[Half/Time 02] Twice Upon a Time

by James Riley

  Except it didn’t. The world didn’t slow down at all. If anything, it seemed to speed up, as instantly Blue Tail appeared right in front of him, a smile covering his face.

  “Got that out of your system, did you?” he said, then pulled the seaweed off of Jack’s and May’s faces. “You’d think I was hatched just this past week, as gullible as you believe me to be.” At that, he reached over his shoulder and removed Jack’s sword.

  Only to hand it right back to Jack.

  “JACK!” May yelled. “NOW! SWORD HIM! SWORD HIM IN HIS FACE!”

  But Jack just replaced the sword on his back, eyeing Blue Tail carefully. “It wouldn’t do any good,” he told May, not taking his eyes off Blue Tail. “We may just be in trouble here.”

  “You may just, at that,” Blue Tail said, still smiling as he gestured for Jack, Phillip, and May to go into the shadowed room where the King of the World awaited them.

  CHAPTER 21

  There was no throne in the throne room. In fact, there were no seats of any kind… nor anything else. From what little Jack could see in the shadows, there was nothing in the room beyond the walls encircling them and a dark ceiling that seemed to let light in from different spots every time he looked.

  Jack took a step closer to May and Phillip, both for protection and just to not feel so alone in the vast room. “Well,” May whispered, “it’s wet, I’ll give it that.”

  A shiver ran up Jack’s spine, and he quickly looked around as the other two crowded even closer. They were all feeling it, whatever it was.

  “Is someone watching us?” May asked, shivering with a chill not from the water’s temperature.

  “The walls,” Phillip said, nodding to his side, and Jack glanced up. Was he saying there was someone there?

  And then a large green eye swiveled around to stare right at Jack. The walls weren’t stone or coral. They were fish. The biggest fish Jack had ever seen.

  “No wonder the King has no need for guards,” Phillip said. “One of those creatures could swallow the three of us whole.”

  “That’s a pleasant thought,” May said, threading her arm through Phillip’s.

  Jack forced a laugh, staring at May’s arm in Phillip’s. “These things are smaller than giants, Phillip. Don’t tell me you’re afraid!”

  Phillip threw Jack a slightly dazed look. “Of course not, Jack,” he said. “This is what I have been trained for. You are all quite safe in my care here.”

  “Not all of us,” Jack said, giving May a dirty look that she never noticed. “And how, exactly, do you expect to save us if those creatures attack?”

  “The whales?” May asked. “You know they don’t eat humans, right?”

  “They haven’t in a century,” a deep voice rumbled from above them. “But perhaps they haven’t lost the taste for your kind just yet.”

  All three of them looked up, but all they could see was the shifting light of the moving “whales,” if that’s what they were called.

  “Who speaks?” Phillip demanded, pushing May behind him and stepping forward.

  And just like that, Phillip was gone, a lone bubble popping in the spot where he’d stood a moment before.

  “PHILLIP!” May screamed, and she immediately disappeared as well.

  Jack whirled around, his sword drawn, but the sword’s glow seemed to struggle against the shadows… struggled and lost as it slowly flickered out. He glanced at it in shock, then pushed it back into its scabbard and turned to the archway…

  Only to watch the walls push together, collapsing the archway into nothingness. Great.

  “Do not leave yet, little human,” the deep voice rumbled again behind him, this time at Jack’s level. “It’s you I wish to speak to, Eye.”

  Jack whipped around, but saw nothing but a lazy flicking of a triangular tail.

  “I’m no Eye,” Jack said, his gaze flying around the room, just catching a glimpse here or there of the tail, or the glow of yellow eyes. “And we mean you no harm.”

  “You could no more harm me than you could stop the tide,” the voice growled from above him again. “Your Queen had a hard time believing that, at first. Or did she not tell you about the others she sent?”

  “She… Others?” Jack said, still frantically looking for the King.

  “I’m actually a bit surprised that she sent you three into my realm so… blatantly,” the voice said, always behind Jack. “Before, she had the common sense to at least completely turn your brothers and sisters into merfolk before sending them down to spy on my people. Not you, though. I cannot begin to fathom what she hoped to accomplish.”

  “She didn’t send us,” Jack said quickly. “I’m not an Eye. I just—”

  “Perhaps she hopes I will destroy you,” the voice said behind him, now just a foot or two from Jack. “Perhaps you are no longer of use to her, and she wishes me to do her dirty work.”

  Jack slowly turned, and found himself staring at a merman easily twelve feet long from the tip of his tail to the top of his head. The King’s bottom half was a sleek white and gray finned fish of some kind, but the human half of the King looked no less lethal, nor did the golden trident he held casually in his hand.

  “Perhaps if I destroy you and do her a favor, she will finally leave my people be,” the king said, appearing to consider the idea.

  “She doesn’t even know I’m here,” Jack said, throwing his hands up in surrender. “Really, we only came to find a—”

  The trident glowed brightly, and lightning began playing around its tines. Faster than Jack could see, the king reversed his trident and launched it in Jack’s direction.

  It hit Jack with the force of a crashing wave, catching him by his shirt in one of the razor-sharp tines, plowing into the coral floor and pinning him there.

  “All I asked was for your kind to leave ours alone, Eye,” the king said, his eyes flashing with lightning matching that of his trident. “A half century ago our kind traded freely, but then…” The King’s face contorted in rage. “But then your people took my daughter, Eye!” His voice rose as he grew angrier, and here and there the whales jumped in fright. “Your kind took her from me! I had to go onto land MYSELF to take her back! It was all I could do not to wipe that pathetic little kingdom out completely, but for the love of my daughter, I let that… that prince and his people live. But never again has a human been allowed in the water. Never again! Yet now you are here.” He swam down and looked Jack right in the eye. “You three, you will tell me everything you know about the Queen’s plans. Or I will feed you to the sharks. All of the sharks, at once.”

  Jack swallowed hard. “And if we tell you?”

  “Then I shall merely lock you away until you starve to death,” the King said, yanking his trident out of the ground, freeing Jack. “You have one hour to decide.”

  And with that, Jack disappeared in a bubble burst as well.

  CHAPTER 22

  Well that was stupid,” May said as she reappeared. Then she realized she was talking to herself, and repeated the same thought in her head. And then she realized that maybe she’d be better off spending her time looking around rather than making snarky comments in her head.

  Then she decided that there was nothing better than making snarky comments in her head, but still… looking around was probably smart.

  “Hello?” May said to the darkness surrounding her, darkness not really that unlike the throne room she’d just been disappeared from.

  The familiar-looking darkness didn’t answer her, which was irritating. That meant that Phillip, at least, had been disappeared somewhere else, not in hearing range. What was even more irritating was that Jack might still be back in the throne room, and who knew if he was okay? Jack was just so useless on his own! Honestly, without her around he’d probably been eaten by another giant. Or worse. Yeah, probably worse.

  “Hello?” May said again, tired of the annoying darkness. She felt around the floor beneath her, and decided it was probably coral. She was s
till swimming, so at least she hadn’t been magicked right out of the ocean. Not that returning to land would have been such a bad thing. At this point she might have even welcomed it, Sea Witch or no. Not without Jack and Phillip, but still.

  Anyway, what was the Sea Witch’s deal? They’d just tried to talk to her, and she went and freaked out at the tiniest mention of fairies. It was rude, first of all, but there were a lot of second of alls.

  “This whole place is rude,” May said as she slid her feet carefully over the coral, moving slowly in the darkness. “If by ‘rude’ I mean stupid. And I do. Jerks.” And they were jerks. After all, they were the ones who couldn’t even get their own stories right. The Sea Witch wasn’t the one who turned into a mermaid in the story. It was the mermaid who turned human! Which, granted, sounded like it had happened, but hadn’t everything turned out okay in that story? Or was that the cartoon version, not the original? Had anyone even read the original?! May hadn’t ever been allowed to read fairy tales, for reasons that were now becoming a little bit more obvious.

  Her right foot tapped a wall, and she pushed her hands up against it. Coral again. At least it wasn’t a whale, which was a plus, given that whales could probably swallow a bus whole, not to mention her. Of course, Jack was probably still back in the whale room, with whoever it was, the King of the Seven Seas. If that boy did something dumb like get hurt, she really was just gonna have to kill him.

  The coral wall seemed to be curving around, so May followed it until she felt an indentation, something that reminded her uncomfortably of bars in a jail cell. She frowned; this whole thing seemed a little too familiar, reminding her of Malevolent’s cells. Granted, she had regrown most of her sarcasm, but there probably weren’t a whole lot of imps living underwater anyway.

  “Way to go, Jack,” she said, yanking on the bars. “How am I supposed to rescue you when I’m all locked up?”

  “Perhaps I can help,” said a voice from the other side of the bars.

  May squinted, trying to see who or what was talking, but unless who or what was solid darkness, she was at a loss. “Maybe you can,” May said tentatively. “But I’m gonna need to hear any conditions up front. You know, like if you help me escape, then you get to eat me, that sort of thing.”

  The voice sighed. “I have no desire to eat you. I need to know why you’re looking for the Sea Witch.”

  May forced a laugh. “See, I was just throwing that eating thing out as a wild possibility, and now you’re talking as if eating me isn’t a wild possibility at all, more like a household-dog- or cat-tame possibility.” Why was her eyesight taking so long to adjust? Talking to this person blind wasn’t helping her comfort level at all. “And why do you care about why I care about the Sea Witch?”

  A familiar-looking mermaid with red hair and a shimmering green tail floated up to the bars. “Because she was very special to me,” Meghan said.

  May gasped, then realized something wasn’t making sense. Well, more than usual. “Wait, I thought you were the Sea Witch.”

  Meghan sighed. “I never really believed the myths that humans were less intelligent than merfolk, but perhaps there is some truth there. I am not the Sea Witch. At least, not in the way you mean. You’re referring to…” She paused. “You’re referring to a fairy queen.”

  “YES, that’s her, that’s the one we want!” May shouted. “Where is she, so I can call her the Sea Witch and she can help us?”

  “I’m afraid she’s not able to help anyone,” Meghan said. “The Sea Witch is dead.”

  “Dead?” May said, hope floating away from her like bubbles rising to the surface. “No… NO. No, no, no. She can’t be dead. She’s not dead. We need her! She’s the only one who can help her people. There’s a spell, a curse! And she needs to go home, to go back to her homeland and fix it!”

  “I’m very sorry,” Meghan said. “She was… quite important to me as well. I still grieve her absence to this day, almost fifty years later.”

  “Great, you go ahead and grieve her,” May said, flopping herself to the coral floor as quickly as the water would let her. “It’s a good time for it. There are about to be a hundred thousand fairies in need of some grieving by this time tomorrow.”

  “She was my mentor,” Meghan said, apparently having heard none of what May had said. “A friend to me when no one else was. She understood what I was going through, as neither of us felt as if we belonged among our own people. Her kind treated her horribly, could never understand her love for a merman, my father. And once she left, they resolved never to speak to her again. So she gave up her old life to become something new.”

  May started to say something about how that was a long way to go to impress a man, but kept her mouth shut, figuring now was maybe not the best time.

  “My father soon rejected her,” Meghan continued. “He was as blind as her kind had been. He couldn’t understand. I was her only friend here, a kindred soul. She taught me that there is magic in music, and gave me the power to do what she had done, even if she didn’t realize it.”

  It took a second, but the mermaid’s words gradually filtered through May’s dark daydreams of dragons flying toward the Fairy Homelands. “Wait… who’s your father?”

  “The Sea King,” Meghan said, her back still turned.

  “You’re the princess?” May asked. “The one who turned human to be with your prince?”

  It was like a jolt of electricity hit Meghan right in the back. “What… what do you know of that?”

  “Some of your sisters told my friend,” May said. “They said Bluebeard’s looking for you. He’s the one who brought us here, to find the Sea Witch. He said he needed the Sea Witch to help him on a job. Sounds like you’re the job. Maybe your prince sent him here to find you again?”

  “You’re lying,” Meghan said, pushing her face up to the bars to stare May in the face. For some reason May had assumed Meghan would be older, given that she’d supposedly turned human, like, fifty years ago, but aside from the yellow eyes and sharp fangs, the woman pushing her face against the bars didn’t look more than her early thirties, tops.

  “Uh… okay, whatever you say,” May told her, taking a step back. The mermaid’s voice might have been gentle, but those eyes… It felt like the look a lion gave children watching it in a zoo. Only this time, May was on the wrong side of the bars. “Listen, we’re all a little on the sketchy side with the whole Bluebeard thing. I get it, he’s creepy, but you said something about the Sea Witch giving you power—”

  “She didn’t give me anything; she taught me how to sing,” Meghan said absently. “I was one of the few she’d ever met who could match her voice, and therefore could use the magic of the fairy queens. Why? Why would he come, after so long?”

  “Oh, he’s been trapped for, like, forty years,” May told her. “Along with your sisters. Long story. But this could be perfect! With your Sea Witch magic, you could help us save the Fairy Homelands AND do whatever it is that Bluebeard needs to get you back to your prince! Then everyone’s happy, or tragic, or whatever it is you’re trying to be by giving everything up for your human boyfriend!”

  “The fairies don’t deserve my help, not after how they treated my friend,” Meghan said. “And as for… Bluebeard, I… It’s been so many years, I—”

  “I could take you to the ship,” May said quietly. “You know, so you can talk to him about your prince, and see what’s what. But if I do that, I’m going to need your help.”

  “Are you trying to bargain with me?” Meghan said, her eyes narrowing. “I could just leave you here. My father intends to starve you, or feed you to the sharks.”

  “Gah,” May said. “And wow, by the way. ’Cause we didn’t do anything but show up here. That’s really sweet of him. But you realize if either of those two delightful options actually happens, I won’t be able to take you to Bluebeard, which I’ll do if you free my friends, and help us end a curse on the fairy queens. Honestly, you may be the only person in this entire w
orld who could!”

  “Curse?” Meghan said absently, not really paying much attention.

  “It’s a long and kinda complicated story that I really don’t want to get into with you right now, but to sum up, the fairies and fairy queens are all about to die, and our only chance of saving them is to bring a fairy queen back with us. We couldn’t find any others, except that supposedly the Sea Witch is—was one, and—”

  “Just stop for a moment,” Meghan said, turning away again. “This isn’t just about love, or bitterness, or any of that.”

  “So what’s the issue?” May said impatiently. “And if we could move this along, that’d be amazing. We’re really not doing well on time here.”

  “When I turned myself human,” Meghan said slowly, “my father blamed the Sea Witch. After he followed me to shore and took me back here, he put the Sea Witch on trial.”

  “So?” May said. “It’s not like she did anything. You did all the magic yourself, right?”

  Meghan nodded. “But my father didn’t care. Instead he found her guilty… then executed her.” She looked up at May, her eyes reddish, though any tears were hidden in the water. “It is my fault the Sea Witch is dead, human. Because I used her magic, I killed her!”

  CHAPTER 23

  Jack bubbled into existence just in time for something hard to slam into him, sending him smashing into what felt like vertical pillars of coral.

  All the water whooshed from Jack’s lungs, and he glanced up to see… nothing, since it was completely dark.

  “Buh?” Jack said when he could breathe.

  “Jack?” a certain familiar prince said.

  “Phillip?!” Jack shouted. “What was that for?!”

  “I was attempting to break free of this cell!” Phillip said. “Why would you choose to appear directly in front of me?!”