and—”
THUMP!
Sophie and Agatha slowly turned to the door.
THUMP! THUMP!
Sophie wrinkled her nose. “He could just knock, couldn’t he?”
Locks cracked. Hinges rattled.
Agatha shrank against the wall, while Sophie folded her hands and fluffed her dress as if expecting a royal visit. “Best give him what he wants without fuss.”
As the door caved, Agatha leapt off the bed and threw herself against it. Sophie rolled her eyes. “Oh, sit down for goodness’ sake.” Agatha pulled at the knob with all her might, lost her grip—the door slammed open with a deafening crack, hurling her across the room.
It was Sophie’s father, white as a sheet. “I saw something!” he panted, waving his torch.
Then Agatha caught the crooked shadow on the wall stepping into his broad silhouette. “There!” she cried. Stefan swiveled but the shadow blew out his torch. Agatha grabbed a match from her pocket and lit it. Stefan lay on the ground unconscious. Sophie was gone.
Screams outside.
Through the window, Agatha watched shouting villagers chase after Sophie as the shadow dragged her towards the woods. And while more and more villagers howled and chased—
Sophie smiled ear to ear.
Agatha lunged through the window and ran after her. But just as the villagers reached Sophie, their torches magically exploded and trapped them in rings of fire. Agatha dodged the gauntlet of firetraps and dashed to save her friend before the shadow pulled her into the forest.
Sophie felt her body leave soft grass and rake against stony dirt. She frowned at the thought of showing up to school in a soiled dress. “I really thought there’d be footmen,” she said to the shadow. “Or a pumpkin carriage, at least.”
Agatha ran ferociously, but Sophie had almost disappeared into the trees. All around, flames spewed higher and higher, poised to devour the entire village.
Seeing the fires leap, Sophie felt relief knowing no one could rescue her now. But where is the second child? Where is the one for Evil? She’d been wrong about Agatha all along. As she felt herself pulled into trees, Sophie looked back at the towering blaze and kissed goodbye to the curse of ordinary life.
“Farewell, Gavaldon! Farewell, low ambition! Farewell, mediocrity—”
Then she saw Agatha charge through the flames.
“Agatha, no!” Sophie cried—
Agatha leapt on top of her and both were dragged into the darkness.
Instantly, the fires around the villagers were extinguished. They dashed for the woods, but the trees magically grew thick and thorny, locking them out.
It was too late.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” roared Sophie, shoving and scratching Agatha as the shadow pulled them into pitch-black forest. Agatha thrashed wildly, trying to wrest the shadow’s grip on Sophie and Sophie’s grip on the shadow. “YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING!” Sophie howled. Agatha bit her hand. “EEEEEYIIII!!!!” Sophie brayed and flipped her body so Agatha scraped against dirt. Agatha flipped Sophie back and climbed towards the shadow, her clump squashing Sophie’s face.
“WHEN MY HANDS FIND YOUR NECK—”
They felt themselves leave the ground.
As something spindly and cold wrapped its way around them, Agatha fumbled for a matc
h from her dress, struck it against her bony wrist, and paled. The shadow was gone. They were cocooned in the creepers of an elm, which ferried them up the enormous tree and plopped them on the lowest branch. Both girls glared at each other and tried to catch enough breath to speak. Agatha managed it first.
“We are going home right now.”
The branch wobbled, coiled back like a sling, and shot them up like bullets. Before either could scream, they landed on another branch. Agatha flailed for a new match, but the branch coiled and snapped them up to the next bough, which bounced them up to the next. “HOW TALL IS THIS TREE!” Agatha shrieked. Ping-ponging up branches, the girls’ bodies collided and crashed, dresses tearing on thorns and twigs, faces slamming into ricocheting limbs, until finally they reached the highest bough.
There at the top of the elm tree sat a giant black egg. The girls gaped at it, baffled. The egg tore open, splashing them with dark, yolky goo as a colossal bird emerged, made only of bones. It took one look at the pair and unleashed an angry screech that rattled their eardrums. Then it grabbed them both in its claws and dove off the tree as they screamed, finally agreeing on something. The bony bird lashed through black woods as Agatha frantically lit match after match on the bird’s ribs, giving them catches of glinting red eyes and bristling shadows. All around, gangly trees snatched at the girls as the bird dipped and climbed to avoid them, until thunder exploded ahead and they smashed headfirst into a raging lightning storm. Fire bolts sent trees careening towards them and they shielded their faces from rain, mud, and timber, ducked cobwebs, beehives, and vipers, until the bird plunged into deadly briars and the girls blanched, closing their eyes to the pain—
Then it was quiet.
“Agatha . . .”
Agatha opened her eyes to rays of sun. She looked down and gasped.
“It’s real.”
Far beneath them, two soaring castles sprawled across the forest. One castle glittered in sun mist, with pink and blue glass turrets over a sparkling lake. The other loomed, blackened and jagged, sharp spires ripping through thunderclouds like the teeth of a monster.
The School for Good and Evil.
The bony bird drifted over the Towers of Good and loosened Sophie from its claws. Agatha clutched her friend in horror, but then saw Sophie’s face, glowing with happiness.
“Aggie, I’m a princess.”
But the bird dropped Agatha instead.
Stunned, Sophie watched Agatha plummet into pink cotton-candy mist. “Wait—no—”
The bird swooped savagely towards the Towers of Evil, its jaws reaching up for new prey.
“No! I’m Good! It’s the wrong one!” Sophie screamed—
And without a beat, she was dropped into hellish darkness.
3
The Great Mistake
Sophie opened her eyes to find herself floating in a foul-smelling moat, filled to the brim with thick black sludge. A gloomy wall of fog flanked her on all sides. She tried to stand, but her feet couldn’t find bottom and she sank; sludge flooded her nose and burnt her throat. Choking for breath, she found something to grasp, and saw it was the carcass of a half-eaten goat. She gasped and tried to swim away but couldn’t see an inch in front of her face. Screams echoed above and Sophie looked up.
Streaks of motion—then a dozen bony birds crashed through the fog and dropped shrieking children into the moat. When their screams turned to splashes, another wave of birds came, then another, until every inch of sky was filled with falling children. Sophie glimpsed a bird dive straight for her and she swerved, just in time to get a cannonball splash of slime in her face.
She wiped the glop out of her eye and came face-to-face with a boy. The first thing she noticed was he had no shirt. His chest was puny and pale, without the hope of muscle. From his small head jutted a long nose, spiky teeth, and black hair that drooped over beady eyes. He looked like a sinister little weasel.
“The bird ate my shirt,” he said. “Can I touch your hair?”
Sophie backed up.
“They don’t usually make villains with princess hair,” he said, dog-paddling towards her.
Sophie searched desperately for a weapon—a stick, a stone, a dead goat—
“Maybe we could be bunk mates or best mates or some kind of mates,” he said, inches from her now. It was like Radley had turned into a rodent and developed courage. He reached out his scrawny hand to touch her and Sophie readied a punch to the eye, when a screaming child dropped between them. Sophie took off in the opposite direction and by the time she glanced back, Weasel Boy was gone.
Through the fog, Sophie could see shadows of children treading through floating bags and trunks, hunting for their luggage. Those that managed to find them continued downstream, towards ominous howls in the distance. Sophie followed these floating silhouettes until the fog cleared to reveal the shore, where a pack of wolves, standing on two feet in bloodred soldier jackets and black leather breeches, snapped riding whips to herd students into line.
Sophie grasped the bank to pull herself out but froze when she caught her reflection in the moat. Her dress was buried beneath sludge and yolk, her face shined with stinky black grime, and her hair was home to a family of earthworms. She choked for breath—
“Help! I’m in the wrong sch—”
A wolf yanked her out and kicked her into line. She opened her mouth to protest, but saw Weasel Boy swimming towards her, yelping, “Wait for me!”
Quickly, Sophie joined the line of shadowed children, dragging their trunks through the fog. If any dawdled, a wolf delivered a swift crack, so she kept anxious pace, all the while wiping her dress, picking out worms, and mourning her perfectly packed bags far, far away.
The tower gates were made of iron spikes, crisscrossed with barbed wire. Nearing them, she saw it wasn’t wire at all but a sea of black vipers that darted and hissed in her direction. With a squeak, Sophie scampered through and looked back at rusted words over the gates, held between two carved black swans:
THE SCHOOL FOR EVIL EDIFICATION AND PROPAGATION OF SIN
Ahead the school tower rose like a winged demon. The main tower, built of pockmarked black stone, unfurled through smoky clouds like a hulking torso. From the sides of the main tower jutted two thick, crooked spires, dripping with veiny red creepers like bleeding wings.
The wolves drove the children towards the mouth of the main tower, a long serrated tunnel shaped like a crocodile snout. Sophie felt chills as the tunnel grew narrower and narrower until she could barely see the child in front of her. She squeezed between two jagged stones and found herself in a leaky foyer that smelled of rotten fish. Demonic gargoyles pitched down from stone rafters, lit torches in their jaws. An iron statue of a bald, toothless hag brandishing an apple smoldered in the menacing firelight. Along the wall, a crumbly column had an enormous black letter N painted on it, decorated with wicked-faced imps, trolls, and Harpies climbing up and down it like a tree. There was a bloodred E on the next column, embellished with swinging giants and goblins. Creeping along in the interminable line, Sophie worked out what the columns spelled out—N-E-V-E-R—then suddenly found herself far enough into the room to see the line snake in front of her. For the first time, she had a clear view of the other students and almost fainted.
One girl had a hideous overbite, wispy patches of hair, and one eye instead of two, right in the middle of her forehead. Another boy was like a mound of dough, with his bulging belly, bald head, and swollen limbs. A tall, sneering girl trudged ahead with sickly green skin. The boy in front of her had so much hair all over him he could have been an ape. They all looked about her age, but the similarities ended there. Here was a mass of the miserable, with misshapen bodies, repulsive faces, and the cruelest expressions she’d ever seen, as if looking for something to hate. One by one their eyes fell on Sophie and they found what they were looking for. The petrified princess in glass slippers and golden curls.
The red rose among thorns.
On the other side o
f the moat, Agatha had nearly killed a fairy.
She had woken under red and yellow lilies that appeared to be having an animated conversation. Agatha was sure she was the subject, for the lilies gestured brusquely at her with their leaves and buds. But then the matter seemed settled and the flowers hunched like fussing grandmothers and wrapped their stems around her wrists. With a tug, they yanked her to her feet and Agatha gazed out at a field of girls, blooming gloriously around a shimmering lake.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The girls grew right from the earth. First heads poked through soft dirt, then necks, then chests, then up and up until they stretched their arms into fluffy blue sky and planted delicate slippers upon the ground. But it wasn’t the sight of sprouting girls that unnerved Agatha most. It was that these girls looked nothing like her.
Their faces, some fair, some dark, were flawless and glowed with health. They had shiny waterfalls of hair, ironed and curled like dolls’, and they wore downy dresses of peach, yellow, and white, like a fresh batch of Easter eggs. Some fell on the shorter side, others were willowy and tall, but all flaunted tiny waists, slim legs, and slight shoulders. As the field flourished with new students, a team of three glitter-winged fairies awaited each one. Chiming and chinkling, they dusted the girls of dirt, poured them cups of honeybush tea, and tended to their trunks, which had sprung from the ground with their owners.
Where exactly these beauties were coming from, Agatha hadn’t the faintest idea. All she wanted was a dour or disheveled one to poke through so she wouldn’t feel so out of place. But it was an endless bloom of Sophies who had everything she didn’t. A familiar shame clawed at her stomach. She needed a hole to climb down, a graveyard to hide in, something to make them all go away—
That’s when the fairy bit her.
“What the—”
Agatha tried to shake the jingling thing off her hand, but it flew and bit her neck, then her bottom. Other fairies tried to subdue the rogue as she yowled, but it bit them too and attacked Agatha again. Incensed, she tried to catch the fairy, but it moved lightning quick, so she hopped around uselessly while it bit her over and over until the fairy mistakenly flew into her mouth and she swallowed it. Agatha sighed in relief and looked up.