As the two schools slept, two heads surfaced outside in the black moat. Sophie and Agatha stared at the thin silver tower that stood between the two schools, surrounded by black sludge. It was too far to swim and too high to climb. A group of fairies guarded its spire, while an army of wolves with crossbows guarded its base.
"And you're sure he's up there?" Sophie said.
"I saw him," Agatha replied.
"We need to get out of here. I can't go back to that place. It's turning Y/n against me!"
"Look, we'll just beg him for mercy until he sends us home."
"Because that'll work," Sophie snorted. "Leave him to me."
For the last hour, the two girls had mulled every possible way to escape while Y/n was resting in the infirmary with Tedros. Agatha thought they should sneak into the Woods and find their way back to Gavaldon. But Sophie pointed out that even if they did get past the gate snakes and any other booby traps, they'd just end up lost. In the end, the School Master was the only option.
"We'll never get up there," Sophie sighed.
Agatha heard a squawk in the distance. "Hold that thought."
A short while later, they were back in the Blue Forest, eyeing a nest of big black eggs from behind a bush. In front of the nest, five skeletal stymphs slept.
"As soon as they attack, we jump on."
"As soon as they what?"
But Agatha was already tiptoeing to the eggs.
As Agatha grew closer to the fleshless birds, there was a crack behind her. Agatha spun around to see Sophie had accidentally stepped on a branch, waking the sleeping creatures.
Agatha tried to step back but they came closer to her.
"Can't watch, can't watch–" Sophie mewled, squinting through her fingers for spewing limbs and blood.
But the vicious birds were nuzzling Agatha, like puppies seeking milk.
"Ooh, that tickles!" she squealed. Sophie folded her arms.
Clumping back, Agatha handed an egg to her. "Your turn."
"Oh, please, if they like you, they'll try to mate with me. Animals worship princesses," said Sophie, walking towards the birds.
The stymphs let out a war cry and charged.
"Helllllp!" Sophie threw the egg to Agatha, but the stymphs still chased Sophie, who ran in circles like a lunatic, five stymphs ran behind her until they 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 berries at the bird's eye, but the bird had no eye, so the berries went right through its bony socket and plopped to the ground.
Agatha watched stone-faced.
"Aggie, it's coming!"
The stymph charged for Sophie, only to stop short and find Agatha perched on its back.
"Get on, you dimwit!" she shouted at Sophie.
"Without a saddle?" Sophie scoffed. "It'll leave chafe marks."
The stymph lunged for her. Agatha walloped its head and slung Sophie by the waist onto the bird's spine.
"Hang on tight!" Agatha yelled as the bird thrashed up to flight, somersaulting over the bay to get the girls off its back.
"There's the tower!" Agatha cried, spotting the silver spire through the mist.
The stymph zoomed for the tower wall. But just as it whipped its tail to smash them, Agatha saw a window glint through the fog.
"Now!" screamed Agatha.
The two girls leaped from the bird's bony back and rolled into the window of the tower. The crash landing through the window left Sophie's entire right side bruised and Agatha's wrist gashed. With a chorus of groans, they staggered to their feet.
"Hello?" Agatha called. Echoes died unanswered.
The girls 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 read every day. She looked over at Agatha, who had made the same discovery across the room. They were standing in a library of every fairy tale ever told.
"Aggie?"
Agatha followed Sophie's gaze 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'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.
"This... thing must be responsible for everyone's stories," Agatha said, staring down at it.
"But whose story is it writing right now?" Sophie questioned.
Just as Sophie had said that the pen was no longer still and continued writing its new tale. The girls walked closer to the book to see the pen scribbling down words.
"Once upon a time, there was a girl named Y/n."
The same elegant script as all the others. A brand-new fairy tale.
"It's writing about Y/n," Agatha spoke softly.
"It's writing about Y/n," Sophie repeated angrily.
"It would appear so," said a gentle voice.
The girls whipped around. No one was 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 girls spun around. No one in the room at all. But then they saw their shadows merge on the wall, into the crooked shadow that kidnapped them. The girls turned slowly.
"And here it starts one for a first year reader who wants nothing more than to help her friends. A true princess," said the School Master.
He wore silver robes that covered his hunched, slender frame, hiding his hands and feet. A rusted crown sat off 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:
"The girl had two friends: one that loved her dearly and wanted what was best for her while the other was selfish and only wanted what would benefit herself."
"It's talking about us," Sophie spoke. "I'm sorry it sees you that way Aggie dear. Don't take it personally. We both know who cares about Y/n the most."
"Says the girl who just fought her over a boy," Agatha mumbled.
They looked up and saw the School Master studying them.
"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 girls. "But I suspect this one will turn out right."
He looked back at the story to see a drawing being made. The pen scribbled and scratched until the picture was now clear. The two girls stared in awe at the two people standing in front of each other in the hallway.
"Is that?" Sophie started to ask, but Agatha knew exactly who was in the picture.
"Tedros and Y/n," Agatha stated.
"It seems our princess may have already found her prince," the School Master smiled, but then it faded. "But I know that this fairytale isn't the reason you've come to see me."
"We would like to go home," Agatha demanded.
Silence.
Sophie dropped to her knees. "Oh, please, sir, we beg for mercy!"
Agatha groaned.
"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 high pitched wail. "I smell." She bawled into her hands.
"So you'd like to switch schools?" the School Master asked.
"We'd like to go home," said Agatha.
Sophie looked up brightly. "Can we switch schools?"
The School Master smiled. "No."
"Then we'd like to go home," Sophie said.
"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 us home!" Agatha said.
"Indeed I could," said the School Master, "if you weren't part of young Y/n's fairytale." He eyed the pen across the room. "You see, once the Storian begins a story, we must see where the story goes. Now the question is, 'Will her story take you home?'"
"So there's no way home?" Agatha asked, eyes welling.
"Not unless it's your ending," the School Master said.
"There has to be some way!"
"I suppose there's one way."
"Tell us!" The girls cried in unison.
"What's the one thing Evil can never have... and the one thing Good can never do without?"
The girls looked at each other.
"So we solve your riddle and you... send us home?" Agatha asked hopefully.
"That is up to Y/n's story to decide."
Suddenly, the room started disappearing in a sweep of white, as if the scene was being erased before their eyes.
"Wait!" Agatha cried. "What are you doing!"
First, the bookshelves vanished, then the walls.
"No! We want to go home now!" Agatha yelled.
Then the ceiling, the table, and the floor around them. The two girls lunged to a corner to avoid being erased.
"How do we find you!? How do we answe–" Agatha ducked to avoid a streak of white. "You're cheating!"
Across the room, Sophie watched as the Storian continued to write her friend's story. This was no longer about Sophie and Agatha, this was about making sure Y/n finished her story. But how?
"You thief! You bully! You masked-face old creep!" Agatha 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 they saw was the School Master turn from the window, smiling in a sea of white.
"What other villages?"
The ground vanished beneath the two girls' feet and they free-fell into emptiness, the School Master's last words echoing, blending into the wolves' call to morning class.
They woke, blinded by sunlight, swimming in puddles of sweat. Agatha looked for Sophie. Sophie looked for Agatha. But all they found were their own beds, in towers far apart.