The Shadow Cadets of Pennyroyal Academy

by M. A. Larson

  “Look!” whispered Basil. Evie and Demetra joined him and Cinderella at one of the cell doors. He was pointing to words that had been etched so deeply into the stone that they had survived years and years of rain and weather. “‘Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die.’ Cheery place, this.”

  “Come on,” said Demetra. “Let’s check upstairs—”

  “Welcome,” came a voice. Evie yelped. The faint outline of her sister stood in the doorway between the towers and the prison. She was just far enough away that the candlelight couldn’t reach her, though the dim yellow orbs of her eyes shone through the blackness. “So? How do you like it? This is where your people used to keep witches. Torture them. Burn them alive.”

  She stepped down into the prison and moved slowly from cell door to cell door. “I assume that princess out there was one of yours. I didn’t mean to do that to her, but she surprised me. And as we all know, once you’ve been turned to stone . . .”

  She was close enough now that the candle lit up her face. It was hard to believe that that voice—Malora’s voice—was coming from that . . . thing. She wasn’t at all recognizable as the girl Evie had known. Her hair was white and stringy, her eyes as dark as twin moons on a cloudy night. Her nose had grown longer and sloped toward the ground, as though it were melting from her face, the end of it having already fallen away. Deep wrinkles made her skin look like rotting meat, though she was only as old as Evie. And the smile on her face, little dagger teeth behind cracked lips, caused Evie to take a step back.

  “Well, Cinderella,” she said with a sneer. “It will be my sincerest pleasure to be your captor.”

  “Where are you going to take her?” said Evie.

  “Somewhere safe,” said Malora with annoyance. “Oh, stop being so suspicious. I have no intention of letting anyone else get hold of her. Did you bring the spindle?”

  “Yes, and the antidote.” Evie’s hands fumbled inside her dress until she found the objects. She held up the spindle and the small purple vial.

  “Well, then, shall we stand round here gaping at one another or shall we get on with it?”

  “You’ve got to call me Hazelbranch,” said Cinderella. “No one must know.”

  Malora’s scowling mouth stretched into a grin. “But of course. This way, Hazelbranch.”

  Malora rejoined the shadows as she disappeared back into the towers. Cinderella looked at her cadets, trying to project calm. She gave them a nod, then followed Malora through the prison doors.

  “Keep your eyes and ears opened,” said Evie softly. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  They followed Cinderella through the ruins of the towers and back out into the night. The fog had grown even thicker in the short time they’d been inside. Malora stood next to a simple wooden cart joined to a horse. It was piled high with tatty furs and blankets. She was still grinning that awful grin.

  “Right,” said Cinderella, giving her candle to Demetra. “Let’s have it.”

  Evie reached into her dress and took out the spindle and vial. Cinderella tossed the vial to Malora, then held the spindle in front of her. She raised a finger.

  “Wait,” said Demetra. “I want to know why she’s doing this.”

  Malora’s grin vanished. “Shouldn’t you be off somewhere weeping behind your sister’s skirts?”

  Demetra didn’t respond.

  “You don’t belong at Pennyroyal Academy, Demetra,” continued Malora, and for a moment she was less a witch and more an angry girl with a grudge. “You’re frivolous and foolish and you’d make a terrible princess.”

  “Now, girls,” said Cinderella. “Let’s not—”

  “Why am I doing this? As if I owe you an explanation.” Her yellow eyes were trained directly on Demetra the entire time she spoke, spittle flying out from between her sharp teeth. “Princesses lock up witches and torture them and burn them. Witches steal children and kill them and eat them. And on and on and round and round. I have no love for any of you. The only thing I want is to watch you all scramble like insects beneath a lifted stone.”

  Evie cringed. To Malora, a princess and a witch were the same thing, two different evils, two different groups that had betrayed her.

  Malora stepped forward, her eyes going so wide that they looked like they might pop out of her head, her lips stretching into a manic sneer. “Now, would you like to sing a song and braid each other’s hair or can we go?”

  “Calm down, Malora, please,” said Cinderella. “I’m doing it now.”

  She climbed into the cart and held up the spindle.

  “Malora,” said Evie. “Promise me you’ll take care of her. I’m trusting you. As my sister.”

  Malora slowly turned her head toward Evie. The crunch of her grinding teeth echoed across the courtyard. “You have my word, sister.”

  “All right,” said Cinderella. She tapped her finger down on the point of the spindle. She looked at Evie with a grimace, then fell dead asleep onto the pile of furs.

  In an instant, everything had changed, and all of them could feel it. Where there had been five of them there were now four, and the most powerful was gone. Malora pulled some of the furs free and draped them over the top of Cinderella’s sleeping body. Evie, Demetra, and Basil could only stand and watch.

  “What’s that?” said Basil.

  Sure enough, there was a noise from somewhere deep in the forest. It wasn’t the crackle of branches or the rustle of leaves. It was the rumble of hooves. And it was growing steadily louder.

  “Who is that?” demanded Evie. “Who’s coming?”

  Malora shrugged and gave her a smile. “Who could it be?”

  The hoofbeats had come to a stop somewhere on the far side of the Drudenhaus, and everything had gone silent once again.

  “Be careful,” whispered Evie. They turned their backs to Malora, who was climbing into the seat of her cart, and faced the Drudenhaus. Basil slowly unsheathed his sword.

  Evie stared into the fog to her right, around the entrance towers, while Basil and Demetra watched the length of the prison that was still visible to the left.

  “I suppose I’ll be off now,” said Malora with a soft cackle.

  “Evie . . .” said Demetra.

  Evie’s eyes flashed left. A figure stepped slowly out from the fog. She was dressed all in black. Two more appeared to the right, around the towers. Then another from the left. And another. Each wore a wolf’s fang around her neck. More began to filter out from the trees like apparitions. Six. Ten. Twenty of them.

  The Vertreiben.

  “Where are you, witch?” called a woman’s voice from the fog.

  “In prison.”

  Evie turned to look at her sister. In that awful grin, she could see everything, every betrayal. “How could you? You gave me your word!”

  “Well, here’s another word,” she said, her smile growing even wider. “Oops.”

  “Ah, here we are!” came the woman’s voice again. It was loud and full of life, bordering on manic. A figure pushed through the rest of them and stepped out of the fog. Evie recognized her instantly from the Registry of Peerage. The missing eye, gashed and pecked by birds. The sunken cheeks that made her face look like a skull. The frizzled black hair wisping around her head in the wind.

  “Sister, allow me to present Princess Javotte,” said Malora.

  Javotte trained her eye on Evie, and it was just as frightening as the glare of a witch. She looked like a madwoman. “The only sister I care about is my own. Where is Cinderella?”

  “She’s just there,” said Malora, nodding to the back of the cart.

  Javotte clutched her hands together dramatically, like an actress putting on a performance. She traipsed across the courtyard to the cart. Evie moved to block her, but Malora shook her head. Javotte gently lifted the furs and
saw her stepsister asleep underneath.

  “Oh, how wonderful! How wonderful and lovely! You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment. It took me years to track down Javelle, and then another fortnight to break her. But break her I did! And now I’ll break this one as well! Break her into a million tiny pieces!”

  “No,” said Evie, with a flare of anger. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Javotte looked at Evie with a beatific smile. “No?”

  Evie said nothing, but her fingers found their way to the grip of her sword.

  “This creature,” said Javotte, pointing to the back of the cart with that same delighted smile, “ruined my life. She stole my prince.” Now she took a step toward Evie. Then another. And in an instant her smile was gone, replaced by fury. “It was her birds that did this to me at their bloody wedding!” She pointed at her horrifically scarred right eye. “A wedding that by all rights should have been mine!”

  “Well,” cackled Malora. “Sound familiar? How is old Remington?”

  “Everywhere I went, it was the wonderful Princess Cinderella!” Javotte hopped onto a stone and twirled her hand with a flourish. “The greatest princess ever to live!” She laughed so loudly that it sounded like a flock of ravens squawking. All around them in the fog, the Vertreiben echoed the laughter. She leapt off the stone and landed in front of Evie, her eye wide and her chest heaving. “Every time one of those miserable fools fell in love with her, they fell in hate with me! Her fame, her popularity cannot exist without a villain to demonize. She climbed to the top by kicking me to the bottom!” Her voice was growing louder and louder, her anger more ferocious. “She’s a fraud and a wretch, and she deserves everything I’m going to give her!”

  She began to dance and skip through the courtyard, a spoiled little girl in a woman’s mangled body. “My sister is going to die! My sister is going to die!” she sang.

  “About that,” said Malora, the reins in her hands. “I’ve decided to change the plan. I think I’d like to keep Cinderella after all.”

  Javotte’s smile slowly sizzled away. “No,” she said, shaking her head. With a fearsome shing! a silver blade came free from its scabbard. “No. We had an agreement!”

  Malora laughed. “Why do all of you people trust witches?”

  Javotte took a step forward. She held her blade high above her head, the tip pointed down like she was wielding some sort of spear. “Give me my sister, witch.” Behind her, there was a chorus of metallic shrieks as the Vertreiben’s swords emerged into the night.

  “I’m not going to do that,” said Malora. “You see, my mother created me with the intention of turning me into the most powerful witch ever to live. With Cinderella in my possession, I finally am.”

  “You should have kept your word,” said Javotte, slowly stepping forward.

  Malora ignored her. “Don’t be upset. I wouldn’t leave you empty-handed. As a token of my appreciation, I’ve brought something for you. Though I will be keeping your sister, you are welcome to have mine instead. She should be every bit as valuable to you. She is, after all, the famous Warrior Princess.”

  Voices sounded from all directions . . .

  “The Warrior Princess!”

  “That’s even better than Cinderella!”

  “Leave her, Javotte, let’s take the Warrior Princess instead!”

  “Quiet!” shrieked Javotte, her furious skull-like face aimed squarely at Malora. “No plan is changing! I will take Cinderella and that is all there is to it!” The Vertreiben began to object. She wheeled, her sword held high. “The next one of you who questions me will spend the rest of her life, which should last about ten more seconds, in this disgusting prison!” Her followers went silent. Her nostrils flaring, she turned back to Malora. “Give. Me. My. Sister.”

  Malora chuckled and shook her head dismissively. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Step forward, Vertreiben! Let us take what is ours!”

  The night itself seemed to close in around them as dozens of black dresses emerged from the fog.

  “Look!” said Basil, pointing at the road down into the forest. It was filled with women in black dresses. More appeared on top of the wall enclosing the courtyard.

  For the first time, Evie saw her sister’s confident expression fade. “What is this?”

  “You yourself said I shouldn’t trust witches,” said Javotte, still creeping forward. “Well, I don’t.”

  Malora’s eyes flicked from one princess to the next. There was genuine fear in them.

  “Malora!” came a voice from the wall. She peered into the darkness as one of the Vertreiben hopped down into the courtyard. She was shorter than the rest, and younger, too. “Malora, it’s me.”

  “Kelbra?” Now her look of fear turned to one of profound disappointment. “Kelbra, what are you doing here?”

  Kelbra’s smile fell. “My sister brought me.” She pointed to the woman behind her atop the wall.

  “You’re meant to be at the Academy, not out here with these simpletons. You’re meant to become a princess.”

  “As are you.” A look of disgust came over Kelbra’s face as she studied her old friend. Disgust and betrayal. “So it’s true. You really are a witch.”

  “Yes, but you’re not a Vertreiben—”

  “Shut up, witch.” She shook her head as tears began to fall. “How could I have been such a fool? I defended you!”

  “Kelbra, none of it was my fault. I had no idea that I was a witch until—”

  “Why don’t we all stop talking?” said Javotte, the point of her blade quavering in the air. “And some of us can start dying instead.”

  Everyone stood in silence for a moment, the tension thicker than the fog. Evie’s eyes went from Kelbra to Malora to Javotte to the horde of Vertreiben blocking any path into the forest. They were trapped.

  “Inside!” she shouted.

  And then everyone began to move at once.

  THE MIST HAD GROWN thicker, creeping up the hillsides and slinking through the trees. The eroded stones scattered across the courtyard gave the Drudenhaus the appearance of a cemetery, and the black-clad Vertreiben were its restless spirits.

  They swarmed from the forest, and they swarmed from the sides of the prison. Basil’s sword flashed like lightning in the night as loud clashes rang out. Evie drew hers as well, the red blade smoldering like an ember as it swirled through the air and met the swords of the Vertreiben.

  “Inside!” she shouted again. “Get her inside!”

  A waft of black materialized in front of Malora’s chest, sweeping around Cinderella’s body and lifting her in the air. She followed Demetra back into the Drudenhaus.

  “Put her down!” shrieked Javotte, her blade sparking against Basil’s.

  “Let’s go, Bas! There are too many!” Evie swung her sword at each blade coming toward her, without a moment to think. She could only react, knocking them away one after another, as she retreated to the entrance. With a huge arcing slash, she knocked one woman’s sword clean out of her hands. It spun across the stones with a rattle.

  “Your movements are still too big, Evie,” said Basil as he ran after her. “You need to tighten your attacks!”

  “Yeah,” said Evie, incredulous. “I’ll work on that.”

  “Surround them!” shrieked Javotte. “No one escapes!”

  As Evie hurtled through the doorway, she glanced back over her shoulder. It looked like an army of shadows pouring after her. She followed Basil through the darkness toward the main chamber, but the Vertreiben were climbing over the broken walls as well. She ran as fast as she could, but she wasn’t going to make it. Three of them dropped from the crumbling tower wall and ran straight for her.

  Suddenly, there was a scream, and a silver blade swished past Evie’s face, knocking away a sword that was just about to strike her. Evie fell to
the floor and looked up. It was Kelbra. She was fighting off two Vertreiben.

  Evie scrambled to her feet and bolted for the doorway. “Come on, Kelbra!”

  “Betrayal!” screamed Javotte, her voice echoing up the tower. “Betrayal!”

  Evie took Kelbra’s hand and pulled her through the prison. More Vertreiben were climbing through the walls where the windows had broken away. “This way!” She could see Demetra huddled at the top of the lone staircase. As the Vertreiben teemed through the prison, they bounded toward the top floor.

  “Now!” screamed Demetra as Evie and Kelbra reached the top of the staircase. A large iron door, the rusted bars of a prison cell, slammed down over the opening. Malora had used her magic to drop it there. The Vertreiben had already filled the staircase and were struggling to move the heavy door above them. It would only be a matter of minutes before they were through. Javotte’s one eye peered up at them from beneath the bars.

  “Climb the walls!” she screamed. “They’re on the second floor!”

  Basil raced into one of the cells and peered out the window. “Here they come!” he shouted. “They’re everywhere!”

  “What do we do?” said Evie. She looked over at Cinderella. “Give her the antidote! Wake her up! She’ll know what to do!”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” said Demetra. “Ziegenbart says it takes at least a day to wake up completely.”

  “AAAAH!” screamed Javotte, pressing against the bars with everything she had. The door scraped against the stone. Inch by inch, it was moving. Soon they’d be through.

  “S-s-s-secret passage!” said Kelbra, terror in her voice. “Remember? Dungeons have secret passages in case of revolts. Prisons must as well!”

  “Demetra! Basil! Look for a secret passage!” shouted Evie. She raced to the back wall and began feeling the stones, looking for the telltale smoothness that the Fairy Drillsergeant had trained them to seek.