The School Years Complete Collection. Soman Chainani

blades like harp strings.

      As she waded through head-high ferns, she thought of Agatha. Did a teacher catch her brewing a plan? Did Hester intercept her?

      Sophie felt pinpricks of sweat.

      Or is Agatha afraid to help me?

      For if she won with Tedros, no one could deny her switching schools. She could rule Good as their beneficent Captain. She could have her prince for Ever After and the life of a queen. Sophie gritted her teeth. If only she hadn’t made that promise about going home! If only she could win this Trial alone, then she wouldn’t have to keep it!

      She stopped in her tracks. But I can! Look at me! I’m doing just fi—

      A scream echoed. White sparks sprayed into the sky. Kiko had surrendered.

      Sophie’s legs jellied. How long would it take Kiko’s attacker to find her? What was she thinking? She couldn’t last here! She yanked the kerchief from her pocket, unleashed vermillion red, and—

      CRACK! Something dropped from above and landed at her feet. She stared down at a scroll of parchment, wrapped with a strip of fabric.

      Fabric glowing with angry green frogs.

      Sophie looked up and saw a white dove high above the trees. The dove tried to fly down—

      CRACK! A barrier of flames exploded across the sky if it got even close to the trees. The faculty had taken no chances.

      Sophie urgently pulled open the scorched scroll—

      Sophie slumped with relief. A tulip! No one would ever find her! Oh, how could she doubt Agatha? Sweet, loyal Agatha! Sophie guiltily balled the red kerchief back in her pocket and followed the dove.

      To get to the Tulip Garden by trail, she’d have to cross the Turquoise Thicket, then the Pumpkin Patch, and finally the Sleeping Willow Bosk. As she followed Agatha out of the ferns into the dense Thicket, phosphorescent leaves lit up the trail with wintry blue light. Sophie could see every scratch and scar on the lucent trunks, including the gash Vex had made above her head.

      Wind suddenly swept through and leaves flickered over the trail. She couldn’t see Agatha through the treetops. Sophie heard muffled grunts—human? animal?—but she didn’t stop to find out. Kiko’s scream thundering in her head, she fled down the trail, snatching at her dragging cloak. Tripping over shrubs and stumps, she ducked stabbing boughs, flung through tentacles of blue leaves, until she glimpsed pumpkins and an impatient dove between two shining tree trunks—

      Someone stood between them. A little girl in a red cape and hood.

      “Excuse me?” Sophie called. “I need to pass.”

      The red-headed stranger looked up. It wasn’t a child at all. She had cloudy blue eyes, rosy blush on her wrinkled, spotted cheeks, and thick gray hair pulled into two ponytails.

      Sophie frowned. She loathed old women.

      “I said I need to pass.”

      The woman didn’t move.

      Sophie marched towards her—“Are you deaf?”

      The crone dropped her red cloak and revealed a hawk’s dirty, bloated body. Sophie shrank back, heard an earsplitting caw and swiveled to two more old bird-women moving towards her.

      Harpies.

      Agatha had taught her—Sweet-talkers? Blind walkers?

      Then she saw their gnarled talons, tapping, sharp as blades.

      Child eaters.

      They pounced with terrible screams and Sophie ducked under a wing as the shrieking monsters dove after her, ugly faces contorted with rage. She raced through bushes to hide, but every corner of the thicket was spotlit blue. Harpies snapped at her neck and she fumbled for her pocket, touching red silk—her cloak snagged her foot and she crashed in mulch. Claws sank into her back and she screamed as she was lifted off ground, flailing for her kerchief. The Harpies opened their jaws to her face—

      The thicket went dark.

      Shrieks of confusion—claws released her and Sophie plunged into dirt. In blackness, she scrambled through gouging twigs until her hands found a log and she hid behind it. She could hear talons scraping blindly through dirt, furious grunts growing closer. Sophie sprang back and slammed into a rock with a cry. The monsters heard her and lunged for her head—

      The thicket lit back up.

      The Harpies craned their beaks to see Agatha the Dove hovering high, wingtip glowing orange. Agatha waved her wing and the thicket went dark. Agatha waved it again and the thicket went light. Dark then light, dark then light, until the Harpies got the point and two flew for Agatha, who squawked fearfully in place—

      “Fly!” Sophie screamed, but Agatha flailed and thrashed as if she’d forgotten how. Twin monsters gnashed for the helpless dove, tearing higher, faster, until they had her in claws’ reach—

      Flames exploded across the barrier with a cruel crack and they fell, charred feathers and flesh.

      The last Harpy gawked at their smoking bodies. Slowly it looked up. Agatha smiled and waved her glowing wing. The thicket lit up. The monster swiveled—

      Sophie smashed its head with a rock.

      In the Forest’s silence, she panted and bled, alone on the ground, legs shaking under her cloak.

      Sophie glared into the sky.

      “I want to switch places!”

      But the dove was already halfway to the Pumpkin Patch. Sophie could do nothing but follow miserably, hand gripping her kerchief inside her pocket.

      Across the silent patch, pumpkins fluoresced a thousand shades of blue. Sophie stepped onto the dirt trail that snaked through the lit orbs, mumbling to herself that these were pumpkins, only pumpkins, and even a School Master couldn’t make one scary. She rushed ahead to keep up with Agatha—

      Dark silhouettes on the trail. Two people in front of her.

      “Hello?” Sophie called.

      They didn’t move.

      Heart thundering, Sophie stepped closer. There were more than two. Ten at least.

      “What do you want!” she screamed.

      No answer.

      She inched closer. They were seven feet tall, with spindly bodies, faces like skulls, and crooked hands made of …

      Straw.

      Scarecrows.

      Sophie exhaled.

      The scarecrows lined both sides of the trail, dozens of them on wooden crosses, guarding the pumpkins with outstretched arms. From behind, glowing pumpkins lit their profiles, revealing shredded brown shirts, bald burlap heads, and black witch hats. As she walked slowly between them, Sophie saw their terrible faces—eyeholes ripped out of burlap, jagged pig noses, and sewn, lecherous grins. Spooked, she hurried forward, eyes on the path.

      “Help me …”

      She froze. The voice came from the scarecrow next to her. A voice she knew.

      It can’t be, Sophie thought. She pushed on.

      “Help me, Sophie …”

      Now there was no mistaking it.

      Sophie willed herself forward. My mother’s dead.

      “I’m inside …” the voice rasped behind her, weak with agony.

      Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. She’s dead.

      “I’m trapped …”

      Sophie turned.

      The scarecrow wasn’t a scarecrow