"She's fine," Beatrix yawned from bed, squinting at me perched on the blue-glass windowsill. Sophie was already fast asleep.
"Just want to make sure she's safe." I peered down at the two armored knights, one short, one tall, standing in the blue pumpkin patch near the Woods gate.
"You sound . . . like . . . a . . . prince . . . ," Beatrix babbled before her breaths turned heavy, untroubled by the angry chants echoing outside.
I could barely see the source of these chants over the spiked gates, just snatches of the princes' shadowed, distorted faces and shredded clothes. Nothing in this world was ever certain. Princes could become as frightening as ogres. Princesses could become villains.
Hours passed, and neither Dot nor Agatha budged from the pumpkins, enduring the princes' blind threats and their weapons fired and absorbed into the enchanted shield over the gates. Midnight came and went, then two o'clock . . . four o'clock . . .
Agatha made no move towards Tedros' castle.
Finally, as the moon sank into the glow of a new sun, Agatha still in place, I colored with shame. This school had turned both of us distrustful.
Resting my head against the glass, I realized how exhausted I was. My thoughts thinned to fragments and flowed into dream. . . .
My eyes flared open. The sky over the Woods gate had gone pitchdark—torches extinguished, moonlight snuffed. The princes howled with confusion before the torch and moon suddenly returned, leaving them dumbstruck at the passing eclipse. But I knew it wasn't an eclipse at all. It was a Lights-Out Jinx.
It was Agatha's favorite spell.
I leapt to my feet—but neither of the knights had shifted from their post. I groaned and plopped down on my bed. Enough paranoia. Time to sleep. I pulled back the bedcovers but felt myself hesitate. Slowly I turned to the window again.
The taller knight had lost an armored shoe. The orphaned shoe was clearly visible a few feet away, but neither the taller nor the shorter knight made an effort to retrieve it. I squinted closer and saw that shoeless Agatha was having trouble standing, while Dot tried to prop her up. But the more Dot tried to help, the more Agatha flailed and flubbered, until finally the two knights fell to the ground, Dot's sword slipping from its sheath as she squealed in horror. Dot lunged to grab it, but it was too late—Agatha crashed face-first on the sword in a terrible heap and impaled on the blade, severing her neck.
I opened my mouth to scream, watching Agatha's head roll out of its helmet—
Agatha's big, blue pumpkin head.
I froze. Dot slowly looked up from the Forest, covered in pulp and seeds.
Blood roared through my veins.
Agatha had gone after all.
***
My feathers shivered in gusty wind as my hawk flew across the sky towards the School for Boys. I'd been scared to mogrify again after the panther incident, but rage blasted away any fear. I had to get to Tedros before Agatha kissed him.
Angry tears dripped onto my wings. I can't lose Agatha, I prayed.
With an anguished caw, I ripped towards the boys' jagged red towers—
CRACK!
An electric shock stabbed through me and I plummeted out of the sky. I tried to flap my wings, but every inch of my body was paralyzed. Mogrif shield, I realized. Hurtling towards Evil's shore, my feathers violently sloughed to skin, my beak to lips, my body to human, preventing any return to bird—before I belly-flopped into mulch, fifty feet from Evil's entrance tunnel. My groans snuffled against wet earth, my legs sticky and cold. For a moment, I was grateful the shield had reverted me without any trouble, given what happened in Lesso's class. Then reality set in.
I was splayed bare in dirt, outside the School for Boys.
How could I be so stupid! Of course they enchanted the school against Mogrifs! Tedros wouldn't just leave his tower unprotected!
I need to get out of here before the princes come.
I looked up determinedly to the boggy field and froze.
On the ground under my face was a crinkly blackish sheath of scales . . . like a snake's shed skin, only twice as long and thick. My eyes slowly moved to another shed sheath a few feet in front of me. Then two more . . .
I raised my head. I was surrounded by snakeskins. More than I could count.
Through darkness, I saw their makers rise from the mulch. Acid-green eyes glowed under misshapen, flattened black heads, their thick, eel-like trunks speared with needles through every scale. I scrambled back, only to see more rising behind me. They curled higher, in a perfect circle, trapping me right and left, front and rear, high and low. With identical grins, they silently flicked tongues and glared down, waiting for me to move.
There was only one to make.
I flung out my glowing finger—the snakes lunged instantly and pinned my body to the ground, spread-eagled to sacrifice. Needles slashed into my wrists and ankles as the snakes unleashed ugly, screeching hisses, drowning out my gasps. I heard boys' voices echo through the entrance tunnel, following the alarm, and knew I was doomed.
"Why can't I kill her!" a weaselly voice said.
"Get back to your guard," retorted a harsh deeper voice.
"But I heard the spiricks first!" the weaselly voice mewled. "Suppose it's her—"
"Shut up!" barked the deep voice. "Boys, weapons ready!"
My nails clawed at dirt. I couldn't die now. . . not like this. . .But now I could see the glint of swords and hooded shadows down the tunnel. They were seconds away.
Then suddenly out of pain, a memory came back like a song. . . .
Snakeskin under my hands as Professor Manley spoke of its magical properties in an Uglification class . . .
"But I want to kill Y/n!" the weaselly voice said, eliciting a chorus of snickers.
"As if you could kill a toad," said the deep-voiced boy. "Or a girl you're soft for."
"I'm not soft for anyone!"
My fingerglow flickered as snake needles stabbed into my palm. I gasped in agony, trying to visualize the spell.
"Shhh! I hear her!"
Snakeskins shivered on the ground around me—
"Ready . . . set . . ."
Hundreds of skins rose into air over the snakes—
"Charge!"
Four enormous boys in red hoods and black uniforms dashed from the tunnel, swords aimed—
"Holy hell," growled their strapping, deep-voiced leader, a gold badge over his snake crest. In the dirt pit, confused snakes hissed at each other—nothing pinned beneath. The leader shot a spell at them and the snakes fled, shrieking. He ripped off his hood, revealing spiked black hair, ghostly pale cheekbones, throbbing blue veins, and lethal, violet eyes. "Stupid spiricks."
Needle cuts burning, I endured the pain, invisible under the mound of sheathed skins.
A last scrawny hood bumbled from the tunnel. "You think I'm soft?" the weaselly boy cried, tearing off his mask. "Wait until I win the treasure! Just wait!"
I held in a gasp. Hort had grown in our time away, now sporting whiskers on his chin, wilder black hair, and beady brown eyes that no longer looked like a little boy's. "I'll buy Dad a gold coffin. Two years he's waited for a grave. Killed by Peter Pan himself, my dad." He glowered at the empty pit. "You'll see, Aric! I'll be the one to kill Y/n. You don't know my villain talent!"
"Turnin' to a man-wolf for three seconds at a time?" said Aric, and his henchmen chuckled.
"That's not true!" Hort howled, chasing them towards the tunnel. "I can last long now! You'll see!"
Watching them go, I sighed with relief—
Aric whirled, sword thrust out.
I stiffened like a corpse as he stared at the spot where I lay naked, his violet eyes narrowed.
"What is it, captain?" his henchman asked.
Aric listened to the silence.
"Come on," he grunted at last, and led his troops into the boys' castle, Hort runting at the rear.
None of them saw the flash of green glow in the bog behind, turning invisible skins into an invisible cape.