The School for Good and Evil #5: A Crystal of Time

by Soman Chainani

  “Met the blond one before when I found her with the Sheriff’s group. Then she went back to look for you two,” he said to Agatha and Tedros, gesturing at Sophie. “Meanwhile, I took the Sheriff’s group to the palace. Sheriff crammed all his friends in that enchanted sack of his. Stuffed it in the back seat and none of the gnomes had a clue. You three, on the other hand, stick out like a hog in a henhouse, so keep your arms and legs in. This thing ain’t meant for humans!” He hurtled down the dip, sending the snakeskin flying before Agatha and Sophie grabbed it down. The gnome tore around a curve, knocking Agatha aside and whacking Dovey’s ball into Tedros, who almost fell out of the cart.

  The gnome glanced at his passengers. “Should have introduced myself. I’m Subramanyam, page boy of Crown Royal Regis Teapea, king commander of Gnomeland. Well, not always page boy.” In a puff of dust, he morphed into a girl gnome. “Get to choose if I’ll be a boy or a girl forever on my thirteenth birthday. I’m thinking I want to be a boy, because most of my friends are choosing to be girls, so. . . .” He turned into a boy and grinned at his passengers. “Bet you’re jealous we gnomes can do that.”

  “Not really,” said Sophie, Agatha, and Tedros at once.

  “Just call me Subby,” said Subramanyam, turning around and pedaling hard. “Don’t worry: whoever’s chasin’ ya can’t track you here, no matter what kinda magic they got. Can’t find a kingdom if ya don’t know it exists! Best view in Gnomeland is coming up on the right. It’s rush hour, though—stay under that skin!”

  Agatha looked over the side of the cart and clutched Tedros’ leg in surprise.

  A colossal, swirling course of tracks funneled miles down into the depths of the earth, with hundreds of bright orange rickshaws and bicycles speeding through various dips and climbs, shuttling gnomes who honked their horns loudly, the horns mimicking cat meows. In the center of this meowing, madcap highway lay Gnome City: a massive neon metropolis held together by luminescent green vines, which not only strung all the gnome-sized buildings and cottages and towers in a giant pulley-system, but also seemed to power them like electric circuits.

  Subby streaked into the traffic jam, veering up onto the edges of the track to bypass bicyclists and rickshaws piled with gnomes, angry meows blasting at him from every direction. Spiraling down through downtown Gnome City, they passed restaurants (Petite Pete’s Puny Eats, The Elvish Maiden, Num Num Gnome), shops (Gnome Garden Grocery, Teeny Tots Daycare, The Beard Brothers’ Barbershop), as well as the Slight & Mighty Gym, Smallview General Hospital, and the Fun Puddle, a pint-sized waterpark with slides so steep that a baby gnome rocketed off one, bounced onto the highway, ricocheted off their rickshaw, and landed in the lap of the driver next to them.

  Every dwelling and edifice flashed the same sign—NON-GNOMES WILL BE KILLED—along with an icon painted in the corner, the official emblem of Gnomeland:

  This same pawprint dominated the marquee of the Musée de Gnome, hosting the exhibition “The Golden Age of Teapea” with a long line of gnomes hanging off its vine, waiting to get in. Meanwhile, at the Temple of Teapea, pious gnomes raised their hands as a priestess gnome stamped their foreheads with a gold-dust paw. Signs pointed off vines to “Teapea Way,” “Teapea Court,” “Teapea Drive,” “Teapea Park,” and everywhere Agatha looked, gnomes greeted each other with smiles, raising their hands like paws, chiming “Blessed Be Teapea!”

  Sophie whispered: “Whoever this Teapea is, he’s a dictator.”

  “Says the girl who redecorated the School for Evil with murals of herself,” Agatha replied.

  Sophie pretended not to hear.

  Down below, the king’s palace came into view, shimmering bright blue against its vines like a fluorescent fortress, flanked at each corner by candlelit minarets. Gnome guards with sparkly blue hats like Subby’s were perched on floating lily pads outside the royal gates, wielding scimitars bigger than their own heads.

  But now the rickshaw was passing more wonders: a schoolhouse filled with itty-bitty gnomes learning the ancient history of Gnomeland . . . an open-air theater playing a matinee of If I’d Only Gnome! . . . a putt-putt course extending vertically down a vine, with golfing gnomes in gravity boots anchored to the greens . . . and the headquarters of the Small Print News, printing their latest edition: “FATIMA WINS GNOMELAND SPELLING BEE! WINNING WORD: ‘BOUILLABAISE’!”

  Agatha was so entranced that she’d forgotten everything they’d left behind.

  “Totally in their own world,” Tedros murmured. “Like they have no clue what’s happening above ground.”

  “We don’t,” Subby chipped in. “After Arthur banished us, King Teapea said it was a blessing and made us build an underground colony. Some uppity gnomes stayed behind on land—hear one’s even a teacher at that famous school—but the rest of us stuck with Teapea and cut ourselves off from all that happens up there. Not to be rude, but you humans think the Woods revolves around you. You divide up your land, create false borders, only to start fights, and before ya know it, you’re declaring war on your own friends and brothers. Joke’s on you, though. Not a single gnome has been bothered to use the Human World Observatory in the Musée de Gnome and see what’s goin’ on up in your Woods. Had to close the exhibit ’cause we couldn’t care less. Imagine that. Gnomes who used to be your best allies, no longer the slightest bit interested in whether you live or die. And now that you know the secret of where we moved, not sure Teapea will let ya leave alive.” Subby giggled. “Ah, here we are. . . .”

  The royal gnome guards glared at Subby, scimitars gleaming, their eyes roving across Agatha and her friends, clearly seeing them beneath the snakeskin. They waved in the rickshaw and Subby pedaled onto a gold-paved track, approaching the blue-lit palace, the only structure in Gnomeland big enough to fit a full-sized human.

  Nerves fluttered through Agatha’s stomach, a reminder that she wasn’t here as a tourist. Above ground, the whole Woods was hunting her and her friends. Now she was depending on a strange king’s mercy to keep them safe. A king who despised her entire kind.

  Two guards held open the palace doors as Subby wheeled inside. “You can take off your snakeskin,” he said, coming to a stop.

  Sophie was already fumbling from under the covering and ogling the opulent foyer, lined with blue-stone arches. Agatha climbed out of the rickshaw and inspected the stone closer, as thin drips of molten lava crisscrossed its surface, the lava switching directions at will, occasionally erupting in detonations of red smoke. Beneath her feet, blue stone sparkled with red glitterdust, rippling in paw patterns across the floor like constellations in a night sky.

  Three lily pads floated from around a corner, topped with tall glasses of golden-rose milk and coconut cookies, which Agatha, Tedros, and Sophie devoured, the tangy drink mixing in their mouths with sweet coconut crumbles, before the milk and cookies magically replenished. Three more lily pads arrived with hot, peppermint-scented towels, which they used to wipe the dirt off their faces, along with a last lily pad toting a fresh shirt for Tedros.

  “If this is our hideout, I don’t see the need to go back above ground,” Sophie quipped.

  “Happy to leave you while this ‘rot’ returns to win his throne,” said Tedros, putting on the shirt.

  “The ‘rot’ can’t win anything without my help, so the ‘rot’ should kiss my feet,” said Sophie.

  “Kissed you once and it was terrible,” said Tedros.

  That shut Sophie up.

  “You two deserve each other,” said Agatha.

  That shut Tedros up too.

  Subby’s voice echoed: “This is where I leave ya.”

  All three turned to see the young gnome posed in front of a door at the end of the hall. He opened it, revealing a blue waterfall cascading over the threshold like a curtain, the water flowing up once it hit bottom, before raining down again.

  “Go on, then,” said Subby, nodding at the waterfall. “Kept the king waiting long enough.”

  Sophie humphed, as if she had no
intention of getting wet, but Agatha was hugging Dovey’s bag tighter and moving towards the door, her prince at her side.

  “Think he’ll help us? King Teapea?” Agatha asked Tedros, pausing at the waterfall.

  Tedros’ face clouded with doubt, no longer the boy who thought he could win this alone. “He has to.”

  They held hands and looked back at Subby.

  “Good luck to ya,” the gnome winked.

  Agatha and Tedros leapt into the water and came out the other side, with Sophie bounding in after them, dress soaked, hair ragged, splashing her glass of milk: “Eeeee, I’m wet! I’m wet! I’m . . . wait a second . . .” She gawked at Agatha and Tedros, completely dry. Then she followed her friends’ eyes.

  A throne room made of velvet sprawled before them, with the walls, the floor, the ceiling blanketed in the same soft, midnight-blue fabric. The velvet on the walls was separated into panels, the columns between panels filled with glowing fireflies, which marched up and down in strict order like sentinels. A gold throne, big enough for a giant, lay at the front of the room, spotlit by a chandelier forged out of more fireflies, the words “C. R. R. TEAPEA” carved into the throne’s head.

  On the floor in front of the throne sat a full audience, their attention craned towards the three intruders.

  Agatha exhaled.

  Everyone was here: Hester, Anadil, Dot, Hort, Nicola, Robin, Guinevere, the Sheriff, and more . . . all her friends, who’d escaped from the battle at Camelot, now safe in Gnomeland. . . .

  But not just them.

  Those she’d left at school had also somehow made it to Teapea’s palace: Professor Anemone, Professor Manley, Professor Sheeks, Princess Uma, Yuba, Castor, and all the first-year Evers and Nevers, quietly packed in on the floor.

  They looked at Agatha, Sophie, and Tedros expectantly, then at the door, waiting for the Dean of Good to come through.

  Then they saw Agatha’s face.

  And they knew.

  “Wherever Dovey is, she’s in peace now,” Robin Hood said to Agatha. “She would have been proud of you.”

  Agatha met his eyes, holding down her grief.

  But now her friends and teachers were on top of her, wrapping her in their arms, one after the other.

  “I prayed you were still alive,” Hester said breathlessly, unable to mask her emotion. “Dovey must have heard my wish. A fairy godmother until the end.”

  “We love you, Agatha,” Kiko gushed.

  “Even me, who doesn’t really like you,” said Hort.

  Nicola shunted him aside, joining the hug. “We’d still be in the dungeons if it wasn’t for you.”

  “It wasn’t just me,” said Agatha sheepishly. “All of us played a part.”

  She glanced at Tedros and Sophie, who were being smothered with their own hugs (Sophie was taking her time with the handsome Everboys).

  Soon the buzz settled and everyone drifted to their seats again, huddled close, like a big, unlikely family. Even Agatha managed to feel some relief. They were together now. All of them. There was no one left to save.

  But soon the seeds of fear bloomed once more.

  Sophie was sitting next to Robin: “I could have sworn you had a ring at the meeting. Only now you’re not wearing one.”

  “Wasn’t my ring to wear,” Robin piped.

  Sophie frowned. “But—”

  Agatha squished between them. “What do we do now, Robin? The whole Woods is hunting us. How do we fight back?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” said the Sheriff of Nottingham, seated behind.

  “To ask King Teapea for help,” said Guinevere, with the Sheriff.

  “Wait a second. How did you and Robin get to Camelot in the first place? How did you have your sack?” Tedros asked the Sheriff as he sat with his mother. “That sack was destroyed! The Snake ripped it to shreds after he escaped the Sheriff’s jail—”

  “Can’t destroy a magic sack,” the Sheriff grouched, holding up the stitched-up bag. “Snake made the mistake of leaving the pieces of it behind. And Dot’s mother is the best tailor in the Woods.”

  “My mother?” Dot called, poking her head from the back like a mole. “My mother died when I was a baby!”

  Robin gave the Sheriff a look. “’Course she did!” the Sheriff called back.

  Dot frowned. “Then how could she stitch up the—”

  The Sheriff barreled on: “Sack divides friends from foes, so I used it to catch pirates and keep them trapped while getting our crew from place to place. Well, until those fairies let the pirates free during the battle. Must have smelled ’em in there.”

  “Given how you smell, surprised they didn’t set you free with ’em,” Robin quipped.

  “Hold on.” Agatha frowned at Robin. “You told me that you and the Merry Men wouldn’t help me. And you and the Sheriff hate each other. How did you get here?”

  “Tedros’ mum has the answer to that,” said Robin.

  “Actually, Sophie does,” said Guinevere.

  “I do?” Sophie said, wringing out her hair into her empty milk glass.

  “That night, when you had dinner with Rhian, you kicked me under the table,” the old queen explained. “You said Tedros was on his own. That you weren’t Tedros’ mother. You were challenging me. Right there in front of that monster. You pushed me to keep fighting, even if it seemed impossible. Yet I had no way to send word out of Camelot, not with that scim on my face. But outside the queen’s chamber is a tree with songbirds that I used to feed every day. In return, they acted as my little spies, singing louder whenever it was safe for me to sneak out and see Lance in the Woods. So after dinner, I slipped back into my old chamber, pretending to clean it, and there they were, my songbirds, singing outside the window like always. But when they saw me, with that disgusting eel on my face, their songs stopped. Their sad eyes asked how they could help. So while I cleaned, I hummed a song . . . a song every bird knows. . . .”

  She hummed and Robin crooned along:

  “Oh help us, Robin,

  Dear dashing Robin,

  Come save us Robin Hood!

  Hear our song, the son of Good,

  All the way through the Green Wood!”

  “Hate that song,” the Sheriff snarled.

  “That’s ’cause the only song people sing about you is ‘Sheriff, Sheriff, Farty Sheriff,’” said Robin. “When the birds came singing of Gwen’s ills, I told my Merry Men, but those lazy louts wouldn’t ride for Agatha and they wouldn’t ride for Gwen either, even though Arthur and I were mates. But then Sheriff, of all people, sends word he’s riding to Camelot to save his daughter from the dungeons and begs me to help him.”

  “Bollocks,” the Sheriff scorned. “I didn’t beg you for anything. I said you’re a pink-bellied chicken for letting the girl who saved you from jail rot in a cell and I hope the Storian would reopen our tale and tell the world what kind of man you really are.”

  “Sounds vaguely familiar,” said Robin. “Anyway, then Marian piles on and asks what I’d do if it was my own daughter that Rhian had taken. And wasn’t Dot the closest I had to a daughter? Marian knows how to push my buttons.”

  “You and me both,” mumbled the Sheriff.

  “Couldn’t go back to putterin’ away at the Arrow. Not after all that,” Robin sighed. “So I joined the Sheriff and rode for Camelot. Sent Gwen a lotus so she’d know we were comin’.”

  “Wore it in my hair to give myself hope,” sighed the old queen.

  “Then while we’re on our way, we hear that Dot and some others escaped the dungeons,” said the Sheriff. “Even so, I wasn’t lettin’ this Rhian bastard win. Our Woods has a law and order and I ain’t restin’ until the pig’s head is on a spike.”

  “Which is why we’re all here now in King Teapea’s palace, praying he’ll help us,” Robin Hood finished.

  “And if he doesn’t?” Agatha asked—

  A trumpet blared, making her jump.

  A guard gnome in a sparkly blue hat and s
tiff jacket appeared out of the darkness behind the throne. “Greetings, human enemies! You are here at the invitation of Crown Royal Regis Teapea. Please stand in honor of the king!”

  Fireflies on the walls and chandelier beamed their orange glow at the throne.

  Quickly Agatha and the rest of her friends rose to their feet.

  “Listen to me,” she whispered to Robin. “The gnomes have a vengeance against King Arthur for banishing them, which means they’ll have a vengeance against—”

  “Me,” Tedros cut in, over their shoulders. “Agatha’s right! What if King Teapea knows who I am? What if he sees us as enemies? What if we came to the one ruler who wants me and my friends dead even more than Rhian?”

  “Then we’re dead either way,” said Robin grimly.

  “In the meantime, stand in the back,” the Sheriff grunted at Tedros.

  Agatha’s stomach lurched. The gold throne in front of her suddenly loomed larger. Here they were, preoccupied with their family reunion, when they’d willingly sealed themselves in a stranger’s palace. A stranger who surely hated Tedros enough to kill him on sight. Her unease about this place exploded into panic. This was an ambush. She could feel it. They needed to get out of here now—

  Before she could move, the gnome’s trumpet blared again: “Presenting the Honorable, Exorable, Crown Royal Regis . . . Teapea!”

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then Agatha saw it.

  A shadow slinking from the back of the room towards the throne, slowly, smoothly, like it was floating on air.

  Agatha recoiled, doom impaling her heart.

  The shadow drew closer . . . closer . . .

  King Teapea came into the light, revealing himself.

  Sophie dropped her milk.

  Tedros toppled backwards.

  All eyes in the room shot to Agatha.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  There was no way.

  No possible way.