One True King

by Soman Chainani

  The carriage stalled violently, launching Sophie and the Mistrals at each other, the eel crushed between Alpa’s and Bethna’s colliding skulls, leaving sisters and prisoner in a heap on the floor.

  Outside, the forest was silent, the carriage unmoving.

  The Mistrals gaped in confusion. Then they threw open the door, stumbling out, dragging Sophie with them.

  A slew of guards were on the ground, faces slashed, helmets crushed, knocked out cold. She’d seen this kind of carnage before, Sophie thought . . . Then she spotted the rest of the guards huddled around the carriage, eyes haunted through their helmets, swords and crossbows pointed wildly in the dark at whatever had just attacked them. The Mistrals, too, scanned the night, gripping their prisoner by her chain, Sophie’s singing having distracted them from the force that just eviscerated half their guards.

  One thing was for sure.

  Whoever did this was angry.

  Very angry.

  Sophie smiled to herself.

  She had that effect on men.

  From the trees came a snarling mass of teeth and fur, crashing down onto the carriage and shattering it to splinters, before sweeping Sophie into its claws, grabbing hold of the nearest branch, and swinging limb by limb into the black mass of trees.

  She relaxed into the beast’s chest as he flew through the forest, his paw manhandling the cuff around her neck and busting it free.

  “My prince,” she sighed. “Only hairier.”

  “You like me like this, don’t you.”

  “If only you didn’t smell like wet dog.”

  “If only you didn’t keep putting yourself into trouble, making me sweat after you like a dog.”

  “Me without trouble is like you without . . .”

  “You?”

  “I am a lone wolf, thank you.”

  “A lone wolf who has to keep getting rescued.”

  “Are you saying I can’t take care of myself?”

  “I’m saying that letting me take care of you is taking care of yourself.”

  “Oh, darling. When you shrink back into a wee little weasel without your clothes on, we’re going to pretend we never had this conversation.”

  His snout brushed her ear: “Beauty and the Beast. That had a happy ending, didn’t it?”

  “Depends on if you think a girl kissing a beast is a happy ending. I don’t.”

  “I’m half-tempted to drop you right no—”

  An arrow impaled his thigh.

  He yelled with pain, as Sophie swiveled to see Camelot guards rush in, crossbows raised, along with blue-masked Pifflepaff soldiers firing arrows of their own. An arrow struck the man-wolf’s ribs, then his shoulder, his eyes numb with terror. More arrows speared for their tree—

  Sophie thrust her lit finger and turned them to flowers—razor-toothed, man-eating flowers—raining them like piranhas over the screaming soldiers. She whirled back, but the wolf was drenched in blood, his paw weakening on the tree.

  “We need to get down,” Sophie ordered, her cheek against his. “Put your arm around me. We’ll go together.”

  He shook his head, saying nothing.

  “Please,” Sophie begged. “We need to find help.”

  He looked at her, a scared boy in a man-wolf’s body. “I love you, Sophie,” he breathed. “I love everything about you. Even the terrible parts of you. They’re as beautiful as the good parts. I knew from the moment I met you that I couldn’t love anyone else. Not like I love you. I tried, Sophie. I tried to let you go. But love doesn’t give you that choice. Not real love. At least you’ll know now. That your story had a happy ending all along. That you had true love. Always.”

  Tears flooded Sophie’s face, stained with his blood. “Don’t talk like that. You’re my Beast. And that story has a happy ending, just like you said. We’ll find a way. Stay here. With me. Don’t let me go, okay? Don’t give up on me.”

  But life was already fading from his eyes. In their reflection, she saw more guards swarming, hundreds of them, arrows and swords raised—

  A sea of white clobbered them, like snow sweeping a field, dragging the shrieking armies under. I’m seeing things, Sophie thought. Phantom swans come to save her and her beast. But as the white wave swept closer, surrounding her tree, she saw they weren’t swans at all.

  Goats.

  Scores of them, led by an old, gray-whiskered librarian from the School for Good and Evil. Sophie smiled down at this flock of heaven-sent angels . . . then looked back at her wolf to see his eyes closed, his body collapsing against a branch, his claw losing grip—

  “No!” Sophie cried.

  He let her go, Sophie reaching for him as she fell, gasping his name like a love song, Hort, Hort, Hort, until she felt the hug of soft white fur, nothing like the beast’s she left behind.

  SOMETHING WARM AND cuddly nuzzled her cheek.

  “Hort?” she whispered, stirring from sleep.

  Her eyes quivered open to a bath of sunlight and a big pink udder pressed against her face. She was stuck to the underside of a goat, her chest against the animal’s fat belly, her face jammed near its backside. Sophie was about to unleash a scream . . .

  . . . until she saw two more goats jogging behind hers in the middle of a crowded market, Willam and Bogden clinging to their stomachs.

  Both boys put fingers to lips, telling her to stay quiet.

  For a moment, Sophie didn’t understand how she was beneath the goat, until she realized it was her dress’s doing, magically adhering to the animal’s paunch. Craning her neck, Sophie spotted more goats ahead, a green-hooded shepherd leading the flock through hectic stalls, fragrant with pomegranates and peaches, sandalwood and rose oil, cinnamon and cardamom spice. Villagers in expensive coats bustled between copies of Excalibur, too concerned with their shopping to pay much notice, while the alleys of the market were crammed with grimy peasants who used Arthur’s swords as tentpoles for their shanty houses.

  Sophie knew this route.

  They were in Maker’s Market, the main thoroughfare of Camelot City. Sophie’s dress hugged her tighter against the goat, camouflaging her to the animal’s peach-cream skin. Soon they were out of the market, crowds receding, as the shepherd led the goats up the path towards the king’s castle.

  Sophie swiveled to the boys: “Where’s Hort? What’s happening! We need to go to Foxwood—”

  Bogden was holding his nose as his goat pooped. “Tell her, Will.”

  His redheaded friend prattled quickly: “While you were in Shazabah, Bogs and I came to Camelot. That’s what Tedros told us to do: come see my old priest, who I used to altar boy for, in case he could help us. Then Hort comes from Shazabah with two old goats he found along the way—librarians, actually; one from school, one from the Living Library—who know Pospisil and wanted to help find Excalibur. But then we hear you found the sword in Foxwood and were being taken prisoner to Camelot’s dungeons. Hort freaks out and insists we rescue you. Luckily, the goats had friends. So Hort tracks you down and tells us to wait in Camelot forest with the goats until we hear the signal.”

  “What was the signal?” Sophie asked.

  “Really bad singing,” said Bogden.

  Sophie reddened. “But where is he, then—”

  “Hort told us no matter what happened, Bogs and I had to get you out the moment we found you. That you were the mission. He’d find us at the meeting spot later,” said Willam.

  Bogden saw the panic in Sophie’s face. “He’s Hort. Nothing bad can happen to Hort.”

  “He’ll be at the meeting spot,” Willam assured. “Then we’ll all go help Tedros together.”

  Sophie swallowed a sick feeling. These boys were young and in love. They believed in Ever Afters. They believed in the rules. But the world had changed. Rules didn’t mean anything now or else Lesso, Dovey, and Robin Hood would still be alive. In this story, bad things happened to good people. And something bad had happened to Hort. But Sophie couldn’t stop believing. Not yet. Hort always
kept his promises. And if he told them he’d be at the meeting point, then he’d find a way.

  “You said we’re going to the meeting place.” Sophie looked at the boys. “Why would the meeting place be the Snake’s castle—”

  Except now the goat herd was veering east, away from the castle and down a road that Sophie knew well.

  The church.

  But that couldn’t be the meeting place either. Because ahead, she glimpsed the spire of Camelot’s chapel, two armed guards blocking the entrance, the door barricaded.

  “Japeth is keeping the priest locked up. My old chaplain, Pospisil,” Willam whispered to Sophie. “Snake didn’t trust him after that speech he gave at your Blessing.”

  Sophie remembered it well. The priest had known her marriage to the king was a sham. Pospisil had used his speech to warn that in the war between Man and Pen, the Pen would always win: “In time, the truth will be written, no matter how many lies someone might tell to obscure it. And the truth comes with an army.”

  But the truth also came with consequences: the priest was now a prisoner in his own church. Another friend to Tedros dealt with.

  The men in front of the chapel pried open their helmets, revealing greasy faces, as the shepherd led his goats past, the guards’ eyes flicking over them with disinterest.

  “Most action we’ve got,” the first guard grouched.

  “Cheer up. On dungeon duty next, ain’t we?” said the second. “Ya know, once Sophie’s innit.”

  The first guard flashed a sordid grin. “Shame we gotta keep ’er alive ’til the weddin’.”

  “Accidents happen,” the second quipped.

  Sophie memorized their faces.

  One day she’d come back for them.

  Onwards the goats trotted, winding past the church, past farm fields, towards the Camelot stables. A few muddy hogs poked heads through a pen, watching. Ahead, the doors to the chicken coop were open, a gaggle of confused hens fleeing into the sun. There were some dead ones too, heads removed, as if one of the hogs had escaped. (And they say pigs are vegetarians! Sophie thought.) The shepherd led his goats into the coop, Sophie and the two boys sliding in last, before the shepherd shut the doors and barred them with a stick. Darkness settled, rich with the scent of overworked goats and a few last chickens, squawking shrilly, then going quiet.

  “What now?” Sophie whispered.

  Somewhere a flame ignited, spraying the coop with light.

  Willam and Bogden dropped from their goats’ bellies, the boys shaking off cramped hands and legs, while Sophie’s dress released her to the pebbly floor. She stood up and saw the shepherd, hood pulled low, holding a torch.

  “There is a reason goats take a shine to me,” spoke a dry, wheezy voice.

  The shepherd pulled back the hood.

  “Because I am an old goat myself,” Pospisil chuckled.

  Sophie’s eyes widened at Camelot’s perilously ancient, red-nosed priest. “But those guards . . . how did you—”

  Pospisil waved his arms over the goats. “Well done, my little kiddies! Shall we do a roll call? Bossman! Ajax! Valhalla! The rest of you! Call out your names and be accounted for!”

  Sophie held in a groan. Just her luck. The one adult to help and he was a senile crackpot—

  Thumps echoed around the room.

  Bodies dropping to the floor.

  That’s when Sophie realized.

  It wasn’t just a few goats hiding passengers.

  It was all of them.

  “FIRST OF ALL, it’s Bossam, not Bossman,” said a hairy, three-eyed Neverboy.

  “I’m Valentina, not Valhalla. And this is Aja,” said a thin-browed Nevergirl.

  “Ajax sounds like a gorilla name,” sniffed a waifish Neverboy with flame-red hair.

  Sophie glimpsed two old goats giggling in the corner—one the librarian from school, the other name-tagged GOLEM—as if they found their priest friend’s ineptitude with names an inside joke. Sophie did the mental roll call herself: Valentina, Aja, Priyanka, Bossam, Laithan, Bodhi, Devan, Laralisa, Ravan, Vex, Brone, Mona, Willam, Bogden—

  “Hort?” Pospisil called. “Where’s Hort?”

  Sophie looked around the crowded coop, packed with friends and first years, many that she used to teach.

  But no Hort.

  “He was our leader,” Laithan worried. “What do we do now? How do we help Tedros?”

  All eyes shifted to Sophie.

  But she was still watching the door, hoping Hort would walk through.

  Her mind went to him in the tree, shot through with arrows—

  She steeled her heart. She couldn’t let herself go there. He was alive. Hort was still alive.

  “Where did you come from?” Sophie asked her charges. She turned to the priest. “How did you escape the church?”

  “Any priest knows not to rely on the good graces of a king,” Pospisil replied. “The church has had secret escape routes since its beginnings. Luckily, Willam paid attention in his altar boy lessons and knew where to find me. Together, with Hort and my old goat friends, we made a plan.”

  “As for us, Princess Uma came to school after she escaped Shazabah,” Ravan answered. “She heard from her animal friends that you’d been captured. Teachers can’t interfere in a story, so Manley and Anemone sent us to rescue you—”

  “—and we ran into Hort in the Woods,” finished pointy-eared Vex.

  “What about the Knights of Eleven?” Sophie pushed.

  Valentina waved her off. “Listen, Señora Sophie, the serpiente is on his way to Foxwood to win the third test. Princesa Uma’s animal friends will try to slow him down, but it’s only a matter of time before he gets to Excalibur and then pew, pew, pew!, we’re all dead and buried under the guanabana tree. So you need to lead us, like Hort once did. We are your army, like we were his. Ever and Never. Smart and talented and elegante. Most of us, at least.” She gave Aja a darting frown. “We’ll do anything you ask, Señora Sophie. What can we do to help Tedros win?”

  This is where Sophie shined. Taking command. Hatching schemes. And yet, all she could think about was Hort. His eyes closing. His paw letting go.

  She shook her head. “Japeth has thousands of men, armies from Good and Evil, plus the King of Foxwood on his side. And the boys who live in the house where the sword is, Cedric and Caleb, both support the Lion . . . Japeth will walk right in . . .” She looked to Pospisil, the embers of his torch popping loudly, lighting him up and his goat friends, but they all seemed at a loss, as if they’d gotten Sophie as far as they could. Sophie appealed to her dress, but it, too, had no answers. “There’s no move for us to make. Not with the whole Woods on his side.”

  “This is ridiculous. You’re Sophie, grand high witch queen,” Aja puffed, hands on hips. “You led a school of Nevers in a glam revolution. You won the Circus of Talents and invented the No Ball. You killed Rafal, kissed Tedros as a boy and girl, turned the School Master’s tower into your own personal hotel, and you looked like a boss witch doing all of it. You don’t make excuses. You don’t give up. You always find a way. That’s what makes you Sophie.”

  Sophie gazed at Aja, at Valentina, at all the students looking up to her, like she was still their Dean, Evil’s mistress of mischief and manipulation. But she wasn’t any of that now. She was just a girl. A girl who’d finally opened herself to love, real love, right when it was too late. “Tedros is the one who has to pull the sword. And he’s far away,” she said, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “He and Aggie don’t even know where the sword is . . .”

  The embers off the priest’s torch were popping louder, snapping at Sophie’s words. Suddenly, more and more spewed off the flame, as if the entire fire was breaking apart. For a split second, Sophie thought the whole coop might go up in smoke, but then she noticed the embers hanging strangely in the air, as if they had a life of their own, little pearls of amber buzzing and glittering about like . . .

  Fireflies.

  Instantly, the g
lowing bugs swarmed into a glowing orange matrix like they once had in Gnomeland. On this magic screen, Sophie glimpsed grainy footage of Tedros and Agatha in a snowfield, riding some kind of humped creature, away from Avalon’s castle. Then Sophie saw Agatha staring at her, eyes flaring, as if she could see her friend in her own fireflies.

  “Sophie? Is that you?”

  “Aggie!” Sophie gasped. “I found the sword—”

  “Chaddick’s house,” Tedros cut in.

  “Y-y-yes!” Sophie said, startled. “How did you—”

  Tedros thrust his face into close-up. “Meet us at Snow White’s cottage. In Foxwood. Hurry!”

  “No! Foxwood’s a death trap!” Sophie said as the screen flickered, the connection severing. “There’s armies! Thousands of men! You can’t go!” But the fireflies had dimmed, her friends gone. “No! I can’t lose you too!” she cried. All the fear and dread she’d been holding back broke through. Grief poured out of her, her face in her hands, her chest heaving. “He’s dead. I know he’s dead . . . I tried to save him . . . I did everything I could . . . But he let me go . . . I told him not to let go . . .” She sobbed so hard, her whole body shook. “They can’t go to Foxwood . . . Please . . . I can’t lose anyone else . . . Not after him . . .” Then slowly her sobs softened. “Only I will lose them, won’t I?” Sophie lifted her head, her cheeks wet. “Letting the Snake win means we all lose. It means everything Hort did to save me was for nothing. That’s what Hort would tell me. To be brave for him. To finish his work.” She sat taller, wiping her eyes. “But how? Aggie and Teddy will be dead the second they come near Foxwood. Unless there’s a way into the kingdom . . . a way to get them in . . .”

  “Same way I got into all these chickens, of course,” a droll voice replied.

  Sophie turned to the corner.

  The two librarian goats parted, revealing a bald, wrinkled cat, pawing at a pile of bird heads.

  “I acted like their friend,” he said.

  Fireflies settled into a crown over his ears.

  “Witch of Woods Beyond,” the cat greeted, yellow eyes twinkling.

  “King Teapea,” Sophie breathed.

  She held the thought of Hort close to her heart.