nights sultry and fresh, the elder Dean had recommended they speak outside, where students wouldn’t overhear. But now Dovey was peering around at the torchlit huts decorated with glamorous portraits of Sophie … the golden sand speckled with S-shaped conchs … the once-sludgy black moat of Evil turned royal blue with a statue of Sophie astride a dragon spraying water from its mouth. …
“I honestly don’t know where I am,” she murmured.
Sophie cleared her throat harshly.
“I know you’re upset, Sophie, and you have every right to be,” Professor Dovey sighed, massaging her knees. “Fairy godmothers don’t make it a habit of using magic to deceive. But fairy godmothers also have a duty to protect the greater Good. If you’d known what was happening, it was only a matter of time before word of the older students’ struggles leaked through the school and distracted the first years. I know you’ll say you can keep a secret, but frankly, you seem incapable of setting boundaries with your new charges at the moment.”
Sophie put her hands on her hips. “What in heavens makes you say that?”
Dovey turned towards the castle’s open windows. Inside Evil Hall, two Neverboys danced saucily on Sophie’s statue, while an Everboy spotted Sophie watching and yelled: “DEAN SOPHIE, WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
Sophie stabbed out her glowing pink finger, shutting the windows and drawing the curtains. “Well, if you were so scared of telling me about these failing quests, why are you telling me now?”
Professor Dovey turned to her. “Because I need you to lead a quest into the Woods and save your fellow classmates before any more of them die.”
Every trace of defiance melted out of Sophie’s face. She saw the three witches staring at Good’s Dean the same way.
“Die?” Sophie rasped.
Professor Dovey looked away, mouth quivering.
Sophie could hardly get the word out. … “Who?”
The elder Dean watched the waters of the bay roll between Good and Evil, thin to thick, water to slime.
“The map,” Dovey whispered.
Slowly Sophie and the witches raised their eyes to the Dean’s Quest Map, its names in red-alarm red, so different from the cool, serene blues Sophie had seen across her doctored one.
But one name was different.
Its ink was darker red than the others and dripping off its label, as if seeping blood.
A thin black line ran through the name, scratching it out.
The name was CHADDICK.
Sophie’s breath caught. In a single mark, a soul lost.
For a long while, no one spoke, the silence broken only by the festive buzz behind them and the snores of sleeping stymphs overhead, perched on the scaffolding shrouding the School Master’s tower. Dot wiped her eyes while Anadil focused on the ground. Even Hester looked unsteady.
Gazing across the lake at Good’s glass castle, Sophie thought of the burly, gray-eyed Everboy who’d once swaggered down those halls and been Tedros’ most faithful liege, just like Agatha had been her own. But Agatha was still alive, of course, even if she was somewhere far away. …
Tedros’ best friend was dead.
“H-h-how?” Sophie stammered.
“We don’t know,” said Professor Dovey emptily. “His body must be in Avalon. Otherwise his figure would have moved on the map.”
Avalon, Sophie remembered. On her Quest Map, she’d seen Chaddick’s figurine there when he should have been off seeking new knights for Tedros’ kingdom. What was Chaddick doing alone in Avalon, which was perpetually cold and uninhabited? It’s not like he could get into the Lady of the Lake’s castle—only Merlin or the King of Camelot could do that. And yet, she distinctly remembered seeing Chaddick’s figurine inside the castle gates. … Still, even if he did get in somehow, wouldn’t the Lady of the Lake have protected him? Chaddick was Camelot’s knight—
Dovey’s voice severed her thoughts: “He sent me a note by crow a couple weeks ago. He’d been hearing reports of attacks in the Woods and wanted to find out who was behind them. I ordered him not to make a move. To stay on his original mission. Clearly he disobeyed.”
Sophie looked at her.
“Whatever he found must have gotten him killed,” the Dean said quietly.
“And now you want me to go and get killed too?” Sophie asked.
“Unlike Chaddick, you will have friends at your side,” the Dean replied, eyeing the three witches.
“There’s that word ‘friends’ again,” Hester murmured.
Dovey ignored her. “I’d been looking into the news of attacks long before Chaddick wrote. The moment students’ names started turning red on my map, I’d asked Merlin to investigate. It’s common for students’ quests to go badly at first—we’ve certainly dispatched rescue teams before—but for all to be failing was unprecedented. At the same time, we’d been hearing reports of unrest in the Woods, prompted by seemingly random crimes against Evers and Nevers alike. And then there was the matter of Tedros’ sword, stuck in that stone. I thought Merlin could get to the bottom of all this. … Well, a few days ago, he finally returned to my chambers. He asked only one question: what fairy tale had the Storian been writing.”
“Nothing of substance. I’ve told you that,” Sophie said, glancing up at the School Master’s tower, now her private quarters, which was connected to Evil’s castle by a catwalk. She saw the Storian through the window, hovering over a stone table littered with crumpled paper. “Ever since it finished mine and Agatha’s fairy tale, it’s been starting and discarding tales of our classmates’ quests.”
“And whose story is it working on now?” said Dovey.
“It stopped writing completely last week, which after all that frantic scribbling and crumpling the past few months, is actually letting me sleep,” Sophie puffed. “But you said that the Storian often suspects a fairy tale will be a good one, only to scrap it midstory … that it’s perfectly normal—”
“To a point,” Professor Dovey replied. “The Storian only writes tales that we need: stories that will redress a balance between Good and Evil that is constantly in flux. But six months is a long time for the Storian not to put a new tale into the Woods. Perhaps it sees no story in your classmates’ failing quests worth telling. Merlin, however, believes all these failures are connected and that there is a bigger quest waiting to be undertaken. That this is the fairy tale the Storian needs to tell.”
“Yet you have no proof of this bigger quest or fairy tale?” said Sophie.
“And yet we still have to go with her?” Hester said, leering at Sophie.
“A student is dead, girls. I’d think at the very least you’d want to bury his body, let alone find out what killed him,” said Professor Dovey frostily. “I do.”
Sophie and the witches fell silent.
