Ever Never After | The School for Good and Evil Fanfiction

Chapter 9: The Rule of Threesomes

There were two major opportunities for an uprising: the Trial by Tale and the Circus of Talents. The Trial would be pitting Evers and Nevers against each other, and Alma wasn't sure there was enough time to crack through her peers' vanity and make them see the truth. She also doubted the Nevers would be able to resist attacking the Evers. Any plan to unite the students for the Trial would be sure to crumble. The Circus, on the other hand, was further away and allowed more time for change. Alma had agreed to wait to educate and reconcile both sides until after the Trial. For now, she was planning with the coven on how there would emerge two victors instead of one, Good and Evil. The first phase of the revolution—if Hester and Sophie could agree to let the other win.

Alma had to intervene before Hester's tattoo and Sophie's bee and wasp friends clashed again. She understood Hester's feelings about not wanting to lose to a Reader, but Sophie had proved she was twice the witch in more than one challenge. Alma reminded both of them that the point of winning the Trial wasn't for notoriety, but for the sake of the Woods and beyond. There was far more at stake than fame and glory and the perks of Class Captain. Admittedly, as powerful as the Gavaldon witch was, Hester would've probably been easier to deal with in the Blue Forest. Unlike Sophie, she was more calculated and less complacent. Keeping the Nevergirl, who believed she was the Woods' gift, tethered to reality would be Alma's side job.

But it wasn't enough that Alma had pointed out the Evil in Good. It wasn't enough that she'd met the School Master and the Nevergirls believed her and were willing to help. She needed to know more about the school and the history that predated it. She had to know everything that had led up to this point in the Endless Woods.

The sleeping tortoise's living pen in the library seemed to dodge Alma's questions, suggesting books about specific and unrelated histories of different kingdoms: how gnomes in Gnomeland had always maintained peace, the fall of the Murmuring Mountains' Good-sympathizing king, the different cheeses that made up Altazarra...

"No," Alma said, losing her patience. "I want to know about the history of the Woods before Good and Evil were known as they are today. You have to have something. Anything."

The pen paused for some time, as if considering her request with significant thought, and it scrawled along the parchment:

Very well. There is A History of the Woods by Professor August Sader. However, Sader's interpretation of history is NOT shared by the rest of the faculty. His views are his alone. Please, keep this in mind.

"I'll take it," Alma said.

The book wasn't in a section. It flew out from behind the log-carved desk and into Alma's hands. She opened it and found that, instead of words, lines of embossed rainbow dots the size of pinheads filled the pages. The sentient pen was already writing down the answer to her questions:

Stroke the dots, but NOT HERE.

Alma nodded and left the library with the book.

In her dorm, sitting on her bed with the book open in her lap, Alma slid her fingers down the first page of dots.

"Chapter One," came Professor Sader's voice. "Before Good and Evil."

Alma's heart stopped.

Thin streaks of smoky light emerged from the dots, crafting ghostly, three-dimensional pictures with gauzy colors that made them look like paintings. Professor Sader's disembodied voice narrated the scenes that played out above the pages. By the end of the first chapter, Alma was trembling.

Long before the school existed, there had been a time when stories hadn't always revolved around princes and princesses, when tales of gods and goddesses had reigned—a time when there had been no Good and Evil, but Chaos and Order. Hundreds of thousands of years later, the Storian had felled the ancient mythos with a tale that had given rise to two gods, one of Good and one of Evil, but they, too, had eventually fallen and splintered into the fairy tales that made up the Woods today. Princes and princesses had become the focus of Good tales, even though monarchies were inherently unjust and depended on the working class to finance their royal lifestyles. Witches had become symbols of Evil despite their connection to the earth that had been robbed from them. Men in power had sought to control women, and some women had reclaimed their power through witchcraft.