The Princesses of Gavaldon

Chapter 12

Sophie followed Yuba to a blue clearing. 
"Stand there." Yuba snapped his fingers. 

For a minute, nothing happened. 

But then, clear, crystal mirrors grew out of the forest floors. All of it's reflection was about a glowering, ugly girl. She had chalk white skin, greasy, dark black hair, and a scowl. 
Sophie wrinkled her nose. "Who is that?" She pointed at the reflection. The reflection wrinkled her nose and pointed at her. 

"That's you." Yuba told her. 

Sophie smirked. 

"That's not me. I am beautiful." Yuba shooked his head. "Not anymore."

Sophie scoffed at him. "You're lying. I'm beautiful and nothing can change that!" Yuba smiled.

"This is your punishment. Escape if you dare." 

He turned and walked away, leaving Sophie in the Maze of Vainity. 

Sophie looked around. There was mirrors everywhere. All pointing, frowning, ugly. She turned to.see another reflection, leering at her. Sophie looked around. 

She had to get out of here. 

 Sophie turned around and ran out of the clearing. But all around her, there was.her reflections. Corner after Conor, crossroad after crossroads. Sophie felt herself growing angrier and scared. Finally she couldn't stop herself. 

She screamed. 

A high pitched noise which began to shatter one reflection after another. 

Defeated, Sophie laid on the ground. She can't wait to go to Gavaldon. 

As the two schools slept, a head surfaced outside in the black moat. Sophie peeped out at the thin silver tower that divided lake from sludge. Too far to swim. Too high to climb. A cyclone of fairies guarded its spire, while an army of wolves with crossbows manned wooden planks at its base.

 For the last hour, the girl had mulled every possible way to escape.
Sophie first thought she should sneak into the Woods and find their way back
to Gavaldon. But a voice in her head pointed out that even if they did get past the gate snakes and any other booby traps, they'd just end up lost. ("They're called
the  Endless  Woods  for  a  reason.")  Then she thought she  hunt  for enchanted  broomsticks  or  magic  carpets  or  something  else  in  the  school closets that might fly them over the forest.
"And what direction would we fly in?" the voice asked.
The girl discarded  other  options—leaving  a  trail  of  bread  crumbs
(that never worked); seeking a kindly hunter or dwarf (Sophie didn't think she would find strangers.); wishing for a fairy godmother (Sophie didn't trust fat women)—
until there was only one left.
But now, peering up at the School Master's fortress, she lost all hope.
"I'll never get up there," Sophie sighed.
But then she heard a squawk in the distance.
"Hold that thought."
A short while later, she was back in the Blue Forest, caked in sludge,
eyeing a nest of big black eggs from behind a periwinkle bush. In front of
the nest, five skeletal stymphs slept on indigo grass, littered with the blood
and limbs of a half-eaten goat.
Sophie scowled. "I'm back where I started, covered in smelly ooze and
who knows how many flesh-eating maggots and—wait!"


"The stymphs woke.
Stymphs' jagged teeth, gnarled talons, and spiked tails that shred flesh from bone were now directed at her.
"Helllllp!" Sophie ran in circles like a lunatic, five stymphs high stepping behind
her in a moronic maypole parade until everyone forgot who was after who
and the birds knocked into each other dizzily.
"See? I outsmarted them," Sophie beamed.
A stymph bit her bottom. "Ayyyiiieee!" Sophie ran for the nearest tree.
Only  she  couldn't  climb  trees,  so  she  hurled  mashed  gooseberries  at  the
bird's eye, but the bird had no eye, so the berries went right through bony
socket and plopped to the ground.

The  stymph  charged  for  Sophie,  only  to  stop  short  and  find  Sophie doubling back and now perched on its back.
The  bird, now annoyed,  thrashed  up  to  flight, somersaulting over the bay to get the girls off its back. Four more stymphs
exploded from blue trees in murderous pursuit; Sophie kicked at the bird's
thighbones. Hearing  squawks  and  screams,  the  fairy  and  wolf  guards
squinted into the sky, only to see the intruders vanish into fog.
Finally, Sophie spotted the silver spire through the mist.  A  wolf's  arrow  whizzed  between  the  stymph's  ribs,  almost  slicing her in half. Fairies stormed out of the fog, shooting golden webs from
their mouths, and the stymph dove to avoid them, spinning to elude a new hail of wolf arrows. This time poor Sophie couldn't hold on and tumbled off its
back.
"Noooo!" screamed Sophir—
Sophie caught the last bone of the stymph's tail. "I'm going to die!"
The stymph zoomed for the tower wall. But just as it whipped its tail to
smash them, Sophie saw a window glint through fog.

Golden nets shot from every direction and the stymph let out a helpless
screech. But as fairies watched it plunge to its death, they looked at each
other curiously.
There were no riders on its back.

The crash landing through the window left Sophie's entire right side bruised
But pain meant she was still alive. Pain meant shestill  had  hope  for  getting  home.  With  a  chorus  of  groans and grunts,  she  staggered to their feet. Then Sophie saw the worst of the damage.
"My shoe!"  She  held  up  her  glass  heel,  snapped  to  a  serrated  stump.
"They were one of a kind," she mourned. But she knew she had other matters to pursue.
The girl inched farther into the shadowy room. Stone bookcases cloaked
gray  brick  walls,  packed  top  to  bottom  with  colorful  bindings.  Sophie
dusted off a shelf and read the elegant silver letters on the wooden spines:
Rapunzel, The Singing Bone, Thumbelina, The Frog King, Cap O'Rushes,
The Six Swans . . . All the stories the children of Gavaldon used to drink up.
She looked over at the other shelf across the room. She were standing in a library of every fairy tale ever told.
Sophie opened up Beauty  and  the  Beast  to  find  it  written  in  the  same
elegant script as the spine, illustrated with vivid paintings like the ones in
the foyers of both schools. Then she opened up The Red Shoes, Donkeyskin,
and The Snow Queen and found that they too were written in the same regal
hand. But Sophie's gaze was fixed to the darkest part of the room. Through
the shadows,  she  could make out a white stone table pressed  against the
wall. There was something looming over it: a long, thin dagger dangling
magically in midair.
Sophie ran her fingers along the cold, smooth surface of  the table and
thought of all the blank headstones behind her house, waiting for bodies.
Sophie's eyes fixed on the hovering knife, eerily still a few feet above the
white slab.
That's when she saw it wasn't a knife at all.
"It's a pen," she said softly.
It was made of pure steel and shaped like a knitting needle, lethally sharp
at both ends. One side of the pen was engraved with a deep, flowing script
that ran unbroken from tip to tip.
Suddenly the pen caught a sliver of sunlight and scattered blinding gold
rays  in  every  direction.  Looking like she was in a trance, Sophie was climbing onto the table.
Sophie  walked  towards  the  pen,  eyes  wide,  body  rigid.  The  world dissipated  in  a  blur  of  gray  around  her.  All  that  remained  was  the shimmering, spindle-sharp pen, strange words reflecting in her glazed eyes.
Somewhere inside, she knew what they meant. She reached for the tip.
Sophie's skin kissed ice-cold steel, blood about to pierce through—
But something was wrong
Sophie broke from her trance and peered around the room.
But...

Her eyes drifted up to the pen, which was no longer still. It dangled an
inch from her face, pointing between her eyes with its deadly sharp tip as if weighing when to kill her.
The pen seared hot red.

The pen plunged and Sophie rolled off the table, only to see the razor sharp nib lurch to a stop just before it hit stone. A puff of black smoke and a book  suddenly  appeared  on  the  table  beneath  it,  bound  with  cherry-red wood. The pen flipped the cover open to the first blank page and began to write:
"Once upon a time, there were two girls."
The same elegant script as all the others. A brand-new fairy tale.
Sophie gaped from the floor, terrified.
"Now that's odd," said a gentle voice.
The girl whipped around again. No one there.
"Students  at  my  school  train  and  toil  for  four  years,  venture  into  the
Woods, seek their Nemeses, fight vicious battles . . . all just for the hope the Storian might tell their story."
The girl spun around. No one in the room at all. But then she saw her
shadows merge on the wall, into the crooked shadow that kidnapped her.
The girl turned slowly.
"And  here  it  starts  one  for  one  first-year,  unskilled,  untrained,  clumsy
intruder." said the School Master.
He  wore  silver  robes  that  billowed  over  his  hunched,  slender  frame,
hiding his hands and feet. A rusted crown sat off center on his head of thick,
ghostly white hair. A gleaming silver mask covered every last shred of his
face,  revealing  only  twinkling  blue  eyes  and  wide,  full  lips,  curled  in  a
mischievous smile.
"It must suspect a good ending."
The Storian dove to the page:
"Both were beautiful and beloved but the one was filled with spite."
"I like our story," Sophie said.

She looked up and saw the School Master studying her.
"Readers  are  unpredictable,  of  course.  Some  have  been  our  greatest
students. Most  have been embarrassing failures." He  gazed at the distant towers,  turning  his  back  to  the  girl.  "But  this  just  shows  how  confused
Readers have become."
"Many of the faculty say I kidnap you, steal you, take you against your will," the School Master said.
"But the truth is I free you."
"You deserve to live extraordinary lives."
"You deserve the chance to know who you are."
The School Master turned to Sophie, still on the floor, shivering slightly.

Sophie dropped to her knees. "Oh, please, sir, I beg for mercy!"
"You took me for Good," sobbed Sophie, "but they put me in Evil and
now my dress is black and my hair's dirty and my prince hates me and my
roommates  are  murderers  and  there's  no  Groom  Rooms  for  Nevers  so
now"—she let out a soprano wail—"I smell." She bawled into her hands.
"So you'd like to switch schools?" the School Master asked.
Sophie looked up brightly. "Can I switch schools?"
The School Master smiled. "No."
"Then I'd like to go home," Sophie said.
"Lost in a strange land, one of the girls wanted to go home," the Storian noted.
"We have sent students home before," the School Master said, silver mask
flaring. "Illness, mental incapacity, the petition of an influential family . . ."
"So you can send me home!" Sophie said.
"Indeed I could," said the School Master, "if you weren't in the midst of a fairy tale." He eyed the pen across the room. "You see, once the Storian begins your story, then I'm afraid we must follow it wherever it takes you.
Now the question is, 'Will your story take you home?'"
The  Storian  plunged  to  the  page:  "Stupid  girls!  They  were  trapped  for
eternity!"
"I suspected as much," said the School Master.
"So there's no way home?" Sophie asked, eyes welling.
"Not unless it's your ending," the School Master said. "And going home
together is a rather far-fetched ending for two girls fighting for opposing
sides, don't you think?"
"But I don't want to fight!" Sophie said.
"We are sisters!"
"Sisters!" the School Master marveled.
"Well,  that  certainly  changes  things."  The  School  Master  paced  like  a
doddering duck. "You see, a princess and a witch can never be sisters in
our world. It's unnatural. It's unthinkable. It's impossible. Which means if
you are indeed sister . . . Agatha must not be a princess and Sophie must
not be a witch."
"Exactly!" said Sophie. "Because I'm the princess and she's the wi—"
But the School Master cut her word.
"And if Agatha is not a princess and Sophie is not a witch, then clearly
I've got it wrong and you don't belong in our world at all," he said, pace
slowing. "Maybe what everyone says about me is true after all."
"That you're Good?" Sophie said.
"That I'm old," the School Master sighed out the window.
"So I can go home now?"
"Well, there is the thorny matter of proving all this."
"But I've tried!" Sophie said. "I've tried proving I'm not a villain!"
"Ah, but there's only one way in this world to prove who you are."
The Storian stopped its busy writing, sensing a pivotal moment. Slowly
the School Master turned. For the first time, his blue eyes had a glint of
danger.
"What's the one thing Evil can never have . . . and the one thing Good can never do without?"
The girl looked at him.
"So  I  solve  your  riddle  and  you  .  .  .  send  me  home?"  Sophie  asked
hopefully.
The School Master turned away. "I trust I won't see you again.
Unless you want a rather depressing end to your story."
Suddenly,  the  room  started  disappearing  in  a  sweep  of  white,  as  if  the
scene was being erased before their eyes.
"Wait!" Sophie cried. "What are you doing!"
First the bookshelves vanished, then the walls—
Then the ceiling, the table, the floor around them—the poor girl lunged to
a corner to avoid being erased—
Sophie ducked to avoid a streak of white. "You're cheating!"
Across  the  room,  Sophie  saw  the  Storian  furiously  writing  to  keep  up
with  their  fairy  tale.  The  pen  sensed  her  gaze,  for  the  words  in  its  steel
suddenly  seared  red  and  Sophie's  heart  burned  again  with  secret
understanding. Scared and angry, she clung to her corner—
"You  thief!  You  bully!  You  masked-face  old  creep!"  Sophie screamed.
"We're fine without you! Readers are fine without you! Stay in your tower
with your masks and pens and stay out of our lives! You hear me! Steal children from other villages and leave us alone!"
The  last  thing  she  saw  was  the  School  Master  turn  from  the  window,
smiling in a sea of white.
"What other villages?"

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