Once Upon the End (Half Upon a Time)

by James Riley

  Jack woke up to his grandfather standing over him with a bucket of water.

  “I’m up!” Jack shouted.

  His grandfather dumped the bucket of water on him anyway.

  “It’s best to be sure,” the old man said, and Jack just glared at him. “When a person falls asleep after touching a magic sword, it’s best to not let them sleep too long. After all, you’re no beauty, boy.”

  “Thanks for that,” Jack said, standing up and grabbing his grandfather’s favorite cloak, then using it to dry himself off.

  “HEY!” his grandfather yelled, so Jack tossed him the soaking cloak.

  “I have to go,” Jack told him, looking around for supplies. He grabbed a sack and filled it with as much food as he could find, pulling a nonmagical horse bridle off the wall as well. “When the younger me comes back, don’t tell him I was ever here, okay?”

  “You’re leaving?!” his grandfather said, dropping the wet cloak to the floor. “But why?”

  “I figured out what I have to do,” Jack told him. “And I’m going to have to do it somewhere else. Considering that ‘somewhere else’ isn’t close, apparently, I’m going to need a ride. Fortunately, I know where one just went.”

  “Samson?!” his grandfather said. “You just got through being terrified of that horse!”

  “Sounds like me,” Jack said, throwing the sack over his shoulder. He stopped in front of the old man, paused, then hugged him. “I love you, Grandpa.”

  “That just shows you’re a smart kid,” the old man said, wiping his eye.

  Jack laughed and moved for the door. His grandfather coughed, and Jack turned back for a moment.

  “You’ve grown, my boy,” his grandfather said. “I . . . I’m not sure I understand everything that’s happened, but I’m . . . I’m proud of you.”

  Jack suddenly had trouble swallowing, and he nodded quickly and turned so his grandfather wouldn’t see the lump in his throat. “Just . . . make sure I go with May when we get back, Grandpa. I wasn’t sure at the time, but I . . . I . . .”

  With that, Jack shook his head and left.

  Outside, Robert and a few of the other boys were gathering in front of Jack’s house.

  “Well, look who’s back!” Robert said, puffing out his chest. “Where’s the princess, Jack?” He grinned widely.

  Jack punched him in the face without stopping, knocking the older boy out.

  The other boys gasped, and Jack threw a look over his shoulder to see if they were going to argue the point, but they all seemed to find something much more interesting in every other direction, so Jack shrugged and broke into a jog.

  If he remembered right, the Huntsman caught up to them not too far out of town. Still, that was a while ago, and who knew what the Huntsman had done to Samson—

  An evil whinny caught Jack’s attention a second before two sharpened hooves drove through the air just inches from Jack’s chest. Jack leapt backward and dropped the food as the boys behind him screamed, running in every direction at once.

  “MAD HORSE!” one screamed, and Jack realized he couldn’t remember the names of the boys he’d grown up with.

  “It’ll eat your face off!” another screamed.

  “Take him, let me live!” shouted a third.

  Jack pulled the bridle out of the sack and slowly stood back up. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he told the horse.

  Samson, though, seemed to want to make it as hard as he could. He whinnied again, the sound echoing in the depths of Jack’s soul, and again kicked out with hooves sharp enough and hard enough to break rock.

  Jack shrugged and moved quicker than the horse could see. As Samson’s hooves hit the ground, Jack was on his back, had the bridle between his teeth, and was gently patting the horse’s neck.

  Samson turned around to look at Jack in surprise, and Jack just smiled. “I know, it’s confusing,” he said. “You just saw me, but I was different. Also, you’re probably not happy about those magic flower reins, huh?”

  The horse’s dead eyes promised raging evil and foul-smelling hate, so Jack sighed. “Sorry about this,” he said, and yanked on the reins.

  Samson yanked back, then bucked wildly, and the other boys scattered to escape the rampaging horse. Why didn’t they just go, and stop coming back to see what was happening? Jack held tightly to the horse, moving with every buck.

  Samson might have kept at it all night if he hadn’t just carried Jack and May off into the woods, then fought the Huntsman. Unfortunately for the horse, there just wasn’t a lot of energy left, and soon he calmed down enough to accept that Jack was going to be riding him around for a bit.

  “That’s okay,” Jack told him, patting his neck again. “You can kill me in my sleep or something. We’ve got a long trip.”

  The horse whinnied in agreement and slowly walked toward the path out of town.

  The journey took a little under a week, and then only because Jack managed to sleep in the saddle, fearing what the horse might do if he ever slept on the ground. Samson eventually grew used to him, even giving up on biting him whenever they stopped to take a break. Well, he still tried, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.

  Five days in, they passed over the border of the Wicked Queen’s occupied lands, avoiding the patrols of goblins who periodically walked the border. Officially, the Queen hadn’t returned yet, so things weren’t quite so bad. The Charmed One kept Jack up-to-date on his past self’s progress as they went, and oddly enough, Jack reached his destination on the same day his younger self freed the Queen.

  Jack dismounted, and Samson didn’t even try to bite him. Maybe the horse was impressed by their destination. Maybe he hadn’t ever seen a building so big.

  Or maybe the Charmed One’s abandoned castle spooked the horse just as much as it did Jack.

  CHAPTER 41

  Time seemed . . . inconsistent. At one point, Jack was sure two months had passed. He asked the Charmed One, who claimed it had been exactly one day since he’d arrived at the castle.

  Then, Jack could have sworn that just a day later, the knight was worrying that three months hadn’t gotten them anywhere.

  “You’re too concerned with yourself!” the Charmed One would shout, smacking Jack with a duplicate of his own sword. “The sword’s magic has no interest in you. It already knows you! It wants to know others, to know all! You have to move past yourself and embrace the rest of the world to truly awaken its powers!”

  “So give the world a hug?” Jack asked, and got smacked again.

  Training, in other words, was slow.

  Every night, Jack would dream himself back to the oak tree and train until the sun came up. Some nights, he’d sit quietly as the wind gusted past him, the Charmed One saying that magic was nothing more than the path a leaf of grass took as it blew wherever the wind carried it. Jack always struggled to keep the obvious response to himself: If leaves of grass caught in the wind had paths to follow, then really someone should just draw a map and save everyone a lot of trouble.

  Other nights, he would explore the city at the edge of the Charmed One’s field, watching memories he’d had locked away of Jill and him playing or of a blurry woman whose smile filled him with joy . . . his mother, he supposed. He must have been too young to remember her clearly.

  This, too, was training, according to the Charmed One. Jack needed to know his own mind before venturing into someone else’s, apparently.

  That made about as much sense as the grass’s path, unfortunately.

  Each day, Jack would wake up and find himself in an old, dusty, dark castle that lay smack in the middle of the Wicked Queen’s occupied lands. Bands of goblins roamed through the nearby town, harassing the villagers as they saw fit. Jack often argued with the Charmed One about going out there, maybe in some sort of disguise, to fight the goblins off, but the Charmed One always pointed out that if he got caught, the Wicked Queen would know, and that would be that.

  Most days ended with h
im staring at the Wicked Queen’s heart box, trying not to think about a girl with a blue streak in her hair.

  What was May doing? Was she okay?

  “Stop thinking about her!” the Charmed One would yell. “She’s distracting you and keeping you from your potential!”

  Where was she now? Had they rescued the fairy queens yet?

  “You won’t defeat the Wicked Queen this way . . . you need to concentrate.”

  Had she found her prince?

  And that’s usually about the point the Charmed One would smack him, in or out of his dreams. True, if he wasn’t asleep, the knight couldn’t touch him, but he did seem to get strange headaches out of nowhere at times.

  Despite the Eye’s warnings, Jack did progress. Soon, he could go in and out of his own mind with ease, watching memories of things he never should have remembered. Classes on princess rescues in Giant’s Hand. The way Gwentell’s wings sparkled as she fell to Penelope’s curse. A certain princess’s laugh. All were locked in his mind with a clarity he never expected.

  Having mastered his own thoughts, Jack soon began training his body as well. The knight worked him through the typical Eye training that Jack had taken—actually, was taking right now, somewhere else—but the Charmed One wasn’t satisfied with just that. Soon, he had Jack running over the tops of the castle’s ramparts in the dark (and blindfolded to boot) and carrying a torch with his feet through the castle while walking on his hands.

  Jack couldn’t even imagine what such things must look like from outside the castle. People in town probably thought it was haunted.

  But above all, Jack practiced with the sword, and the sword practiced with him. Together, they learned each other’s balance, and worked to move in complementary forms. Jack would feel the sword wanting to strike, and he would move in such a way as to most easily let it, while the sword could feel his goal (usually to smack the Charmed One back) and work to accomplish it.

  And still, he couldn’t stop wondering if May was okay.

  “Snow White’s mind will be buried deep, far deeper than you’ve ever had to go,” the Charmed One lectured him over and over. “It will be like diving into the ocean, only without a mermaid tear to help you breathe. You won’t run out of breath in her mind, but you might forget who you are or why you’re there. Above all, you’ll need to hold tightly to yourself as well as let yourself go, both at the same time if you’ll have any chance of finding her.”

  “You realize that contradicting yourself makes you really easy to understand, right?” Jack would ask.

  “Magic is contradictions,” the Charmed One would tell him. “The fairy queens change nature by contradicting nature’s song. The Wicked Queen takes the spark of life and contradicts it into a deadly lightning. And you, with your sword, will contradict the very reality of this world with your own imagination.”

  “I am pretty contradictory,” Jack would admit, and sometimes—not often, but sometimes—get a laugh.

  The training grew more and more intense, and Jack found himself sleeping through both nights and days as his time ran out. There were times he’d awaken with a start, sure someone was watching him, only to find no one there.

  Creepy castles were definitely creepy.

  Finally, the day came, six months after he’d begun training with the Charmed One.

  “You just died,” the knight told him. “There’s not much time left.”

  Jack knew this was true. And he knew that he’d soon be as ready as he could ever hope to be to dive into Snow White’s poisoned mind and bring the Charmed One to her.

  This was the only way to end the Wicked Queen’s reign once and for all. It’d be dangerous, and there was no guarantee that it’d work even if he got it exactly right, but it was their only shot. Snow White knew how to stop the Queen’s heart, and Jack needed that information.

  He needed to do this, but not for himself. He’d made a mistake, a year ago at this point, when he’d first heard how a princess’s grandmother was kidnapped, and there was only one way to make it up to her.

  And so, as the Charmed One reported that armies of fairy queens and legged sharks approached the Wicked Queen’s castle, sure to fail in their attack, Jack left the Charmed One’s castle armed only with his sword and the wooden heart box, a year late but finally ready to rescue Snow White.

  CHAPTER 42

  May’s execution day turned out to be chilly and rainy, which was the perfect kind of weather to have on your execution day, she figured. Her goblin guards delivered a black cloak to her and waited with swords drawn until she put it on. At that point, they opened her cell and led her back through the castle in silence.

  There was enough noise outside anyway.

  At some point early that morning, May had heard a familiar calling, familiar but completely creepy. It’d taken her a good hour of listening to it before she realized what the noise was.

  Sharks were growling. Loudly.

  Somehow, Phillip had managed to get the Sea King to bring his armies to the Wicked Queen’s door. From the tiny silver fairy that appeared in her window, then disappeared as the goblins shouted at it, she figured the mermen weren’t the only ones out there either.

  So all in all, rain or no rain, May was feeling much more optimistic than she had in days, black cloak with the hood up and all.

  In what had been an empty courtyard a few days ago now stood a raised platform of darkened wood. The Queen waited for her there, the hint of a smile on her face. Behind her was a smaller crowd of nobles than had been in the throne room.

  “You look happy for someone who’s about to be invaded,” May told her from beneath the black hood that one of the goblins had pushed up.

  The Queen just smiled wider. “We shall see.”

  Next to the queen waited the Wolf King as well as row upon row of goblin, troll, and ogre soldiers.

  The Queen nodded at the wolf, who nodded back. She smiled and turned to May.

  “Before you die, I know you’ll be interested to see this,” she said.

  “You getting your behind handed to you?” May asked.

  “My invasion of the free kingdoms,” the Queen said, then opened a circle made of blue lightning. The circle flickered, then solidified, and on the other side, May could see a very surprised-looking woman in a crown, and panicking soldiers.

  “Phillip’s kingdom,” the Queen said, and gestured for the Wolf King to step through.

  Before the wolf could move, voices raised from beyond the palace walls, and a song drifted through the courtyard. The blue lightning circle fizzled and disappeared, and the Wolf King turned to look expectantly at the Queen.

  “Oh wow, look who else Phillip found,” May said. “Sounds like he’s got a few fairy queens out there. Maybe all eleven of them?”

  The Queen smiled again and gestured for a pair of goblins to carry something up to the platform, covered like May was in a black cloak. The goblins pulled the black cloth off, revealing a golden harp with a statue of a woman on it.

  The harp that Jack had brought back. The day he’d died.

  “Let’s try that again,” the Queen said, and again, the blue lightning circle opened.

  The voices outside raised once more, but this time, the Queen laid a hand on the harp, and the statue of the woman opened her mouth and began singing as well. Only . . . it wasn’t just one voice. Or several. It sounded like thousands, all incredibly off-key, all overpowering the voices beyond the palace.

  If the goblins hadn’t been holding May’s arms, she would have covered her ears. The goblins didn’t look too happy either.

  The Queen stroked the harp’s head, and the thousands of voices quieted. The blue lightning circle, meanwhile, was still going strong.

  “Melodies are such a fragile thing,” the Queen said, her hand still resting on the harp. “They can be disrupted so very easily.”

  “He’s still got an army out there,” May said, feeling much less confident than she had a second ago.

 
; A sudden wind behind her almost knocked May off her feet, and she turned to find something large, green, and toothy beating its wings slowly as it landed behind her on the platform. An enormous green dragon stared down at her as if it wanted to bite her in half, while its rider, wearing black armor with a white circle on it, saluted the Queen.

  The dragon had landed, but the wind hadn’t stopped. May looked up, then more up, and up some more, the dragons extending farther than she could see, at least with the goblins holding her down. A few spat fire into the sky ahead of themselves, either too excited or too ready to fight to hold themselves back.

  Phillip’s armies, fairy queens, and mermen wouldn’t have a chance.

  The Queen turned to the assembled human lords and ladies, a smaller group than she’d seen only a few days before. “Behold!” she shouted, and her voice echoed far beyond the palace walls. “Look upon the reward for any who would defy me! The pitiful armies of the free kingdoms have gathered, yet they are helpless before my dragons! And while they flee for their lives, I shall send my armies into each of their kingdoms to take over while their protectors are gone. Any living free-kingdom soldier will return to find their kingdom under my rule!”

  “Princess,” said a voice from May’s side, and she turned to see the Wolf King now holding her arm where a goblin had been.

  “I’m already going to be executed,” May whispered. “Isn’t that enough for one day? Now I have to put up with you, too?”

  The wolf narrowed his eyes. “I have given some . . . thought. To what you did for me.”

  “Now I ask you, my former subjects and present revolutionaries . . . do you still question me? Do you still wish to follow this girl down her path toward death?”

  “Better tell me quick,” May whispered. “Sounds like I’m not going to be around for long stories.”

  “I owe you,” the Wolf King growled low. “You did indeed save my Beauty and return her to me, whether you knew it or not. I cannot stay here, not anymore. I cannot let the Queen know that Beauty is free once more, so I’m leaving. And without my nose, she’ll be unable to track me down.”