Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 36

"I don't understand," Sophie said. "What does this have to do with getting into the boys' school?"

I ignored her, glaring at Helga the Gnome, bound to a frilly rocking chair, long white hair covered in kale flakes. "Either you tell us how you do it, Yuba, or we give you to the Dean."

"I find your charges deeply offensive," Helga retorted, her voice tight and pitchy. "All males have been evicted—"

"We saw you, Yuba," said Hester, arms crossed next to Dot. "We saw your face."

"Yuba? Me? Preposterous," Helga scowled, struggling for the white staff out of reach. "Now leave at once, before I call the Dean myself."

"Please! We need your help," Agatha begged—

"But how can she help us with boys? And why do you keep calling her Yuba?" Sophie badgered, pointing at the dowdy gnome. "I feel like I'm missing something—"

"A brain," Hester murmured.

With the butterflies generally dormant at night, we had waited until after midnight before each of us took a turn sneaking into the Blue Forest (Anadil was caught by Pollux and had to abort the plan). There was no way to squeeze through the tiny gnome hole we'd seen, but Dot had turned the ground around it to kale and the rest stomped through, stunning Helga in her lair. While the witches tied the gnome to the chair, Agatha poked around the tiny furniture and bookshelves for signs of a male inhabitant, but the doily linens, abundance of flowerpots, and lavender wallpaper all had a decidedly female touch.

Sophie frowned as she sniffed a flowerpot. "Strange, though . . . ," she said airily. "Never met a girl who likes hydrangeas."

Agatha humphed at Helga, as if this idiocy would have to suffice as proof. "We know about Merlin's spell, Yuba. We saw it in our book. We know you used it."

"The Dean has revised all her brother's texts to reflect her own agenda," Helga shot back, reddening. "Besides, what do I know of Merlin's spells?"

"Only what you taught Merlin yourself," a voice said. They all swiveled to Dot, in front of a bookshelf, peering at My Life in Magic by Merlin of Camelot.

She held open the first page, eyeing the gnome.

"To Helga and Yuba, my greatest teacher."

"Should be 'teachers,' shouldn't it?" I said, folding my arms.

The den was quiet.

Agatha kneeled down in front of the old gnome. "Surviving Fairy Tales. That's what you teach." She took Helga's wrinkled hand. "And we can't survive ours without you."

Helga's gray pupils glued to the ground, unable to look at her student for a long time. Slowly, her long white hair retracted into her skull, growing scratchy and short. The grooves of her face magically deepened and the skin hardened to a leathery tan beneath a growing white beard. Her cheeks hollowed, her nose fattened, her eyebrows bushied, her body burlying to a barrel shape . . . until at last Yuba the Gnome gazed up at his former students, in the same lavender dress and wobbly heels.

"Do you mind if I change?" he asked quietly.

Sophie gawped at her old Forest Group teacher, morphed from a girl into a boy.

She twirled to Agatha.

"That's how you want us to get into the boys' school? By turning us into. . . gnomes?"

I wanted to bang my head against the wall.

***

We settled on a dusty wool couch with mugs of turnip-root tea, eyes flicking back and forth as Yuba paced the room in his belted green coat and orange cone hat.