his blindfold.
Agatha tramped in front of the class and stood next to Sophie, who was blushing like a bride.
“Aggie, he doesn’t care what school I’m in or the color of my robes,” Sophie gushed. “He sees who I am.”
“You don’t even know him!”
Sophie flushed. “You’re not . . . happy for me?”
“He knows nothing about you!” Agatha shot back. “All he sees is your looks!”
“For the first time in my life, I feel like someone understands me,” Sophie sighed.
Hurt squeezed Agatha’s throat. “But what about—I mean, you said—”
Sophie met her eyes. “You’ve been such a good friend, Aggie. But we’ll be in different schools, won’t we?”
Agatha turned away.
“Ready, Tedros! Go!” Yuba jabbed his staff, and both girls exploded from their clothes into slimy, stinky hobgoblins.
Tedros took off the blindfold and jumped back, hand to nose. Sophie clasped her green claws and batted her wormy lashes at him. With Sophie’s words throbbing in her head, Agatha slumped sullenly and gave up.
“It seems too obvious,” Tedros said, eyeing the flirting hobgoblin.
Sophie stopped batting her lashes, confused.
“And that witch is craftier than you can imagine,” Tedros said, glancing between the two goblins.
Agatha rolled her eyes. This boy had a brain like a peanut.
“Feel with the heart, not the mind!” Yuba shouted at the prince.
Grimacing, Tedros closed his eyes. For a moment the prince hesitated. But then surely, powerfully, he felt himself pulled towards one of the hobgoblins.
Sophie gasped. It wasn’t her.
Tedros reached out and touched Agatha’s wet, warty cheek. “This one’s Sophie.” He opened his eyes. “This one’s the princess.”
Agatha gawped at Sophie, dumbstruck.
“Wait. I’m right,” Tedros said. “Right?”
For a moment, everything was quiet.
Sophie tackled Agatha. “YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!”
To everyone else, this sounded like “GOBBO OOMIE HOOWAH!” but Agatha understood it just fine.
“See how stupid he is! He can’t even tell us apart!” Agatha yelled.
“You tricked him!” Sophie shrieked. “Just like you tricked the bird and the wave and the—”
Tedros punched her in the eye.
“Leave Sophie alone!” he shouted.
Sophie gaped at him. Her prince had just punched her. Her prince had just confused her with Agatha. How could she prove who she was?
“Use the rules!” Yuba bellowed atop a log.
Suddenly understanding, Sophie lurched up so her spotted, humped body towered over Tedros, and she caressed his chest with her greasy green hand. “My dear Tedros. I forgive you for not knowing any better and won’t defend myself even though you attacked me. I only want to help you, my prince, and give us a story that will take us hand in hand to love, happiness, and Ever After.”
But all Tedros heard was a torrent of goblin growls, so he stomped on Sophie’s foot and ran towards Agatha’s goblin, arms outstretched. “I can’t believe you were ever friends with—”
Agatha kneed him in the groin.
“Now I’m confused,” Tedros wheezed and collapsed.
Moaning in pain, he craned up to see Sophie shove Agatha into a blueberry bush, Agatha smack Sophie with a screeching squirrel, and the two green goblins go back and forth, bashing each other like oversugared children.
“I’ll never go home with you!” screamed Sophie.
“Oooh! Ooh! Marry me, Tedros!” hissed Agatha.
“At least I will get married!”
The fight escalated to a ludicrous climax, with Sophie beating Agatha with a blue squash, Agatha sitting on Sophie’s head, and the class gleefully making bets as to who was who—
“Go rot in Gavaldon alone!” Sophie screamed.
“Better alone than with a phony!” Agatha shouted.
“Get out of my life!”
“You came into mine!”
Hobbling, Tedros leapt between them—
“Enough!”
It was the wrong moment. Both goblins turned on the prince with slime-drenching, earsplitting roars and kicked him so hard he sailed over Groups 2, 6, and 10 and landed in a heap of boar dung.
The girls’ green hides shrank, their scales softened to skin, their bodies melted into their human clothes. . . . Slowly Sophie and Agatha turned to find the entire group goggling at them.
“Good ending,” said Hort.
“Hold your verdict,” Yuba said. “For when Good acts Evil and Evil acts incompetent, and rules are broken right and left until even I can’t figure out what’s what . . . well, there’s only one ending indeed.”
Two pairs of iron shoes magically grew on the girls’ feet.
“Yeek. These are hideous,” Sophie frowned.
Then the shoes grew hot, blazing hot.
“Fire! Feet on fire!” yelped Agatha, hopping up and down.
“Make it stop!” Sophie cried, dancing with pain.
In the distance, the wolves howled the end of class.
“Class dismissed,” Yuba said, and waddled off.
“What about us!” screamed Agatha, yanking at her burning soles—
“Unfortunately fairy-tale punishments have a mind of their own,” the gnome called back. “They’ll end when the lesson has been learned.”
The class followed him back towards the school gates, leaving Sophie and Agatha to dance in the cursed shoes. Tedros limped past the punished girls, covered in slime and dung. He gave them equally disgusted scowls.
“Now I see why you two are friends.”
As the prince trudged into blue thicket, the girls glimpsed Beatrix sidle up to him. “I knew they were
