Twice Upon a Time

by James Riley

  Jack frowned. “But why would she do that? The Wicked Queen wouldn’t bother if May weren’t important in some way. Though, I guess that does prove that the Queen and May aren’t related, at least.”

  “Does it?” the fairy queen asked. “We know not how the Wicked Queen came to know of May. Perhaps she was the merchant’s mother, and stole her granddaughter to protect her from what she knew was coming. Or could she be May’s maternal grandmother, searching for a remembrance of her daughter? I’m afraid this tells us little about the Wicked Queen’s motivations.”

  Jack sighed. “Okay, fine. So what would have happened if May hadn’t been taken? What were you going to do for her?”

  Merriweather’s eyes grew hard. “I’m afraid May’s stepmother was quite a wicked woman in her own right. Whatever money her husband had saved was quickly spent on frivolous luxuries and extravagant parties. If May had grown up under her stepmother, she soon would have been forced to serve the woman’s every whim, once the woman couldn’t afford to pay servants. Of course, May’s father would have spent more and more time away from home in an effort to support his family, eventually passing away from sickness, leaving May at the mercy of her stepmother—”

  “That’s awful,” Jack interrupted. “You’re making it sound like she might have been better off with the Wicked Queen!”

  “You forget that I was meant to play a role in these proceedings,” Merriweather reminded him. “My magic would have saved May from a miserable existence, and given her a chance at a better life.”

  “Oh, right,” Jack said, his anger dying as quickly as it had flared up. “What were you going to do?”

  “If May had lived as fate intended,” Merriweather said, “I was meant to help her win the heart of her one true love.”

  For a moment the room went absolutely silent, without even the sound of Jack’s beating heart. Then, his chest strangely cold, Jack stood up.

  “Her… her true love?” he said, his voice sounding like it was hundreds of miles away.

  Merriweather nodded. “A prince, from a neighboring kingdom. May would have then become a true princess, and lived happily until the end of her days.”

  “But… her true love?” Jack said. “Maybe… maybe she could still be happy with someone different, just as happy as—”

  “Just as happy?” Merriweather said, shaking her head. “No, nothing could possibly approach her love for this prince. A prince that most likely still awaits her.”

  “He’s… out there?” Jack asked, having trouble thinking clearly for some reason. “Waiting for her? The prince, her true love?”

  “In all probability,” Merriweather said. “Despite May missing her appointment, such love was destined from the beginning of days, and would be extremely hard to put off entirely.”

  Jack nodded, his breathing shallow. “Who… who is this prince?” he asked finally.

  “I do not know,” Merriweather admitted. “Her prince was destined to place a slipper on her foot, and at that moment they would both know of their destiny to be as one.” The fairy queen held out her hand, and a translucent glass slipper appeared on it. “Only true love can transform this slipper from cold, hard glass. If her prince gave this to her, it would feel softer than a fairy wing on her skin.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “So that’s it, then. She… she’s meant to love someone else.”

  Merriweather nodded. “Why do you react in such a way? I thought you wished to know the truth.”

  Jack shook his head, not really focusing. “No, I did. I just thought… once this was all over, maybe…”

  “You thought she might care for you?” Merriweather laughed. “Child, you were never meant to have even met her! If you had not interfered, the Wicked Queen would still be imprisoned. In fact, from what I can tell, your destiny almost appears that you were meant to oppose—”

  “I get it, okay?!” Jack shouted. “I mean, I should have known.” He reached out and touched the slipper, the glass cold to his touch. “I should have known. I’m not… It was all just a joke on me.”

  “As if you were meant for such things!” Merriweather repeated, shaking her head.

  “As if I were,” Jack said quietly, then turned to go.

  “Child,” Merriweather said as he left. “If it is of any solace, I would have thought your very presence would have doomed their mission to save our homelands from the start. The fact that Phillip and May succeeded in doing so in spite of you speaks volumes. But perhaps it is time to let them lead the lives they were meant to, without your interference.”

  Jack just stared at her, then nodded slowly. “Perhaps it is.”

  CHAPTER 45

  The silver fairy led Jack to a room filled with blue silk to wait for May and Phillip. Barely noticing anything, he followed her in a daze, glancing out the window to see May, Phillip, and the new girl, Penelope, walking slowly toward the castle/building/whatever it was, the prince walking as much ahead of Penelope as he could without appearing rude. Penelope for her part didn’t seem to notice that, or really anything else.

  “I heard what Merriweather said,” said a voice to Jack’s right. The air shimmered, and Lian appeared out of nowhere, staring out the window as well. “Kind of harsh, even if it’s the truth. Which it is.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said absently, his eyes locked on May.

  “Look at them,” Lian said softly. “Phillip really is a hero. There’s no way around it. And May is as well, in her own way. But both will never defeat my Queen. They’re much too… decent.”

  Jack started to argue, then went silent.

  “You know I’m right,” Lian said, and her voice sounded sad. “You know you three were just running to stay in place against my Queen. And Merriweather’s correct. You weren’t exactly helping.”

  “Is there a point to this?” Jack asked quietly.

  Lian paused, then pulled her sword out… and threw it into the wall across the room. The sword slid in smoothly to the hilt, and Lian nodded. “Now we can talk,” she said.

  Jack gave her a confused look. “You don’t want the sword overhearing?”

  Lian pulled the hood off her head, revealing a face that wasn’t the one she’d worn as a mermaid. In fact, she looked familiar, like he’d seen her before somewhere, but he barely cared enough to try to remember from where.

  “I don’t want my Queen listening,” Lian said, turning back to the window. “Not all of us have had our swords fixed by the Charmed One to keep her out.”

  “You still managed to know exactly what we were doing,” Jack said, turning back to the window as well. “Guess he didn’t fix it as well as he thought.”

  Lian laughed. “You think it was the sword? How many times have you watched me disappear into thin air, you idiot? Eyes can turn invisible, Jack. You saw me do it right before the cave to the Land of Never, and, like, a million other times. Phillip even told you!”

  “I try not to listen to him,” Jack said, half-dazed. Could this be true?!

  “You really think that I wasn’t with you the entire time?” Lian continued. “Who do you think took the fourth mermaid tear? Your sword’s light flickered every time you pulled it out. It sensed my sword and was warning you! Are you really that stupid?”

  Jack’s mouth dropped open, and he sat down hard on the bed, staring up at Lian. “You were there… the entire time?”

  “Way to catch up,” she said. “I had to make sure you didn’t mess anything up, all while my Queen listened to my every word. Not the easiest thing to do, but I’m pretty talented.”

  “What do you mean, ‘mess anything up’? You’re trying to say you were helping us?!”

  “You certainly didn’t make it easy!” she said indignantly. “You were almost killed, like, five times by the goblins while getting Meghan to the ocean. I had to follow right behind you and protect you the entire time. Even the pirates almost hit you… such horrible shots! And the tidal wave?! The Sea King aimed for me once with his electricity, and alm
ost killed me! I had to jump into the water. That meant I lost you for a bit.”

  “That’s when the Charmed One came back,” Jack said. “But you made things hard for us too. You made my sword go crazy in the Sea Witch’s lair, and—”

  “You had to be found, Jack,” Lian said. “There were things that had to happen for you to succeed, so I made them happen. Mako never would have let you escape with Meghan, so he had to be removed from the picture…. I thought he’d never try to pull me out that hole in the Sea Witch’s place. You needed Bluebeard to get Meghan in the first place, so I made sure you ended up in the Land of Never. I even made sure to leave you with a rope so May could pull you out when you first got hit by the sleeping curse!” She sighed deeply. “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked!”

  Jack glared at her. “Right. And the whole time, you were able to get into my head.”

  “Because I was always close enough to touch your sword, which makes that easy,” Lian said with a shrug. “I can teach you that.”

  “But why?” Jack said. “Why would you do any of this?”

  Lian shook her head. “You really can’t figure it out?” She straightened up, stepped around behind him… then pushed him hard in the back.

  As Jack fell forward in surprise, the memory of a boy and a girl on a hill exploded in his mind, and he realized where he’d seen Lian before. The shock threw him so much, he slammed into the floor, not even making an effort to catch himself.

  “Lian… you’re that girl?!” he said, turning over onto his back.

  “Maybe it’s time you stopped using childish nicknames,” she said, making a face. “If you’re going to shorten Jillian, you might as well call me Jill like our dad does.”

  A chill shot through his body. “Our dad?”

  “You fell down, Jack, years and years ago,” Jill said quietly. “I… I pushed you down that hill. You broke that thick skull of yours, so our parents sent you to live with our grandfather, since he had magical items that could heal you over time. It was also quieter than… than our home.”

  “Our… home?” Jack said.

  “You’ll see it eventually,” she said. “But this is what you’ve never understood, Jack. Our family? We’re not heroes. We’re not the noble princes who operate in the sunlight, winning the love of the people as we save lives and make it look easy. No, we do what needs to be done to survive. We steal from giants. We outwit our enemies, playing whatever card we can just to live. And we get the job done.”

  “And what job is that?” Jack said, barely able to concentrate. Lian was his sister? He had a sister?!

  “What do you think?” Jill said. “I’m going to take down the Wicked Queen.”

  “But you’re an Eye!”

  Jill smiled. “You have so much to learn. But to do that is going to require going to some pretty dark places. You busy?” She stuck out her hand to help him to his feet.

  Jack glanced up at her, then reached out and took her hand.

  “Jack?” May said, opening a door into a room that took her breath away. The entire room seemed to be made out of blue silk, from the chairs to the bed to a desk in the corner.

  And the room was empty.

  “I asked you to bring me to Jack,” she told the little fairies who’d guided her here. They just smiled and shrugged, pointing into the room, so May walked in to explore.

  She sat down on the bed, looking around at the sheer softness of everything, then noticed something rolling toward her on the bed, something shiny and transparent she hadn’t noticed before.

  A slipper made of glass.

  “What is this?” she said. A glass slipper? And only one? Wasn’t there a royal ball or something missing here?

  The monkey on her shoulder leapt to the bed and grabbed something else, something that’d been underneath the slipper. Something white and papery.

  “Give me that!” she shouted, grabbing for it, barely managing to rip the paper from the monkey’s hand. It screamed at her, grabbed the slipper instead, and climbed back up to its perch on her shoulders.

  May started to open the paper, but a noise outside caught her attention and she pushed aside the blue silk curtains to find out what was going on.

  At first she couldn’t see much of anything. It was too dark outside as the sun set. But then she made out some fairy lanterns, off in the distance, moving away as if they were leaving town.

  It was some kind of carriage, pulled by fairies. And on that carriage… She squinted hard, pressing her face against the window glass. There was someone on it….

  “Jack?” she said quietly.

  “Princess,” Phillip said behind her, his voice soft. “Where is he? We were led here.”

  May quickly sat down on the bed again, then unfolded the paper, a sheet from Jack’s Story Book.

  “Dear May,” it said.

  She began to read the note, passing along the important bits to the others. “Jack says I have a stepmother… and stepsisters! He doesn’t mention my parents, though. Something about a prince. He’s pretty vague. And… oh, wow. That slipper is—”

  May abruptly dropped the note to the ground, her whole body going numb. “This is Cinderella,” she said, an entire childhood and world of stories crashing over her at once. Was it possible? She was Cinderella?! With stepsisters, an evil stepmother, and… singing mice?

  “What is a Cinderella?” Phillip asked her.

  Penelope shrugged. “I think it’s something you use to clean a fireplace,” she told him, then bent down and picked up Jack’s letter. “There’s more on the back, only in a different kind of writing,” she said, then read, “‘And with a heavy heart, Jack left Phillip and May behind to join the ranks of the Wicked Queen’s Eyes.’”

  Penelope frowned, then looked up to find Phillip and May staring at her in shock. “Well,” she said, “at least it sounds like he’s got something new to keep him occupied!”

  Outside the window a large blackbird watched them, tilting its head as May grabbed the note from Penelope and began to read it again. The bird stared for a moment, then nodded and cawed “Jack!” loudly once, before abruptly flying out over the Fairy Homelands. It quickly located its prey, one of two people riding a carriage being pulled by fairies, then soared along above the carriage silently, following Jack once more as it had for the past four months.

  Only this time, following him to the lands of the Wicked Queen, following him back to the blackbird’s master.