Agatha dashed back through the row. In every one, light chose two children: one bright and fair, the other strange and grim. Agatha retreated from the nook and climbed on a stuffed cow’s rump so she could see all the paintings at once, paintings that told her three things about this Professor Sader—
He could move between the real and fairy-tale worlds. He knew why children were brought here from Gavaldon.
And he could help them get home.
As fairies chimed the start of the next class, Agatha barged into the Theater of Tales and squeezed beside Kiko, while Tedros and his boys played handball against the phoenix carved into the front of the stone stage.
“Tristan didn’t even say hi,” Kiko griped. “Maybe he thinks I have warts now that I talked to yo—”
“Where’s Sader?” Agatha said.
“Professor Sader,” said a voice.
She looked up and saw a handsome silver-haired teacher give her a cryptic smile as he ascended the stage in his shamrock-green suit. The man who smiled at her in the foyer and on the Bridge.
Professor Crackpot.
Agatha exhaled. Surely he’d help if he liked her so much.
“As you know, I teach fourth session both here and in Evil and unfortunately cannot be in two places at once. Thus I’ll be alternating weeks between schools,” he said, clasping the lectern. “On weeks where I’m not here, you’ll have former students come to recount their adventures in the Endless Woods. They’ll be responsible for your weekly challenges, so please afford them the same respect you’d give me. Finally, given I am responsible for a vast amount of students and a vast amount of history, I do not hold office hours nor will I answer your questions inside or outside of class.”
Agatha coughed. How could she get answers if he didn’t allow questions?
“If you do have questions,” said Sader, hazel eyes unblinking, “you’ll surely find the answers in your text, A Student’s History of the Woods, or in my other authored books, available in the Library of Virtue. Now to roll call. Beatrix?”
“Yes.”
“One more time, Beatrix.”
“Right here,” Beatrix snapped.
“Thank you, Beatrix. Kiko!”
“Present!”
“Again, Kiko.”
“I’m here, Professor Sader!”
“Excellent. Reena!”
“Yes.”
“Again?”
Agatha groaned. At this rate, they’d be here until new moon.
“Tedros!”
“Here.”
“Louder, Tedros.”
“Good grief, is he deaf?” Agatha grouched.
“No, silly,” said Kiko. “He’s blind.”
Agatha snorted. “Don’t be ridi—”
The glassy eyes. The matching names to voices. The way he gripped the lectern.
“But his paintings!” Agatha cried. “He’s seen Gavaldon! He’s seen us!”
That’s when Professor Sader met her eyes and smiled, as if to remind her he’d never seen anything at all.
“So let me get this straight,” Sophie said. “There were two School Masters first. And they were brothers.”
“Twins,” said Hester.
“One Good, one Evil,” said Anadil.
Sophie moved along a series of chipped marble murals built into Evil Hall. Covered in emerald algae and blue rust, torch-lit with sea-green flames, the hall looked like a cathedral that had spent most of its life underwater.
She stopped at one, depicting two young men in a castle chamber, keeping watch over the enchanted pen she had seen in the School Master’s tower. One brother wore long black robes, the other white. In the cracked mosaic, she could make out their identical handsome faces, ghostly pale hair, and deep blue eyes. But where the white-robed brother’s face was warm, gentle, the black-robed one’s was icy and hard. Still, something about both of their faces seemed familiar.
“And these brothers ruled both schools and protected the magic pen,” Sophie said.
“The Storian,” Hester corrected.
“And Good won half the time and Evil won half the time?”
“More or less,” said Anadil, feeding a snail to her pocketed rats. “My mother used to say that if Good went on a streak, Evil would find new tricks, forcing Good to improve its defense and beat them back.”
“Nature’s balance,” said Dot, munching on a schoolbook she’d turned to chocolate.
Sophie moved to the next mural, where the Evil brother had gone from ruling peacefully alongside his brother to attacking him with a barrage of spells. “But the Evil one thought he could control the pen—um, Storian—and make Evil invincible. So he gathers an army to destroy his brother and starts war.”
“The Great War,” said Hester. “Where everyone took a side between Good brother and Evil brother.”
“And in the final battle between them, someone won,” said Sophie, eyeing the last mural—a sea of Evers and Nevers bowed before a masked School Master in silver robes, the glowing Storian floating above his hands. “But no one knows who.”
“Quick-study,” Anadil grinned.
“But then surely people must know if he’s the Good brother or Evil brother?” Sophie asked.
“Everyone pretends it’s a mystery,” said Hester, “but since the Great War, Evil hasn’t won a single story.”
“But doesn’t the pen just write what happens in the Woods?” Sophie said, studying the strange symbols in the Storian’s steel. “Don’t we control the stories?”
“And it just happens one day all villains die?” Hester growled. “That pen is forcing our fates. That pen is killing all the villains. That pen is controlled by Good.”
“Storian, love,” Dot chomped. “Not a pen.”
Hester smacked the book out of her mouth.
“But if you’re going to die every time, why bother teaching villains?” said Sophie. “Why have the School for Evil at all?”
“Try asking a teacher that question,” piped Dot, digging in her bag for a bigger book.
“Fine,
