said a voice below.
They looked down to find a four-foot gnome with wrinkly brown skin, a belted green coat, and a pointy orange hat frowning from a hole in the ground.
“Bad group,” he murmured.
Grumbling loudly, Yuba the Gnome crawled out of his burrow, pulled the gate open with his stubby white staff, and led his students into the Blue Forest.
For a moment, everyone forgot their rancor and marveled at the blue wonderland around them. Every tree, every flower, every blade of grass sparkled a different hue. Slender beams of sun slipped through cerulean canopies, lighting up turquoise trunks and navy blooms. Deer grazed on azure lilacs, crows and hummingbirds jabbered in sapphire nettles, squirrels and rabbits jaunted through cobalt briars to join storks sipping from an ultramarine pond. No animals seemed skittish or the slightest bit bothered by the crisscrossing student tours. Where Sophie and Agatha had always associated forests with danger and darkness, this one beckoned with beauty and life. At least until they saw a flock of bony stymph birds, sleeping in their blue nest.
“They let those around students?” Sophie said.
“Sleep during the day. Perfectly harmless,” Dot whispered back. “Unless a villain wakes them up.”
As his students followed, Yuba rattled off the history of the Blue Forest in his clipped, hoary voice. Once upon a time, there had been no joint classes for School for Good and School for Evil students. Instead, children had graduated straight from their school’s training into the Endless Woods. But before they could ever engage in battle, Good and Evil inevitably fell prey to hungry boars, scavenging imps, cranky spiders, and the occasional man-eating tulip.
“We had forsaken the obvious,” said Yuba. “You cannot survive your fairy tale if you cannot survive the Woods.”
So the school created the Blue Forest as a training ground. The signature blue foliage arose from protective enchantments that kept intruders out, while reminding students it was just an imitation of more treacherous Woods.
As to just how treacherous the real thing was, the students sensed firsthand as Yuba led them past the North Gates. Though there was still sunlight left in the autumn evening, the dark, dense Woods repelled it like a shield. It was a forest of eternal night, with every inch of green blackened by shadow. As their eyes adjusted to the sooty darkness, the students could see a puny dirt path lilting through trees, like the withering lifeline on an old man’s palm. To both sides of the path, vines strangled trees into armored clumps, so there was barely an undergrowth between them. What was left of the forest floor had been buried beneath mangled thorns, stabbing twigs, and a gauntlet of cobwebs. But none of this scared the students as much as the sounds that came from the darkness beyond the path. Moans and growls echoed from the forest bowels, while low rasps and snarls added ghoulish harmony.
Then the children began to see what was making the sounds. Pairs of eyes watched them through the onyx depths—devilish red and yellow, flickering, vanishing, then reappearing closer than before. The terrible noises grew louder, the fiendish eyes multiplied, the undergrowth crackled with life, and just when the students saw skulking outlines rise from the mist—
“This way,” Yuba called back.
The students scampered from the gates and followed the gnome into a blue clearing without looking back.
Surviving Fairy Tales was just like any other class, Yuba explained from a turquoise tree stump, with students ranked from 1 to 16 for each challenge. Only now there was something more at stake: twice a year, each of the fifteen groups would send its best Ever and best Never to compete in the school’s Trial by Tale. Yuba didn’t say any more about this mysterious competition, except that the winners received five extra first-place ranks. The students in his group glanced at each other, thinking the same thing. Whoever won the Trial by Tale would surely be Class Captain.
“Now there are five rules that separate Good from Evil,” the gnome said, and wrote them in air with his smoking staff.
1. The Evil attack. The Good defend.
2. The Evil punish. The Good forgive.
3. The Evil hurt. The Good help.
4. The Evil take. The Good give.
5. The Evil hate. The Good love.
“As long as you obey the rules for your side, you have the best possible chance of surviving your fairy tale,” Yuba said to the group gathered in navy grass. “These rules should come with ease, of course. You have been chosen for your schools precisely because you show them at the highest level!”
Sophie wanted to scream. Help? Give? Love? That was her life! That was her soul!
“But first you must learn to recognize Good and Evil,” said Yuba. “In the Woods, appearances are often deceiving. Snow White nearly perished because she thought an old woman kind. Red Riding Hood found herself in a wolf’s stomach because she couldn’t tell the difference between family and fiend. Even Beauty struggled to distinguish between hideous beast and noble prince. All unnecessary suffering. For no matter how much Good and Evil are disguised, they can always be told apart. You must look closely. And you must remember the rules.”
For the class challenge, Yuba announced, each student had to distinguish between a disguised Ever and Never by observing their behavior. Whoever correctly identified the Good student and the Evil student in the fastest time would receive first rank.
“I’ve never done any of those Evil rules,” Sophie mourned, standing beside Tedros. “If only they knew all my Good Deeds!”
Beatrix turned. “Nevers shouldn’t talk to Evers.”
“Evers shouldn’t call Evers Nevers,” Sophie snapped.
Beatrix looked confused, while Tedros bit back a smile.
“You have to prove they switched you and the witch,” he whispered to Sophie once Beatrix turned back. “Win the challenge and I’ll go to Professor Dovey myself. If the gargoyle didn’t convince her, then this will.”
“You’d do that … for me?” Sophie said, eyes wide.
Tedros touched her black tunic. “Can’t flirt with you in this, can I?”
Sophie would have burned her robes right there if she could.
Hort volunteered to go first. As soon as he tied the ragged blindfold over his eyes, Yuba stabbed his staff at Millicent and Ravan, who magically shriveled in their pink and black clothes, smaller, smaller, until they slithered out of them, identical cobras.
Hort whipped off the blindfold.
“Well?” Yuba said.
“Look the bloody same to me,” Hort said.
“Test them!” Yuba scolded. “Use the rules!”
“I don’t even remember the rules,” Hort said.
“Next,” the gnome grouched.
For Dot’s turn, he changed Beatrix and Hort into unicorns. But then one unicorn started copying the other and vice versa, until they both pranced about like mimicking mimes. Dot scratched her head.
