The School for Good and Evil Read Online Free

  Epigraph

IN THE Woods PRIMEVAL

A SCHOOL FOR Skillful AND EVIL

TWO TOWERS Similar TWIN HEADS

Ane FOR THE PURE

One FOR THE WICKED

TRY TO ESCAPE You'LL ALWAYS FAIL

THE Simply WAY OUT IS

THROUGH A FAIRY TALE

Contents

Epigraph

Map

1 - The Princess & The Witch

2 - The Art of Kidnapping

3 - The Great Mistake

four - The Three Witches of Room 66

5 - Boys Ruin Everything

6 - Definitely Evil

7 - Chiliad High Witch Ultimate

8 - Wish Fish

9 - The 100% Talent Show

ten - Bad Group

11 - The School Principal's Riddle

12 - Dead Ends

thirteen - Doom Room

14 - The Crypt Keeper's Solution

fifteen - Choose Your Bury

16 - Cupid Goes Rogue

17 - The Empress's New Apparel

18 - The Roach and the Fox

19 - I Have a Prince

20 - Secrets and Lies

21 - Trial by Tale

22 - Nemesis Dreams

23 - Magic in the Mirror

24 - Hope in the Toilet

25 - Symptoms

26 - The Circus of Talents

27 - Promises Unkept

28 - The Witch of Woods Across

29 - Beautiful Evil

30 - Never After

Well-nigh the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Map

1

The Princess & The Witch

Sophie had waited all her life to be kidnapped.

Only tonight, all the other children of Gavaldon writhed in their beds. If the Schoolhouse Master took them, they'd never return. Never atomic number 82 a total life. Never encounter their family again. Tonight these children dreamt of a red-eyed thief with the body of a brute, come to rip them from their sheets and stifle their screams.

Sophie dreamt of princes instead.

She had arrived at a castle brawl thrown in her laurels, but to find the hall filled with a hundred suitors and no other girls in sight. Here for the showtime fourth dimension were boys who deserved her, she thought as she walked the line. Pilus shiny and thick, muscles taut through shirts, skin smooth and tan, beautiful and circumspect like princes should be. But just as she came to 1 who seemed better than the rest, with brilliant blue eyes and ghostly white hair, the 1 who felt like Happily Ever Afterwards . . . a hammer broke through the walls of the room and smashed the princes to shards.

Sophie's eyes opened to forenoon. The hammer was existent. The princes were not.

"Begetter, if I don't sleep ix hours, my eyes expect swollen."

"Everyone'south prattling on that y'all're to be taken this year," her father said, nailing a misshapen bar over her bedroom window, at present completely obscured by locks, spikes, and screws. "They tell me to shear your hair, muddy upwardly your face, as if I believe all this fairy-tale hogwash. Simply no 1'due south getting in here tonight. That'south for sure." He pounded a deafening crack as assertion.

Sophie rubbed her ears and frowned at her in one case lovely window, now something you lot'd see in a witch's den. "Locks. Why didn't anyone think of that before?"

"I don't know why they all call back information technology's you," he said, silver hair slicked with sweat. "If it'southward goodness that Schoolhouse Master beau wants, he'll take Gunilda's daughter."

Sophie tensed. "Belle?"

"Perfect child that one is," he said. "Brings her begetter home-cooked lunches at the manufactory. Gives the leftovers to the poor hag in the square."

Sophie heard the edge in her father's vocalization. She had never one time cooked a full meal for him, even after her mother died. Naturally she had good reason (the oil and fume would clog her pores) but she knew information technology was a sore point. This didn't mean her father had gone hungry. Instead, she offered him her ain favorite foods: mashed beets, broccoli stew, boiled asparagus, steamed spinach. He hadn't ballooned into a stuffed like Belle's begetter, precisely considering she hadn't brought him home-cooked lamb fricassees and cheese soufflés at the mill. Equally for the poor hag in the square, that old crone, despite claiming hunger day after day, was fat. And if Belle had anything to do with it, then she wasn't good at all, just the worst kind of evil.

Sophie smiled back at her father. "Like you said, it's all hogwash." She swept out of bed and slammed the bathroom door.

She studied her face in the mirror. The rude awakening had taken its toll. Her waist-long hair, the color of spun gold, didn't have its usual sheen. Her jade-green eyes looked faded, her luscious ruby lips a touch dry. Even the glow of her creamy peach skin had dulled. Only still a princess, she thought. Her begetter couldn't see she was special, but her mother had. "You lot are too cute for this world, Sophie," she said with her final breaths. Her mother had gone somewhere better and now and so would she.

This night she would exist taken into the wood. This night she would brainstorm a new life. Tonight she would live out her fairy tale.

And now she needed to look the part.

To brainstorm, she rubbed fish eggs into her skin, which smelled of dirty feet but warded off spots. Then she massaged in pumpkin puree, rinsed with goat's milk, and soaked her face in a mask of melon and turtle egg yolk. Equally she waited for the mask to dry, Sophie flipped through a storybook and sipped on cucumber juice to keep her pare dewy soft. She skipped to her favorite part of the story, where the wicked hag is rolled down a hill in a nail-spiked barrel, until all that remains is her bracelet fabricated of little boys' bones. Gazing at the gruesome bracelet, Sophie felt her thoughts drift to cucumbers. Suppose there were no cucumbers in the woods? Suppose other princesses had depleted the supply? No cucumbers! She'd shrivel, she'd wither, she'd—

Dried melon flakes fell to the page. She turned to the mirror and saw her brow creased in worry. Beginning ruined sleep and at present wrinkles. At this rate she'd be a hag by afternoon. She relaxed her face up and banished thoughts of vegetables.

As for the rest of Sophie's beauty routine, information technology could make full a dozen storybooks (suffice it to say it included goose feathers, pickled potatoes, horse hooves, cream of cashews, and a vial of cow's blood). Ii hours of rigorous grooming later on, she stepped from the house in a informal pink dress, sparkling drinking glass heels, and hair in an impeccable braid. She had one last day earlier the Schoolhouse Master'due south arrival and planned to utilize each and every minute to remind him why she, and not Belle or Tabitha or Sabrina or any other impostor, should be kidnapped.

Sophie's best friend lived in a cemetery. Given her loathing of things grim, grey, and poorly lit, ane would expect Sophie to host visits at her cottage or find a new best friend. Just instead, she had climbed to the business firm atop Graves Loma every twenty-four hour period this week, careful to maintain a smile on her face up, since that was the point of a expert deed later all.

To get there, she had to walk nearly a mile from the bright lakeside cottages, with green eaves and sun-drenched turrets, towards the gloomy edges of the forest. Sounds of hammering echoed through cottage lanes as she passed fathers boarding up doors, mothers stuffing scarecrows, boys and girls hunched on porches, noses cached in storybooks. The terminal sight wasn't unusual, for children in Gavaldon did little besides read their fairy tales. Just today Sophie noticed their eyes, wild, frenzied, scouring each page as if their lives depended on information technology. Four years agone, she had seen the same desperation to avert the curse, but information technology wasn't her turn then. The Schoolhouse Primary took only those past their twelfth year, those who could no longer disguise as children.

At present her turn had come.

As she slogged upwards Graves Hil

50, picnic basket in hand, Sophie felt her thighs burn. Had these climbs thickened her legs? All the princesses in storybooks had the same perfect proportions; thick thighs were equally unlikely as a hooked nose or big feet. Feeling broken-hearted, Sophie distracted herself by counting her good deeds from the day before. Outset, she had fed the lake'south geese a alloy of lentils and leeks (a natural laxative to showtime cheese thrown by oafish children). And so she had donated bootleg lemonwood confront launder to the town orphanage (for, as she insisted to the befuddled benefactor, "Proper skin intendance is the greatest human activity of all."). Finally she had put up a mirror in the church building toilet, and so people could return to the pews looking their all-time. Was this plenty? Did these compete with baking homemade pies and feeding homeless hags? Her thoughts shifted nervously to cucumbers. Maybe she could sneak a private supply into the forest. She still had plenty of time to pack earlier nightfall. Only weren't cucumbers heavy? Would the school send footmen? Perhaps she should juice them before she—

"Where you going?"

Sophie turned. Radley smiled at her with buckteeth and anemically cherry-red pilus. He lived nowhere virtually Graves Hill merely fabricated information technology a habit to stem her all hours of the day.

"To encounter a friend," said Sophie.

"Why are you friends with the witch?" said Radley.

"She'southward non a witch."

"She has no friends and she'due south queer. That makes her a witch."

Sophie refrained from pointing out this made Radley a witch too. Instead she smiled to remind him she'd already done her good act by enduring his presence.

"The School Master volition take her for Evil School," he said. "Then you'll need a new friend."

"He takes ii children," Sophie said, jaw tightening.

"He'll take Belle for the other one. No one's equally skillful as Belle."

Sophie's smile evaporated.

"Simply I'll be your new friend," said Radley.

"I'm full on friends at the moment," Sophie snapped.

Radley turned the color of a raspberry. "Oh, correct—I just thought—" He fled similar a kicked dog.

Sophie watched his straggly hair recede down the hill. Oh, yous've actually washed it now, she thought. Months of good deeds and forced smiles and now she'd ruined it for runty Radley. Why not brand his day? Why non simply answer, "I'd be honored to have you lot equally my friend!" and give the idiot a moment he'd relive for years? She knew it was the prudent thing to do, since the School Master must be judging her as closely as St. Nicholas the night before Christmas. Merely she couldn't do it. She was beautiful, Radley was ugly. Merely a villain would delude him. Surely the Schoolhouse Master would understand that.

Sophie pulled open up the rusted cemetery gates and felt weeds scratch at her legs. Beyond the hilltop, moldy headstones forked haphazardly from dunes of expressionless leaves. Squeezing between dark tombs and decomposable branches, Sophie kept conscientious count of the rows. She had never looked at her mother's grave, even at the funeral, and she wouldn't start today. As she passed the sixth row, she glued her optics to a weeping birch and reminded herself where she'd be a day from now.

In the centre of the thickest batch of tombs stood 1 Graves Hill. The business firm wasn't boarded up or bolted shut like the cottages by the lake, but that didn't make information technology any more than inviting. The steps leading upwardly to the porch glowed mildew light-green. Dead birches and vines wormed their mode around night wood, and the sharply angled roof, blackness and sparse, loomed similar a witch'due south hat.

As she climbed the moaning porch steps, Sophie tried to ignore the smell, a mix of garlic and moisture true cat, and averted her eyes from the headless birds sprinkled effectually, no doubt the victims of the latter.

She knocked on the door and prepared for a fight.

"Go away," came the gruff voice.

"That'due south no way to speak to your best friend," Sophie cooed.

"You're not my best friend."

"Who is, and then?" Sophie asked, wondering if Belle had somehow fabricated her way to Graves Colina.

"None of your business."

Sophie took a deep breath. She didn't want another Radley incident. "We had such a good time yesterday, Agatha. I thought we'd exercise it again."

"You dyed my hair orange."

"But nosotros fixed information technology, didn't nosotros?"

"You always test your creams and potions on me just to encounter how they piece of work."

"Isn't that what friends are for?" Sophie said. "To aid each other?"

"I'll never be every bit pretty every bit y'all."

Sophie tried to discover something dainty to say. She took likewise long and heard shoes stomp away.

"That doesn't mean nosotros can't be friends!" Sophie called.

A familiar true cat, bald and wrinkled, growled at her across the porch. She whipped back to the door. "I brought biscuits!"

Shoesteps stopped. "Existent ones or ones you made?"

Sophie shrank from the slinking cat. "Fluffy and buttery, just like you dear!"

The true cat hissed.

"Agatha, allow me in—"

"You'll say I aroma."

"You don't smell."

"And then why'd you say it last time?"

"Because you smelled last fourth dimension! Agatha, the true cat's spitting—"

"Maybe information technology smells ulterior motives."

The cat bared claws.

"Agatha, open up the door!"

It pounced at her face. Sophie screamed. A hand stabbed between them and swatted the cat downwards.

Sophie looked upwards.

"Reaper ran out of birds," said Agatha.

Her hideous dome of black hair looked similar information technology was coated in oil. Her hulking black wearing apparel, shapeless equally a potato sack, couldn't hibernate freakishly pale skin and jutting bones. Ladybug optics bulged from her sunken face.

"I idea we'd get for a walk," Sophie said.

Agatha leaned against the door. "I'm still trying to figure out why yous're friends with me."

"Considering you're sweet and funny," said Sophie.

"My mother says I'm biting and grumpy," said Agatha. "Then i of you is lying."

She reached into Sophie's basket and pulled back the napkin to reveal dry, butterless bran biscuits. Agatha gave Sophie a withering stare and retreated into the business firm.

"Then nosotros can't take a walk?" Sophie asked.

Agatha started to close the door but and so saw her crestfallen face. Every bit if Sophie had looked forrard to their walk as much every bit she had.

"A short 1." Agatha trudged past her. "But if you say anything smug or stuck-upwardly or shallow, I'll have Reaper follow you home."

Sophie ran after her. "But then I can't talk!"

Subsequently 4 years, the dreaded eleventh night of the eleventh month had arrived. In the late-day sun, the foursquare had become a hive of training for the School Master'due south arrival. The men sharpened swords, set traps, and plotted the night's guard, while the women lined upwards the children and went to work. Handsome ones had their hair lopped off, teeth blackened, and dress shredded to rags; homely ones were scrubbed, swathed in bright colors, and fitted with veils. Mothers begged the best-behaved children to curse or kick their sisters, the worst were bribed to pray in the church, while the residuum in line were led in choruses of the village anthem: "Blessed Are the Ordinary."

Fright swelled into a contagious fog. In a dim alley, the butcher and blacksmith traded storybooks for clues to save their sons. Beneath the kleptomaniacal clock tower, two sisters listed fairy-tale villain names to chase for patterns. A group of boys chained their bodies together, a few girls hid on the school roof, and a masked kid jumped from bushes to spook his mother, earning a spanking on the spot. Even the homeless hag got into the act, hopping before a meager fire, croaking, "Burn the storybooks! Burn them all!" But no one listened and no books were burned.

Agatha gawped at all this in atheism. "How tin can a whole town believe in fairy tales?"

"Because they're existent."

Agatha stopped walking. "You can't really

believe the legend is true."

"Of course I do," said Sophie.

"That a Schoolhouse Master kidnaps ii children, takes them to a school where one learns Expert, one learns Evil, and they graduate into fairy tales?"

"Sounds about right."

"Tell me if you see an oven."

"Why?"

"I want to put my head in it. And what, pray tell, practice they teach at this school exactly?"

"Well, in the School for Good, they teach boys and girls like me how to become heroes and princesses, how to rule kingdoms justly, how to discover Happily Ever After," Sophie said. "In the School for Evil, they teach you how to become wicked witches and humpbacked trolls, how to lay curses and cast evil spells."

"Evil spells?" Agatha cackled. "Who came upwards with this? A four-twelvemonth-old?"

"Agatha, the proof'south in the storybooks! You tin can see the missing children in the drawings! Jack, Rose, Rapunzel—they all got their ain tales—"

"I don't run into anything, because I don't read dumb storybooks."

"Then why is there a stack by your bed?" Sophie asked.

Agatha scowled. "Look, who'south to say the books are even real? Maybe it's the bookseller's prank. Maybe it'due south the Elders' manner to keep children out of the wood. Any the explanation, it isn't a Schoolhouse Chief and it isn't evil spells."

"So who'south kidnapping the children?"

"No one. Every four years, 2 idiots sneak into the forest, hoping to scare their parents, simply to get lost or eaten by wolves, and at that place you have it, the legend continues."

"That'southward the stupidest explanation I've e'er heard."

"I don't retrieve I'm the stupid one here," Agatha said.

There was something about being called stupid that set up Sophie'south blood aflame.

"Yous're just scared," she said.

"Right," Agatha laughed. "And why would I be scared?"

"Considering you know you're coming with me."

Agatha stopped laughing. So her gaze moved past Sophie into the foursquare. The villagers were staring at them like the solution to a mystery. Good in pinkish, Evil in blackness. The School Master's perfect pair.

geisslerilthaddly.blogspot.com

Source: https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/soman-chainani/47512-the_school_for_good_and_evil.html

Share this post