Twice Upon a Time

by James Riley

  The wolf turned to May, who had her hands up as if she were going to fight him, despite the tears still streaming from her eyes. “You have no idea how not a good time this is,” she said quietly. “You are not taking us anywhere, do you hear me?”

  The wolf sighed. “As the Queen commands, so shall it be.” With that, he leapt at May.

  And just as fast, the wolf fell to the ground, unconscious from the hilt of a glowing sword slamming into his head.

  May glanced up in surprise.

  So did Jack.

  Lian tossed Jack’s sword a few feet away, then bent down to check if the wolf was still breathing. She nodded. “He’ll be fine.”

  Above them the dragons began to circle, their jobs now complete, then slowly form back into a flight formation before heading off the way they’d come. Lian watched them go, Jack and May still staring at her in surprise. Finally she turned to look at them.

  “Okay, what?” she said.

  “Why that?” Jack said, waving vaguely at the wolf.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, I should expect that by now, but I always seem to give you the benefit of the doubt, and—”

  “Get to the point,” May said, her voice still quiet.

  “You’ll figure it out soon enough,” Lian said, pointing out into the still burning Fairy Homelands. “And that means it’s probably time for me to go, considering what’s about to happen.” She bent down and grabbed the Wolf King’s paws, then dragged him a short distance away. “Tell Phillip I’m impressed,” she said. “And Jack?” She smiled. “See you soon!”

  She picked up her sword, blew a familiar-looking whistle, and disappeared along with the Wolf King.

  Behind them Bluebeard groaned. “What is going on?” he said, pushing himself to his feet.

  “Perhaps I can help,” said a voice, and Phillip’s head appeared out of nowhere… just his head. And his blushing, bright red face.

  And then, like a curtain falling, the scene of a burning city fell to the ground, replaced by the beautiful, magical colors of the Fairy Homelands, completely safe and sound.

  “Where to start?” Phillip said now that his entire self was visible… his face just as red.

  CHAPTER 43

  Where to start actually fell to healing the Sea King, as his situation seemed the most urgent. As they all gathered around the merman with human legs, Jack shifted impatiently from side to side, and noticed May doing the same thing.

  “I’m waiting for something else to come along and ruin this for us,” he whispered to her as a fairy queen in all green quietly hummed over the merman, his injuries disappearing with every chorus of the song.

  “It’s a fair bet,” May said, looking at nothing. “Can you see Merriweather?”

  Jack glanced around at the other five or so fairy queens standing nearby, and shook his head. “But don’t worry. She’ll be here.”

  “Will she?” May asked without looking up. “I mean, c’mon. You really think after all this that my grandmother won’t have some way to mess with us still?”

  “She’s not your grandmother,” Jack said, shaking his head.

  “Prove it,” May said, still not looking at him.

  “I did what I did for Mariella,” Meghan told the nearest fairy queen. “I would not have brought them back here for your sake.”

  The fairy queen, a smaller woman dressed all in purple, looked at her quizzically. “Mariella? Why, her spirit returned here years ago. She’s a part of our lands now, as all fairies are once they pass on. So yes, you did this for her as well.”

  Meghan gasped, and lowered her eyes as tears began to fall. “I… didn’t know.”

  “We welcomed her home,” the purple fairy queen said. “She had been gone too long.”

  The Sea King’s eyes fluttered open, and Meghan quickly pushed past the purple fairy queen to hug her father. He smiled at the sight of her, then did something exactly the opposite when he caught site of Maarten over her shoulder.

  “YOU!” he roared, and was on his feet and leaping for Maarten before anyone could stop him.

  Anyone except the green fairy queen, who barely hummed for a second before the Sea King froze in place in midair. “Work out your conflict now,” she said, her pupil-less eyes just as creepy as Merriweather’s had been back in the Red Hood’s cottage. “We will tolerate no violence here.”

  “You shall die for what you’ve done!” the Sea King said, quieter this time, but no less dangerous.

  “See, Meghan?” Maarten said, staring at her father. “There is no reasoning with him.”

  “There is nothing to reason,” she told him, wiping tears from her eyes. “My father and I will end this war immediately, then return to the sea and never again come to land. That is how it must be. You and I must not see each other again.”

  “I will not allow that to happen,” Maarten told her, bending down on one knee. “I love you, more than myself, my kingdom, my world. I cannot bear the idea of living without you.”

  “Desperation doesn’t look good on anyone,” May whispered to Jack, who nodded.

  “You just don’t get it, do you, Maarten?” Meghan said.

  “We are in your debt,” the green fairy queen said to Phillip, Jack, and May, pulling them away from the domestic drama that was both more interesting and more disturbing than it should have been. “If there is any way that we might repay you—”

  “YES,” May said. “Tell me who I am.”

  “WAIT!” Bluebeard shouted, and strode over to them. “Ye made a deal with me, girl. And I aims to collect!”

  May’s eyes went wide. “You can’t possibly be serious! This was what we spent the last three months doing, trying to find this place just so I could find out who I am!”

  “Be that as it may be,” Bluebeard said, “ye made a deal with me to save yer Little Eye here. Ye promised me any possession ye might own, and the fairy queen here just offered ye a favor. I want that. Ye cannot say no.”

  May stared at him in shock, her mouth moving but nothing coming out. The fairy queen tilted her head, then looked to May, who finally nodded, the hardest gesture Jack had ever seen anyone perform.

  “Your favor, pirate?” the fairy queen asked, boring her white eyes into Bluebeard.

  Bluebeard bored his eyes right back. “Turn me into a merman. For good.”

  About fourteen people gasped, it felt like, but that might have just been due to the volume of the gasps of Jack and May. Phillip looked speechless, while Meghan and her father looked doubly so.

  “Meghan,” Maarten said, turning to the mermaid. “Fifty years ago you gave up your entire life to be a part of my world, and to be with me. And after your father took you back, I sailed out to find the Sea Witch, hoping to do the same for you. But I found neither you nor her. Your sisters, they tried to help, but Pan found us, and—”

  “You wanted to do that… for me?” Meghan said.

  “I love you,” he said. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do!”

  The fairy queen looked between the two of them. “You might not realize what you are asking. You will give up your humanity, your kingdom, your—”

  “Yes, to whatever you say,” Maarten said. “There is no price too high.”

  The fairy queen nodded. “Then so be it.” She began to sing, a strangely soothing melody rising from her throat. Maarten turned to Meghan and her curiously quiet father in expectation… then doubled over in pain.

  “What… ?” he said, then gasped as he hit the ground hard, his legs no longer supporting him. The reason for that quickly became obvious. As Jack watched with a combination of horror and fascination, Maarten’s legs pushed together, his pants turning bright orange and scaly as his lower half turned into a fish.

  “It is done,” the fairy queen intoned. “You shall forevermore be a merman, with all that entails.”

  Meghan bent down to his side, a sympathetic smile on her face. “I know that pain, Maarten. I felt it mysel
f. You truly intend to live below the ocean with us? And place yourself under the rule of my father?”

  The Sea King’s eyes went from enraged to gleeful, and for the first time Jack saw the monarch smile.

  Maarten watched that smile with a certain dread, then nodded. “Of course. I would have done so fifty years ago—”

  “You know that things can’t just go back to that point,” Meghan told him. “Mako loves me, and I have a life.”

  “I just want to be a part of it,” Maarten said. “And whatever comes, comes.”

  Jack looked from Maarten to Meghan, then over at Phillip, who was watching the proceedings with a joyful smile. This was the prince’s world, sacrificing everything for love, doing the noble deed, giving up yourself for others.

  Doing everything that Jack couldn’t. Yet here he was, like Maarten, trying to turn himself into something he wasn’t ever since he’d met May. He was no Phillip. He was no prince. And there was no fairy queen spell that could make him one.

  “If that is all?” the fairy queen asked, then turned without waiting for an answer and strode toward the city. Maarten tried to speak again, but a melody rose up around him, Meghan, and the Sea King, and all three began to float into nothingness.

  “Don’t forget to call off that invasion!” May shouted.

  “We will,” Bluebeard said. “But first we’ll join human and merman soldiers to wipe out the Queen’s goblin army.” He laughed crazily.

  “Good luck, Captain,” Jack said as they disappeared.

  The laughter stopped abruptly. “I’m gonna need it,” Bluebeard shouted at him, then winked.

  The pirate monkey realized that he was being left behind, and made a mad dash for his captain but was too late. Just like that, they were gone.

  And just like that, someone else showed up.

  “YOU JUST ABANDONED ME HERE TO BE BURNED BY DRAGONS?!” a tiny golden fairy screamed in Jack’s ear.

  “Oh, my fairy!” May shouted, grabbing the angry fairy and hugging her tight.

  Meanwhile the pirate monkey dejectedly scrambled over to climb up on May’s shoulders. The monkey and fairy stared at each other, backing away slowly, before the fairy took off and flew over to hide in Jack’s hair. The monkey stuck out its tongue at her.

  “Oh, GREAT,” May said, yanking at the monkey again to pull him off her, accomplishing nothing.

  “Speaking of annoying,” Jack said. “Phillip, you never explained how you dispelled the curse.”

  At this, the prince went bright red and glanced around at the fairy queens and assorted lesser fairies as if he were watching for someone. “That… is a long story.”

  “PHILLIP!” someone shouted, then tackled the prince bodily and knocked him to the ground. Jack started to leap to the prince’s aid, then realized Phillip’s attacker was a dirt-covered girl about their age with reddish brown hair and a sleepy stare that, combined with her dazed grin, didn’t exactly scream danger.

  “This… is my long story,” Phillip said simply.

  CHAPTER 44

  I’m Penelope,” the girl said after all the tackling was done. She shook Jack’s and May’s hands, each step she took a bit more certain than the previous. It was as if the girl had just woken up after a long sleep but was still pretty out of it.

  “Nice to meet you,” May said, her eyebrows telling Jack that she wasn’t exactly sure how nice it was. “And… who are you?”

  “Penelope?” Penelope said, sounding as if she were asking herself.

  “She is the, ah, cause of the spell,” Phillip said, his blush growing. “As I guessed, apparently there was a curse on this girl, that if she were to prick a finger on a spindle, she would sleep forever and curse those around her to sleep as well.”

  May’s eyes went wide, and she looked from Phillip to Penelope and back. “Oh, wow. You’re her,” she said. “Sleeping Be— Wow!”

  “Sleeping bee?” Jack whispered. “I’m glad you think it makes sense, because I’ve never heard anything make less. I mean, a spindle puts an entire city to sleep? If you’re going to curse someone, why not make it something they can’t avoid, like water, or air? Take a breath, and everyone for miles conks out, you know? A spindle? I’ve never even seen one!”

  “Uh, yes, well,” Phillip said, glancing uncomfortably from Jack and May while Penelope glanced very comfortably between the three of them. “Apparently Lian infiltrated the Fairy Homelands with just such a spindle, stabbed Penelope, then fled just ahead of the curse. The spell was so powerful, it knocked out the entire city, and you know the rest.”

  “We don’t know how you woke them all up, Phillip,” Jack said, a smile spreading over his face. For some reason he had an idea that his entire year was about to be made.

  “Yes, right,” Phillip said, apparently having trouble breathing. “Well, I… You see, to wake a sleeping girl—”

  “Princess,” Jack said. “Remember, from your story.”

  “To wake a sleeping princess,” Phillip continued, his voice cracking, “there are certain ways—”

  “My true love kissed me,” Penelope whispered to Jack and May conspiratorially.

  “He did no such thing!” Phillip objected.

  “Didn’t you kiss me?” she asked, staring up as if trying to remember. “I mean, I woke up and there you were, your face about an inch from mine, and it felt like you did—”

  “YES, I kissed you!” Phillip shouted. “But I am not your true love!”

  “The fairy queens tell me that only my true love’s kiss could have broken that spell,” Penelope said with a smile. “But do not worry. I won’t tell anyone. Well, anyone else.”

  “I don’t know, Phillip,” Jack said, clapping a hand on the prince’s and Penelope’s shoulders. “If she’s your true love, what are you waiting for?”

  Phillip seemed to have no response, but fortunately for the prince, someone interrupted them. “Young sir,” a tiny silver fairy said, shyly looking at Jack. “Merriweather wishes to speak to you.”

  “Finally!” Jack said. “So let’s go—”

  “To you,” the silver fairy said. “Not the others. She said you, and only you.”

  Jack glanced at May and Phillip, who just looked confused. Finally their golden fairy put her hands on her waist and bent over to look at Jack from his head. “If a fairy queen says go, you go!”

  Jack frowned. “I guess… I’m going,” he said. “Merriweather wants to talk to me. Just me.”

  May stepped forward, a question on her lips, but Jack just smiled at her. “I’ll find out what you need to know, May. No matter what.”

  May stopped, then smiled. She started to speak again, but instead just reached out and hugged Jack tightly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “And if you mess this up, I will never forgive you.”

  He smiled at that, then followed the growingly impatient silver fairy away down the multicolored tile path toward the center of the Fairy Homelands.

  All around him fairies buzzed happily, some singing, some chatting away, but all just happy to be alive. Somehow the mood didn’t translate as well as their words did, because Jack had never felt quite so depressed as he did right now for some reason.

  He followed the silver fairy into what looked to be some kind of elaborate organic tree-ish dwelling in the center of town, the tree growing up through crystal formations that looked just as natural as the tree, if in a different way. As soon as he walked in the entrance, though, everything changed, and he found himself in the middle of an enormous castle. He glanced out a window, expecting to see forest, but instead saw the open ocean. Because why not.

  “Um, so where’s Merriweather?” he asked as they walked farther into the castle.

  “Thank you, Auriel,” came a voice from down the hall, and the silver fairy smiled, then turned and flew away. “Gwentell, please bring your charge in.” Jack’s golden fairy, apparently named Gwentell, nodded in response, then settled herself down on Jack’s shoulder as he followed the voice down the hall.<
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  At the end of the hall, Jack found a woman in a familiar blue dress, her eerie white eyes just as disturbing as they’d been the first time he’d seen them. Still, Merriweather looked much better than the last time he’d seen her. Granted, she’d been locked in a life-and-death battle with a djinn at that point, so really anything was up from there.

  “Come with me, Jack,” Merriweather said, and Jack hurried along behind her as they walked down several hallways, passing by rooms made of gold, fire, and confusion, among other things. Finally they stopped in a room that looked to be made entirely of glass, from the chairs and the walls to the tapestries and doorknobs. Merriweather gestured, and Jack sat down in one of the glass chairs, a little surprised by how comfortable it felt.

  “Indeed,” she said, apparently agreeing with his silent thoughts. “But let us speak of what brought you here. As I told May, my obligation to her is complete. I saved you three from the Ifrit. But you… It was you who ultimately saved my life, and convinced my… sister… to rescue me. So it is to you I owe a debt, and therefore it is your questions I will answer. I owe nothing to the others.”

  “They helped save you too—,” Jack started to say, but one look from her stopped him.

  “None of that would have been necessary if any of you had been where you were supposed to be,” Merriweather said, her white eyes crackling with energy and annoyance. “This world cannot hold with such wrongness. The Wicked Queen almost destroyed our homelands and us along with them today, all because we were forced to hide Penelope here! This is not where she belongs…. None of you are where you belong!”

  “Where are we all supposed to be, then?” Jack asked. “Where is May supposed to be? That’s the reason we came—”

  Merriweather sighed. “I know but little, but I will share what I can, in payment of my debt. From what I know, May was born to a successful young merchant and his wife, loving parents both.”

  “Born… here, in our world? Because—”

  “Yes, in the lands now occupied by the Wicked Queen,” Merriweather said. “Unfortunately, her mother passed away when May was but a year old. As her father traveled far and wide to sell his wares and support his small family, he chose to remarry, giving his infant daughter a new mother, as well as two stepsisters, given that May’s stepmother had two daughters as well. While her father traveled, then, May’s stepmother began to care for her.” Merriweather paused. “Or so she would have, if May had remained with her family. Unfortunately, the Wicked Queen stole her away from her stepmother for reasons unknown to me.”