by James Riley
As the Red Hood hit the cottage floor May jumped up from the other side of the bed, grabbed the knife, and leapt at the Hood. “Hold her down!” Phillip shouted as he tried to get out from under the bed while still holding tightly to the Red Hood’s exposed leg. May kneeled down on the Hood’s arm and held the knife over what might have been the woman’s neck. As she did so the arms and leg stopped struggling. The princess must have put the knife against something important, neck or no.
Jack carefully stepped past May and made his way to what he figured was the Hood’s head. He reached down and felt around until he touched something wooly, then pulled on it. Instantly, the Wicked Queen’s monster finally became visible.
Only the woman on the ground wasn’t some grotesque creature of the night. Instead, she was actually quite pretty, her eyes a deep blue, wide open with fright and anger as they flashed between Jack and May. Raven-colored hair flooded down the woman’s back, while her well-lined face still managed to look young, especially in the blue eyes.
As he’d figured, the wooly cloth Jack had pulled turned out to be the Hood’s namesake, a red cloak that covered almost all of the woman’s body, despite now having several large slashes in it. Beneath the cloak, the Hood was dressed entirely in crimson from her blouse to her silky pants. Apparently she had a thing for the color red.
“Who are you!” the Red Hood demanded. “What do you want!”
May shook her head. “Oh no, lady,” she said. “You are gonna answer our questions. Where’s my grandmother!”
“Your … what?” the Hood asked, sounding confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Not good enough!” May said, and she pushed the knife against the woman’s throat. As May put on a threatening face the Red Hood just looked more confused. “You know that doesn’t hurt, right?” the Hood asked.
“I do know that, yes,” May said, a bit annoyed. She glanced down at the knife, then tossed it aside and yanked the Hood up by her tunic. “You have the Mirror, so you have to know something!” May yelled. “Tell me where my grandmother is!”
“You want to find your grandmother?” asked a voice from the door. As Jack spun around to see who’d spoken something enormous flew through the open doorway and plowed into the four-poster bed, practically breaking it in half in the process.
It was the Wolf King. And from where he stood, Jack couldn’t tell if the animal was still alive.
From the doorway, the Huntsman smiled. “You could have just asked me, you know. Oh, and Red? I took care of that little wolf problem you’ve been having. You’re welcome.”
Chapter 24
“That is a huntsman!” Phillip said in surprise.
“You’re a huge help, Phillip,” May said, not taking her eyes off the man in the doorway.
“You picked up another stray, girlie?” the Huntsman said, smiling at Phillip. Without warning, the Huntsman’s left hand flew out and grabbed the prince, locking around Phillip’s throat even while the Huntsman’s right hand pointed a crossbow at Jack’s face.
“This seems like old times, doesn’t it, kids?” the Huntsman said, laughing heartily. At the end of his arm, Phillip struggled to break free of the Huntsman’s grasp, but the man’s grip was like steel, cutting off the prince’s air.
“Let him go!” May shouted furiously. “Just leave us alone already!”
The fairy in her hair aimed a dirty look at the Huntsman, muttering something to herself in her own language. Strangely enough, Jack thought he could almost make out a word here or there. He shrugged it off, though, and brought his attention back to the Huntsman.
In answer to May’s command, the Huntsman just squeezed Phillip harder, turning the prince’s face purple.
“Let him go now, or she’s dead,” May said as she dragged the Red Hood to her feet and held the knife against the woman’s throat.
“The knife doesn’t cut flesh,” the Hood said calmly, then threw her head back into May’s face. Their two skulls smacked against each other with a hollow clunk, sending May to her knees holding her forehead.
The Red Hood, meanwhile, leapt for the Mirror on the wall. Before she could reach it, Jack threw himself backward between the wall and the Hood, then yanked his sword from his back.
For an instant, no one moved as the sword’s glow lit up the room.
“That’s—,” the Red Hood said with surprise.
“That’s the sword of an Eye!” the Huntsman said.
“You’re not getting the Mirror,” Jack said, his voice calmer than he felt.
“Take it,” the Huntsman said to the Hood, his eyes locked on Jack. She nodded and went for the Mirror. As she did Jack swung the sword out and smacked her in the head with the flat of the blade. The Hood crumpled against the wall for a moment, then crept back to the protection of the Huntsman, clearly in pain.
“Nicely done,” the Huntsman grudgingly admitted. “But I knew you didn’t have the guts to kill her.”
Jack just shrugged as casually as he could. “There was no need,” he said. The truth was that he hadn’t even really intended to hit her at all, just scare her. Still, it wasn’t as if he’d been in many swordfights in his life, so he took his victories where he could get them.
“Believe me, killing is always necessary,” the Huntsman said, smiling bitterly. “I learned that the hard way. Now … why don’t I pass that lesson along?” With that, he took aim at Jack’s head, then shot the crossbow.
As the arrow launched out toward Jack’s face the sword glowed brightly, and time seemed to slow down. Someone screamed out, though Jack couldn’t tell who—he was too intent on watching the arrow fly toward him. It was moving so slowly, actually, that he wondered if arrows always took this long to get where they were going.
“Why not deflect it with your sword?” asked a voice in his head that sounded surprisingly like the knight in the giant’s mouth.
For some reason, that struck Jack as a perfectly logical thing to do, so he swung the sword up, almost in slow motion, and swept the arrow right off course so it missed him entirely.
And just like that, time resumed its normal speed, though no one else seemed to have noticed. What they did notice was the fact that Jack had just deflected an arrow with his sword, moving faster than anyone had a right to.
This clearly surprised the Huntsman, but only for a moment. Before Jack had a chance to make a move, the Huntsman threw Phillip into Jack, knocking them both backward. As Jack fell to the floor he thought he saw the Huntsman grab the Red Hood and go for the door, but that was all he could make out before the prince’s purple cloak covered his eyes.
“Get off!” Jack yelled, pushing the gasping prince off him and running to the door, but both the Huntsman and the Red Hood had disappeared.
Jack sighed, then turned around to help the prince up, but found that May had already done so. “That could have gone better,” Jack said, but neither of the other two responded. In fact, they didn’t seem to have even heard him; their attention was caught up with something that he couldn’t see. “What are you two looking at?” Jack asked, stepping around them to get a look for himself.
When he saw what they were staring at, all the adrenaline of the moment drained from his body, and he almost fell over. He steadied himself on the bed and stared at the wall in front of him, right at the spot where the Magic Mirror hung.
In the exact center of the Mirror was a hairline crack, a crack that split off in all directions from the spot where the arrow had struck the glass.
By saving himself, Jack had broken the Mirror.
Chapter 25
“No,” Jack said, holding tightly to one of the bed’s posts so he didn’t fall over. “No, no, no, no, no!”
“You hit the arrow …,” May said, staring at the Mirror.
“It flew right into the Mirror …,” the prince said, doing the same.
May gradually turned around to look at Jack. “How were you able to do that?” she asked, sounding a bit dazed. “I barely e
ven saw you move.”
Before Jack could explain what happened, a difficult task considering he didn’t know himself, the prince saved him. “The Mirror can wait,” Phillip said, then turned around and stepped over to the bed.
“The Mirror can what?” May said, snapping out of her shock. “The thing’s broken, and it was our only way of finding my grandmother!”
“We have a more pressing problem right now,” Phillip said, then pointed down at the bed. Jack stepped over to join him, and after a pause, May did the same. The princess started to say something, then caught sight of what Phillip had been pointing at.
The Wolf King lay in the middle of a huge pile of quilts, covered in blood and bruises. The animal’s closed eyes fluttered wildly and his feet shook every few seconds. He did seem to be breathing, at least, but each breath sent a shudder through the wolf’s entire body.
“I think he is dying,” Phillip said softly, reaching out to touch the animal’s paw.
The wolf’s whole body flinched at Phillip’s touch, despite the fact that the animal was unconscious. The wolf was bleeding in multiple places, his pale skin showing through in patches where his fur had been torn off. Phillip grabbed some of the bed’s extra linens and started to cover the wounds, while Jack and May helped where they could. Finally, the prince stopped, glancing over his work to make sure he’d caught everything.
“That will hopefully help a bit,” Phillip said. “But we will need to find help. I don’t know if it will make a difference, but we must try. We can use your broomstick to bring a healer.”
May nodded, then looked over at the wall. “What about the Mirror?”
Jack frowned. “We can’t touch it, not broken like it is. We have no idea what would happen if you put the crown back in now. Magic’s a tricky thing … it might be dangerous. We’ll have to figure out a way to fix it before using it.”
Phillip nodded. “He’s right, Princess.”
“Right,” May said, her voice quiet. “So we need a doctor, then. Or healer—whatever you said, Phillip. Who’s going to go?”
Before Jack could respond, the prince stepped forward. “Me, Your Highness. I have encountered devices like the broomstick before. It shall not take me long to learn its specifics.” He smiled. “Besides, once airborne, where would either of you go? I know where to find a healer, if I can but figure out our location. I will return shortly.”
The prince saluted them both with a hopeful smile, then strode purposefully out the door and back to where they’d hidden their belongings in the brush outside the clearing.
May followed him as far as the door, smiling sadly. “You know, if our history is any indication, he might kill himself on that thing,” she said.
“He might,” Jack said diplomatically.
“Should we stop him?”
“He’s royalty,” Jack said with a shrug. “I doubt we’re allowed to tell him what he should and shouldn’t do, regardless of the inherent stupidity.”
A moment later Phillip hovered easily on the broomstick just outside the door. “I will return as soon as I can,” he said, then smiled, turned the broomstick, and flew off at top speed into the distance.
“Or he’ll have no problems whatsoever,” Jack said. “Figures.”
May laughed, then let out a deep breath. “This isn’t how things are supposed to go, you know,” May said softly, twisting the crown around at the end of her necklace. “This isn’t how fairy tales work.”
Jack glanced at the fairy in May’s hair, who had started braiding a few of the princess’s hairs together, humming softly to herself as she did so. “I hate to go over this again, Princess, but I’m pretty sure they still don’t have tails,” Jack said.
May rolled her eyes. “That joke never gets old. You know what I mean.”
“Stories about fairies,” he said.
“Stories where people live happily ever after,” she said, staring at the crown. “Stories that make you think there’s magic in the world. ‘Once upon a time.’ Heroes who do the right thing and villains who never win. The heroes always know they’re right and always know what to do. They never have any doubts.”
“That sounds like a good story,” Jack said. “It’d be nice if the world really worked that way.”
May snorted. “Where I’m from, that’s exactly what’s wrong: It doesn’t work that way. Here, though, it’s like … it’s like you’ve got all the parts right. You’ve got princes, monsters, Snow White, all these fairy tales come to life …” She sighed. “But this isn’t once upon a time. It’s like the opposite … half or something.”
“Wouldn’t the opposite be ‘never’?” Jack asked, but the princess ignored him.
“The story’s not right, Jack. This shouldn’t be how things go. Everything’s so mixed up, and we’re barely holding on. We’re not … we’re not winning, are we.”
Jack reached over and took the crown out of her hand. May glanced up at him, letting the necklace fall back against her chest.
“Maybe not now,” Jack said, “but we will. We’re the good guys, and we’re doing the right thing. It will be just like your stories. We’ll win in the end.”
“Will we?” she asked. “Look at this, this whole place! Magical things happen here, but other than that, it’s … it’s just the same as where I’m from.” She shook her head in frustration. “In my world, no one is safe, Jack. Especially not the good guys.” She nodded toward the wolf. “I thought here, of all places …”
“You said heroes don’t doubt themselves,” Jack said, forcing a smile. “The prince will be back with a healer soon, and the Wolf King will be fine. Meanwhile, we have the Mirror, and—”
“The Mirror?!” she shouted, then blushed and lowered her voice. “The Mirror is broken!” May whispered, pointing at it. “And with it goes any hope I had of finding my grandmother.” She dropped her head into her hands and stared at the floor. “But not only that. We were … we were going to do something magical, Jack. We were going to rescue Snow White! How amazing is that? I mean, my grandmother is Snow White! I still can’t wrap my head around that. But don’t worry, real life won’t let me go on too long like this without crashing down. And now, here we are, waiting for the ambulance to pick up one of our friends.” She gritted her teeth, then smacked a hand against the wall hard enough to turn her palm red.
Jack thought about asking what an ambulance was, but decided to keep his question to himself. Instead, he took the princess’s hands in his. “Princess … May,” he said. “Listen to me.” She glared at him for a second, then sighed deeply, the anger draining from her face.
“These are challenges,” Jack told her. “That’s it. We are going to win. You know why? Because it doesn’t matter if you’re in a fairy tale or here in real life, doing the right thing still counts for something. We’re going to win because we’re good, decent people trying to accomplish something noble.”
She flashed her half smile at him. “You didn’t have to get all melodramatic there,” she said, then bumped him with her shoulder.
He grinned. “Just following your example, Your Highness.”
She gave him an indignant look. “I was not being melodramatic!”
“Oh, of course not.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Did you listen to yourself? You were half a second away from saying we’re the villains in our story!”
May stuck out her tongue. “Maybe not me, but I’ve got my suspicions about you.”
He laughed out loud. “I’m pretty sure there’s not a villain out there who would put up with you for this long.”
This time she pushed him hard, and he fell to the ground, still laughing. May rolled her eyes, then leaned over and offered him her hand to pull him up, but Jack grabbed her and yanked her down to the floor next to him. Jack then sprang to his feet and put his hands on his hips, striking the classic hero pose. “No princess is a match for Sir Jack!” he said majestically.
“Sir Jack?” May said from the f
loor, raising an eyebrow.
He nodded toward his back. “I’ve got a sword, don’t I?”
She laughed. “If that’s all it takes, I’m going to be Sir May in about two seconds….” She jumped to her feet and launched herself at him. Jack backpedaled away from her, but May was too quick. She threw both her arms around him and grabbed for the sword, even as he backed away, trying to keep her from getting it.
May moved with him, though, so Jack kicked himself backward, laughing the entire time. He kept moving backward until he bumped into the cottage wall, May’s momentum pushing her right into him.
It took him all of a second to realize that she had her arms around him, he had his arms around her, and their faces were only inches apart.
Suddenly, Jack had no clue what to do. What had just happened? The wolf was hurt, and they were playing around? Plus, May was a princess, and Jack hated royalty … didn’t he? Okay, maybe right now he had a hard time remembering why, but still….
May seemed as surprised as he was to find herself in this position. Still, she recovered quickly and started to say something, but stopped and looked down toward his mouth. She looked back up at him, and her eyes softened.
A low growl from the bed interrupted whatever May’s eyes were about to say. “If … you’re not too busy,” the wolf said.
May instantly blushed and jumped backward, slamming Jack hard against the wall. As Jack slid down to the floor, grunting in pain, she literally leapt to the wolf’s side.
“Yes!” May shouted. “We’re here! Not doing anything, just waiting! For a doctor! A healer, whatever! What can we do? Want some water? Something to eat? Are you all right?” She stopped to take a breath, giving the wolf a chance to jump in.
“No,” he growled, “I need nothing … I will be fine. I heal … quickly. Just tell me what happened.”
Jack pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the bed. “Not to disagree, but it doesn’t really look like you’ll be fine,” he told the wolf. “You’re barely able to move, and you’ve lost a lot of blood, but I think we’ve got it covered. Phillip went to get a healer.”