The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes by Soman Chainani

. . . why is this all happening?”
    Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie . . . I—I—I—made a—mistake—”
    â€œAggie, slow down.”
    Agatha couldn’t look at her. “I opened it—I opened our fairy tale—”
    â€œI don’t understand—”
    â€œA w-w-wish!” Agatha stammered, reddening. “I made a wish—”
    Sophie shook her head. “A wish?”
    â€œI didn’t mean it—it happened so fast—”
    â€œA wish for what?”
    Agatha took a deep breath. She looked into her friend’s scared eyes.
    â€œSophie, I wished I was with—”
    â€œTickets,” a voice said.
    Both girls turned to see an alarmingly thin caterpillar with a top hat, curled mustache, and purple tuxedo, poking out of a tree hollow.
    â€œThank you for calling the Flowerground. No spitting,sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the flowertrains. Violations will result in the removal of your clothes. Tickets?”
    Sophie and Agatha gaped at each other. Neither had the faintest idea how to call the Flowerground.
    â€œLook,” Agatha pressed, glancing back at shadows nearing the dead-end turn, “we need to ride right now and we don’t have—”
    â€œLeave it to me,” Sophie whispered, and twirled. “Such a pleasure to see you again, conductor! Remember me? We met when you graciously escorted our class to the Garden of Good and Evil. And look at that lovely mustache! I just love a good mustache—”
    â€œNo ticket, no ride,” the caterpillar crabbed, and withdrew.
    â€œBut they’ll kill us!” Agatha cried, seeing red hoods turn into view—
    â€œSpecial circumstances can be presented in writing on Form Code 77 at the Flowerground Registry Office, open on alternate Mondays from 3:00 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.—”
    Agatha grabbed him from the tree. “Let us in or I eat you.”
    The caterpillar bleached in her grip. “NEVERS!” he called. Vines shot out and sucked Agatha and Sophie into the hollow as arrows set the tree aflame.
    The two girls fell through a pit of swirling pastel colors until vines flung them over a snapping Venus flytrap intoa tunnel of blinding-hot mist. Shielding their eyes, the girls felt their vines cinch around their chests like straitjackets and hook on to something above them. Both peeked through their hands to see that they were dangling in midair from a luminescent green tree trunk, stenciled
ARBOREA LINE
    â€œThe butterfly called the train somehow!” Sophie yelled from her tight harness as the track propelled them ahead. “See! The butterfly was trying to help us!”
    Coming out of the mist, Agatha gaped at the Flowerground for the first time, speechless. Before her was a spectacular underground transport system, big as half of Gavaldon, made entirely of plants. Color-coded tree trunks crisscrossed like rail tracks in a bottomless cavern, whisking passengers dangling from vine straps to their respective destinations in the Endless Woods. The conductor, perched in a glass-windowed compartment inside ARBOREA’s green trunk, grumpily called stops into a willow microphone as flowertrains flitted by: “Maidenvale!” “Avalon Towers!” “Runyon Lane!” “Ginnymill!”
    Whenever passengers heard their stop, they pulled hard on their vine strap; the strap fastened around their wrist, unfurled off their track, and ferried them high to one of many windwheel exits that churned them out of the Flowerground and up onto land.
    Agatha noticed their green line’s trunk was jam-packed with women in twittering conversation, some well dressed and cheerful, others oddly haglike and unattractive for Evers, while the red ROSALINDA LINE running perpendicular had only a few glum, scraggly-looking men.