Soman Chainani - The Last Ever After

Not her too. Not our only hope. Agatha tuned out a bird’s loud chirps and sank her face in her hands. How do we get to Sophie now?

“Agatha …”

“Not now,” she whispered, head throbbing with fear, grief, and strident birdcalls.

“Agatha, look …”

Agatha spun. “I said not no—”

She frowned.

The dove from the well was in the prince’s lap tweeting angrily at both of them.

“What’s it saying?” Tedros asked her.

“How should I know?”

“You’re the one who took Animal Communication!”

“And burned down the school in the process—”

Agatha stopped because the dove was drawing in the dirt with its wing. “Why is he drawing an elephant?”

The dove let out a torrent of chirps, furiously modifying his picture.

“It’s a weasel,” Tedros guessed. “Look at the ears.”

“No, it’s a moose—”

“Or a raccoon.”

The dove was apoplectic now, slashing more lines.

“Oh. A rabbit,” said Agatha.

“Definitely a rabbit,” Tedros agreed.

He looked at Agatha. “Why’s he drawing a rabbit?”

The dove rolled his eyes and stabbed his wing ahead.

Tedros and Agatha turned and saw a fat, balding white rabbit glaring at them from behind a tree, wearing a dirty blue waistcoat with a silver swan crest over the heart, a hideous white cravat, and crooked spectacles low on his nose. The rabbit yanked a pocketwatch out of his coat, pointed crabbily at it, and scampered down a dirt path out of the glen.

“Um. I think he wants us to follow him,” said Agatha.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Tedros, slinging Uma over his shoulder and lumbering ahead. “Stay any longer and we might end up as dead as those dwarves.”

“But shouldn’t we know where he’s taking us?” Agatha called out. “We can’t just follow a strange animal in a scarf—”

“Sooner we follow him, sooner we find someone who knows how to unpetrify a teacher,” her prince called back.

They followed the rabbit through inky trees as blackness swept over the Woods like a plague, the sun offering no resistance against the night. Soon they could barely see at all, and if it wasn’t for the rabbit’s corpulent pace, they’d have lost him in the dark. Ominous howls and low screams crackled ahead of them and Agatha tried to ignore the skitters and slithers in the underbrush lining the path. Yellow and red eyes peeped overhead like malevolent stars, warning her that danger was coming and coming fast. If only we knew where League Headquarters was, Agatha thought miserably. Her mother had sacrificed her life to make sure they reached the League … and I didn’t bother to ask Uma where it was? Why didn’t I have a backup plan in case something happened? Why can’t I think straight? Now instead of finding the one place where they’d be safe tonight, they were on some wild-goose chase, carrying a petrified teacher and chasing a time-obsessed bunny to who knows where. With Tedros lagging under Uma’s weight, Agatha kept pace with the rabbit for more than an hour, silently punishing herself for their predicament, until she finally glimpsed a wisp of white smoke emanating through pine trees ahead.

Drawing closer, Agatha began to smell a faint tinge of sandalwood mixed with a familiar scent she couldn’t quite place, and as they moved into a tiny clearing, she saw that the smoke plumes were coming from a hole in the dirt, half-covered with dead fern fronds. The rabbit kicked the ferns aside and disappeared down the burrow, before peeking his face through the gap impatiently.

Agatha paused, reluctant to follow a stranger into a hole—

Tedros barreled right by her. “Nothin’ to lose,” he mumbled.

Before Agatha could argue, her prince lowered Uma into the hole and slid in behind her. Irritated, Agatha lowered herself down after him, landing awkwardly in darkness before Tedros caught her into his chest, soaking her with sweat. He smells good, Agatha noticed, inhaling his minty fresh scent. How could a boy possibly smell like spring fields after everything they’d just been through? She suddenly thought of Sophie, who’d smelled of honeycream even after traipsing up Graves Hill in the worst heat. Maybe that’s why Tedros missed Sophie, Agatha thought bitterly … they could lie around all day sniffing each other, flawless gold-haired idols, while here she was, a “holy bloody mess,” reeking of stress, dirt, and undead witch—

“Anyone here?” Tedros called.

Agatha snapped to attention, embarrassed by her thoughts. It was pitch-black in the hole, the rabbit nowhere to be seen.

“Hello?” Tedros echoed.

Nothing answered him.

The prince held out his hand and felt a wall of solid earth in front of him. “Why do we always end up in dirt?”

Agatha’s stomach rumbled. “Maybe the dove was telling us to eat the rabbit instead of follow him.”

“Or maybe the rabbit was telling us to leave Uma here, while we go look for League Headquarters.”

“You want us to dump a petrified teacher in a hole and leave?” said Agatha, flabbergasted.

“It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”

“Suppose you’ll dump me in a hole the moment I’m inconvenient too,” Agatha murmured, strangely confessional in the dark.

“Huh?”

“Then you can go get your sweet-smelling, beautiful, vibrant Sophie all alone,” Agatha vented, unable to stop herself.

“You didn’t happen to eat any strange mushrooms on the way, did you?”

“Go ahead, laugh. You can name your children Blond and Blonder.”

“Never pegged you as a jealous type,” Tedros marveled.

“Jealous? Why? Because you almost kissed her as a boy and a girl? Because you can make her feel loved in a way that I can’t? Me? Jealous?” Agatha ranted, thoroughly ashamed of herself now.

“Isn’t Sophie supposed to be the crazy one?”

“Bet you wouldn’t leave her in a dark pit—”

“And we thought Tweedledee and Tweedledum were hopeless,” said a hoary voice.

Agatha and Tedros choked, recognizing it at once, and twirled to see a torch spark to flame in the grip of a white-bearded gnome wearing a belted green coat with a silver swan over the heart and a pointy orange hat. A gnome Agatha thought had been killed in a fire, but now here he was, alive in a secret den. She burst into a smile, glowing with relief—

Yuba didn’t smile back. “First you lose a teacher because you fail to protect each other in the face of mortal danger. Then you fight so often and loudly that you’ve alerted the entire Woods as to your whereabouts. Now you’re so busy insulting each other that you forget to use a simple glow spell to illuminate your surroundings in the time that a Cave Troll could have bashed both your heads to smithereens. If it wasn’t for a rabbit rescuing you from yourselves, you two nincompoops would be dead before dawn,” he lashed, fingers twitching on his white staff as if he wanted to beat them with it. “A Bad Group is one thing. But you two Evers might just be the Worst Evers … Ever.”

Agatha and Tedros looked down, humiliated.

Yuba sighed. “Lucky for you, the League needs you as much as you need it.”

Torches roared to flame, lighting up a squad of strangers behind him in a giant cave headquarters the size of a small house.

“Presenting the honorable League of Thirteen, legendary legion of Good and Enlightenment,” Yuba proclaimed with an imperious smile, clearly expecting the Evers to look impressed, awed, or at least grateful for the glorious platoon that they had come all this way to see.

Agatha and Tedros blanched in horror instead.

Because the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to save Sophie, the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to stay alive … were all very, very old.