The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani
“No, you give me a boost. I’m going first,” Sophie retorted.
“There’s no way you can pull me up over that stage,” Aric shot back.
“Aric—”
“We don’t have time for this, Sophie.”
Sophie exhaled angrily. She dug her shoe tip into the edge of Professor Anemone’s old tomb. “Use my leg. Hurry.”
Aric placed his heel on her thigh, gripped on to a broken spear of ice, and propelled himself up the ice wall. Sophie gnashed her teeth in pain, sustaining his weight on her thigh for a split second, before he muscled his way over the edge of the ice and crawled onto the stone platform above.
“Pull me up!” Sophie barked. “Hurry!”
Aric bent towards her. Then he stabbed out his glowing finger at the dungeon ceiling, which instantly started closing again, faster than before—
“What are you doing!” Sophie cried.
Aric’s violet eyes flashed through the mist. “If it wasn’t for you, I would have led training. And the war would already be won.”
He bounded off and out of sight, the sound of the east doors slamming behind him.
As the Brig hemmed in on her, Sophie felt her finger burn with fear. She shot a blast of light at the dungeon ceiling to keep it open, but the sides were closing too fast. She tried again, but she couldn’t focus her emotion like last time. Lady Lesso had left her unsteady—panic and doubt were making her fingerglow flicker—
You’ve never been more alone.
She couldn’t get the words out of her head.
“Help! Someone help me!”
But the stage was seconds from sealing over. She’d be trapped in the tombs. No one would know where to find her, even Rafal, even . . .
“HELP! SOMEONE HELP! PLEASE—”
A shadow suddenly fell over her.
Sophie looked up at a blue-lit silhouette, extending her arm into the pit.
“Grab on to me!” the familiar voice yelled.
Sophie gaped at Agatha, stunned.
“Hurry, Sophie! Before it closes!”
Instantly Sophie seized her hand, as her best friend started pulling her up to safety . . .
Sophie’s grip slipped and she crashed back down. Petrified, she lunged up, clasping Agatha’s hand again—
Too late. The crack was almost sealed. Agatha would never get Sophie out in time. Either Agatha let go of her or Sophie would be crushed by the sides of the stage—
“Don’t leave me here!” Sophie rasped, holding on to her. “Please!”
Desperate, Agatha looked down at Sophie’s hand in hers . . . the School Master’s ring shining gold on her finger, like the last glow of sun over her prince fighting for his life . . .
Don’t fail me and I won’t fail you, Lancelot echoed.
Agatha wouldn’t.
On a breath, she squeezed Sophie’s hand tight and leapt over the edge into glowing blue mist, pulling her friend back down into the frozen dungeon before it sealed shut above them with a resounding crack.
33
An Unexpected History Lesson
With the ceiling closed and no warmth seeping in from the theater, the dungeon turned lethally cold.
The two girls stumbled to their feet and recoiled against opposite walls, lit by the frosty blue light of the tombs. Each held out her glowing fingertip, trying to catch her breath as they glared into the other’s eyes.
“What are you going to do? Kill me?” Agatha panted, shivering in her black cloak. “Still won’t get you out of this place alive.”
“And you can?” Sophie scowled, fingertip smoking through the frigid air. “You who will do anything to make me destroy my ring? Chase me, bully me, hurt me . . . bet you have a wand in that pocket, ready to hold to my head. Go on. Threaten me, Aggie. Threaten me with life or death. I’ll die rather than destroy this ring for you.”
Agatha went quiet, weak from the stun spell and the cold. She looked past Sophie at the long rows of graves leading into the darkness. She couldn’t help but snort at the irony of it all.
Sophie simmered. “You think this is funny?”
“It’s just . . . this is how Tedros and I started when we came back to rescue you,” said Agatha. “Trapped in a grave.”
“And now you’re here with me, trying to find a way to rescue him,” Sophie snarked. “Always rescuing, Aggie. Always so Good. How could I ever match up?”
“Friendship isn’t a competition.”
“Says the friend who made it one,” Sophie retorted, pointing her fingerglow at Agatha’s heart. “You and your old minions want me to destroy my true love, so you can keep yours. What if I destroy you instead?”
“He’s not your true love,” Agatha said, struggling to stay calm. “He’s using you to get his ending.”
“Just like you’re trying to use me to get yours,” said Sophie, finger glowing hotter. “Even if I end up alone.”
Agatha matched her gaze. “My ending has you in it, Sophie. Even if I’m with Tedros. I’ll never leave you behind, no matter how Evil you are, how many boys come in our way, or how old we get. We’re stronger than Good and Evil, Boys and Girls, and Old and Young. We’re best friends.”
The fury drained out of Sophie’s face. “And yet, we can’t find a happy ending together, no matter how hard we try,” she said, softer now. “Every path leaves us trapped.”
Agatha clung to Cinderella’s words. “Don’t give up on us, Sophie.”
“Do you know what you’re asking me, Aggie?” Sophie’s fingerglow dimmed, her eyes shimmering like cut emeralds. “You’re asking me to throw away my Ever After for yours, and still be happy. You’re asking me to end just like my mother, only worse, because you want me to come live with you two. It would be like Cinderella’s stepsisters shacking up with her and the prince at the palace like one big, blissful family, Happily Ever After. You know why we never saw that in a storybook? Because it could never happen.”
Agatha stared at her, her own fingerglow dimming too.
Sophie’s face hardened again. “But it would also be foolish to kill you right now,” she said, ice-cold. “Help me find a way out of here and maybe you’ll see your precious prince again.”
She tightened the ring on her finger and headed further into the Brig.
Agatha’s heart withered, watching Sophie’s black-leathered silhouette recede into the mist.
Where was Tedros right now? Is he even alive?
The sun must be on its last drips, no more than an hour left . . .
No. I can’t think like that.
A hero always finds a way out.
Tedros would find a way out.
Agatha took a shallow breath and forced herself after Sophie.
“There must be a secret door somewhere,” Sophie’s voice echoed.
Agatha couldn’t keep up, her legs still throbbing, her teeth starting to chatter. Limping behind, she scanned the coffins sunken into opposing walls, filled with those who’d betrayed their duties to Evil. Professor Espada, the Swordplay teacher . . . Professor Lukas, the boys’ Chivalry teacher . . . Albemarle, the spectacled woodpecker in charge of the Groom Room . . . each freshly entombed when they’d refused to serve the young School Master’s new school. Lesso and Dovey hadn’t had the time to rescue them, but all three were still alive and healthy, their wide eyes blinking through the ice like trapped puppets. Guilty that she didn’t have time to free them either, Agatha slunk further into the Brig, promising herself she’d come back if she could. At least they were still alive, she thought, because now she could see older coffins ahead, murky and cobwebbed, with dead bodies decaying inside of them. Each was labeled on the outside with a small steel placard, blank and awaiting inscription.
Yet as Agatha moved past the grave of a rotting teenaged boy with curly black hair, she suddenly noticed the placards weren’t blank at all. There were carvings embedded in the steel . . .
A series of raised dots, small as pinheads, arranged in neat rows.
Her he
A swoosh of silver air rocketed off the placard, contorting into a floating human silhouette, three-dimensional and the size of a fairy. Professor Sader grinned back at Agatha as he hovered in midair, wearing his customary shamrock suit, his wavy silver hair neat and clean, his hazel eyes twinkling with life. For a moment, Agatha beamed in surprise, thinking he was looking at her, before Sader’s focal point scanned past her, addressing a larger audience.
“The next betrayer on our tour is Fawaz of Shazabah, a henchman ordered by an Evil sultan to hide a magic lamp where no one could find it, before Fawaz secretly tried to keep it for himself. The sultan caught him and had him killed, before he was brought here to the Brig for permanent display. You won’t need to know which sultan he betrayed for your second-year exam, but keep your eye on Fawaz, who plays a crucial role in how Aladdin came to find his magic lamp . . .”
Of course he didn’t see me, Agatha sighed, quickly moving on. One, Sader was blind; two, he was dead; and three, he was nothing but a phantom now, on a recorded loop. No doubt he’d left these placards behind for future History classes after he foresaw his own death, just as he’d once amended the class textbooks to include his obituary.
Agatha couldn’t see Sophie anymore through the mist.
What would Sader have told me to do?
Sun setting . . . shield falling . . . Tedros struggling . . . a ring on her best friend’s finger the only way out . . .
A happy ending is right under your nose.
That’s what he’d say.
Tears sprung to her eyes. He’d always felt like a father to her. Sometimes in her dreams, she’d see him, with his silvery hair and light eyes, looking down at her, with the gentlest of smiles. But when she woke up, she knew he wasn’t real, just as he wasn’t real now. Just as there was nothing under her nose except darkness and snow.
As she hurried past more tombs, she ran her fingers over the placards, so she could see his face pop up again and again, the voices overlapping as Sader’s phantom explained each one, until the entire dungeon chorused with Professor Sader’s deep, measured tones. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t real, Agatha thought. There was something soothing about hearing him, as if she was safe and protected as long as Sader was talking . . .
Only she could see Sophie’s shadow again now, looming in front of one of the graves ahead. Agatha’s gut tightened.
“Did you find a way out?” she pressed. “Is that a secret doo—”
Sophie didn’t answer.
She was staring at a beautiful woman in a silky white dress, her eyes closed inside her coffin, her face serene, like a princess waiting to be kissed. Unlike the other decaying corpses, she had flawless, vanilla skin, luscious lips, and the most beautiful long, blond hair, like hand-spun gold. From the pallor of her mouth and the waxy complexion of her skin, it was clear she was dead and embalmed long before she was ever placed into her frozen grave.
“Who’s that?” Agatha said.
Sophie didn’t answer.
Behind them, Sader’s recorded voices had all gone quiet.
Agatha frowned. “Sophie, we don’t have time to sit here and ogle random dead women who happen to look like you—”
Her heart dropped. No.
“That’s . . . that’s her?” Agatha blurted. “That’s—”
“My mother,” said Sophie, her voice flat and numb. “Her body was here in the Woods all along. The grave on Necro Ridge wasn’t a mistake. Someone must have moved her here.”
“But that’s impossible!” said Agatha, before she looked up at Vanessa again and saw just how much she resembled Sophie. “Isn’t it?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sophie rasped.
Agatha followed her gaze to the placard on Vanessa’s tomb and the silver dots carved into the steel.
“Her story is inside those dots,” said Sophie shakily. “The answer to why she has a headstone on Necro Ridge. To why she’s here in Evil’s dungeon.”
Sophie looked at her friend. “And maybe to why the both of us are in this fairy tale together.”
Agatha held her breath, watching Sophie reach out a quivering hand and brush her fingers across the dots.
A cloud of silver leapt off the placard, melting into Sader’s miniature silhouette once more. Only this time he was no longer smiling or at ease. His shoulders were stiff, his jaw tight, and his glassy hazel gaze locked on them.
“We don’t have much time, girls. If you’re seeing this, then my visions held true and you are nearing the end of your story.”
Agatha reddened. “But Professor Sader, what happens at—”
“Dead seers still can’t answer questions, Agatha, though I knew you would ask one because I am a seer and foresaw it. But from now until this recording runs out, neither of you will interrupt me again. There is no time for interruptions.”
Agatha and Sophie glanced at each other.
This means everything turns out happily, Agatha thought, hope swelling. Sader sees the future . . . he knows we come out alive—
“I do not know how your fairy tale ends,” Sader said starkly.
Agatha snapped back to him.
“My visions stop after you and Sophie appear in front of me, listening to this very message. From here, I do not know whether you live or die, end as friends or enemies, or whether either of you will find a happy ending at all.”
Agatha felt hope shrivel away.
“What I do know, however, is that you cannot find the ending to your fairy tale unless you know how it began,” said Sader. “And it began long before you two ever came to the School for Good and Evil. Every old story sets off a chain of events that leads to a new story. Every new story has its roots in the old. Your story most of all.”
He conjured a storybook twice as big as his fairy-sized body and let it float towards the girls. It had a red cherrywood cover, just like The Tale of Sophie and Agatha that the Storian was writing in the School Master’s tower right now. Only as Agatha looked closer, she realized this wasn’t her and Sophie’s fairy tale. The title of this one was:
The Table of Callis & Vanessa
Agatha saw Sophie’s whole body seize up.
“She was in a fairy tale,” Sophie gasped.
Sader spread open the storybook to its first page. A puff of mist erupted over it, along with a ghostly scene of an ordinary cottage. “And now it’s time for you to go inside,” he said.
Agatha and Sophie stared at his tiny image, confused.
“I was never fond of my sister Evelyn’s spells, but there was one that I quite liked,” Professor Sader explained, with a growing grin. “Because say what you will of her, when Evelyn Sader told you a story . . . she made you feel like you were there.”
He raised the open storybook and blew on the phantom scene. With a fizzling swish, the scene shattered into a million glittered shards and crashed over the two girls like a glass sandstorm. Agatha shielded her eyes, her body drifting through space, until her feet touched ground next to Sophie’s. Slowly they both looked up.
They were standing inside the cottage they’d seen on the page, the air thick and hazy around them, giving the room a vaporous feel, as if it wasn’t quite real. Agatha recognized the effect at once, for this was how Evelyn Sader had brought them into her adulterated fairy tales a year ago. Now August Sader had brought them into one they never knew existed.
Agatha scanned the intimate kitchen and white, round dining table . . .
“Wait a second—” she started.
“This is my house,” said Sophie, realizing it too.
Agatha furrowed. “But if it’s your house, then who’s that?”
Sophie followed her eyes to a sk
“It’s . . . you . . . ,” said Sophie, studying her. “Only not you.”
Definitely not me, thought Agatha, because this girl had a cruel mouth and a vicious gleam in her eye. There was something dark and venomous about her that made Agatha afraid of her, even if she was just a phantom. She’d never seen the girl in her life. She had no idea who she was and why she was in Sophie’s house. But one thing was for sure. Whatever the girl was looking at through the window had her unwavering focus and utmost contempt.
“Once upon a time, in a land beyond the Woods, there lived a girl named Vanessa,” said Professor Sader.
Sophie and Agatha froze dead still, eyes wide, breath misting.
Neither looked at the other. Neither spoke.
They gaped at the dark-haired girl, who looked starkly different than the blond-haired woman they’d just seen in the frozen tomb.
Because if this was Vanessa, then they had this story all wrong.
“Vanessa was a foul, miserable soul, who thought herself far better than the town she lived in,” said Sader. “Perhaps she would have made a fair student at the School for Evil, except for one ray of light amidst the darkness of her heart . . .”
The scene magically zoomed in, so now Sophie and Agatha could see what the girl was looking at through the window . . .
A young and strapping teenager strutted by, with thick, wavy, golden blond hair, a tall, sturdy frame, blue-green eyes and a devil-may-care smile.
Stefan, thought Agatha, struck once more by his resemblance to August Sader, even as a young boy.
But it wasn’t Stefan who Vanessa was glowering at, as he passed by her house. It was the plump, scraggly-haired, sweet-faced girl walking with Stefan, hand in hand.
“Honora,” Sophie whispered.
Sader continued: “Since the day she laid eyes on him, Vanessa had been in love with young Stefan. Not that they knew each other. Vanessa fantasized about him from afar, waiting for him to rescue her from her dreary life. Day after day, he was her only source of happiness. This despite the fact their souls were mirror images. Where Vanessa was calculating, controlling, and disdainful of her fellow villagers, Stefan was jovial, gregarious, and a favorite of the Elders. Not that he didn’t have his faults: Stefan was rakish and carefree in a way that made mothers keep their daughters away from him. But if Vanessa thought this cleared the way for Stefan to choose her, that would soon change. For Stefan had fallen in love with a girl named Honora, who despite her plain looks, had his same blithe and playful spirit. Stefan had eyes for no one else.”