Facing away, she was slumped on her knees behind a far tree, arms over her head. The second finger on her right hand pulsed her signature pink glow a few last times and dulled to pale.
“Sophie?” Agatha said. Her own gold fingerglow went cold.
Sophie still didn’t move.
Agatha approached the tree, dread rising. She could hear her friend’s shallow breaths. Slowly Agatha reached out and touched bare shoulder through Sophie’s torn dress.
There was blood on it.
Agatha spun her around. Sophie’s hands were lashed to a branch with braided horse reins. There were shallow knife pricks in each of her palms, from which the Elders had taken blood and smeared a scarlet message on Sophie’s chest.
Frantic, Agatha cut Sophie down with her knife, trying in vain to think of a spell to wash away the blood. She scrubbed at her friend’s skin with shaking palms. “I’m sorry—” she choked, severing the last rein. “I’ll get us home—I promise—”
The instant she was free, Sophie covered Agatha’s mouth with ice-cold hands. Agatha followed her wide, bloodshot eyes …
There was something on all the trees ahead, flapping milky white in the darkness. Agatha held up her glowing finger.
Parchment scrolls crackled in the wind like dead leaves, tacked to the trunks. Each one was the same.
The face on the posters was Sophie’s.
“That’s impossible!” Agatha cried. “He’s dea—”
She froze.
Between trees she caught glints of red. Something was coming.
Agatha grabbed Sophie’s wrist and dragged her behind a trunk. Muffling Sophie’s moans with her hand, Agatha slowly peeked out.
Through tangled branches, she saw men in red leather hoods, eyeholes cut away. They carried fire-tipped arrows, which lit up their sleeveless black leather uniforms and bare, muscular arms. She tried to count how many there were—10, 15, 20, 25 … until she counted one whose violet eyes glared right at her. Grinning, he raised his bow.
“Down!” Agatha yelped—
The first arrow singed Sophie’s neck as both girls dove into dirt. Neither spoke as they floundered through snarls of black briars, dozens of flaming arrows barely missing them and igniting trees left and right. Hand in hand, the girls fled deeper into the Woods, looking for somewhere to hide, red hoods gaining, until they came to a break in the trees and finally glimpsed the forest path, serene in moonlight. Wheezing with relief, they ran for it and stopped short.
The path forked into two. Both trails were thin and sooty, crooking away in opposite directions. Neither looked more hopeful than the other, but from reading storybooks, the girls knew.
Only one was correct.
“Which way?” Sophie rasped.
Agatha could see just how weak and shaken her friend was. She had to get her to safety. Hearing the skimming of arrows again, Agatha swung her head between the paths, burning trees growing nearer … nearer …
“Aggie, which way?” Sophie pressed.
Agatha’s eyes darted uselessly back and forth, waiting for a sign—
Sophie gasped. “Look!”
Agatha swiveled to the east path. A glowing blue butterfly flapped in darkness, high above the trail. It beat its wings faster and nosed forward, as if urging them to follow.
“Come on,” Sophie said, suddenly strong again, and surged forward.
“We’re following a butterfly?” Agatha retorted as she chased Sophie past WANTED signs on trees ahead.
“Don’t worry. It’s leading us out of here!”
“How do you know?”
“Hurry! We’ll lose it!”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through—” Agatha heaved, puffing behind.
“Let’s not play who’s had it worse, shall we!”
The butterfly sped up as if nearing its destination and veered around a bend, wings brightening to blinding blue. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the wrist, dragged her faster around the curve—
Into a dead end of fallen trees.
The butterfly was gone.
“No!” Sophie squeaked. “But I thought—I thought—”
“It was a special butterfly?”
Sophie shook her head, eyes welling, as if her friend couldn’t understand. Then, over Agatha’s shoulder, she saw a torch-lit shadow inch across the trees, then two more …
The hoods had found their path.
“We had our happy ending—” Sophie backed against a trunk. “This is all my fault—”
“No …,” Agatha said, looking down. “It’s mine.”
Sophie’s heart clamped. It was the same feeling she had alone in the church, thinking about how her friend had changed. A feeling that told her none of the last month was an accident.
“Agatha … why is this all happening?”
Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie … I—I—I—made a—mistake—”
“Aggie, slow down.”
Agatha couldn’t look at her. “I opened it—I opened our fairy tale—”
“I don’t understand—”
“A w-w-wish!” Agatha stammered, reddening. “I made a wish—”
Sophie shook her head. “A wish?”
“I didn’t mean it—it happened so fast—”
“A wish for what?”
Agatha took a deep breath. She looked into her friend’s scared eyes.
“Sophie, I wished I was with—”
“Tickets,” a voice said.
Both girls turned to see an alarmingly thin caterpillar with a top hat, curled mustache, and purple tuxedo poking out of a tree hollow.
“Thank you for calling the Flowerground. No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating
