Once a year, on a morning he could not predict, he would arrive at his shop to find a box of books waiting inside. Four brand-new fairy tales, one copy of each. Mr. Deauville would hang a sign on his shop door: “Closed Until Further Notice.” Then he’d huddle in his back room day after day, diligently copying the new tales by hand until he had enough books for every child in Gavaldon. As for the mysterious originals, they’d appear one morning in his shop window, a sign that Mr. Deauville had finished his exhausting task at last. He’d open his doors to a three-mile line that snaked through the square, down hillslopes, around the lake, jammed with children thirsting for new stories, and parents desperate to see if any of the missing had made it into this year’s tales.
Needless to say, the Council of Elders had plenty of questions for Mr. Deauville. When asked who sent the books, Mr. Deauville said he hadn’t the faintest idea. When asked how long the books had been appearing, Mr. Deauville said he couldn’t remember a time when the books did not appear. When asked whether he’d ever questioned this magical appearance of books, Mr. Deauville replied: “Where else would storybooks come from?”
Then the Elders noticed something else about Mr. Deauville’s storybooks. All the villages in them looked just like Gavaldon. The same lakeshore cottages and colorful eaves. The same purple and green tulips along thin dirt roads. The same crimson carriages, wood-front shops, yellow schoolhouse, and leaning clock tower, only drawn as fantasy in a land far, far away. These storybook villages existed for only one purpose: to begin a fairy tale and to end it. Everything between the beginning and end happened in the dark, endless woods that surrounded the town.
That’s when they noticed that Gavaldon too was surrounded by dark, endless woods.
Back when the children first started to disappear, villagers stormed the forest to find them, only to be repelled by storms, floods, cyclones, and falling trees. When they finally braved their way through, they found a town hiding beyond the trees and vengefully besieged it, only to discover it was their own. Indeed, no matter where the villagers entered the woods, they came out right where they started. The woods, it seemed, had no intention of returning their children. And one day they found out why.
Mr. Deauville had finished unpacking that year’s storybooks when he noticed a large smudge hiding in the box’s fold. He touched his finger to it and discovered the smudge was wet with ink. Looking closer, he saw it was a seal with an elaborate crest of a black swan and a white swan. On the crest were three letters:
S.G.E.
There was no need for him to guess what these letters meant. It said so in the banner beneath the crest. Small black words that told the village where its children had gone:
THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL
The kidnappings continued, but now the thief had a name.
They called him the School Master.
A few minutes after ten, Sophie pried the last lock off the window and cracked open the shutters. She could see to the forest edge, where her father, Stefan, stood with the rest of the perimeter guard. But instead of looking anxious like the others, he was smiling, hand on the widow Honora’s shoulder. Sophie grimaced. What her father saw in that woman, she had no idea. Once upon a time, her mother had been as flawless as a storybook queen. Honora, meanwhile, had a small head, round body, and looked like a turkey.
Her father whispered mischievously into the widow’s ear and Sophie’s cheeks burned. If it were Honora’s two little sons who might be taken, he’d be serious as death. True, Stefan had locked her in at sundown, given her a kiss, dutifully acted the loving father. But Sophie knew the truth. She had seen it in his face every day of her life. Her father didn’t love her. Because she wasn’t a boy. Because she didn’t remind him of himself.
Now he wanted to marry that beast. Five years after her mother’s death, it wouldn’t be seen as improper or callous. A simple exchange of vows and he’d have two sons, a new family, a fresh start. But he needed his daughter’s blessing first for the Elders to allow it. The few times he tried, Sophie changed the subject or loudly chopped cucumbers or smiled the way she did at Radley. Her father hadn’t mentioned Honora again.
Let the coward marry her when I’m gone, she thought, glaring at him through the shutters. Only when she was gone would he appreciate her. Only when she was gone would he know no one could replace her. And only when she was gone would he see he had spawned much more than a son.
He had borne a princess.
On her windowsill, Sophie laid out gingerbread hearts for the School Master with delicate care. For the first time in her life, she’d made them with sugar and butter. These were special, after all. A message to say she’d come willingly.
Sinking into her pillow, she closed her eyes on widows, fathers, and wretched Gavaldon and with a smile counted the seconds to midnight.
As soon as Sophie’s head vanished beneath the window, Agatha shoved the gingerbread hearts in her mouth. Only thing these will invite are rats, she thought, crumbs dribbling on her black clump shoes. She yawned and set on her way as the town clock inched past the quarter hour.
Upon leaving Sophie after their walk, Agatha had started home only to have visions of Sophie darting into the woods to find this School for Fools and Crackpots and ending up gored by a boar. So she returned to Sophie’s garden and waited behind a tree, listening as Sophie undid her window (singing a birdbrained song about princes), packed her bags (now singing about wedding bells), put on makeup and her finest dress (“Everybody Loves a Princess in Pink”?!), and finally (finally!) tucked herself into bed. Agatha mashed the last crumbs with her clump and trudged towards the cemetery. Sophie was safe and would wake up tomorrow feeling like a fool. Agatha wouldn’t rub it in. Sophie would need her even more now and she would be there for her. Here in this safe, secluded world, the two of them would make their own paradise.
As Agatha tramped up the slope, she noticed an arc of darkness in the forest’s torch-lit border. Apparently the guards responsible for the cemetery had decided what lived inside wasn’t worth protecting. For as long as Agatha could remember, she’d had a talent for making people go away. Kids fled from her like a vampire bat. Adults clung to walls as she passed, afraid she might curse them. Even the grave keepers on the hill bolted at the sight of her. With each new year, the whispers in town grew louder—“witch,” “villain,” “Evil School”—until she looked for excuses not to go out. First days, then weeks, until she haunted her graveyard house like a ghost.