The Shadow Cadets of Pennyroyal Academy

by M. A. Larson

  “Here! Here!” shouted Demetra. She gripped a stone with both hands and pulled down on it like a switch. The stone slid free, and a gap opened in the wall.

  “Come on!” said Evie. “Malora, let’s go!”

  Malora’s spell once again enveloped Cinderella and carried her down the narrow staircase into the darkness. Demetra and Basil followed. There was another thump and scrape, and another. One of the Vertreiben was almost through.

  “Kelbra, let’s go!”

  Kelbra drew her sword. “Go on. Get her out of here.”

  “What are you doing? Come on!”

  “I’ve made too many mistakes this year. I won’t make another. I’m sorry, Evie. It seems I was wrong about you. And her.”

  The first Vertreiben squeezed through the narrow gap between the stone and the bars. Kelbra kicked her in the chest, knocking her back down the stairs. Another followed immediately behind. As Evie ducked into the secret passageway, she heard swords clashing behind her.

  The staircase got narrower toward the bottom, then evened out into a long hallway that curved to the right. She ran after her friends just as they emerged from another hidden doorway into a tall, thin chamber stained with black. She and Demetra slammed the door shut. Demetra picked up a sharp stone and jammed it beneath the trigger on the wall so it couldn’t open.

  They were in the third and final part of the Drudenhaus. A rusted gate hung between them and the main prison. Basil checked the latch, which seemed secure, but they were still just as trapped as they had been before.

  They heard shouts behind the secret door in the wall, but Demetra’s stone held fast. Moments later, Javotte slammed into the iron bars at the room’s entrance, heaving like a rabid dog. Other Vertreiben filled in the space behind her until all Evie could see were murderous smiles and blackness.

  “Give her to me, Malora! Give her to me and I’ll kill you quickly!” screamed Javotte.

  Evie turned to Malora, who looked less like the most powerful witch in all the land and more like a terrified girl. But for now, the only thing that mattered was Javotte and her army.

  “Do something! Use your magic!”

  “I can’t,” said Malora. “There are too many of them.”

  Evie scanned the room for a way out. Fifteen feet above, the windows had crumbled away, leaving jagged holes in the wall, but aside from that the structure was the most intact of any in the Drudenhaus. The walls were striped with black. There had been a fire in this chamber. Fire and smoke, and great quantities of both. The crumbling remains of a staircase led up from where they were to the windows. There was enough of the stone left to provide a perch right at the window level. A giant brick-and-mortar oven covered the far wall, nearest the secret passageway. There were rusted metal implements—chains and blades and hooks and saws—everywhere.

  “They’ll be in here soon,” said Demetra as the Vertreiben threw their bodies against the bars. “What do we do?”

  “I’d kill for a pot of bear urine right now,” said Basil. Demetra gave him an exasperated look. “You know, to disguise ourselves—”

  “Bas, can you watch those windows?” asked Evie.

  “Of course,” he said. He began climbing the ruins of the staircase just as the first black dress appeared in the window. He charged the rest of the way and swung his sword. The Vertreiben in the window managed to bring hers up to block, but the blow was enough to knock her back to the ground.

  Evie bounced her blade in her hand, eyes on the doorway. The pounding of stone on iron thundered through the Drudenhaus. “Break it down!” screamed Javotte. “Bring me my sister! You can keep the Warrior Princess for yourselves, Vertreiben, but bring me my sister!”

  Evie glared over her shoulder at Malora, who huddled next to Demetra. Cinderella lay helpless beneath them.

  “Aaaah!” shouted Basil from above. There was a flurry of clashing metal as he managed to hold off two more Vertreiben. “They’re coming by the dozens!”

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Demetra raced to the bars and began using a stone to smash the Vertreiben’s fingers as they tried to break the gate down. Evie, meanwhile, continued bouncing her sword in her hand. Her mind was racing, flying through ideas as quick as a dragon. Basil was fighting them off admirably, but with each one he knocked out of a window, two more appeared in the next. Demetra was beating them away from the bars as best she could, but they’d be through in moments.

  “Do something, Malora!” shouted Evie, but her sister was frozen in place.

  I need warriors, not cowards. I need dragons, not witches. I need . . .

  Her palm wrapped around the hilt with such force that the whole blade shook. Basil was shouting for help at the top of the stairs, but she couldn’t hear him. Javotte and her army were battering the iron bars, but she couldn’t hear that either. The only thing she could hear was her mother’s voice.

  I believe you are a dragon, daughter. And there is only one place any of us can truly be a dragon . . .

  With her free hand, she clutched the dragon scale dangling against her chest. It was dried and weathered, only a hint of what it had once been, but there was still strength alive inside of it. And in the only place that mattered, Evie knew her mother was right. She was a dragon.

  She wheeled and charged toward Malora. She gripped her sister’s shoulders as tightly as she could, though the sting of ice shot through her palms. “Malora! Listen to me: you’ve got to watch the doorway! Malora!” She shook her violently and stared straight into her cold, yellow eyes. “Sister. I need you to watch the doorway. Use whatever magic you’ve got to keep them out. Can you do that?”

  Malora looked back at her with a blank expression. Her face was like death, her once-perfect skin riddled with veins and tendons. Her cheeks and nose were wasting away. Her eyes were perfect circles of yellow, with black hollows beneath. And her hair was stringy, pulled back from her face as though it didn’t want to be near her either.

  And yet, somehow, Evie could feel her sister looking inside of her. She knew the sensation from her previous encounters with witches. It was a horrible, invasive, terrifying feeling, but Evie let her do it. She could tell from the expression on Malora’s face that it was working. She was finding her way back from her own private horror and into the Drudenhaus as she drew strength from Evie. Slowly, she began to nod.

  “Good. Get over there and do whatever you have to, do you understand?” Malora nodded again.

  Basil was shouting as he slashed again and again and again at the swords of the Vertreiben trying to breach the holes above the staircase. He moved like a swordsman with decades of experience, always seconds ahead of the next enemy to appear. Even with his remarkable blade work, the Vertreiben were threatening to overrun his position.

  “I can’t hold them! Someone help!”

  Evie shoved Malora to the door, then turned to Demetra, thrusting her sword into her hands. “The mission has changed, Demetra, and it’s time to adapt. I’ve been training with a sword, but this mission calls for a dragon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “If this works, I won’t be of any use after. So it’ll be up to you to get Cinderella out of here, all right?”

  “Evie, please. What are you doing?”

  Evie hurtled across the room to the oven, kicking the metal implements out of her path. Then she crouched down and stepped inside. It was claustrophobic, darker than a witch’s spell, and even after all these years of disuse it choked her with the stench of fire. She pushed herself in, shimmying all the way to the back until she found the opening to the chimney. She peered up, but could see only a faint patch at the top that was slightly less dark than the smoke chamber that led to it. She took a deep breath and her lungs seized up from the stink of ash and smoke. Then she reached into the chimney and began to climb. There were plenty of footholds and handholds amidst the roughly as
sembled stone. The problem for Evie was that there wasn’t much room to use them. The chamber was so tight that her back and knees scraped against the walls every time she pulled herself higher. She looked up. Perhaps it was her imagination playing tricks on her, but it seemed as though the chimney was getting narrower as she climbed.

  She kept going, wincing with each scrape of the stone. She could feel her dress tearing. The clash of steel and bang of stone echoed up from below. The shouts of the Vertreiben outside the Drudenhaus rained down the chimney from above. And still she climbed.

  She neared the top, but the smoke chamber was so narrow that she couldn’t lift a leg and couldn’t lower her arms. She had to pull with her fingers until her toes found a new stone, then push with her feet until her hands did the same. Finally, inch by inch, her fingers reached the open sky. Then she worked her hands free, and then her arms. Grimacing at the pain, she shimmied higher and higher until her chest was free and she was able to lower her shoulders. The top half of her was out, but her hips were stuck. I’ll not die trapped in a chimney, she thought. Then, with an effort worthy of a dragon, she pushed herself free.

  She was sitting atop the crumbled chimney with nothing else around. She could see through a hole in the ceiling that the Vertreiben had not yet managed to break through the gate. She could also see the black dresses hoisting each other up the side of the wall to get inside. Basil’s shouts poured out of the windows, as did the clashing sounds of his sword. From Evie’s vantage point, she could see the entire sweep of the forest, which had been almost entirely swallowed up by fog. There were Vertreiben swarming everywhere. She was thirty feet in the air and the only ways down were to climb or to jump. She suspected she’d have to do a combination of the two.

  “Hey!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “I’m the one you want! Up here!”

  Down below, the princesses in black began to stop their assault on the Drudenhaus. Some of them looked around for the source of the voice. One saw her and pointed, and soon there was a wave of them looking up at her.

  “It’s me, the famous Warrior Princess! And while you’re at home feeling sorry for yourselves, I’m still at Pennyroyal Academy becoming a princess! How do you like that?”

  She could see their faces turning to fury at her words. As they surrounded the base of the chimney, she realized she had to move. Using the instincts she’d learned from her family, she climbed down the chimney almost as quickly as an ordinary human might fall. The Vertreiben were racing toward her from all directions, so she pushed off from the stone and jumped over their heads. She landed in the dirt with a thud, then hopped to her feet and sprinted into the woods. She didn’t dare look back, but she could tell from the shouts behind her that a significant number of Vertreiben were giving chase. I only hope it’s enough of them.

  She ran as fast as she could without losing them. She wanted to be chased, to lure them away. Once she judged they were far enough out, she began a wide arc through the trees until finally she was running straight back toward the jagged silhouette of the Drudenhaus.

  “Over here, false princesses!” she screamed.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see them descending on her in a wave of black. Like the Piper of Hamelin, she was leading them right where she wanted. Up ahead, a massive oak tree sprawled through the fog. Its limbs were starting to twist and groan as it sensed an intruder.

  I believe you are a dragon, daughter . . .

  As she raced toward the tree, the swarm of black dresses behind her, Evie could feel something burning in her stomach. She winced from the pain, but kept her thoughts focused on her mother.

  There’s only one place any of us can truly be a dragon . . .

  Something was bubbling inside of her. She could feel it scalding her from the inside out. She let her emotions run wild through her heart. Grief at how she’d treated her family. Anger at Javotte and the Vertreiben. Fear for her friends trapped inside the Drudenhaus. Love for her father, the man she’d recently met in letters. But above all else, the emotion that swirled the strongest inside of her was pride. She was a dragon, and ever would be.

  Unbidden, the roiling fire inside of her flooded up through her chest and throat and mouth. An invisible heat poured out of her, still not enough to produce the liquid flame that her family could, but enough to cause ripples in the air and char the oak tree black. She glanced back at the Vertreiben, coming from multiple directions now, then turned to another branch and let another surge of dragon fire come up from her belly. The tree swung its boughs wildly, angrily, as its lower branches turned to smokewood.

  Evie doubled over in pain, the worst pain she’d ever felt in her life. She coughed and coughed, though each spasm sent a new sword blade of agony down her throat and through her lungs. With tears streaming from her eyes, she glanced at the Vertreiben, who were nearly on her now. The first to arrive slowed, blades drawn, smiles on their faces. Their wolf’s fangs glinted through the fog.

  “Take her alive,” said one. “We need her alive.”

  Evie lurched to her feet, clutching her throat.

  “She’s trying to make smokewood,” said Kelbra’s sister with a chuckle. “My sister told me about you. Just because you were raised by dragons doesn’t mean you are one.”

  “That’s not what I believe,” said Evie. Her voice was a horrific rumble sending screams of pain through her body. She coughed again, flecks of blood splatting against the leaves. With a crack as loud as thunder, the oak swung at her. She dropped flat on her stomach, and the branches crashed into each other just above her head.

  Fire exploded into the sky, showering the ground in bright orange flames. The dead leaves beneath the oak quickly caught, and within moments there were fires burning everywhere.

  Evie lay on her side, blood streaming out of her mouth from somewhere inside. She could barely breathe from the smoke and pain coursing through her body. Her vision filled with new brightness as the fires joined together and quickly became an inferno. The oak swung its branches wildly as the fire attacked its trunk.

  In the black gaps between flames, she could see the Vertreiben trying to scatter. The tree had become a fire monster, its enchanted limbs throwing flames everywhere. As they all ran away and left her to be swallowed up by the fire she’d just created, one dark silhouette ran toward her . . .

  It was Demetra.

  “Evie!” The flames crackled and roared around them. Evie could barely keep her eyes open. Suddenly, she felt herself being dragged through the leaves. “Come on, Evie, stand up!”

  Demetra jerked her to her feet, which was the only part of her body that didn’t hurt. And with her friend’s help, Evie somehow managed to stagger out of the flames. There were only tiny windows of unburnt ground left now as the flames spread rapidly through years of dead leaves. A massive oak limb swatted the ground next to them. It had missed its mark, but in doing so, it had scattered even more kindling across the forest.

  Evie tottered forward, but it all felt like a dream to her. She wasn’t in control of her body. It was moving on its own. She couldn’t even feel the pain anymore. All she could see was the furious red all around her, and Demetra’s face, and then nothing at all.

  “THAT’S IT, EVIE,” said the dragon, her voice as dry and hollow as the last log in a fire. “I’m so proud of you, my darling.”

  Her face appeared out of the fuzzy gray, as wide as a carriage. Her scales were a soft yellow-green, her teeth as long and sharp as swords. But it was her eyes that sent a rush of peace through Evie’s body. Her mother’s eyes hadn’t looked so serene, so joyous, so proud, in as long as Evie could remember.

  Another face appeared next to her mother’s. It was smaller, the scales a more vibrant green. It was the face of her sister.

  And then, from the fog of the dream, a third face. It was old and battle scarred, the scales nearly white.

  “Father,” she cri
ed. “Oh, Father, I’ve missed you.”

  “And I you.”

  She looked from one dragon to the next, to the faces that had raised her and made her into the human she now was. “When I was trapped with no way out, it was you who led me through.”

  “We’re family, Evie,” he said in a voice she hadn’t realized she’d been so desperate to hear. “We will always be inside of you, just as you will always be inside of us. We are together, even when we’re apart. Even after we die.”

  Evie felt the most peculiar sensation then. It was a peace so total, so deep, that nothing would ever be able to hurt her again. Even when she was alone, her mother, her sister, her father . . . all would be with her . . .

  “I’ve just given her a dose,” said a ghostly voice.

  “Evie?” said another. The faces of the dragons began to blur, slowly fading back into the gray. “Evie!”

  Her eyes fluttered open. The gray was gone, but she had to blink to clear away the fuzziness. She could feel tears running down her temples and into her hair. She must have been lying on her back. There was a field of white above her. As she continued to blink, it started to come into focus. The glass ceiling of the Infirmary.

  The Infirmary at Pennyroyal Academy.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right!”

  Evie turned her head, only slightly, and saw a poof of red hair above her. She tried to say Maggie’s name, but nothing came out. Instead, searing pain shot through her body from just above her stomach all the way through her throat.

  “No no no, you mustn’t speak!” said Maggie.

  Another face appeared in the right side of her vision. It was Princess Wertzheim. She had a long metal object and was using it to prod around inside Evie’s mouth. Evie was so weak, she couldn’t protest. Wertzheim disappeared. Evie could hear her issuing orders to other nurses, so she turned her eyes back to Maggie.

  “You’re in the Infirmary. You’ve had terrible burns all through your throat.” Maggie leaned in closer until her face was fully in focus. Her eyes were soft, filled with compassion. “But you did it, Evie. Your idiotic plan actually worked. Cinderella made it out. Malora used your fire as a distraction and sneaked her away. She’s safe now. She sent a hawk to the Fairy Drillsergeant, though it doesn’t say where she is. But the important thing is, she’s safe.”