The School Years Complete Collection. Soman Chainani

      ho else is in our group?” Agatha asked Sophie, breaking the tension.

      Sophie didn’t answer. In fact, she acted as if Agatha wasn’t there at all.

      The last class of the day, Surviving Fairy Tales, was the only one that mixed students from Good and Evil. After Professor Dovey ordered Everboys to the Armory to turn in their personal weapons—the only way to appease Lady Lesso, furious over losing a gargoyle to Tedros’ sword—both schools reported to the Blue Forest gates, where fairies sorted them into Forest Groups, eight Evers and eight Nevers in each. As other children found their leaders (an ogre for Group 2, a centaur for Group 8, a lily nymph for 12) Agatha and Sophie were the first to arrive under the flag stamped with a bloodred “3.”

      Agatha had so much to tell Sophie about smiles and fish and fires and most of all about that foul son of Arthur, but Sophie wouldn’t even look at her.

      “Can’t we just go home?” Agatha begged.

      “Why don’t you go home before you fail or end up a mole rat?” Sophie fumed. “You’re in my school.”

      “Then why won’t it let us switch?”

      Sophie spun. “Because you … Because we—”

      “Need to go home,” Agatha glared.

      Sophie smiled her kindest smile. “Sooner or later, they’ll see what’s right.”

      “I’d say sooner,” a voice resounded.

      They turned to Tedros, shirt scorched, eye swollen pink and blue.

      “If you’re itching for something to kill, how about yourself this time?” Agatha spat.

      “‘Thank you’ would suffice,” Tedros shot back. “I risked my life to kill that gargoyle.”

      “You killed an innocent child!” Agatha yelled.

      “I saved you from death against all instinct and reason!” Tedros roared.

      Sophie gaped at them. “You two know each other?”

      Agatha swiveled to her. “You think he’s your prince? He’s just a puffed-up windbag who can’t find anything better to do than prance around half naked and thrust his sword where it doesn’t belong!”

      “She’s just mad because she owes me her life,” Tedros yawned, scratching his chest. He grinned at Sophie. “So you think I’m your prince?”

      Sophie blushed delicately the way she had practiced before class.

      “I knew it was a mistake at the Welcoming,” the prince said, studying her with dancing blue eyes. “A girl like you shouldn’t be anywhere near Evil.” He turned to Agatha with a scowl. “And a witch like you shouldn’t be anywhere near someone like her.”

      Agatha stepped towards him. “First of all, this witch happens to be her friend. And second, why don’t you go play with yours before I make those eyes match.”

      Tedros laughed so hard, he had to grip the gate. “A princess friends with a witch! Now there’s a fairy tale.”

      Agatha frowned at Sophie, waiting for her to jump in. Sophie swallowed and turned to Tedros.

      “Well, it’s funny you say that, because a princess certainly can’t be friends with a witch, of course, but doesn’t it depend on the type of witch? I mean, what exactly is the definition of a witch—”

      Now Tedros was frowning at her.

      “And so, um—what I’m trying to say is—”

      Sophie looked between Tedros and Agatha, Agatha and Tedros …

      She swept in front of Agatha and took Tedros’ hand.

      “My name’s Sophie, and I like your bruise.”

      Agatha crossed her arms.

      “My, my,” Tedros said, gazing into Sophie’s tantalizing green eyes. “How are you surviving in that place?”

      “Because I knew you’d rescue me,” Sophie breathed.

      Agatha coughed to remind them she was still there.

      “You’ve got to be kidding,” said a girl’s voice behind them.

      They turned to see Beatrix, under the bloody “3,” along with Dot, Hort, Ravan, Millicent, and the rest of their Forest Group. To chart all the dirty looks thrown in that moment, one would end up with something resembling a bowl of spaghetti.

      “Mmmm,” 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