Once Upon the End (Half Upon a Time) (19 page)

CHAPTER 39

S
now White?” Jack said.

“Her body is poisoned,” the Charmed One said, his voice cracking. “The poison keeps her mind from returning. Some mixture of the Queen’s, deliberately keeping Snow alive yet unable to live. Beyond cruel.”

“So we just need the counterspell or whatever.”

The knight opened his mouth, but no words emerged. Finally, he whispered, “There is none.”

“There’s
always
a counterspell,” Jack argued, his hope fading. “That’s how these things work. Magic can always be undone.”

“In her cruelty, the Queen did create an antidote,” the knight said. “Me. She created the poison to only be cured by a kiss from Snow’s true love. And then she killed me with my own sword.”

Though the knight had hinted at that, Jack still went cold at the idea that the sword he held had killed the man in front of him. “But . . . how is it that you’re here, then? You know, I meant to ask you that, but there always seemed to be more important things going on—”

“You . . . meant to ask me?” The Charmed One looked confused. “But we have not met before now.”

Jack shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here arguing pointless points if you’re dead. Let’s get back to the important questions, like how can you exist here in this place if you’re dead?”

The knight pointed at his sword. “You really know so little about the sword and its power? I’m surprised an Eye would be so ill-educated.”

“I’m a surprising guy sometimes.”

“Did the Queen tell you nothing of her bargain?” the Charmed One said. “Did she not share how she came into possession of these swords?”

“Let’s assume I haven’t heard the story in a while. But how about the short version? My grandfather’s probably not happy with how long I’ve been out.”

The Charmed One seemed confused again, then shrugged. “The Queen had often explored other realities. Worlds with magic similar but different . . . even worlds without magic. One in particular she thought might make a safe retreat if ever she needed to flee.”

“I’ve seen it; it’s nice,” Jack said, not really wanting to think about that.

“But while exploring, someone met her between realities, another explorer like herself, someone else looking for knowledge. Though while the Queen wanted knowledge to use as power, this man sought knowledge for its own sake.” The knight seemed to be staring off into the space, as if he were imagining the man. “The Queen spoke of him as having two pet ravens, one on each shoulder. That was what gave her the idea for her familiar, in fact. This explorer carried a spear and rode a horse with sixteen legs—”

“Seems a little excessive—”

“And when this traveler heard of the Queen’s Mirror . . . he wanted nothing more than to speak to it. And the Queen agreed but traded the Mirror’s knowledge for something equally as important to this traveler: one of his eyes.”

“AGH!” Jack said, trying to sum up his feelings in as simple a sentence as possible.

“The Queen claims that the traveler had but three questions for the Mirror, then left with a patch covering his missing eye.” The Charmed One gave Jack a look. “And before you ask, I don’t know the questions.”

“I
didn’t
ask.”

“The Queen took this man’s eye and fashioned it into the swords we—”

“NO.”

“Wield, and each sword—”

“NO!”

“Much like the traveler, thirsts for knowledge. The magic each sword contains—”

“I AM NOT HOLDING SOME GUY’S EYEBALL!”

“Was given to it by the Queen, imparted to each sword individually. But each sword also contained everything that this man had seen. This is how each sword knows how to bend light past its user and move us through time faster than we might normally move on our own. This traveler had learned such things, and his eye had seen them—”

“I’M SERIOUS HERE. I’m not touching some guy’s EYE—”

“But each sword also learns from its user.” The Charmed One put a hand on his own sword. “And mine has learned well. I even managed to replace the Queen’s powers within the sword so that she could not listen through it, nor use my sight as her own. But putting so much of myself in the sword has resulted in this.” He waved his hand around bitterly. “I have moved on, the important parts of me, but the remnants . . . the part of me the sword knew . . . the sword can still access that part of me from the beyond.”

Jack put his hands up. “WHOA. So not only do I have some guy’s eyeball on my back, but it also has the essence of a dead guy in it? Do you understand why I’m having some issues with this? Also, how big was this guy that this thing could be part of his eye?!”

“He was quite large, I’m told,” the Charmed One said, and Jack thought he saw the hint of a smile.

“You better not be enjoying this,” Jack warned him.

The Charmed One sighed. “I am afraid that I cannot help you with your task of ending the Queen’s reign.”

“NO,” Jack said. “If I have to carry this thing around with me, it’s going to be of some use. If you can be in here and you’re dead, then Snow White can stop on by too. And if I get the two of you together in here, then you can do the whole kissing thing and wake her up, right?”

The Charmed One paused. “I . . . do not know. Such a thing would require months of training—”

“I have months. I’m already six months in the past—”

“And could very well leave you as weak as a babe, unable to defend yourself.”

“That’s pretty much my usual day too.”

The Charmed One looked more hopeful than Jack had ever seen him. “I would of course be willing to try. If you were to attempt such a thing, to allow me to see Snow once more—”

“Let’s not give me more credit than I deserve,” Jack said. “I’m just trying to un-Wicked a Queen. But yes, that’d be a nice side benefit. So where do we start?”

“You’ll need a place where you can be alone for the training,” the Charmed One said. “No distractions, no other thoughts. I have an idea of somewhere you could go—”

The Charmed One gestured and showed Jack an image. Jack shrugged. “Seems a bit run-down but as good a place as any.”

“I would truly owe you, my friend,” the knight said.

“Just . . . try to talk some sense into me next time we meet,” Jack said. “I’m going to be pretty annoying and not want to listen. But sometimes, you just have to jump for it.”

“I . . . don’t know what that means.”

“You’ll see,” Jack said, then woke himself up, leaving as quickly as possible after his victory.

He was finally able to out-vague the Charmed One!

CHAPTER 40

J
ack 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

T
ime 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 him 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.