flipped the page to start, but it didn’t have words. Splashed across it were patterns of embossed dots in a rainbow of colors, small as pinheads. Agatha turned the page. More dots. She tore through fistfuls of pages. No words at all. She dumped her face to the book in frustration. Sader’s voice boomed:
“Chapter Fourteen: The Great War.”
Agatha lurched up. Before her eyes, a ghostly three-dimensional scene melted into view atop the book page—a living diorama, colors gauzy like Sader’s paintings in the gallery. She crouched to watch a silent vision unfold of three wizened old men, beards to the floor, standing in the School Master’s tower with hands united. As the old men opened their hands, the gleaming Storian levitated out of them and over a familiar white stone table. Sader’s disembodied voice continued:
“Now remember from Chapter One, the Storian was placed at the School for Good and Evil by the Three Seers of the Endless Woods, who believed it the only place it could be protected from corruption …”
Agatha gawked in disbelief. Sightless Sader couldn’t write history. But he could see it and wanted the same for his students. Every time she turned a page and touched the dots, living history came alive to his narration. Most of Chapter 14 recounted what Sophie had told her at lunch: that the School had been ruled by two sorcerer brothers, one Good, one Evil, whose love for each other overcame their loyalties to either side. But in time, the Evil brother found love give way to temptation, until he saw only one obstacle between him and the pen’s infinite power … his own blood.
Agatha’s hands swept over dots, scanning exhaustive scenes of Great War battles, alliances, betrayals to see how it all ended. Her fingers stopped as she watched a familiar figure in silver robes and mask rise out of the burning carnage of battle, Storian in hand:
“From the final fight between Evil brother and Good brother, a victor emerged beholden to neither side. In the Great Truce, the triumphant School Master vowed to rise above Good and Evil and protect the balance for as long as he could keep himself alive. Neither side trusted the victor, of course. But they didn’t need to.”
The scene flashed to the dying brother, burning to ashes as he desperately stabbed his hand into the sky, unleashing a burst of silver light—
“For the dying brother used his final embers of magic to create a last spell against his twin: a way to prove Good and Evil still equal. As long as this proof stayed intact, then the Storian remained uncorrupted and the Woods in perfect balance. And as to what this proof is …”
Agatha’s heart leapt—
“It remains in the School for Good and Evil to this very day.”
The scene went dark.
She turned the page urgently, touched the dots. Sader’s voice boomed—
“Chapter Fifteen: The Woodswide Roach Plague.”
Agatha flung the book against the wall, then the others, leaving cracks in painted couples’ faces. When there were no more to throw, she buried her face in the bed.
Please. Help us.
Then in the silence between prayers and tears, something came. Not even a thought. An impulse.
Agatha lifted her head.
The answer to the riddle looked back at her.
It’s just a haircut, Sophie told herself as she climbed through a cornflower thicket. No one will even notice. She slid between two periwinkle trees into the West Clearing, approaching her group from behind.
Just find Agatha and—
The group turned all at once. No one laughed. Not Dot. Not Tedros. Not even Beatrix. They gaped with such horror Sophie couldn’t breathe.
“Excuse me—something in my eye—” She ducked behind a blue rosebush and gulped for air. She couldn’t bear any more humiliation.
“Least you look like a Never now,” Tedros said, bobbing behind the bush. “So no one makes my mistake.”
Sophie turned beet red.
“Well, this is what happens when you’re friends with a witch,” the prince frowned.
Now, Sophie was a pomegranate.
“Look, it’s not that bad. Not as bad your friend, at least.”
“Excuse me,” said Sophie, eggplant purple. “Something in my other eye—”
She darted out and grabbed Dot like a life raft—“Where’s Agatha!”
But Dot was still staring at her hair. Sophie cleared her throat.
“Oh, um, they haven’t let her out of her room,” Dot said. “Too bad she’ll miss the Flowerground. If Yuba can call the conductor, that is.” She nodded at the gnome, grumpily jabbing at a blue pumpkin patch. Dot’s eyes drifted back to Sophie’s hair.
“It’s … nice.”
“Please don’t,” Sophie said softly.
Dot’s eyes misted. “You were so pretty.”
“It’ll grow back,” Sophie said, trying not to cry.
“Don’t worry,” Dot sniffled. “One day, someone Evil enough will kill that monster.”
Sophie stiffened.
“All aboard!” Yuba called.
She turned to see Tedros open the top of an ordinary blue pumpkin like a teapot and vanish inside.
Sophie squinted. “What in the—”
Something poked her hip and she looked down. Yuba thrust a Flowerground pass at her and opened the pumpkin lid, revealing a thin caterpillar in a violet velvet tuxedo and matching top hat, floating in a swirl of pastel colors.
“No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the Flowerground,” he said in the crabbiest voice imaginable. “Violations will result in removal of your clothes. All aboard!”
Sophie whipped to Yuba. “Wait! I need to find my frien—”
A vine shot up and yanked her in.
Too stunned to scream, she plunged through dazzling pinks, blues, yellows, as more tendrils lashed and fastened around her like safety belts. Sophie heard a hiss and wheeled to see a giant green flytrap swallow her. She found her scream before vines jerked her out of its mouth into a tunnel of hot, blinding mist and hooked her onto something that kept her moving while her feet and arms dangled freely in the ivy harness. Then the mist cleared and Sophie saw the most magical thing she’d ever seen.
It was an underground transport system, big as a whole village, made entirely of luminescent plants. Dangling passengers hung on to vine straps attached to glowing, different-colored tree trunks covered in matching flowers. These color-coded trunks wove together in a colossal maze of tracks. Some trunks ran parallel, some perpendicular, some forked in different directions, but all took riders to their
