[Half/Time 01] Half Upon a Time (21 page)

Even as Jack frantically tried to come up with a plan, May clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I got this one,” she said confidently. The princess stepped past him, then raised her hand, palm out.
“Stop!”
she roared.

Immediately, the group of goblins stopped in their tracks. Jack stared at them in surprise for a second, then realized that
the creatures most likely didn’t know what May planned to use that hand for. After all, the goblins knew as well as anyone that palms could be awfully dangerous in the wrong hands, so to speak. If she was a witch or magician of some kind, she might be casting a spell.

“What’re you doing?” Jack whispered out of the side of his mouth.

“Getting us inside,” May responded in the same way. “Hear me, Creepy Little Monster-Thingers!” she shouted to the goblins. “Take us to your leader! Take us to Malevolent! We have important information for her!”

The goblins looked at one another, then smiled. One of the larger ones took a step forward. “Gladly,” it said.

“Well,
good!
” May responded. “It’s nice to finally meet some reasonable people here!”

“But first,” the bigger goblin said, “we’ll take you to the dungeon. You’ll see our Lady, all right … in a few hundred years.”

And then the goblins attacked.

Jack slowly opened his eyes to find himself in a strangely familiar place. Behind him, the leaves of a large oak tree filled the sky, while golden grasses waved in the gentle wind at his feet. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t remember what this place was, or how he’d gotten here. The last Jack remembered, the goblin guards had swarmed over them from every side. One had lifted its sword and brought it down …

Oh, right, brought it down straight onto Jack’s head.

Jack felt around the back of his skull, then winced as he found the spot the goblin had hit. It didn’t hurt, exactly; it was more like a memory of a pain. Well, at least that explained why he had his eyes closed—the creature had knocked him unconscious. But hadn’t
it been nighttime before? Here, the sun burned high in the sky, causing the grasses to glow a calming green.

How exactly had he gotten from Malevolent’s castle to this field? And why was it so hard to think clearly?

“I see you’ve returned,” said a man in a blue cloak on Jack’s right. As Jack turned, the memory of his last dreamlike encounter with the man flooded into his foggy consciousness. Unfortunately, just as it had the last time, the situation seemed much too surreal to take very seriously.

“That’s right,” Jack responded, finding himself oddly happy despite a nagging feeling that something was deeply, deeply wrong.

The knight leaned over and looked closely at Jack, as if the man were peering right into him. “Your training progresses slowly,” he said. “I assume there is no cause for worry?”

“Worry?” Jack asked, confused. “Training?”

“You haven’t been making use of your sword as you should have, Jack,” the knight said with a touch of disappointment. “That sword is a powerful tool; it can help to awaken the world around you, if you let it.”

“The sword?” Jack furrowed his brow. “But the sword … it’s …” He struggled with what he wanted to say, but in the end just gave up and went for the obvious. “It’s bad.”

The knight laughed. “It certainly has the possibility for evil, I’ll grant you that. And most of the Eyes did use their weapons for horrible deeds. But the sword can be used for great good, in the hands of the right person.” He glanced momentarily at Jack. “I do hope I haven’t chosen wrongly. Still, you must be careful. There are those in the world who would turn you from your path.”

“My path?” Jack asked. Why was it so hard for him to think here?

The knight nodded. “You walk a dangerous road, my young friend. Few have the courage to walk it, and all before you have failed, including myself. You are our last chance.”

“Chance?” Jack asked. “It’s … hard to think.”

“You will get used to it as time passes,” the knight said. “This is a realm of great potential, yet you haven’t reached the point where you might take advantage of it. For now it provides a convenient place for us to meet. Soon, it shall be more … when you are
ready
.”

Jack didn’t even bother asking about any of that, instead going back to a previous question. “What … what is my path?”

The knight raised an eyebrow, then leaned in close. “Why, just what you believe it to be. You are on a quest to save Snow White, are you not?”

Jack nodded slowly.

The knight smiled. “I cannot think of a more important one,” he said. Abruptly, his smile vanished. “However, you must heed this word of warning—”

Before the knight could finish, a sharp pain struck Jack in the spot where the goblin had hit him. He hissed in pain, then looked to the knight. “I … I think I might be waking up now.”

The knight looked concerned. “Oh, you
are
waking up,” he said. “Yet not nearly fast enough. And the Wicked Queen
knows
you, Jack. She has always known, and she awaits your arrival. However, she doesn’t yet realize that I have found you first. And you must keep that from her, Jack, above all else. If she learns that I am training you, all will be lost. There would be nowhere you could run, nowhere you could hide from that woman.”

And with that, the knight sat back against the tree. As Jack tried to fight through the fog in his head to ask something, anything, about what the knight had just said, the grass and sunlight began to swirl around in front of his eyes. Faster and faster they whirled until the bright colors drained away, leaving just the dark unknown of his unconsciousness, tainted by a throbbing pain at the back of his head.

“Jack?” someone whispered.

Jack groaned but didn’t open his eyes. The pain in the back of his head pounded away, threatening to magnify dramatically if he so much as cracked his eyelids. And what if he
did
open his eyes, and he was still in a meadow?

No, that had been a dream … but where had the dream actually started? Had he dreamed the entire beanstalk mess? Maybe he could just go back to sleep and let this whole nightmare end on its own.

“Jack!”
the voice whispered again, louder this time. “Wake up!”

“I knew you were gonna say that,” Jack grunted, then cracked his eyes open. Instantly he closed them: Some kind of floating
globe of light was shining right in his face, blinding him. More cautiously this time, he tilted his head to the side and opened his eyes again.

Not only was there a light but bars, too. Big metal bars. They’d been thrown in jail by the goblins, as promised. At least the monsters were reliable.

“May?” Jack asked, reluctantly pushing himself to a sitting position. He glanced around his cell and quickly spotted her staring at him from the next cell over, just to the left of the floating will-o’-the-wisp globe that eerily lit the cells.

“About time you woke up!” she said indignantly. “I’ve been sitting here for hours!”

“Did they hit you, too?” Jack asked, lightly rubbing the back of his head, then resolving not to do that anymore when new pain shot through his temples.

“Well, no,” May said. “They didn’t touch me.”

Jack nodded. That was something.

“I’m still annoyed, though,” May said, standing up with her hands on her hips. “I mean, what kind of guards don’t take you to the person in charge?!”

“Yeah, evil monsters not listening to you—who could have predicted that?” Jack asked, taking a quick look around his jail cell.
Greenish hay filled one corner, probably for sleeping on. Nice of his jailers to throw him onto the hard ground in the middle of the room instead of onto the hay. An old wooden bucket sat in the opposite corner, the one nearest a barred window at the rear of the cell.

“Great,” he said, shaking his head. “How do we manage to hit the worst possible outcome in every situation?”

“We’ll just talk our way out,” May said, though she didn’t sound too convinced.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Talk to who?”

“The guard, a judge, Malevolent … someone! They can’t just leave us here!”

“Oh, really?” Jack said, then nodded toward the cell on his right. May strained to see what he meant, then gasped.

“Is that a skeleton?” she said, cringing.

“Yup,” Jack said. “He probably should have tried talking his way out.”

“Don’t make me come over there,” May said, banging on the bars between them. Then she gasped suddenly, jumping backward. “Jack! I saw something moving!”

“Don’t worry,” Jack said, following her gaze. “It’s just rats. Where’s Phillip?”

“No clue,” May said. “I haven’t seen anyone but you. Well, and now that guy. And the rats.”

Jack nodded and stood up, bracing himself against the walls. The room chose that moment to sway and spin, apparently just to spite him. He shook off the dizziness and set to work.

“What’re you doing?” May asked Jack as he bent over and stared into each corner of the cell.

“There’s always one in these places, just watching for someone interesting,” he said. “They can’t resist checking out the new people. You just have to find …
aha
.” He reached into the corner with the bucket and grabbed ahold of what looked to be a long white thread. As he yanked on it the thread pulled up a tassel, which topped a funny little red hat.

Which, in turn, sat on top of an imp’s tiny, pointed head.

Jack dragged the creature out of its hiding place and held it in midair.

“Let me go!”
the imp screamed, desperately clutching its red hat with little, white-knuckled fists as it kicked at Jack with all its strength. The imp’s furious face scrunched up as tightly as it could, considering its beard was tucked into its bright blue pants, a color that happened to go nicely with its shockingly goldenrod tunic.

Jack held the imp out at arm’s length, both to keep the creature from biting him and to avoid the smell. Maybe the corner with the waste bucket wasn’t the smartest place to live.

“Release me!” the imp said, struggling even more viciously.

“No,” Jack said simply. “You’re going to help us first. I’ll let you go when you agree to free the princess there.”

“Oh, a princess!” the imp said, immediately stopping its struggle with a big grin. “Put me down, let me get a look at her!”

Jack smiled. “I’ll put
you
down, but your hat’s mine, just in case you’re thinking about running.” He jerked his arm, ripping the hat off the imp’s head and tossing the little creature to the floor. Before it even hit the ground, the imp started screaming obscenities, its face an unnaturally bright purple, but Jack just shrugged.

“I’m keeping your hat until you get her out of here,” he said calmly.

The imp stopped swearing. “I’ll help her out of here all right …” A smile slowly made its way over the imp’s beady little face.

“Again, no,” Jack said. “You’ll put her out there on the floor, right outside our jail cells. You will not alert the guards or do anything else to put her in danger. Also, you will not turn her into a frog or shrink her to the size of a mushroom. You will put
her outside the cell without changing or hurting her in any way. Do we understand each other?”

The imp stamped its foot. “You humans have become far too clever to be any fun.” Then it smiled again. “But what about you, fine sir? You said you would give me my hat back if I freed her, yet you’ll still be stuck in this dank, dreary cell! What deal will you strike for your
own
freedom?”

“No deal,” Jack said, his eyes narrowing. “She’ll find a way to get me out.”

The imp managed to look indignant. “You wound me, good sir! I could easily grant your freedom from this cell and ask nothing in return!”

“That sounds good, we’ll take that!” May yelled from the other cell before Jack could stop her.

Jack groaned all the way down to his feet. “Oh,
May
,” he said, shaking his head.

“Deal!” the imp said, jumping forward to seize May’s hand, which it pumped furiously up and down. “And now, I shall grant his freedom, yes, and for no price! However …”

The imp snapped its fingers, and suddenly Jack was hanging in midair outside the castle, a few feet from the barred window and hundreds of feet above the ocean below.

Jack glanced around fearfully and swallowed hard. The rest of the castle was below him; he was hanging outside the very top of the tower in the tail of the dragon. Apparently, the lit window they’d seen from the ground had been the jail.

“Jack!”
May screamed from inside the tower.

The imp’s eyes burned with greed as they stared at the princess. “Let’s just say that if you want me to
not
release him at this point, milady, we’ll have to make a second deal.”

May grabbed the imp by its white hair and smashed its head straight into the bars of her cell over and over.
“Get him back in here!”
she screamed.

The imp howled in pain. Outside, Jack abruptly dropped a few feet. As Jack shouted in surprise May dropped the imp, who instantly collected itself.

“That’s a no-no, milady,” the imp said, a cold gleam in its eyes. “Wouldn’t want me to lose concentration and drop our hero boy, now would we?”

“What do you want!” Jack yelled from outside. “What’s the deal?!”

The imp jumped up to the windowsill. “I’m a creature of few desires, good sir,” it said. “Why, I’d be perfectly satisfied with, say, both your arms.”

Jack shook his head in disgust. The imp shrugged, and Jack dropped a few more feet, making him yell out again despite himself.

This really wasn’t going well at all. “What else?!” Jack said, trying to keep his voice calm but failing miserably.

The imp thought about it for a second. “You could hand over that pretty set of teeth,” it said. “Or an ear … an ear and an eye!” Its eyes lit up all of a sudden. “
Oooh,
I’ll take every other word from the princess’s tongue! That would serve me
quite
well! One can never have too many words, after all!”

Jack shook his head again, and this time dropped out of sight of the window, coming to a stop about halfway down the dragon’s tail. May screamed his name, but he waited to respond until he could hear her over the sound of his heartbeat. “I’m okay!” he yelled finally. “You know, relatively! I’m actually a little scared for some reason!”