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The School Masters dissipated, relics of the past, and took with them the guise of princess, prince and witch, leaving only Agatha, Tedros and Sophie. Around them, their fellow students stood in uniforms as silver as the swan crest that once adorned them, skin muddied from the brawl in the moat even as their button-downs and slacks shone spotlessly. Girls, Boys, Evers, Nevers, impossible to tell apart.
Agatha clutched her best friend, Tedros’s hand on her shaking shoulder, and wept.
“A witch and a princess, friends,” Sophie murmured, her first words since her revival. “Are we going to be sent home?”
Tedros, unsure of what was being discussed, pulled Agatha closer to him.
“No,” Agatha said, shaking her head. “We’re not Evers and Nevers any longer. We’re human.”
“You can’t leave,” Tedros said. “What about Happily Ever After?”
“No,” Agatha said. “No more of those. Not when our lives have just begun. No more illusions of Happy Endings. No more Fairy Tales.”
Lady Lesso hissed a breath between clenched teeth as Professor Dovey gasped.
As one, the student body turned to look at the faculty, faces blank.
The staff of the School for Good stood, bright and gauche in their suits and gowns, while the staff of the School for Evil sulked sullenly in their dark attire.
“This is our school,” Sophie said as her best friend pulled her to her feet. “School, singular. And we bow to no Master.”
She raised the lifeless Storian, its tip welling with her lifeblood, and crossed out the words of the book documenting her Tale in dashes of crimson.
“We’re free,” Hester said. “We all live to see a future of endless possibilities.”
“If you can’t accept that,” Beatrix said. “There is no room for you here.”
The School Master’s tower crumbled to dust, Halfway Bridge fell in chunks to the ground, and the two halves of the school drew together. The lake and the moat became one, a flowing river winding its way around the school, and the flower garden and the graveyard merged into a grassy lawn. Where pink and blue glass met black stone they turned to honey-golden bricks, resulting in an amalgamation of old and new towers, stretching into the sky, and in the new entrance hall stood an obelisk bearing the names of failed students.
“And there are no trespassers,” Tedros said.
The faculty had no time to protest before vines pulled them to the Flowerground beneath the soil.
- - - - - - -
In a forest primordial
Stands a school as tutorial
Free to come, free to leave
Students in dreams,
Distrust as they believe
Though it may lead to pain and strife,
Within the gated walls
A school for Life