Once Upon the End (Half Upon a Time) (18 page)

CHAPTER 36

Q
uite the inspiring speech,” said a man in a large black cloak as the goblins led May back to her cell. The goblins froze in place as the Wolf King stepped in front of May, then ran off as he dismissed them.

“Oh yeah?” May said. “Inspiring enough for you to change sides?”

The Wolf King laughed his low growly laugh. “What did you hope to accomplish?”

May glared at him, then sighed. “I have no idea. But I couldn’t just join her. I
couldn’t
.”

“Better than you have tried before,” the wolf told her. “And it almost worked. But sometimes it’s even worse when you get that close, only to fail.”

Behind them, screams echoed in the throne room, and swords clashed against swords. The goblins had pulled her out as everything had descended into chaos, but it wouldn’t last long, she knew. Not long—

And then the Queen’s voice rose above all others, and everything went absolutely silent. “Perhaps I should get you to your cell,” the Wolf King said, and gestured for May to follow him.

“Give me back my weapon,” May pleaded with him. “The one you took, back at Malevolent’s castle. She was convinced it would help take the Queen down!”

The wolf just looked at her. “You have no idea what you had there.”

“I had the Fairest, whatever that meant.”

“Do not
speak
of her!” the Wolf King growled. “You know nothing of what you speak!”

“. . . Her?”

The Wolf King pushed her against one of the hallway’s stone
walls, flashing his teeth at her, despite still being in human form. “That was no
weapon
—that was a dream
and nothing
more!”

May glared right back. “Are we talking about metaphors here? Because you’re really going to have to be specific. I can’t tell what’s literal and what’s not with you people.”

The wolf growled again and pushed her back into the hallway. “Never speak of her again.”

“You keep saying ‘her,’” May said, stopping in place. “The Fairest . . . she’s a person? The fairest one of all . . . oh wow, that’s not the name, that’s a title. The most beautiful person in the world . . . we’re talking about Beauty, like in ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ aren’t we?”

“Do not speak of this further!”

May’s eyes widened. “You’re the Beast!”

The wolf bared his teeth again. “What
I
am is none of your concern!”

He pushed her through a door and into a more brightly lit room, surprising two goblin guards who’d been sleeping in their chairs. The Wolf King growled at both, then pulled one of the five cell doors open and pushed May inside.

“I rescued your Beauty, didn’t I?” May shouted at him.

“She was never real!” the Wolf King roared. “She was only a dream! The
only
way someone could love me was in a dream!”

“A dream you loved too?” May asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“And what do you think the Queen would do if she knew?” the wolf sneered. “My dream love was taken from me once. What lengths do you think the Queen would go to in order to hold Beauty over me once more?”

“Whatever it took,” May said softly.

The wolf just glared at her.

“It’d still be worth it, though,” May said. “You know, if you really did love her. Dream or not.”

The Wolf King roared, banging a fist against the cell, then turned and walked toward the door.

“You’re welcome for saving her!” May yelled after him. “See you at my execution!”

“QUIET!” one of the goblin guards yelled at her, suddenly a lot braver now that the wolf was gone.

“Oh yeah?” May said, spreading her arms. “Come over
here
and say that!”

The other goblin stood up and smacked his sword against the bars. “He said quiet!”

May grabbed his arm and yanked it hard, bashing the goblin’s head into the bars. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back against the door while the monster squealed and the other guard just laughed. A minute later, the second goblin’s sword poked through the bars right at May’s head, and she released the first one, who straightened up and stumbled out of reach.

“I wouldn’t try that again,” the second goblin said, grinning still.

“I think she was trying for the keys!” the first goblin said. “I felt her reach for them!”

“Well?” the second goblin said, pointing at the keys on the first one’s belt. “Looks like she didn’t get them, doesn’t it? Maybe next time you’ll be even stupider and just hand them over to her.”

“Maybe if you’d been doing
your
job and watching my back, I wouldn’t have been attacked!”

The goblins continued arguing while May slowly moved the knife she’d just stolen off the goblin up into her sleeve, then settled back into the corner of the cell, waiting for her execution.

CHAPTER 37

J
ill watched from the castle walls as the biggest giant she’d ever seen picked up a tiny Prince Phillip and swallowed him. She frowned. “That seems like an odd plan.”

“You’re back just in time,” her father told her as he came up behind her. “After all the hard work is done.”

“I’m pretty terrible at sewing,” she told him, still concentrating on the last remaining giant, who now resumed his onward march toward the castle, all because he could smell her father, and probably her, honestly. Stupid blood. “What exactly was Phillip’s plan there? To give the giant indigestion?”

“I’m not spoiling anything,” her father told her, putting a hand over his eyes to cover the now-visible sun giant once again. “Though I reserve the right to say it wasn’t my idea if it doesn’t work.”

“LIAN!” shouted a voice, and Jill turned to find Penelope sprinting up the stairs to the wall. “What just happened to Phillip? The guards said he was eaten?!” The girl’s eyes were wider than Jill had ever seen, and she seemed about as awake as a normal person for once.

Several responses swam through Jill’s head, ranging from the blunt (“Yup, swallowed all up!”) to the kind (“I’m sure his death will be quick, and he won’t feel the stomach acid for very long”) to her default response (a shrug).

She shrugged, going with the classic. “Apparently he’s got a plan.”

“Plans don’t do much from inside a stomach,” Penelope said, pushing as far as she could over the wall to see better.

“He’s not even slowing down,” Jill’s father said. “This might end badly.”

“We could always run away from the castle, and he’d probably follow,” Jill pointed out.

“That’d be admitting defeat, wouldn’t it?” her father asked.

“I’m pretty sure the giant eating us both will also be admitting defeat.”

“Maybe he’ll eat you first and give me a chance to escape.”

“Spoken like a loving father.”

“Be quiet, both of you!” Penelope shouted. “How can you be so . . . callous? Phillip might be dead!”

“Probably,” Jill said. “But we have to look at the big picture. And they don’t get much bigger than that giant out there. What do we do now?”

“We wait until the last moment,” her father said. “Phillip might still come through.”

The giant sniffed loudly in the distance. “I can smell you, little thief! I’m coming for you!”

“Maybe not the
last
moment,” her father admitted.

The giant was less than a mile away now, and even if he did fall, he’d still almost reach the city. This was getting far too close, especially at the rate he was going. Yes, running would mean abandoning the city, but what had the city ever done for Jill? Also, the giant
would
probably follow them. Probably. She wasn’t sure which side of that she came down on. Neither side was particularly encouraging.

And then, the giant paused right in midstep. His foot swayed in the air, then fell back to the earth with a huge shudder. The giant’s face contorted into a very uncomfortable expression, and he grabbed his stomach as he seemed to be dealing with a loose morsel of food in his teeth, picking at it with his tongue.

“What . . .” the giant said, then stopped as his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell forward.

“He’s too close!” Jill yelled as guards all around them began to panic and run from the walls.

“No, he’s not,” her father said, grabbing her arm. “Just wait.”

The giant collapsed toward them, his mountain-high head getting closer and closer as he fell. His knees hit first, the jolt almost knocking them off the wall as the monster’s chest and head hurtled straight at them.

Well, they were going to be crushed, that was it. Jill’s last thought was that she really, really wished she’d been able to take the Wicked Queen with her.

Her father’s last thought, though, seemed to involve throwing a rope over the city wall in the direction of the descending giant’s head.

And then the head slammed into the ground maybe twenty feet away, and the resulting tidal wave of earth threw all three of them into the air. The walls began to collapse under them, and Jill grabbed Penelope as she slowed time down, avoiding any falling stones and making it to a safe spot in the wall, which just happened to be the spot her father already stood in. Of course he did.

Finally, silence took over, and Jill turned to her father, who just smiled and pointed down at the rope.

Someone was pulling on it.

Jill rolled her eyes. No. Way. There was no way. He was no Eye. He had no special training. He was just some kid. There was no way!

And then a hand appeared on the remnants of the wall, and her father reached down and helped pull Phillip up and over.

“Phillip!” Penelope shouted, and helped him as well, while Jill just shook her head. The perfect prince. “But . . . how did you survive?”

“I had it on good authority that one could grab on to the bit of skin hanging down over the throat of a giant,” Phillip told her as Jill held her nose. Being eaten did
not
smell good. “And then it was just a matter of jumping at the right moment.”

“I may have helped him with that,” Jill’s father whispered to her, and she rolled her eyes again.

“But how did you kill the giant?” Penelope asked.

Phillip reached into a pouch on a shoulder strap and pulled out a shiny-looking apple, with a guilty-looking smile. “I figured these should come to some use,” he said.

“That’s one of the Wicked Queen’s apples,” Jill said, her eyes going wide in surprise. “How many did you feed him?!”

“Just one,” Phillip said with a shrug. “I only had the two, but apparently they are stronger than you would think!”

Penelope laughed, and Jill even smiled. It was hard to hate someone who smelled so horrible.

And then, tiny hands pulled themselves up the rope, and a golden fairy appeared over the side of the wall. “Finally!” she said.

“Gwentell!” Jill shouted, and retrieved the dirty, shaken fairy. “Where did
you
come from?”

“Your horrible, stupid brother left me in the giant’s castle!” she shouted. “I had to ride along with him the entire way back here!”

“What’s she saying?” Jill’s father asked her.

“Same sorts of things,” Jill told him. She bent down to whisper in the fairy’s ear. “Jack . . . he died, Gwentell. The Queen killed him.”

The fairy looked at her in shock, then snorted. “No, he didn’t.”

Jill gave her an odd look. Did she know? “What do you mean, no he didn’t? I saw it happen.”

“Eh,” Gwentell said. “He’s fine. Trust me, I’ve seen that man-child make it out of things that should have killed him a hundred times over.” She brushed herself off, then gently flew up to Jill’s shoulder. “Now, what’s next?”

Jill smiled, then turned back to Phillip. “By the way,” Jill said, “I did what you asked. The Sea King is on his way. He’s marching his sharks and squids and everything over land and will meet us there.”

“The fairy queens have decided to help us too,” Penelope said, smiling at Gwentell. “They’re on their way as well.”

“Captain!” Phillip shouted, and a moment later the captain of the guard picked his way up the collapsed section of wall where Jill and Penelope had been standing moments earlier.

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Gather anyone you can find,” Phillip told him. “We’ll need an army, if we can find one.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” the captain said. “But . . . for what?”

“We are going to attack the Wicked Queen’s castle,” Phillip told him. “We’ll start marching at dawn!”

“Might as well get wiped out all at once instead of dragging it out,” Jill murmured, and the fairy snorted.

CHAPTER 38

S
o wait,” Jack’s grandfather said as he absently pounded away on the contents of the Queen’s wooden heart box with a large hammer, frowning at the lack of progress. “How did the Wicked Queen come back? You skipped over that part. No one’s heard anything from her in over a decade.”

“We may never know the full truth of that,” Jack said, turning around so his grandfather couldn’t see him blush. “But that’s not really the point. I need to figure out a way to stop that heart, Grandpa, and nothing I’ve tried has worked.”

“If you know what’s going to happen, why don’t you just go stop it before it can?” his grandfather said.

Jack shook his head. “I got a bunch of headaches trying to figure that out already. If I changed things so the Wicked Queen wasn’t freed, then I’d never need to go to Punk to arrive here when I do, which means I wouldn’t be there to stop it, which means I’d go again, and on and on.” He grimaced. “I need to make sure this sticks. And that means I need to wait until the point I left.”

“So I probably shouldn’t be doing this,” his grandfather said, still hammering the heart.

Jack shrugged. “I’d be a lot more worried if I thought there was a chance of it working.”

“Well, I’d suggest something from my bag of magical curiosities, but I just gave those to you—the younger you,” the old man said, then gave Jack a suspicious look. “You still have them, right?”

Jack coughed. “Oh, I’m sure I gave them back to you or something in the future, unlessIlosttheminacollapsingcastle. Anyway, they’re not here now. Any other suggestions?”

“I missed a big part of that sentence, but fine,” his grandfather said. “I still can’t believe you went over to the evil side.”

“It’s not the evil side!” Jack said. “I mean, it is, but I had to get close to the Queen if she was going to send me to Punk so I could steal her heart.”

His grandfather glared at him. “You’re just like your uncle. And look where that got
him
.”

“Where exactly did it get him?” Jack asked. “I actually have no idea who my uncle is. My father wouldn’t talk about him—”

“For good reason,” his grandfather said. “Even your fool father had more sense than that idiot. But enough about your mother’s less-than-intelligent family.
She
was a sweet girl, even for an Eye. Speaking of, can’t you just use that fool sword of yours?”

Jack opened his mouth to say something, then closed it quickly. Whoops. He hadn’t exactly tried that. And it
had
cut through frozen dragon’s breath six months ago, when he’d rescued . . . uh, accidentally freed the Wicked Queen. “I was going to do that next,” he said, then pulled his sword out and gave it a try.

The heart went right on beating, but the sword’s glow reminded him of someone he needed to talk to.

He gently placed two fingers on the sword, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the Charmed One.

A second later, his body collapsed to the floor, and he found himself sitting beneath an oak tree in the middle of a grassy field.

There, with an exact copy of Jack’s sword, was the Charmed One. Only, the sword was aimed right at Jack.

“She got to you before I could,” the knight said, circling around Jack. “I failed you, Jack, and for that, I apologize. But I cannot allow you to leave here under her control.”

“Apology accepted,” Jack said, then paused. “Wait . . . what?”

And then he realized that though the sword had come with him through time, the Charmed One apparently had not.
So . . .
the knight wasn’t in his head after all. Instead, the sword must pull him in from some . . .
other
place? Jack frowned, the whole thing giving him a headache again.

Then the Charmed One sliced through the spot where Jack’s head should have been, Jack barely dodging it, and he realized that he’d have a
bigger
headache if he didn’t pay attention.

“Well avoided,” the knight said half-approvingly. “I see she has trained you well.”

“Who, the Queen?” Jack said. “She didn’t train me, you did! You gave me this sword. You just haven’t done it yet. You will. In a giant’s mouth.”

The knight’s eyes narrowed, and he attacked again. Jack blocked with his sword and leapt away, trying to force the man to talk to him. “You really did!” Jack shouted. “You trained me! To . . . not become this, actually. So it didn’t go so well, but—”

The knight struck again, and again Jack defended himself, then moved away quickly. “I should have found you sooner,” the Charmed One said. “I never dreamed she’d find you this early. I thought you were hidden away safely, where no one would find you!”

“Hidden me?” Jack said, and then barely dodged as the knight’s sword flew straight at his chest.

“I cannot allow this, Jack,” the Charmed One said. “If you’ve joined her, I will see your mind dead, and your body will soon follow!”

“WAIT!” Jack shouted, but nothing happened even close to that. The knight attacked again, and this time, Jack fought back. The knight swept his sword low, and Jack leapt over it, swinging out one-handed with his sword at the knight’s shoulder.

The sword passed through the knight as if he were made of air, and yet the man flinched from what looked like pain. “First blood to you,” he said.

“You’re not bleeding,” Jack told him.

The knight growled and attacked again, moving so fast that the Jack of six months ago would never have even seen a movement. But Jack of six months ago was presently galloping away on a man-eating horse.
This
Jack knew a thing or two more.

Jack concentrated, and the knight’s sword hit nothing, as Jack completely disappeared, only to reappear right behind the man. Jack grabbed the Charmed One’s cloak and yanked, pulling the man down, then drove his sword down at the man’s unprotected neck, stopping just short of touching it.

“Despite how this looks, I really don’t want to hurt you,” he told the knight. “Seriously.”

“And what exactly is it that you
want
to do,
Eye
?” the Charmed One said.

And with that, Jack let him up and concentrated, making a dreamlike wooden box appear in his hand. “I want to destroy
this
.”

The Charmed One slowly pushed himself to his feet, his face full of shock. “That’s . . . the Queen’s lost heart. But where did you—”

“I found it lying around in some other world,” Jack told him. “The one the Queen fled to after . . . well, you know that story better than I do.”

The knight nodded. “So . . . you tell the truth, or some version of it. You couldn’t be her creature; she would never risk her heart being found. And now you want to destroy it but don’t know how?”

“Not so far. That’s why I came to you.”

The Charmed One nodded. “While I rejoice that you still fight for the good, I also despair for your quest. Only one other ever learned the secret of the Queen’s cursed heart, and she told no one.”

“So?” Jack said. “Who is it? I’ll go find this woman and get some answers.”

The knight sighed. “You may have a bit of trouble with that. You see, the one I refer to was poisoned by the Queen before she could share her discovery.” He smiled sadly. “And given that the only one who can wake this woman, me, is currently dead, I’d say we might have some problems with this.”