She crawled through darkness, hands and knees blindly shuffling along cold metal—until metal suddenly turned to air. This time, she couldn’t save herself.
Falling too fast to scream, Agatha whizzed through chutes, ping-ponged through pipes, and slid down vents until she somersaulted through a grate and landed on a beanstalk.
She hugged the thick green trunk, thankful she was still in one piece. But as she looked around, Agatha saw she wasn’t in a garden or forest or anywhere else a beanstalk is supposed to be. She was in a dark room with high ceilings, filled with paintings, sculptures, and glass cases. Her eyes found the frosted doors in the corner, gilded words etched in glass:
THE GALLERY OF GOOD
Agatha inched down the beanstalk until her clumps touched marble floor.
A mural blanketed the long wall with a panoramic view of a soaring gold castle and a dashing prince and beautiful princess wedded beneath its gleaming arch, as thousands of spectators jingled bells and danced in celebration. Blessed by a brilliant sun, the virtuous couple kissed, while baby angels hovered above, showering them with red and white roses. High above the scene, shiny gold block letters peeked out from behind clouds, stretching from one end of the mural to the other:
E V E R A F T E R
Agatha grimaced. She had always mocked Sophie for believing in Happily Ever After. (“Who wants to be happy all the time?”) But looking at the mural, she had to admit this school did a spookily good job of selling the idea.
She peered into a glass case, holding a thin booklet of flowery handwriting with a plaque next to it: SNOW WHITE, ANIMAL FLUENCY EXAM (LETITIA OF MAIDENVALE). In the next cases, she found the blue cape of a boy who became Cinderella’s prince, Red Riding Hood’s dorm pillow, the Little Match Girl’s diary, Pinocchio’s pajamas, and other remnants of star students who presumably went on to weddings and castles. On the walls, she scanned more drawings of Ever After by former students, a School History exhibit, banners celebrating iconic victories, and a wall labeled “Class Captain,” stacked with portraits of students from each class. The museum got darker as it went on, so Agatha used one of her matches to light a lamp. That’s when she saw the dead animals.
Dozens of taxidermied creatures loomed over her, stuffed and mounted on rosy pink walls. She dusted off their plaques to find the booted Master Cat, Cinderella’s favorite rat, Jack’s sold-off cow, stamped with the names of children who weren’t good enough to become heroes or sidekicks or servants. No Happily Ever After for this lot. Just hooks in a museum. Agatha felt their eerie, glass-eyed stares and turned away. Only then did she see the plaque gleaming on the beanstalk. HOLDEN OF RAINBOW GALE. That wretched plant had once been a boy.
Agatha’s blood ran cold. All these stories she had never believed in. But they were painfully real now. In two hundred years, no kidnapped child had ever made it back to Gavaldon. What made her think she and Sophie would be the first? What made her think they wouldn’t end up a raven or a rosebush?
Then she remembered what made them different from all the rest.
We have each other.
They had to work together to break this curse. Or they’d both end up fossils of a fairy tale.
Agatha found her attention drawn to a corner nook, with a row of paintings by the same artist, depicting the same scenes: children reading storybooks, in hazy, impressionistic colors. As she neared the paintings, her eyes grew wider. Because she recognized where all these children were.
They were in Gavaldon.
She moved from first painting to last, with reading children set against the familiar hills and lake, crooked clock tower and rickety church, even the shadow of a house on Graves Hill. Agatha felt stabs of homesickness. She had mocked the children as batty and delusional. But in the end, they had known what she didn’t—that the line between stories and real life is very thin indeed.
Then she came to the last painting, which wasn’t like the others at all. In this one, raging children heaved their storybooks into a bonfire in the square and watched them burn. All around them, the dark forest went up in flames, filling the sky with violent red and black smoke. Staring at it, Agatha felt a chill up her spine.
Voices. She dove behind a giant pumpkin carriage, hitting her head on a plaque. HEINRICH OF NETHERWOOD. Agatha gagged.
Two teachers entered the museum, an older woman in a chartreuse high-necked dress, speckled with iridescent green beetle wings, and a younger woman in a pointy-shouldered purple gown that slunk behind her. The woman in chartreuse had a grandmotherly beehive of white hair, but luminous skin and calm brown eyes. The woman in purple had black hair yanked in a long braid, amethyst eyes, and bloodless skin stretched over bones like a drum.
“He’s tampering with the tales, Clarissa,” the one in purple said.
“The School Master can’t control the Storian, Lady Lesso,” Clarissa returned.
“He’s on your side and you know it,” Lady Lesso seethed.
“He’s not on anyone’s side—” Clarissa stopped short. So did Lady Lesso.
Agatha saw what they were looking at. The last painting.
“I see you’ve welcomed another of Professor Sader’s delusions,” Lady Lesso said.
“It is his gallery,” Clarissa sighed.
Lady Lesso’s eyes flashed. Magically, the painting tore off the wall and landed behind a glass case, inches from Agatha’s head.
“This is why they’re not in your school’s gallery,” said Clarissa.
“Anyone who believes the Reader Prophecy is a fool,” hissed Lady Lesso. “Including the School Master.”
“A School Master must protect the balance,” Clarissa said gently. “He sees Readers as part of that balance. Even if you and I cannot understand.”
“Balance!” scoffed Lady Lesso. “Then why hasn’t Evil won a tale since he took over? Why hasn’t Evil defeated Good in two hundred years?”
“Perhaps my students are just better educated,” said Clarissa.
Lady Lesso glowered and walked away. Swishing her finger, Clarissa moved the painting back into place and scurried to keep up.
“Maybe your new Reader will prove you wrong,” she said.
Lady Lesso snorted. “I hear she wears pink.”
Agatha listened to their footsteps go quiet.
She looked up at the dented painting. The children, the bonfire, Gavaldon burning to the ground. What did it all mean?