[Half/Time 02] Twice Upon a Time

by James Riley

  And just her luck, parachutes wouldn’t be invented for another… infinite amount of years, probably. Stupid magic.

  As the ship began to slowly slide away from the tidal wave and into more of a falling-type situation, May decided her last thought wasn’t going to be anything so pessimistic as Stupid magic. No, it should be much more along the lines of—

  MONKEY!

  “THE MONKEY!” May screamed out as the little monster swung around the ropes just below her, holding the magic bottle that had sent the ship to the bottom of the ocean in its evil little paws. “SOMEONE GRAB THE MONKEY!”

  Unfortunately, the roar of the tidal wave made her screaming useless, which just frustrated her more. Whether anyone could hear her or not, there was just no time. May pulled Jack’s grand-father’s knife out of her pack, judged the distance quickly, and then cut right through her rope.

  “WHOOOOOAAAAA!” she screamed as she dropped into thin air straight at the monkey… then almost straight past him as she missed, the little demon giving her a confused yet almost satisfied look as she went. Not willing to give him the pleasure, May threw her arms out and managed to grab hold of the monkey as she passed, which didn’t do much to stop her fall but did a lot to make her feel better. If she was going out, she was taking the stupid monkey with her.

  “MAY!” someone screamed as she fell past Jack and Phillip, but May was too busy to see who, too busy falling, too busy trying to wrestle a stupid bottle out of a stupid monkey’s paws, and too busy keeping the monkey from clawing her eyes out.

  She managed to grab the bottle just as she tumbled down the long wooden spire sticking out of the front of the ship. Throwing a hand out, she shoved the monkey onto the log thing, then grabbed a rope and winced as it burned her hands, crashing her into the ship just inches from a rather lifelike-looking figurehead.

  “Oh, hey. Sorry about this,” she said to the figurehead. “I’m just trying to save us all.”

  “Apology accepted,” the figurehead told her.

  May blinked in surprise. “Wow, I hate this place,” she said, then brought the bottle down hard onto the ship, just as she’d seen the monkey do.

  The bottle promptly cracked in her hand.

  The monkey slapped its forehead, then took the bottle and made the EXACT SAME GESTURE, only to have the bottle blow up and suck the ship right into it, just as it had done last time.

  “I DID THAT TOO!” May yelled at the little monster, but it just shook its head in disgust at her.

  “To be fair, his method worked,” the figurehead pointed out.

  May screamed, but this time in frustration as the now rapidly bottling boat began to crash into the castle walls. It wouldn’t be much, but the bottle’s magic had somehow held the ship exactly in the center. So the bottle might protect it at least a little bit.

  The impact was like nothing May had ever felt, throwing her off the bow and toward the glass of the bottle, only for something to halt her just a few feet away. The glass bottle slammed into the rock walls, breaking them apart like they were paper. The ship crashed into the glass bottle, held back just enough by the bottle’s magic to keep it from exploding apart, its timbers splintering and cracking as they barely held together. Instead, all around them cracks ran through the glass, shrieking up and down like lightning bolts. It was like a perfect storm of breakage, and they were in entirely the wrong place to enjoy it.

  Smashing through the walls of the castle, the bottled ship had landed in what looked like a courtyard, utterly destroying a decorative fountain. May wondered for a second if insurance covered this kind of thing, before realizing how stupid a thought that was. Of course it would.

  The ship seemed to be done being murdered, having stopped in place, sticking about halfway in and halfway out of the castle wall. The glass, unfortunately, was cracking faster and faster, threatening to negate everything May had just done to save them, by slicing them all into pieces when it broke apart.

  But maybe they could unbottle the ship first!

  “MONKEY!” May screamed. “Get rid of the bottle!” She glanced around, but somehow was stuck looking straight down. What had caught her?

  “Please stop struggling,” the figurehead directly behind her said. “I might lose my grip on you.”

  May glanced down at two wooden hands holding her tightly, and scrunched her eyes closed, repeating to herself that the wooden figurehead had probably saved her life, and now wasn’t the time to be creeped out by the fact that a wooden statue was alive. “Thank you,” she managed finally. “Would you mind if I climbed back up to find that little monster monkey thing?”

  “Not at all,” the figurehead said pleasantly, which was almost worse. Why did all this magic stuff have to be so easy to deal with while still being a crime against nature?! Either way, the figurehead helpfully lifted her back onto the bow of the ship, where she found the monkey shaking with fear at the landing. For a second she felt sorry for the creature, but the second passed quicker than most.

  “UNBOTTLE US!” she screamed as part of the bottle above her cracked, showering them with a fine dust of glass.

  The monkey glanced at her, then at the ceiling, then back to her. It nodded. FINALLY. It slowly climbed up to the top of the bow, then made a particular gesture. The monkey paused, as if waiting for something, then made the gesture again, then a third time, each time more urgently. Finally it turned back to May, an expression of terror on its face as the glass cracked like an earthquake above them.

  “NO!” May shouted, grabbing the monkey by its coat and holding it in front of her. “I don’t want to die here! I don’t want my friends to die here either! The rest of you, I could go either way, but I’d probably end up on ‘live.’ Even you! Please tell me you’re kidding! PLEASE!”

  The monkey shook its head desperately, then suddenly smiled maliciously, stuck out its tongue at her, and snapped its fingers. The glass bottle shot off the bow of the boat like a rocket, the ship popping out of the breaking glass as the bottle shrank down, boomeranged in midflight, and flew back to land right in the smirking monkey’s hand.

  “Okay, that’s it,” she told the evil, evil creature. “You’re gonna pay for that one. I don’t care if it takes a thousand years and a billion dollars, I will live to see that day.”

  “DO NOT MOVE!” shouted a voice from outside the boat. May sighed deeply and utterly, then turned to find at least twenty soldiers aiming spears at her.

  One soldier stepped forward and gestured with his spear.

  “PUT THE MONKEY DOWN AND RAISE YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

  “Thousand years, billion dollars,” May said to the monkey. “You. PAY.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Well, look who’s back,” a voice said. Jack rolled over, expecting to find the remains of a destroyed pirate ship, but instead found an oak tree, a warm breeze, and a calming grass meadow.

  Instantly he was on his feet, his sword out… only to find someone he hadn’t ever thought he’d be happy to see.

  “Nice to see you too,” said the Charmed One with a hint of a smile. “Is this how you treat your friends?”

  “Who said you’re a friend?” Jack said, glancing all around them. “Where’s Lian?! She’s been keeping you out somehow!”

  “We have a little time,” the Charmed One said. “Thanks to the Sea King, of all people. Lian will be back soon enough, but for now we can talk undisturbed.”

  “You picked a great time to leave me alone,” Jack said, waving his sword around to make his point even more clear. “Thanks for that. Now we’re on the run from the Sea King and just crashed a pirate ship into a castle, all with just a few hours to get to the Fairy Homelands before the Wicked Queen’s dragons show up and kill everyone. Oh, except the mermaid princess can’t sing magic out of the water, the Wolf King has the Piper, and May promised she’d give Bluebeard whatever he wanted at some point in the future, which I’m sure is going to end just fine.”

  “And?” the Charmed One said.
>
  Jack just blinked. “And what? You want more?”

  “I’m sorry. I meant to ask, where’s the problem? The solutions to all those issues are inherent in the problems, are they not?”

  “Now I remember why I hated you,” Jack said. “It’s your extremely clear answers.”

  “We don’t have time to discuss your immediate problems, Jack,” the knight said. “There’s something more pressing that needs to be addressed before Lian returns. Your sword, and what it is doing to you.”

  Jack went cold. “It’s turning me into an Eye, isn’t it.”

  The Charmed One sighed. “It’s not that simple. The sword isn’t inherently evil in any way, as I told you when I first met you. It is just a tool, nothing more. But that tool gives you access to powers beyond what you’re used to dealing with, and those powers can give you… opportunities.”

  “Can we maybe just skip to the end of this and get to the point?”

  The knight stopped, then nodded. “The point is this.” He waved his hand, and an image appeared of an older boy, maybe a year older than Jack. The image widened to reveal that the boy was dressed in the armor of an Eye, covered in the same midnight blue cloak the Charmed One and Lian wore. And as the image grew, Jack could see the boy standing next to a familiar-looking woman.

  “That’s the Wicked Queen,” he said softly.

  “More relevantly,” the Charmed One said, “that is you next to her.”

  The meadow went silent except for the wind blowing through the large oak tree. Finally Jack cleared his throat and spoke.

  “What… what is this? What are you showing me? A possibility?”

  The Charmed One shook his head.

  “This is you, the way the Wicked Queen saw you in her Magic Mirror.” The knight looked away. “This is why she believes that you will betray May.”

  “‘One of these boys will betray you, and the other will die,’” Jack said, repeating the words the Wicked Queen had told May three months earlier.

  “I wanted to head this off, Jack,” the knight said, letting out a deep breath. “Unfortunately, your refusal to be trained, and now Lian’s interference, have ensured that whatever effect I might have had will be too late.” He shrugged. “For all I know, this was meant to be exactly the way it’s happening and I never had a chance.”

  “That… can’t be,” Jack said, his entire body and head numb from the idea. He would never, NEVER betray May, or join the Wicked Queen! How could this even be possible?

  “It’s not just possible. It will happen. You are heading straight for it,” the Charmed One said, answering Jack’s unspoken question. He glanced at the weapon in Jack’s hand. “You are meant to take my place in more ways than one, it seems.”

  “But why?! And why tell me this?” Jack shouted. “I can make my own choices. I can CHOOSE not to do this!”

  “Of course,” the Charmed One said. “And right now you would choose just that. But at some point in the future, the near future, it seems that you will choose the opposite path. I have not seen how or why, and neither has the Queen. But I can’t help but think it has something to do with Lian.”

  “Why? Why her? Isn’t she just an Eye?”

  “There’s no such thing as just an Eye,” the Charmed One said bitterly. “There’s no more clever, strategic, or manipulative group in existence, each one surpassed only by their Queen in terms of cunning. But Lian—”

  The Charmed One stopped abruptly, grasped his chest, then exploded in a cloud of smoke. As the smoke drifted away, Lian strode up slowly, what little Jack could see of her face unreadable.

  “Well, that was unpleasant,” she said to him. “I can’t believe you crashed the entire ship.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t crash it into you,” he said. “Next time I’ll work on my aim.”

  “You’d still miss, even with something that size,” Lian said, then shrugged. “But I get your bitterness. I heard some of what the Charmed One was telling you. Gonna be an Eye, huh? I knew it.”

  “You know nothing.”

  Lian smiled. “I know who you are, Jack, and right now I think that’s more than you know. I know who I am, I know who the Charmed One was… and I know something that you’ve been dying to know, even if you’d never admit it to another living soul.”

  “You know how much I want to tie rocks to your feet and drop you back into the ocean?” Jack asked. “’Cause I’m happy to tell the world that.”

  “No,” Lian said as the meadow began to fade out. “I know where your father is, Jack.”

  And then the meadow disappeared once more.

  CHAPTER 37

  Jack woke up to the sight of stones moving all by themselves below him. That was interesting. Apparently the world on land had learned some new tricks since they’d been gone!

  Then feeling began to return to his legs, and he realized he was being dragged along the stone hallways of a castle.

  A castle? They’d survived?! Jack almost laughed before the reality of the situation sank in.

  Being dragged along by people with what looked to be swords was usually a bad sign.

  “You are awake,” Phillip said from his side. “I feared you were permanently injured.”

  “The day’s still young,” Jack told him, his head pounding with every word. It was hard to tell which hurt more, the real pain of what had to have been a horrifying crash into the castle, or what Lian had just said to him. His father. Everything he’d had to live with all his life, everything he’d gone through, the fact that he was seen as the son of a criminal and nothing more, and Lian knew where his father was.

  “Tell the prisoners to be quiet,” someone ahead of them ordered.

  “Be quiet!” a guard holding Jack’s right shoulder said.

  “I like how they pretend we didn’t hear the first guy,” Jack said to Phillip. The prince, meanwhile, just shook his head, quieting down. A fountain of antiauthority, Phillip was not.

  Being dragged as he was, there wasn’t much Jack could see. From what he could tell, the guards had May in front of them, with what seemed to be a monkey tail growing out the back of her shirt. Okay, that was new. Behind him Jack could hear Bluebeard grunting and groaning, but given that he wasn’t shouting threats at the guards, Jack assumed the pirate was still unconscious. More important than the pirate, though, was—

  “Did you notice this one’s eyes?” one guard behind Jack asked. “They’re yellow. And she’s got claws and fangs.”

  “Mermaid spy, most likely,” whoever was in charge said from the front. “Tie her up and gag her. Can’t take any chances with the king.”

  The guards did just that, and soon Meghan was being dragged along right beside Jack, her eyes flaring with anger as they passed through some kind of elaborate doorway into a tiled room.

  “Your Majesty,” the guard in the front said, “we’ve brought you the shipwreck’s survivors, including what we believe to be a mermaid spy. The ship did indeed bear your royal seal, though we haven’t had ships on the water for fifty years. Many of the crew escaped off the back, but we have guards chasing them down.”

  “Wha… me crew?” Bluebeard mumbled, still sounding asleep.

  “Get them to their feet!” a man’s voice said from a distance. “Who are these people?”

  The guards roughly jerked Jack to his feet, and he looked up to find a middle-aged man who looked far too beaten down for his age, and far too small for a large threadbare robe and oversize crown missing half its jewels.

  “Your… Your Majesty,” said a shocked older man’s voice from behind the crowned man. “Look! The man in the blue beard!”

  “I recognize that voice,” Bluebeard mumbled, then gasped. “Farnsworth! My old chancellor!”

  “Maarten?” Farnsworth said. “By the sea, MAARTEN!”

  “It can’t be,” the king said, striding forward to Bluebeard, then holding the pirate up by his shoulders. “Brother?”

  “That robe never did fit you, Fford,” Blu
ebeard said, then grabbed the man in both arms and shouted joyfully as he embraced him, several bones cracking in the process.

  “MAARTEN!” King Fford shouted. “Guards, release these people! My brother has returned!”

  The guards awkwardly released them, and Jack watched as the two least likely siblings in the world clapped each other’s back and looked each other over, both seeming a little disappointed by what they saw, but both trying to hide it.

  “Fford?” said a woman’s voice from the doorway behind them all. “Who is this?”

  “Ah, Marispoptia!” Fford shouted. “Meet my older brother, returned to us after almost forty years missing! After years of searching, we gave up all hope. Yet hope may always be rewarded if patience remains, as proven by my brother!”

  “Yes, yes, I get it,” Marispoptia said, looking over Maarten with some distaste. “He is not the rightful king, then, is he? I would hate to think I’m engaged to the wrong brother.”

  “That would be truly horrible,” Fford said, looking everywhere but at Marispoptia.

  “Engaged, Brother?” Maarten said. “I see that congratulations are in order!”

  “Uh, indeed,” Fford said, now looking everywhere but at Maarten. “Guards, take that mermaid to the dungeon. We’ll want to question her soon—”

  “YOU’LL DO NO SUCH THING!” Maarten roared, leaping over to Meghan and clutching her to him protectively. “If I have any authority left here whatsoever, you will leave this woman be!”

  The guards glanced among themselves, not sure who to listen to. “You gave up your authority when you left the kingdom, Maarten,” the chancellor, Farnsworth, said.

  Fford and Maarten looked at each other, and Maarten frowned. “I did leave this kingdom in Fford’s care long ago,” he said. “Yes, it might be a bit worse for wear, but I’m sure he did the best he could—”

  “Left it?!” Fford said, forcing a laugh. “You abandoned us to chase after that mermaid…” And then his voice trailed off and his eyes went wide as he looked at Meghan. “Maarten… what did you do?”