Twice Upon a Time

by James Riley

  The fourth and fifth goblins had just enough time to start to look frightened before Jack slammed their heads together, then whipped the first one’s ax right at the smiling Wolf King’s head…

  When a black-gloved hand reached out and grabbed it, mere inches from the wolf’s face.

  “Not bad,” Lian said, her smile the only thing he could see under her Eye cloak. “But not that great, either.”

  She disappeared, reappearing right in front of Jack before he even saw her move. She grinned right in his face, then slammed her fists into his stomach over and over, faster than he could follow. One last kick to his chest sent Jack flying backward to slam into the Piper’s tree stump.

  And just like that, time returned to normal and the girl was gone.

  “JACK?!” May shouted in surprise while Phillip stared at the five goblin bodies that had fallen to the ground in front of them.

  “Wasn’t that interesting,” the wolf said smugly. “You have gotten better, little fake Eye, but you’re still nothing compared to the real thing.”

  “Brave words,” Jack said, desperately sucking in air, “from a big bad wolf… who’s hiding behind goblins and little girls. Why don’t you… trot yourself over here and see how good I am?” Jack took a deep breath. “Maybe give me a minute or two first, though.”

  The wolf laughed like rocks tumbling against one another. “You humans always think pride is so important. You’re faster than me, I’ll grant you that. But how will your speed fare when you’re overwhelmed by my army?” He nodded, and hundreds of goblins, trolls, and ogres surged forward, their hungry howls calling out into the night.

  “The cave!” Philip yelled, grabbing May and pulling her toward Jack.

  “The one that all those children never came out of?!” Jack yelled.

  “We do not have much choice!” Phillip said, rushing in. “We can make a stand from within!”

  “A stand against all that?!” May shouted, grabbing Jack’s arm as he pushed himself to his feet, almost yanking him off them again with the force of her pull. “Is there an aircraft carrier in there or something I don’t know about?!”

  Phillip didn’t respond as he led them into the cave, Jack’s sword still flickering oddly but giving them enough light to see by as they pushed their way in deeper. Behind them the monsters hesitated at the mouth of the cave, only to surge forward once again at the Wolf King’s orders. Jack struck out with his sword at the walls, and the glowing blade bit into the stone, huge chunks of which fell to block the way.

  Well, that was that. He’d given them a reprieve from the monsters by trapping them inside the cave. Perfect.

  “Where are we going?” Jack asked as he squeezed his way between two pillars of rock. Everything was slippery from some unknown water source, and just keeping his footing was hard.

  “Remember what the villagers in that town said,” Phillip said, still pulling May deeper into the cave in an annoying way. “The Piper stole their children away into a cave, and the children never emerged. They must have gone somewhere!”

  “Or been killed by the Piper,” May said, yanking her arm out of Phillip’s grasp as she stopped.

  Jack passed her by and grabbed her arm too, almost carrying her farther in. “The wolf must have gotten him,” Jack said as he pushed on, “but if he were in here, I’d take a murderous old musician over the monsters behind us, even with your tendency to fall for his music.”

  “If he can make me not afraid like that again, I’ll take a little murderousness,” May said, but kept moving forward.

  The cave, however, didn’t. First Phillip, then Jack and May, practically slammed into a solid rock wall just a few feet in front of the spot where May had stopped.

  The light from Jack’s sword lit the wall enough to show an intricate black outline drawn in charcoal on the wall, one of the most realistic-looking doors Jack had ever seen drawn on a cave wall. Which, admittedly, wasn’t a huge group to begin with, but still.

  “Open it!” May shouted.

  “The drawing?” Phillip asked in surprise.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were an idiot,” May said. “It’s magic, Phillip.” She shook her head in disgust, then reached out to grab the doorknob.

  Instead her hand just smacked against the flat rock.

  “I hate to side with the prince,” Jack said, “but that was seriously just amazing to watch.”

  “Perhaps there is a way to make it real?” Phillip asked.

  “Perhaps there’s a way to speed this up?!” May shouted as they began to hear goblin voices again. Apparently Jack’s cave-in hadn’t done as much slowing down as he’d hoped.

  “There’s only one way the Piper would open his cave-wall-door drawing,” Jack said, shrugging as he pulled out the pipes the wolf had left as a message on the stump. “Anyone know how to play these?”

  “I played clarinet in elementary school,” May said, grabbing the pipes. “So, no. But I’ll try anyway.” She brought the pipes to her lips and blew.

  Jack and Phillip both cringed at the resulting screech.

  “I think they’re broken,” May said.

  “Yeah, it’s the pipes’ fault,” Jack said.

  “Let me,” Phillip said, taking the pipes from May’s hand and blowing gently into them.

  This time a simple but beautiful melody filled the small room, but the drawing didn’t change at all.

  “That was even worse!” Jack lied, grabbing for the pipes himself. “Seriously, how hard can this be?”

  “They’re just ahead!” a goblin yelled from behind them.

  “PLAY!” May said, smacking the door over and over with her hand.

  Jack put the pipes to his lips and gently blew on them. At first the instrument squeaked worse than May’s attempt, but he quickly realized his error and managed to work out a simple little melody. Except, it wasn’t simple. There was something in the pipes, something just aching to be let loose, to be released into the world and fill everyone’s heads with its beautiful music—

  A horrible scraping sound broke Jack’s concentration, and the rock just to the right of the drawing of the door in front of them pushed open. Behind it, a fat middle-aged man wearing the clothes of a six- or seven-year-old child glared at them.

  “Can you stop with the horrible music, please?” he said, shaking his head. “If you wanted in, why didn’t you just knock?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Um,” May said, and glanced first at the middle-aged man, then at his clothes, and then at Jack and Phillip. “I’m not the only one seeing this, right?”

  May’s “um” just about summed it up, but their only options were creepy adult or death by monster. Jack paused, weighing both choices, then sighed.

  Death by monster would be quicker, but he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. Literally.

  “May we come in?” Jack asked the man, who was bobbing his head in boredom.

  “Why, of course,” the man said, giving him an odd look. “Everyone’s welcome in the Land of Never!”

  May stopped. “Please tell me that’s not what I think that is. ’Cause I’m not flying to the first, second, or third star on the right, I don’t care who’s behind us.”

  “Stars?” the man said with confusion. “No, I said it’s the Land of Never! Here you never grow up, you never get old, never hungry, never bored…”

  “Never wear age-appropriate clothing,” Jack muttered.

  “It’s like a dream!” the man finished.

  They glanced at the man, then at one another, and all three sighed. Crazy man it was.

  Phillip pushed May in through the stone doorway, then followed Jack a second later, and the man pulled the stone shut just as the goblin voices began shouting excitedly on the other side. They’d gotten in just in time, it sounded like.

  Jack turned to thank their savior, then lost his train of thought when he saw where they were.

  “Oh my,” Phillip said, as speechless as the prince ever se
emed to get.

  “We could just give up and stay here, you know,” May said, her voice quiet.

  Jack just nodded, not sure how serious she was, and not really wanting to find out. Because if she were serious? He had a sinking feeling he’d be perfectly willing to stay here for the rest of his life.

  “Nice, huh?” the fat man said, smiling almost shyly.

  “Nice” didn’t quite sum up the river of chocolate that several enormously fat middle-aged men and women were drinking from. “Nice” didn’t do justice to the rainbow that other chubby men and women slid down, landing with joyful shrieks in piles of fluffy white clouds. And “nice” definitely didn’t fit the mountains of gold and silver coins that a few of the men and women were tossing up and letting hit them on the head.

  “It’s everything your heart desires,” the man told them. “We have chocolate rivers, the dirt is made out of cookie crumbs, and it rains gumdrops.”

  “I hope you learned your lesson at the witch’s house,” May whispered to Jack.

  “I really hope I didn’t,” he whispered back absently. “Phillip, have you ever heard of the Land of Never?”

  “I have not,” Phillip said, watching with disgust as a four-hundred-pound man jogged by, chasing what looked to be a swarm of cakes with tiny wings flying just out of his reach. The jogging, unfortunately, was causing tiny earthquakes of fat to ripple all around the man’s overweight body.

  “Me either,” Jack said. “And I really don’t like not knowing what I’m getting into.”

  “There’s a fountain in the middle of town that shoots toys into the air, not water,” the man said, skipping forward in front of them, clearly not listening to their conversation. “Our beds tell us stories as we fall asleep. And that’s only if you want to sleep…. The sun never sets in the Land of Never if we don’t want it to!”

  “Kinda like a summer in the arctic,” May suggested.

  The man crinkled his nose. “You’re weird!”

  “You’re weird!” she shouted.

  “Shut up!” he told her, his fists balled up at his sides. “Don’t make fun of me!”

  “Then don’t come at me with all that stupid!” she yelled back.

  The man fumed, apparently trying to think of something to say in return, but finally just smiled. “Oh, well,” he said. “It’s hard to stay angry in the Land of Never. And you know the best part?”

  “The ill-fitting clothing?” May asked.

  “You never get any older!” the man said proudly. “You never grow up! We were all kids when we got here, and that was years and years ago, like thirty or forty! But we never aged a day!”

  The man dropped a hand into the chocolate river, then pulled it out and sucked on his fingers as Jack slowly backed away from him, grabbing May and Phillip as he went.

  “Um,” Jack said. “Everyone else sees a chubby older guy in his forties, right?”

  “You forgot ‘insane’ in that description,” May said.

  “Perhaps we should not remain here long,” Phillip suggested, his hand resting on his sword. “If these people truly believe they are children, there may be some magic at work.”

  “Want some?” the man asked, holding up a hand covered in chocolate.

  “I’m gonna go with ‘never,’” May said. “So… the Piper brought you all here?”

  “Yup!” the man said. “He saved us from having to grow up into mean old adults. Adults have responsibilities, he said, like paying their debts. Here there’s no responsibility at all!”

  “That’s a big word for such a little kid,” Jack told him.

  “I’m pretty smart,” the man confided.

  “I can see that,” Jack said, winking at the man. “And someone as smart as you probably knows all the ways in and out of the Land of Never, doesn’t he?”

  “Of course!” the man said, beaming. “I like to be the gatekeeper, and let in anyone who knocks!”

  “Do… a lot of people knock?” May asked him.

  “You’re the first!” he told her proudly. “And I was there waiting!”

  “That’s just the most amazing story we’ve ever heard,” May told him. “You’re the bestest! But we can’t stay. Where’s another one of those doors? Preferably one that opens in the direction that we’re going.”

  “The Eastern Coast,” Phillip told him.

  “That’s where the pirates are from!” the man said.

  “Pirates?” Jack asked. “There aren’t any pirates, not anymore. Not since the mermen started terrorizing the oceans.”

  “Of course there are pirates, stupid!” the man told him, shaking his head as he somehow irritated Jack more and more with every word. “We fight them sometimes, whenever we’re feeling adventurous! There’s never any end to the things to do in the Land of Never!”

  “That’s just a superfun story,” May said. “Now, where’s that way out again?”

  “Way out?” The man looked confused. “No, the gates only come in. Once you enter the Land of Never, you can never leave!”

  CHAPTER 8

  Let’s try that again,” May said, her voice lowering dangerously. “’Cause if I thought for a minute that there really was no way out of here, I’d kick your behind back to age seven for reals.”

  The man looked scared. “Stop being mean! I just told you, you can’t leave, so you might as well get used to it! Why would you even want to?”

  “Okay, we’re done here,” May said. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “You have plenty of time for this!” the fat man told her. “You can’t leave!”

  Jack and Phillip both had to grab May before she punched him. “We’ll just go out the way we came in.” Jack grunted as he restrained May.

  “Can’t!” the man said with a smug smile. “It’s one-way. Some of the kids tried at first, but it never worked.”

  “Where is here?” Phillip asked. He glanced up at the sky above them. “Obviously we are not in the Piper’s cave anymore.”

  “It was some kind of magic teleporting,” the man said. “Lots of doors lead here, but none lead out. Well, unless our leader says you can go, of course.”

  “Your leader?” May asked. “Is he a seventy-year-old who thinks he’s eighteen?”

  “Don’t be stupid, stupid,” the man said with a sneer, forcing Jack and Phillip to grab her again. “King Pan is a boy, just like me. But unlike me, he’s being held by big nasty pirates!” The man seemed to consider that for a second. “Hmm, maybe it’s time to go rescue him!”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jack said, still struggling to hold on to May. “We’ll rescue your king from pirates, and he’ll thank us by letting us out of the Land of Never.”

  “YAY!” the man yelled, then turned around. “Hey everybody! We’re gonna go on an adventure to rescue King Pan from the pirates! Come on!”

  All around them middle-aged adults popped out of the oddest places. Some were covered in chocolate from swimming in the river, their candy-filled stomachs rippling as they ran toward the group, squealing in joy. Two others rode up on rocking horses, the horses neighing loudly. One even dropped from the sky after flying in on a pair of wings attached to shoulder straps.

  “Good idea, Icky!” the gatekeeper said. “We’ll fly over to the pirate ship! Get more wings!”

  “Yes sir!” The man with wings said, and flew off for more.

  “Pirates!” one of the adults yelled.

  “It will be an epic battle!” shouted a second.

  “I like their monkey!” a third said.

  “Monkeys are funny!” the first one said.

  “I’ve literally never been more irritated in my entire life,” May told Jack loudly.

  “They’re just kids,” he said, then thought about what he’d said, and shuddered.

  “Who are these older kids?” one of the adult women asked.

  “We are here on an adventure,” Phillip told the woman politely. Apparently even the prince’s patience was perfect, as he seemed to
have no trouble keeping his manners in the midst of all the creepiness.

  His answer sent a wave of excitement splashing through the adults, and the questions doubled.

  “What’s the adventure?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Are you fighting any dragons?!”

  “Are you fighting any pirate monkeys?!”

  And then, worst of all, one of the adults began to sing. “Here we are, without a slip, off to attack a pirate ship!”

  “Pirate ship! Pirate ship!” two others began singing along. “Off to attack a pirate ship!”

  May looked at Jack, her eyes filled with horror.

  “Join us now, don’t be a dip, come along to the pirate ship!” the first one sang.

  “Pirate ship! Pirate ship!” the rest of the adults chimed in. “Come along to the pirate ship!”

  “OH NO YOU ARE NOT!” May exploded. “I cannot take another second of this! Stop singing!” She turned to the adults, who had gone absolutely quiet and were now all cowering pathetically in front of her. “YOU. ARE. ADULTS. You are not children anymore!”

  The adults looked at one another, one or two beginning to cry. “What are you talking about?” one said. “We’re still kids. Look at us. Look at our clothes!”

  “This, all of this? It’s not real!” May shouted. “You’re living here, pretending you’re still kids, acting like you’re still kids, acting like time is standing still, but it’s obviously not!”

  “May, there is obviously some magic—” Phillip began, but she interrupted him.

  “I don’t even care, Phillip! It’s time for these kids to grow up! They’re sitting here living a dream, but… but it’s not REAL. You can’t stay a kid forever, and you have to move on. I don’t care how happy your life is, if it’s not real, then it’s worthless!”

  Jack sighed. This wasn’t about the adults, as weird as they were. This was about May and her grandmother.

  A tear rolled down May’s face, soon followed by more, but that just made a few of the adults point and laugh. “Oh, you did NOT just do that!” May said, leaping for the nearest giggling adult.