“Death to Sophie!”
“Kill her!”
“Kill the witch!”
The men fired arrows and catapulted stones at the tower, but the weapons instantly vanished into an enchanted shield, bubbly and violet tinged, that appeared over the school gates. As the crowd roared and swung pickets, mounted with the same WANTED signs the girls had seen in the woods, an intrepid prince leapt onto the spiked gates. The gold metal magically sizzled and he let go in shock, impaling on spikes below. Sophie spun in horror—
“How can those be princes?” she cried.
“How can those be princes?” Lady Lesso mimicked. “Those princes are there because of you.”
Agatha and Sophie gaped at each other. “We don’t understand—” Agatha spluttered.
Professor Dovey ground her teeth. The only time Agatha had seen her fairy godmother this furious was when she had disobeyed a teacher her first year and almost burned down the castle.
“Think, Agatha. Once upon a time, you believed yourself an ugly witch. But instead, your destiny was to become a princess. To find Ever After with the most coveted prince in our land! It would have been Good’s greatest victory! A restoration of all the values we’d lost! Kill the School Master, send your Evil friend home safe—and stay here with Tedros, as his queen. All you had to do was take his hand before you disappeared. That would have been the correct fairy tale. But instead . . .”
She looked daggers at Sophie. “You chose her.”
“And rightly so,” Sophie riposted. “If you knew Agatha at all, you’d know she could never give me up for a boy.” She whirled to her friend, knowing this time Agatha would defend her. But again, Agatha didn’t. She just gulped hard and stared at her muddy clumps.
“What happened after we left?” Agatha said.
“The Eviction.”
The girls turned to Lady Lesso, who shuddered at the memory.
“After your kiss, students tried to return to their schools, but the Evil towers ejected the Nevergirls. Sixty girls flung through windows into the bay—from stairs, classrooms, beds, toilets, common rooms . . . They tried to go back, but the Evil gates barred their entry. All the Nevergirls fled to Good for sanctuary, and the Evergirls welcomed them, inspired by your happy ending.”
“As soon as they arrived, the Good towers evicted the Everboys just as rudely,” Professor Dovey went on. “The moment the boys were all gone, the castle magically changed to what it is now—their portraits removed, murals repainted, friezes recarved, as if mirroring your tale. The School for Good had become the School for Girls.”
And indeed, the glittering crests over her and Lady Lesso’s hearts, once silver swans, were now sparkling blue butterflies. Agatha shook her head, confused.
“But those aren’t Everboys from school!” She pointed out the window. “Those are real princes!”
“What happened here happened everywhere in the Endless Woods,” Professor Dovey said gravely. “As your story spread like a plague and princesses imagined a world without princes, the men were magically ejected from their castles and left homeless. They appealed to witches to break the curse, but they too had heard The Tale of Sophie and Agatha. Stirred by the power of your bond, witches joined forces with princesses and took control of the kingdoms.”
“Witches and princesses are friends?” Sophie said in disbelief.
“No one thought it possible until your fairy tale,” said Professor Dovey. “And now it is men and women who are enemies.”
Agatha thought back to the Flowerground—the twittering women in groups, some pretty and cheerful, some homely and queer . . . the few scraggly, lonely males. . . .
“But we don’t want the princes homeless!” Agatha cried. “We don’t want them to be enemies!”
“We certainly don’t want them to smell,” murmured Sophie.
“You made princes irrelevant,” Lady Lesso retorted. “You made them impotent. You made them obsolete. And now you’ve made them turn to a new leader for revenge.”
The girls followed her eyes to the sea of WANTED signs hoisted outside the gates, demanding Sophie’s head at the orders of this leader.
“The School Master—” Sophie stammered. “We saw him—”
“Did you now?” Lady Lesso sneered.
“He’s in the Evil castle! We have to kill him!” Sophie swiveled to Agatha. “Tell her!”
Agatha ignored the fluttering in her stomach. “But he couldn’t have lived,” she said, almost to herself. She looked up. “You were there too, professors. All of us saw him die.”
“Indeed,” said Professor Dovey. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t replaced.”
“Replaced?” the girls blurted.
“Naturally Lady Lesso and I believed ourselves the best candidates,” Professor Dovey said, smoothing her gown’s beetle wings. “Homeless and hated, the princes needed leaders they could trust. We assured them The Tale of Sophie and Agatha was closed forever. Under our protection, the Storian would restore men and women to balance, as it does Good and Evil. But just as we tried to bridge peace between boys and girls . . .” Her face dimmed. “Something odd happened.”
She thrust out the last page of their fairy tale and waited for the girls to say something.
“They drew Tedros taller than he is,” Sophie offered.
“Isn’t something missing?” the Dean moaned.
Agatha remembered the storybook under her bed . . . the wedded princess and prince . . .
“‘The End,’” she said. “Why doesn’t it say ‘The End’?”
Professor Dovey glared at her and slowly lifted the book to the light. Beneath the last line of their fairy tale, the two girls could see faded ink spelling those very two words . . .
Before they had been erased.
“What happened?” Sophie breathed.
“It seems your book has reopened,” Professor Dovey said, guiding their eyes to all the other versions of their story splayed across the desk. ‘The End’ had disappeared off each of them too.
Sophie rifled through the pile. “But how can we lose a happy ending!”
“Because one of you wished for a different one,” Lady Lesso lashed, not looking at her. “One of you wanted a new Ever After. And now, one of you has put our school on the brink of war.”