The School for Good and Evil: Another Story

6~A Way Out

Clarissa Dovey bustled to the Halfway Bridge to keep with her appointment. Her blue dress billowing in the wind as she clicked halfway across where a blonde youth in stilettos awaited for her with her arms crossed. Sophie did not look happy.

"It's about time. I've been waiting for hours." Clarissa doubted this. "Now, what do you need to talk to me about that is so urgent?"

"We may have made an error when we accepted the students."

"An error? I do not make errors. What did you do?"

"We enrolled a prince as a princess."

"'We'? You. And so? I certainly cannot complain if there's an extra strapping young man on campus. Where is the problem?"

"Balance, Sophie. These schools operate on balance. Good and evil, boys and girls, and that balance is slightly tipped."

Sophie scowled for a moment, "There was something off in the class I taught today. It felt like someone was missing. You are sending him to classes still?"

"Yes. Of course. He's in the girls' towers, taking girl classes, he was even wearing the pinafore this morning." Sophie let out a cackle at the last bit. "But I have allowed him to take additional lessons with Professor Espada in fencing and given him a boy's uniform, though it is pink."

Sophie paused to think for a moment, "Can we take him out? Let him leave? Find a replacement?" Clarissa went deep into thought and glanced up at the tower spouting out of the bay. "No, it couldn't. Could it? Agatha's story was enough for me. I don't want part of another."

"That's not for us to decide. Anyway, I wasn't thinking of the storian. I was thinking of rulebook that was up there."

"Oh, rulebook. Of course. Naturally. Well, let's go. Surely there's something in there for this specific situation."

"Sarcasm doesn't become you, dear. Let's go." Clarissa pulled out her twig of a wand and the two glided up high to the tower window. Sophie grimaced at the memories that this place held: watching Agatha betray her for Tedros and being held in here by the School Master.

The two stepped over to a desk with a thick book lying upon it. "We have to go through that entire thing?!"

"You should know these things already being the dean," Clarissa shook her head. This was going to be a long year. She opened the book and it landed on the rules of the Trial by Tale. She flipped back a few pages until she got to the application section.

Application quiz, application letter, those eligible for an application, where were the rules on eviction?

Eviction of trolls, eviction of fairies, eviction of staff, eviction of nargles, and . . . here it is! Eviction of students:

The only reason a student is to be evicted is if the storian writes it.

"If the storian writes it? I thought it only wrote what happens."

Clarissa sighed, "It does. It's a paradox. Besides, stories aren't even written when the students are in here. Well, besides yours, of course. But I don't think we can do anything about Rose."

"There isn't anything else?"

"No, it just continues on about the eviction of stymphs. Then the eviction of undesired parents showing up at the gates."

"So Rose stays?"

"Rose stays. I just want to check one more thing." Flipping through the book past the Trial by Tale and the Circus of Talents. Finally she reached the Snow Ball:

Any girl not asked to the Ball has failed her princess duties and will be failed. There have been recorded times when two boys make a pact leaving two girls dateless and there have been times when a boy takes half ranks and avoids the Ball entirely.

Clarissa flipped to princess chapters:

Ever girls are enrolled in princess classes and are given pink to wear. There are 60 Ever girls.

She flipped through to numbers:

There are always 60 Never boys, 60 Never girls, 60 Ever boys, and 60 Ever girls.

There seemed to be no loopholes. No way to get Rose out of this. But Clarissa still needed to protect the schools. Clarissa still needed to make sure the schools stayed open.