[Half/Time 01] Half Upon a Time (20 page)

Jack suddenly froze in place, but Phillip didn’t notice. “In chasing the thief,” the prince continued, “the giant rampaged across kingdom after kingdom, killing many, including my father, before escaping to parts unknown.”

“So,” Jack said as calmly as he could, “what kinds of things did the thief steal from the giant?”

“Priceless trinkets and such,” Phillip said. “A harp that sang the most perfect melodies. A bag of gold bigger than the thief’s head.”

“And a goose that laid golden eggs?” Jack said, almost off-handedly.

Phillip’s head shot up. “Why, yes! How did you know?”

Jack cringed. “I think I know who the thief was.”

“How?” Phillip said. “I would as soon bring him to justice as the giant, for both were equally to blame in my father’s death!”

“Good luck with that,” Jack said very softly. “No one’s seen my father for years.”

The entire camp went silent, and Jack found that he had some trouble breathing.

“Your … father?” Phillip said, a torment of emotions flooding his face.

“My father, yes,” Jack said, avoiding Phillip’s gaze. “Believe me, you can’t hate him any more than I do.”

“I think you might be mistaken,” Phillip said softly.

“Uh, let’s all calm down,” May said, moving between the two boys. “How could anyone know who did what so long ago?”

“My father broke into the castle of a giant who lived in the clouds,” Jack said. “He stole a magical harp, a bag of gold, and a goose that could lay golden eggs. The broken harp is still at my grandfather’s house, May. It was him.”

“Because your father stole from this giant, my father was murdered,” Phillip said, his voice very quiet.

May looked between them quickly, then laid a hand on Phillip’s arm. “Listen, how could Jack’s father even get up there? I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at them, but the clouds aren’t exactly close. Not to mention that they’re just water vapor, so you can’t exactly build a castle on them, let alone walk—”

“He climbed up,” Jack said. “He climbed up a magical plant.”

“A what?” May and Phillip said together, their confusion harmonizing nicely.

“He climbed a beanstalk,” Jack said. “He traded the family cow for some magic beans that were supposed to make him rich. Turns out they could have, given that one giant bean
could feed a family for years. My grandmother tossed them out the window, though, pretty annoyed at her son for trading away their only cow for some potentially normal beans. The next morning, there it was, a beanstalk ladder to the clouds.”

“So the giant pursued your father, ravaging whole kingdoms to find him while he hid like a coward?” Phillip sneered.

“Pretty much,” Jack admitted. “And ‘coward’ is putting it lightly. Still, that was probably the smartest thing he ever did, as it at least saved my grandmother.”

“At the price of my father’s life,” Phillip said, rising to his feet.

“Whoa!” May said, standing up too. “Phillip, none of this is
Jack’s
fault. And Jack, stop telling him all this!”

“Why?” Jack said, standing up as well. “He deserves to know. And if I were him, I’d beat me up too.”

“No one’s beating anyone up!” May said.

Phillip growled. “Of course not. Jack, I formally challenge—”

“No formal challenges, either!” May yelled. “Besides, I think you’re all missing the big picture here!”

Both boys turned to her while May grabbed Jack’s grandfather’s bag and rummaged through it. Finally, she pulled out what looked like a tiny round seed.

“Don’t you see?” she said. “We’ve got a way to get to Malevolent’s castle!”

“But—,” Phillip said.

“May, you don’t know—,” Jack said.

“Shut up!” May shouted. “I’m not going to let you two fight over something this stupid! Phillip, you can’t blame Jack for something his father did. Jack, stop trying to work out your father issues through Phillip.”

“Wait, what?” Jack said, but May didn’t let him continue.

“My grandmother needs our help, and this is how we’re going to do it!” May said, handing Jack the last of his father’s magical beans. “Now, help me dig a hole; we’re going to need to aim this just right.”

It didn’t very take long for the bean to take root in the sand below Malevolent’s castle. It took even less time for the first sprout to break through the dirt with a loud pop, startling a nearby blackbird from its sleep.

“Wow!” May said as she bent over to stare at the sprout. “That was quick! How long do you think it’ll—”

A second sprout interrupted her, popping up right between her feet. “Whoops!” she yelled, jumping backward. Jack and Phillip both stepped back a few paces as well, giving the plant more room. That turned out to be a good thing, as five more sprouts immediately broke through the sand where the teenagers had just been standing.

“How many shoots will it grow?” Phillip asked suspiciously. “The bean did not appear to be that large….”

“Four beans went all the way into the clouds,” Jack said, eyeing the shoots. “One bean should be plenty to get us up to the castle.”

“I’ll never get used to this,” May said as the sprouts grew under the moonlight. “I mean, shouldn’t it need sunlight? Right, sorry. Magic.”

As the first bean sprouts grew larger, more and more popped up through the sand, each one inching up toward the sky. Proving it was only a matter of time, the first sprout tipped over and curled right into its neighbor. Without even pausing, the two sprouts spiraled around each other, then branched off together in a third direction.

It didn’t take the other sprouts long to push their way into the mix as well, and soon a relatively thick vine made up of dozens of smaller shoots rose into the sky. Other individual sprouts still grew on their own, but most seemed to gravitate toward the larger vine.

“Maybe we should give it more room?” Jack said nervously, glancing down at the ground beneath them. There was no telling what was forming underneath the sand and might burst out at any second.

“It’s not
that
big,” May said, reaching out to touch a leaf on the larger vine as it rose quickly beyond her grasp. “Do you think we should grab on at some point?” she asked. “It’d save us the climb.”

“Perhaps we ought to wait until it has finished growing?” Phillip asked nervously, looking a bit green himself as more and more shoots twisted and wrapped themselves around the larger vine, moving like the grotesque tentacles of some foul squid.

“Why wait?” Jack said. “You’re not scared of a little plant, are you, Phillip?” He tossed a challenging look back at the nervous prince.

Phillip just glared at him. Jack smiled in response. “Fine, you wait down here,” he said. “I’ll go save Merriweather.” Quickly checking to make sure his bag and sword were secure on his back, Jack readied himself, waved to Phillip and May, then took a running jump straight at the vine.

He slammed into the plant a bit harder than he would have liked, considering he was going for an impressively easy sort of look, but at least he managed to find a fairly secure shoot to grab ahold of before he lost his grip. Jack’s feet kicked around for a brief moment before finding a shoot strong enough to stand on, but that was all he needed to hold himself up.

By the time Jack secured himself and looked back down to the beach, he found himself ten feet above May’s and Phillip’s heads. “Come on!” he shouted down to them. “You’ll miss your ride!”

May shouted in excitement, then took a running leap onto the beanstalk as well, landing much more gracefully than Jack had. Phillip hesitated, then took a deep breath and followed the princess. Jack noticed with more than a little annoyance that the prince landed on the rising vine absolutely perfectly, as if he did this sort of thing every day.

“Should we have told the wolf what we’re doing?” May shouted up to Jack.

“I think he’ll be able to figure it out!” Jack yelled. He glanced down past May and Phillip to see if he could locate the wolf from this height, but he was already higher than he’d thought and couldn’t make out much on the ground in the dark. Suddenly, Jack felt dizzy, and for a brief moment, he almost lost his grip. He quickly shook off the feeling and threw both arms around the vine, resolving not to look down again for the rest of the trip.

Unfortunately, up wasn’t looking much better, as Jack quickly realized.

“Uh-oh!” he shouted.

“What!” May said.

“I think we aimed badly!” Jack shouted back.

“Did we miss the castle?” Phillip yelled up.

“Oh, we’re going to hit it all right,” Jack said with a wince. “Just hold on! Make sure you’re secure down there!” Without waiting for a response, Jack quickly followed his own advice, wrapping stray shoots around his arms and kicking his legs through some other loops. It wasn’t much, but it was all he could do under the circumstances. Feeling a bit more secure, he glanced upward again.

As they’d seen from the beach, the castle sat on an island in the sky, an island supported by a very narrow column of stone. That meant the sides of the island hung far out over the ocean and beach, nowhere close to the supportive stone column in the middle of the island. When planting the magic bean, they’d tried to aim for the very edge of the island’s overhang, considering they would have to jump from the beanstalk to the castle.

Unfortunately, aiming a magical beanstalk wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. Instead of pulling up
next
to the overhang, it appeared as if the beanstalk was headed straight for it.

As Jack watched with growing apprehension, the first shoots reached the bottom of the overhang. Pushing up into the rock,
the shoots curled back over themselves when they couldn’t move the stone. Fortunately, those first strands didn’t have the support of the main shoot, which itself was about two seconds away from reaching the overhang.

“Brace yourselves!”
Jack shouted down as the main beanstalk connected with the cliff. Instantly the entire stalk shuddered sickeningly, shaking and vibrating all over the place. Even worse, the shaking was soon followed by a rather horrifying cracking noise from the overhang.

Small rocks began to tumble down all around Jack. He held on to the vine as tightly as he could, his eyes firmly closed as he desperately hoped that the beanstalk would just push up and around the overhang, leaving the rock intact.

Instead, the overhang decided to kill Jack’s hopes by cracking right in half with a sound like thunder. The shock of the break sent the beanstalk into brutal convulsions, shaking Jack right off the plant. As he tumbled backward his eyes opening wide in shock, his heart pounded louder in his ears than the rock breaking above him.

Fortunately, the loops around his legs held firm, and instead of falling completely off the beanstalk, Jack found himself suspended upside down over nothing. He quickly threw a hand back into the
vine, grabbed the center stalk, and jerked himself back in, just as the broken half of the overhang plummeted down past him, right through the spot where his body had been a second ago.

As Jack’s toes went numb at the thought of what had almost just happened he managed to scream out a warning to May and Phillip, knowing in his heart that he was already much too late. A second later he heard the rock explode as it hit the sand below.

“Are you
kidding
me with that?!” May shouted up at him. “Could you maybe not drop anything else?!”

“To be fair, Jack was not at fault,” Phillip said in response. “Not
this
time, at least.”

“She knows that, idiot!” Jack yelled down. “Stay close to the vine. It’s not done!”

After the largest piece broke off, smaller but no less deadly bits of rock tumbled down past Jack, each one falling with enough force to split his head open. The deadly rock shower soon slowed, then stopped completely, fortunately leaving him with nothing more than some bruises. The beanstalk, though, hadn’t stopped growing, and was pushing right up through the newly created edge of the overhang. As he rose toward it Jack watched the rock carefully, making sure he knew exactly when to jump.

“The edge of the island is on May’s side, Phillip!” he yelled down. “Both of you, watch out for it!” As he said this it occurred to him that he himself had to get to the other side of the beanstalk. Unfortunately, the thing was growing so fast, he didn’t have very much time to decide how exactly to do that. He threw a leg around to the other side of the beanstalk, quickly located a sprout that hopefully would support his weight, and stepped down.

It held. He sighed, then moved his other leg around. The first step had taken him halfway around, but the overhang had just passed right by him. As he frantically searched for another foothold with his right foot he watched the overhang fall away as the stalk continued growing.

There really was no choice. Jack sighed, closed his eyes, and threw himself off the beanstalk.

His fall ended with a shoulder-crunching landing on the overhang. The pain caused him to bite down hard on his lip, but overall, he counted himself lucky. After all, if he had missed, it was a long way down, and frankly, he had already taken far too many falls from great heights in the past few days.

Jack pushed himself to his feet just as May’s head popped up past the edge of the overhang. She smiled as she rose up and easily stepped off the beanstalk onto the overhang.

“That wasn’t too bad,” May said. Jack couldn’t bring himself to return her grin as he felt around his body to see if anything had broken. A few seconds later Phillip rose up past the overhang, stepping off just as neatly as May had.

“Quite a nice way to travel,” the prince said. Jack just shook his head and wondered what kind of supreme being would allow this sort of injustice. He started to say something, then noticed that Phillip had frozen in place and was staring at something behind Jack.

On his other side May seemed to have seen the same thing. “Yup, that’s just about our luck,” she said quietly.

Jack whipped his head around to see what she was talking about, then sighed deeply. Six lumbering goblins covered in black armor strode toward them in the moonlight. All six held swords easily as long as the goblins were tall, and all six swords were pointing at Jack, May, and Phillip.