The next morning, fifty princesses dashed about the fifth floor as if it was their wedding day. On the first day of class, they all wanted to make their best impressions on teachers, boys, and anyone else who might lead them to Ever After. Swans twinkling on nightgowns, they flurried into each other’s rooms, glossing lips, poofing hair, buffing nails, and trailing so much perfume that fairies passed out and littered the hall like dead flies. Still no one seemed any closer to being dressed, and indeed, when the clock tolled 8:00 a.m., signalling the start of breakfast, not a single girl had put on her clothes.
“Breakfast makes you fat anyway,” Beatrix reassured.
Reena poked her head into the hall. “Has anyone seen my panties!”
“No, sorry.” Phoenix replied, heading down the staircase, looking flawless without flapping around like a mad duck.
Her hair was tied into two simple braids but, like her mother’s, it still dragged along the floor. She was sure Agatha was ready for the day as well, since she had been gone when Phoenix woke up.
Breakfast was fruit and pastries, and Phoenix nibbled on strawberries, sitting by herself, ignoring the group of rowdy princes a couple of tables over.
She glanced up at the clock as she finished, then jumped up, wanting to find Agatha before class started so the girl didn’t get lost.
Phoenix hurried through the halls toward Professor Anemone’s classroom, and saw a familiar black-haired girl wearing clumps underneath her dress.
“Agatha!” Phoenix called out, then saw her roommate was dripping wet. “Oh dear. Hang on…here…” Phoenix conjured fire on her palm and it instantly dried Agatha. “There! All better. I’m assuming you went for a swim this morning since I woke to find you gone.”
Agatha went to protest, but then saw the gentle smile on Phoenix’s face, indicating the princess was teasing.
“It’s okay, I’ll keep it secret.” Phoenix winked as the two girls took their seats in the classroom, awaiting the teacher’s arrival as the other girls around them chattered.
Professor Emma Anemone, whistling in a blinding yellow dress and long fox-fur gloves, walked into her pink taffy classroom, took one look at Agatha, and stopped whistling. But then she murmured “Rapunzel took some work too,” and launched into her first lesson on “Making Smiles Kinder.”
Phoenix raised her eyebrows at the Rapunzel comment, but chose not to say anything.
“Now the key is to communicate with your eyes,” the professor chirped, and demonstrated the perfect princess smile. With her bulging eyes and wild yellow hair matching her dress…
“She looks like a manic canary.” Agatha whispered to Phoenix, who giggled quietly, seeing the resemblance also.
“Try saying her name five times fast.” She whispered back.
Professor Anemone walked around surveying the girls. “Not so much squinting...A little less nose, dear...Oh my, absolutely beautiful!” She was talking about Beatrix, who lit up the room with her dazzling smile. “That, my Evers, is a smile that can win the heart of the steeliest prince. A smile that can broker peace in the greatest of wars. A smile that can lead a kingdom to hope and prosperity!”
Then she saw Agatha. “You there! No smirking!”
With her teacher looming, Agatha tried to concentrate and duplicate Beatrix’s perfect smile.
“Goodness! Now it’s a creepy grin! A smile, child! Just your normal, everyday smile!”
Phoenix prayed for luck for her friend, but no-one answered her wishes.
“Now it’s positively malevolent!” Professor Anemone shrieked.
Agatha turned and saw the whole class cowering, as if expecting her to turn them all into bats.
“Do you think she eats children?” Beatrix asked quietly.
“I’m so glad I moved out,” Reena sighed. “Poor Phoenix.”
Agatha frowned. Phoenix pretended not to hear. Professor Anemone looked at Agatha with a serious expression.
“If you ever need a man to trust you, if you ever need a man to save you, if you ever need a man to love you, whatever you do, child...don’t smile at him.”
Then it was Phoenix’s turn.
“So pure!” Professor Anemone sighed.
Phoenix’s smile was so innocent.
“How do you do it?” Agatha whispered to her.
Princess Etiquette, taught by Pollux, was worse. He arrived in a bad mood, hobbling with his massive canine head attached to a skinny goat’s carcass and muttering that Castor “has the body this week.” He looked up and saw girls staring at him.
“And here I thought I was teaching princesses. All I see are twenty ill-mannered girls gaping like toads. Are you toads? Do you like to catch flies with your little pink tongues?”
The girls stopped staring after that, though Phoenix giggled quietly.
The first lesson was “Princess Posture,” which involved the girls descending the four tower staircases with nests of nightingale eggs on their heads. Though most of the girls succeeded without breaking any eggs, Agatha had a harder time. In the end, she left twenty eggs bleeding yolk on marble.
“Twenty beautiful nightingales who will not have life...because of you,” said Pollux.
As class ranks appeared over each girl in ethereal gold clouds—Beatrix 1st, of course—Agatha spun to see a rusted “20” hover over, then crash into her head.
Phoenix looked up at the sparkly number five. Not bad.
YOU ARE READING
Fire Princess
FanfictionYears ago, once her fairytale had ended, Rapunzel married a prince who's entire family possessed the powers of phoenixes. That same power was passed onto her children. This is the story of her daughter, Phoenix of Firebirch, who attends the School f...
