Fire Princess

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The first thing Sophie noticed when Rafal let her leave that tower was that the Blue Forest was no longer blue.

She pulled away from Rafal, windswept and dizzy, and staggered forward, anchored in the middle of the forest. The Blue Willows had rotted to black husks. The once-weatherproof blue grass was now urine yellow, cracking and breaking under her feet. Bracing from the wintry breeze, Sophie crawled through diseased, fallen trunks in the Turquoise Thicket, her nightgown catching on cancerous fungus and mould. Worst of all was the stench: an acrid, acid reek that made her eyes water and grew stronger the deeper she went into the Forest. By the time she reached the Tulip Garden, a stinking ashpit of amber and brown, she covered her face with both hands, barely able to stand straight. She looked back for Rafal, but couldn’t see him.

Sophie gasped a shallow breath and ploughed forward. She had to get out of there.

She shambled into the Fernfield, desperate to find the North Gates and stopped short. The ferns, once thigh-high with lush, cobalt fronds, was a wasteland of dead animals, swarming with roaches and flies. Under the jaundiced sun, carcasses of emaciated rabbits, storks, squirrels, and deer littered the dirt in front of the sealed gates, as if they’d all tried to flee and failed.

Then she heard a familiar hissing.

She raised her eyes to dozens of black spiricks, coiled around the gates, flicking red tongues. Sophie shrunk from the flat-headed snakes with deadly barbs through every scale, that once prevented anything from getting into the School for Boys, and now prevented all the animals from getting out. Sophie slowly looked up at the School Master’s tower in the distance, looming over the Blue Forest like a landmark in a demented park.

Sophie’s heart sagged. The Blue Forest had once been the school’s backyard, a safeguarded replica of the deadly Woods. She smiled, reliving her liveliest moments here, but the bad memories soon overwhelmed the good and as Sophie looked up at the Forest, it turned a shade blacker and bleaker before her eyes.

“It likes you,” Rafal drolled, coming up behind her.

Sophie spun. “What? I did that?”

“You did all of this,” he said, scanning the whole dead Forest. “You and me together.”

“I-I-I don’t understand,” Sophie stammered. “I don’t want the Forest like this—”

“It doesn’t matter what you think you want. It only matters what’s truly inside you,” said Rafal. “The Schools mirror back their Masters’ souls, as does the Storian they both protect. When my brother ruled with me, the castles reflected the balance between us: one light for Good, one dark for Evil. Last year, with Evelyn Sader and Tedros at war, the castles reflected the balance between Boys and Girls.” He caressed Sophie’s ring. “But now with you by my side, there’s a new balance… beyond Good and Evil…beyond Boys and Girls…”

Sophie followed his gaze up to the two black castles lording over the Forest, tipped with alien-green fog. At first glance, both castles appeared indistinguishable…but then Sophie peered closer. The old Evil castle had turned to jagged stone, resembling the jaws of a monster, while the once bloodred creepers coiling its three towers were the same eerie green as the fog. The old Good castle was black too, circled with the same green mist, but its four towers had sharpened turrets and smooth, shiny walls that looked wet, as if the entire school was made out of polished obsidian. Linked by the foggy bridge in the distance, the two schools seemed like a Before and After: one castle a fiendish, saw-toothed crumble; one castle a cold, sleek fortress.

Confused, Sophie inched closer towards the Forest gates, trying to get a better view of the schools…when the spiricks’ eyes all darted to her. Sophie stumbled back, expecting them to spit their noxious poison—instead, they all bowed their heads like slaves and the golden gates parted, offering a clear path into the Clearing.