Sophie thrust her lit finger and turned them to flowers—razor-toothed, man-eating flowers—raining them like piranhas over the screaming soldiers. She whirled back, but the wolf was drenched in blood, his paw weakening on the tree.
“We need to get down,” Sophie ordered, her cheek against his. “Put your arm around me. We’ll go together.”
He shook his head, saying nothing.
“Please,” Sophie begged. “We need to find help.”
He looked at her, a scared boy in a man-wolf’s body. “I love you, Sophie,” he breathed. “I love everything about you. Even the terrible parts of you. They’re as beautiful as the good parts. I knew from the moment I met you that I couldn’t love anyone else. Not like I love you. I tried, Sophie. I tried to let you go. But love doesn’t give you that choice. Not real love. At least you’ll know now. That your story had a happy ending all along. That you had true love. Always.”
Tears flooded Sophie’s face, stained with his blood. “Don’t talk like that. You’re my Beast. And that story has a happy ending, just like you said. We’ll find a way. Stay here. With me. Don’t let me go, okay? Don’t give up on me.”
But life was already fading from his eyes. In their reflection, she saw more guards swarming, hundreds of them, arrows and swords raised—
A sea of white clobbered them, like snow sweeping a field, dragging the shrieking armies under. I’m seeing things, Sophie thought. Phantom swans come to save her and her beast. But as the white wave swept closer, surrounding her tree, she saw they weren’t swans at all.
Goats.
Scores of them, led by an old, gray-whiskered librarian from the School for Good and Evil. Sophie smiled down at this flock of heaven-sent angels . . . then looked back at her wolf to see his eyes closed, his body collapsing against a branch, his claw losing grip—
“No!” Sophie cried.
He let her go, Sophie reaching for him as she fell, gasping his name like a love song, Hort, Hort, Hort, until she felt the hug of soft white fur, nothing like the beast’s she left behind.
SOMETHING WARM AND cuddly nuzzled her cheek.
“Hort?” she whispered, stirring from sleep.
Her eyes quivered open to a bath of sunlight and a big pink udder pressed against her face. She was stuck to the underside of a goat, her chest against the animal’s fat belly, her face jammed near its backside. Sophie was about to unleash a scream . . .
. . . until she saw two more goats jogging behind hers in the middle of a crowded market, Willam and Bogden clinging to their stomachs.
Both boys put fingers to lips, telling her to stay quiet.
For a moment, Sophie didn’t understand how she was beneath the goat, until she realized it was her dress’s doing, magically adhering to the animal’s paunch. Craning her neck, Sophie spotted more goats ahead, a green-hooded shepherd leading the flock through hectic stalls, fragrant with pomegranates and peaches, sandalwood and rose oil, cinnamon and cardamom spice. Villagers in expensive coats bustled between copies of Excalibur, too concerned with their shopping to pay much notice, while the alleys of the market were crammed with grimy peasants who used Arthur’s swords as tentpoles for their shanty houses.
Sophie knew this route.
They were in Maker’s Market, the main thoroughfare of Camelot City. Sophie’s dress hugged her tighter against the goat, camouflaging her to the animal’s peach-cream skin. Soon they were out of the market, crowds receding, as the shepherd led the goats up the path towards the king’s castle.
Sophie swiveled to the boys: “Where’s Hort? What’s happening! We need to go to Foxwood—”
Bogden was holding his nose as his goat pooped. “Tell her, Will.”
His redheaded friend prattled quickly: “While you were in Shazabah, Bogs and I came to Camelot. That’s what Tedros told us to do: come see my old priest, who I used to altar boy for, in case he could help us. Then Hort comes from Shazabah with two old goats he found along the way—librarians, actually; one from school, one from the Living Library—who know Pospisil and wanted to help find Excalibur. But then we hear you found the sword in Foxwood and were being taken prisoner to Camelot’s dungeons. Hort freaks out and insists we rescue you. Luckily, the goats had friends. So Hort tracks you down and tells us to wait in Camelot forest with the goats until we hear the signal.”
“What was the signal?” Sophie asked.
“Really bad singing,” said Bogden.
Sophie reddened. “But where is he, then—”
“Hort told us no matter what happened, Bogs and I had to get you out the moment we found you. That you were the mission. He’d find us at the meeting spot later,” said Willam.
Bogden saw the panic in Sophie’s face. “He’s Hort. Nothing bad can happen to Hort.”
“He’ll be at the meeting spot,” Willam assured. “Then we’ll all go help Tedros together.”
Sophie swallowed a sick feeling. These boys were young and in love. They believed in Ever Afters. They believed in the rules. But the world had changed. Rules didn’t mean anything now or else Lesso, Dovey, and Robin Hood would still be alive. In this story, bad things happened to good people. And something bad had happened to Hort. But Sophie couldn’t stop believing. Not yet. Hort always kept his promises. And if he told them he’d be at the meeting point, then he’d find a way.
“You said we’re going to the meeting place.” Sophie looked at the boys. “Why would the meeting place be the Snake’s castle—”
Except now the goat herd was veering east, away from the castle and down a road that Sophie knew well.
The church.
But that couldn’t be the meeting place either. Because ahead, she glimpsed the spire of Camelot’s chapel, two armed guards blocking the entrance, the door barricaded.
“Japeth is keeping the priest locked up. My old chaplain, Pospisil,” Willam whispered to Sophie. “Snake didn’t trust him after that speech he gave at your Blessing.”
Sophie remembered it well. The priest had known her marriage to the king was a sham. Pospisil had used his speech to warn that in the war between Man and Pen, the Pen would always win: “In time, the truth will be written, no matter how many lies someone might tell to obscure it. And the truth comes with an army.”
But the truth also came with consequences: the priest was now a prisoner in his own church. Another friend to Tedros dealt with.
The men in front of the chapel pried open their helmets, revealing greasy faces, as the shepherd led his goats past, the guards’ eyes flicking over them with disinterest.
“Most action we’ve got,” the first guard grouched.
“Cheer up. On dungeon duty next, ain’t we?” said the second. “Ya know, once Sophie’s innit.”
The first guard flashed a sordid grin. “Shame we gotta keep ’er alive ’til the weddin’.”
“Accidents happen,” the second quipped.
Sophie memorized their faces.
One day she’d come back for them.
Onwards the goats trotted, winding past the church, past farm fields, towards the Camelot stables. A few muddy hogs poked heads through a pen, watching. Ahead, the doors to the chicken coop were open, a gaggle of confused hens fleeing into the sun. There were some dead ones too, heads removed, as if one of the hogs had escaped. (And they say pigs are vegetarians! Sophie thought.) The shepherd led his goats into the coop, Sophie and the two boys sliding in last, before the shepherd shut the doors and barred them with a stick. Darkness settled, rich with the scent of overworked goats and a few last chickens, squawking shrilly, then going quiet.