A World Without Princes

  “I can’t,” she said, and slumped against the stall door. A cough suddenly came from behind it.

  Hester bared sharp teeth. “What.”

  “Can I come out now?” peeped a familiar voice.

  “You’ll stay in there until you admit you’re a traitor who no one likes and who is better off stabbing her own throat than ever showing her face again,” Hester lashed.

  Silence.

  “Agatha, can I come out?”

  Agatha sighed. “Hello, Dot.”

  The stall door slowly opened, and an Evergirl she’d never seen, with a slender waist and auburn curls, crept through first. Agatha gave her a baffled look and peeked in the stall for Dot.

  The stall was empty.

  Agatha slowly turned back to the stranger. “But you’re—you’re—”

  “Hungry all the time,” Dot said, and pulled her into a long hug, before Agatha drew away and gaped at her. Dot was thirty pounds lighter, with a light sheen of makeup, red lipstick, and sparkled mascara. Her hair, brown with blond highlights, was tightly curled and clipped with glittery yellow barrettes. She’d even rolled up her uniform’s light blue bodice so it showed off her taut belly.

  “You’re not going to get rid of this school, are you?” Dot fretted, nibbling on what looked like a wad of dried kale.

  “Here we go,” Anadil moaned.

  “Daddy always told me I’d end up a fat, lonely villain like him,” said Dot, eyes wet. “But this place lets me be who I want to be, Agatha. I feel good here for the first time in my life. And these two make me feel so bad for it. They made so much fun of me for being fat, and now they insult me for being thin.”

  “So you might as well die,” said Hester.

  “You’re just jealous because I have new friends,” Dot snapped.

  The tattooed demon peeled off Hester’s neck, inflated to life, and hurled a lightning bolt at Dot’s head. Dot dove into a bathtub and the bolt blasted a hole in the marble wall. A tiny girl on her bed, reading Why Men Don’t Matter, gawped through the hole and fled her room.

  Grumbling, Hester summoned her demon back into her neck. Dot peeked at Agatha from the tub, now snacking on what looked like a star-shaped carrot. “She’s mad because everyone else likes the Dean.”

  “I like that she can’t make us wear that buffoonery,” Hester said, scowling at Dot’s blue bodice. “Professor Sheeks secretly taught us a charm that made us erupt in contagious boils anytime we put on the uniform. After two days of screaming girls, the Dean gave up.”

  “How could she just take over?” Agatha said, bewildered.

  “You have to remember how bad things were between boys and girls when you left,” Hester said. “The most eligible prince in school lost his princess to a bald, toothless witch. Boys suddenly saw girls as the enemy—and girls saw the boys as bullies. When the schools changed to Boys and Girls, it already felt as divided as Good and Evil. The Dean just made things worse.”

  “But where did she come from?” asked Agatha. “She says she’s Sader’s sister—”

  “All we know is, the night the schools changed to Boys and Girls, Professor Dovey couldn’t get back into her office,” said Anadil. “She and Lesso tried to get it open for hours, and when they finally did . . . Dean Sader was sitting at the desk.”

  “But how’d she get in?” Agatha said, frowning. “And why don’t they fight her?”

  “For one thing, the male teachers tried,” said Anadil. “And they haven’t been seen since.”

  Agatha gaped at her.

  “As long as Dovey and Lesso had the Storian, we had a chance at peace,” Hester pressed. “But now you kissing Tedros is the only hope. Because there is no way to fight the Dean.”

  She glared into Agatha’s eyes.

  “The castle’s on her side.”

  As Sophie followed the Dean through the blue breezeway from Honor Tower to Valor Tower, girls kept popping up in their path, saluting Sophie like a ship captain—

  “Death to the prince!” a pimply girl squeaked.

  “Long live Sophie and Agatha!” chimed an elfish Evergirl.

  Sophie forced a fraught smile as she tried to keep up with Dean Sader through the glass tunnel over the lake. As she walked, the Dean squinted out at distant princes clamoring outside the school gates, testing Lady Lesso’s shield with rocks and sticks. Her thick red mouth pursed slightly and she walked faster, hips swishing in a dress that seemed so much tighter than all the other teachers’. Hustling behind, Sophie peered at the Dean’s reflection in the breezeway. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful—even her own mother. Proportions exactly out of a storybook, rose-petal lips, hair so lustrous and full, as if the Dean had been drawn to a page and brought to life. What did she use on her skin? Even thistleroot can’t get pores that small, Sophie thought, comparing them in the polished glass to her own—

  Her bald, toothless reflection snarled back at her, covered in warts.

  Sophie choked with terror and closed her eyes. No . . . I’m Good . . . I’m Good now . . .

  She opened her eyes to see her creamy smooth face once more.

  “Sophie?”

  Heart racing, Sophie turned to see the Dean frowning at the end of the breezeway. Quickly, Sophie hastened to keep up, legs quavering, as more girls passed and saluted her.

  “Death to Tedros!”

  “Death to the prince!”

  “Um, when you said slay Tedros,” Sophie fumbled anxiously, “you didn’t mean I—I—I’d slay him . . . or that I’d be involved in anything . . . Evil—”

  “Given your past history, I thought you’d be looking forward to it,” the Dean mused.

  Sophie wiped sweat. “It’s just, um . . . I know I have a rather fearsome reputation. . . . But I’ve changed, you see . . .”

  “Have you?” The Dean gave her a pointed look. “In the gallery, you seemed quite ready to lead a war.”

  “Well, one must project the carriage of leadership,” Sophie said, dripping sweat now. “But in truth, my witch days are long past, so perhaps it’s best if someone currently Evil kills Tedros—might I suggest Hester or Anadil, both rather loathsome villains—”

  “The boy who wants to steal your only friend, and you’re afraid of a fight?”

  Sophie slowly looked up at the Dean, grinning outside the entrance to Valor Tower.

  “Perhaps because you don’t know what it is you’re fighting for.”

  The doors magically opened, and Sophie gasped.

  The walls on both sides of the crowded stairwell, stretching all the way up the five floors, were painted with colossal, stylized stencil murals of her and Agatha’s smiling faces, haloed with wreaths of stars, above the glittering blue headline:

  HOPE FOR A BETTER WORLD

  Instead of the leather, cologne, and animal skins of the old Valor Tower, now there were lush hanging gardens draped over the blue glass stairwell and marble columns, with azure-colored roses that showered the mob of students with petals as they headed to class, before lower-hanging vines swept them up. As Sophie followed the Dean up the stairs, girls immediately moved to the left in single file, clearing a path and greeting them with warm smiles as they passed. Through the spiral banister, Sophie saw a pack of blue butterflies zooming from floor to floor, rearranging into pictures to amuse the descending girls—a stymph, a nymph, a swan. . . . The Dean gave them a look, and with squeaky meeps! they zipped back into her dress.

  She turned off onto the third floor and Sophie followed into a hall flurrying with activity. Against the walls, Evergirls and Nevergirls huddled side by side, watching a ghostly living scene atop the pages of A Student’s Revised History of the Woods to finish an assignment. Above their heads, murals of an idyllic school of girls presiding over enslaved boys, watermarked with Sophie and Agatha’s deified faces, stretched down the long dormitory walls.

  Reena darted to each of them with plates of poached eggs and pumpernickel toast, while Arachne passed mugs of chocolate buttermilk. In a corner,
a group of girls practiced oboes, fiddles, and trumpets, though Sophie couldn’t tell which were Evers or Nevers, since they all had ragged hair and no traces of makeup. Standing on ladders over the stairwell, Mona and Millicent finished painting pink roses on banisters a rich shade of blue, dripping paint on two girls sparring with wooden swords, while Kiko hopped past, flinging sheets of parchment—“Book Club meeting tonight! Come to Book Club!”—before she was drowned out by Giselle and Flavia practicing a loud song from sheet music. All around, doors chorused open and shut as girls scurried to their rooms from the Welcoming and rushed right back out with their books for class, unfussed by sweaty faces and armpits.

  Sophie thought of the old schools—Nevers bashing each other to get to class, Evers primping for hours and hours, everyone in such terrible competition between schools, within schools, all the time. And now here they were, despite the sweatiness and raggedness and satanic smell of buttercream, thriving together, happy together . . . without a boy in sight.

  “How can Agatha not want this?” she breathed.

  “Some will always resist change,” the Dean said next to her. “Agatha is a princess and still believes she needs a prince. Surely you know the power of that fantasy.”

  Sophie thought of all the hope, all the energy, all the time she had put into her princely dreams. The conviction that a gorgeous boy of noble blood would sweep her to his white castle and eternal bliss. Agatha had taunted her ruthlessly for it before the School Master kidnapped them. “As if this muscle-bound god would even understand you,” Agatha scoffed. “We’d be better off together.” She’d given her usual pig snort to make sure it sounded like a joke. But Sophie knew she meant it. Agatha always thought the two of them was enough for Ever After.

  But had her friend fallen under the spell? Had she started to believe in the same fantasy she once mocked?

  Sophie’s stomach sank. Had she and Agatha switched places?

  “She wants to see him,” Sophie said softly.

  The Dean’s face hardened, and she shunted Sophie behind the stairwell as girls streamed by. “If she kisses him, all is lost.”

  “She’d never kiss him—not if it means losing me—”

  “She wished for him,” the Dean pressed, gripping Sophie close. “Wishes are borne of the soul, Sophie. Deny them, and they only grow stronger.”

  Sophie’s insides went cold.

  Leaning in, the Dean took her cheeks into her gilded nails. “She’s not the girl you knew, Sophie. There is a thorn in her heart. And it has to be cut out.”

  Sophie nestled into the Dean’s shoulder. “I just want my friend back,” she rasped.

  “And you will, when her prince is dead.” The Dean stroked her hair. “You’ll stay together always. No boy between you, ever again.”

  Sophie’s eyes misted. She wanted to hide in the Dean’s arms forever. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Keep them apart,” the Dean said, pulling away sharply. “Make Tedros fight us. When he does, you and your army will be ready.”

  “But I—I don’t want to fight—” Sophie stammered, feeling warts burn as if they were there. “I—I want to be Good now—”

  “And let your friend kiss her prince?” the Dean said, glaring at her. “Let her banish you to an ordinary life in a world of no consequence?” She edged closer. “Friendless . . . loveless . . . forgotten?”

  Sophie’s voice left her.

  “Wasn’t that your mother’s ending?” the Dean asked, closer still. Her lips grazed Sophie’s ear. “And what became of her?”

  Sophie lost all color.

  A hand grabbed hers and she shrieked in surprise—

  “Don’t worry!” Beatrix chimed to the Dean, dragging Sophie away. “I’ll show her the room and her uniform and her schedule!” She put her arm around Sophie and yanked her down the hall. “Can you believe we once fought over a boy?”

  Speechless, Sophie glanced back at the Dean against the wall mural, who was smiling at her like a mother to child. As she receded into the hall’s darkness, the last Sophie saw was her emerald eyes, blending into the ones of her own painted face, haloed above a princeless world.

  A world where her best friend would never betray her again.

  Sophie gritted her teeth.

  As long as Agatha didn’t kiss Tedros, they had a chance.

  Agatha sat on the edge of the tub in dazed silence, knocking a soap bar to the floor. All she could think about was where she would be right now if she hadn’t made the wish.

  Her mother would be stewing lunch . . . garlic and liver, and the smell from the cauldron would mix with the ashy wind’s, seeping through broken windows. On her bed, she’d be rushing to finish her grammar homework, due at afternoon lesson. Curled in a corner, Reaper would hiss at her, but a little less than yesterday. As she slurped up the last of the stew, she’d hear the weeds crackle, the soft humming . . . the glass heels on the porch . . . “Walk to school?” Sophie’d say. They’d amble down the hill in their black and pink winter coats, cracking jokes about the barn-smelling boys in their class. “Let them try to marry us,” Sophie would say, and she would laugh, because once upon a time, it was true. They had each other and would never need more.

  “How could I ruin it?” she said, voice breaking. She looked up at the three girls. “How could I wish for him?”

  “Because you’re a princess, Agatha.” Hester’s face softened for the first time. “And no matter how much you fight it . . . you want a prince.”

  Agatha swallowed the knot in her throat. She looked up at Anadil, who nodded next to Hester and waited for Dot to concur.

  She didn’t.

  The two witches shot her with sparks.

  “Ow! Okay, fine!” Dot moped, munching on star-shaped celery. “Even if it means I go back to Evil and be fat and have no friends again!”

  Agatha shook her head. “Look, Sophie just has to forgive me and everything will be—”

  “Forgive you?” Hester cackled. “Her faithful Agatha, soiled by the boy once hers . . . and you expect the Witch of Woods Beyond to forgive? Oh please. Inside, Sophie wants you cut up in little pieces.”

  “You don’t get it,” Agatha said hotly. “Sophie’s changed—she’s Good—”

  Even Anadil’s rats snickered. “She’s a Never, Agatha,” Dot said. “No matter how much you love her, no matter how much you try to change her, Sophie will end Evil and alone.”

  “And not Class Captain,” Hester mumbled.

  Anadil kneeled in front of Agatha. “You will never mean your wish for Sophie, Agatha. Because you and Sophie will never be happy in your world.” For once, Anadil’s red eyes looked human. “You’ll always end up back here again, wishing for your prince. And Sophie will always be the witch, keeping you and him apart . . . until you kiss Tedros.” Her cold, white hand took Agatha’s wrist. “Don’t you see? Your wish was right.”

  Agatha sat on the tub in silence. It was as if she was caught in another riddle. And once again, only a School Master had the answer. This time, Sophie couldn’t come with her.

  “I have to see Tedros alone,” she said quietly.

  Dot nodded. “It’s the only way you’ll know if you’re meant to be with him.”

  “And what if I’m not?” asked Agatha, thinking of all the reasons she hated her prince right now. “What if I still want to go home with Sophie?”

  “Then we’ll help you,” Anadil groused.

  Agatha thought of Sophie’s face in Sader’s office, lethal and ice cold. “But how do I see him without her knowing? We’re in the same room.”

  “Leave it to us,” said Hester, gnawing on the ends of her red-and-black hair. “But it has to be tonight. I can’t survive another day of class.”

  Agatha felt an odd relief, as if caught in a ferocious storm and suddenly given a glimpse of the eye. After all this, she would see Tedros. No matter what happened, there’d be hope after. A road to happiness. A choice made.

  Hunched on the tub, she suddenly fo
cused on the star-shaped bar of soap on the floor. She lifted her gaze to the star-shaped cucumber in Dot’s hand.

  “You’d think it’d be easier than chocolate,” Dot sighed, turning another soap into a turnip. “But for a while, everything just turned to gouda chees—” Anadil covered her mouth.

  The girls tracked her wide eyes to a blue butterfly fluttering in through the smashed hole in the wall.

  Agatha snorted. “It’s just a butterf—”

  Hester shot her with sparks from her finger and Agatha gasped in pain. The tattooed witch glowered at her, and with her red-lit finger, drew smoky words in the air . . .

  She’s listening.

  Agatha shook her head, confused.

  Hester and Anadil counted down on their fingers . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .

  The bathroom door creaked open and a head poked through.

  “There you are, Agatha,” the Dean said as the butterfly drifted back into her dress pattern. “Class starts in five minutes and you’re not in uniform? Not the best way to start your first day.”

  She flashed a black look at Hester and Anadil, as if this included their company. Her eyes drifted down to the hole in the wall behind them, which instantly filled in and repaired itself.

  “Destruction of property is a rather masculine trait,” she said to the two witches, her tone glacial. Then she smiled approvingly at Dot. “I suggest you two learn from your roommate how to behave like women. Or you never know. The castle might teach you the same lesson it taught the boys.”

  Hester and Anadil bowed their heads nervously, which made Agatha even more wary of the Dean. She remembered the odd feeling that she was eavesdropping during the Welcoming . . .

  As a blue butterfly perched on Sophie’s shoulder.

  Agatha drew a breath. The butterfly in the Woods . . . the one in the Flowerground . . .

  The Dean had been there all along, leading them here.

  And she’d heard every word.

  “Shall we, dear?” The Dean held open the door with long, sharp nails.

  Muscles tensed, Agatha followed her out but kept her eyes pinned on the mirror, just in time to see Hester’s reflection raise furious black eyes and mouth a last command.