The School for Good and Evil 2 book collection: The School for Good and Evil. Soman Chainani

Чтение книги онлайн.

      “Look, we just beg him for mercy until he sends us home.”

      “Because that’ll work,” Sophie snorted. “Leave him to me.”

      For the last hour, the two girls had mulled every possible way to escape. Agatha thought they should sneak into the Woods and find their way back to Gavaldon. But Sophie pointed out that even if they did get past the gate snakes and any other booby traps, they’d just end up lost. (“They’re called the Endless Woods for a reason.”) Instead, she proposed they hunt for enchanted broomsticks or magic carpets or something else in the school closets that might fly them over the forest.

      “And what direction would we fly in?” Agatha asked.

      The two girls discarded other options—leaving a trail of bread crumbs (that never worked); seeking a kindly hunter or dwarf (Agatha didn’t trust strangers); wishing for a fairy godmother (Sophie didn’t trust fat women)—until there was only one left.

      But now, peering up at the School Master’s fortress, they lost all hope.

      “We’ll never get up there,” Sophie sighed.

      Agatha heard a squawk in the distance.

      “Hold that thought.”

      A short while later, they were back in the Blue Forest, caked in sludge, eyeing a nest of big black eggs from behind a periwinkle bush. In front of the nest, five skeletal stymphs slept on indigo grass, littered with the blood and limbs of a half-eaten goat.

      Sophie scowled. “I’m back where I started, covered in smelly ooze and who knows how many flesh-eating maggots and—what are you doing!”

      “As soon as they attack, we jump on.”

      “As soon as they what?”

      But Agatha was already tiptoeing to the eggs.

      “The shoes burnt your brain!” Sophie hissed.

      As Agatha inched towards the nest, she caught a closer look at the sleeping stymphs’ jagged teeth, gnarled talons, and spiked tails that shred flesh from bone. Suddenly doubting her plan, Agatha backed up, only to trip on a branch and fall on a goat leg with a loud crack. The stymphs opened their eyes. Her heart stopped.

      Unless a villain wakes them up.

      The pink dress wouldn’t fool them.

      Agatha glowered at the waking fiends. She couldn’t give up now! Not when she had Sophie willing to go home! She lunged for the nest, snatched an egg, sprang up for the blitz—

      “Can’t watch, can’t watch—” Sophie mewled, squinting through fingers for spewing limbs and blood.

      But the vicious birds were nuzzling Agatha, like puppies seeking milk.

      “Ooh, that tickles!” she squealed. Sophie folded her arms.

      Clumping back, Agatha handed the egg to her. “Your turn.”

      “Oh, please, if they like you, they’ll try to mate with me. Animals worship princesses,” said Sophie, sashaying towards the birds—

      The stymphs unleashed a war cry and charged.

      “Helllllp!” Sophie threw the egg to Agatha, but the stymphs still chased Sophie, who ran in circles like a lunatic, five stymphs high stepping behind her in a moronic maypole parade until everyone forgot who was after who and the birds knocked into each other dizzily.

      “See? I outsmarted them,” Sophie beamed.

      A stymph bit her bottom. “Ayyyiiieee!” Sophie ran for the nearest tree. Only she couldn’t climb trees, so she hurled mashed gooseberries at the bird’s eye, but the bird had no eye, so the berries went right through bony socket and plopped to the ground.

      Agatha watched stone-faced.

      “Aggie, it’s coming!”

      The stymph charged for Sophie, only to stop short and find Agatha perched on its back.

      “Get on, you dimwit!” she shouted at Sophie.

      “Without a saddle?” Sophie scoffed. “It’ll leave chafe marks.”

      The stymph lunged for her—Agatha walloped its head and slung Sophie by the waist onto the bird’s spine.

      “Hang on tight!” Agatha yelled as the bird thrashed up to flight, somersaulting over the bay to get the girls off its back. Four more stymphs exploded from blue trees in murderous pursuit; Agatha kicked at the bird’s thighbones, Sophie holding on to her for dear life—“This is the worst plan evveerrr!” Hearing squawks and screams, the fairy and wolf guards squinted into the sky, only to see the intruders vanish into fog.

      “There’s the tower!” Agatha cried, spotting the silver spire through the mist. A wolf’s arrow whizzed between the stymph’s ribs, almost slicing Sophie in half. Fairies stormed out of the fog, shooting golden webs from their mouths, and the stymph dove to avoid them, spinning to elude a new hail of wolf arrows. This time neither girl could hold on and tumbled off its back.

      “Noooo!” screamed Agatha—

      Sophie СКАЧАТЬ