Once Upon the End (Half Upon a Time)

by James Riley

  “Father?” Jack said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “Are you asking? Because any boy of mine shouldn’t have to.”

  Jack nodded. “Just making sure.”

  And with that, he took his sword off his back and threw it straight at the tiny spot that led all the way through the bars of the cage, straight at his father’s chest.

  The sword hit something glowing and translucent, and a hand grabbed it before it could hit the ground.

  “Don’t you just love family reunions?” Jill said, a sword in each hand.

  CHAPTER 6

  Phillip stood with his arms folded behind his back, covered by his royal vestments, staring out the window. Beyond the glass, adventure waited. Beyond the glass lay creatures of all-encompassing evil, and warmth that would make a shadow smile. Beyond the glass was his destiny.

  His destiny to sacrifice himself for May, fighting against the Wicked Queen.

  “Your Princeness,” said a boy not much younger than Phillip and holding a pig. “Did you hear me? I said my pig can see the future, and he warns of terrible things!”

  The pig oinked in agreement, and Phillip sighed.

  “What does it see?” said a dazed voice from behind him. “What kinds of terrible things?”

  A girl with hair of bronze, wearing a dress woven from golden thread by hand, no spinning wheels, leaned forward to put her ear next to the pig’s dirt-covered snout and listened intensely, nodding every few seconds. “Phillip,” she whispered, still nodding. “You really should hear this!”

  Just beyond the glass. Would it be so wrong to leave once more? To forsake his duties, to leave his kingdom and . . . everything that came with it? To once more find his destiny under a full moon and a hungry sun, his sword gleaming like a star?!

  “Seriously, I think you might want to listen to this,” Penelope said with a frown. “HOW big?”

  The pig oinked, and the boy nodded. “See what I mean, Your Princessness? Dark tidings are on the wind, and you’d be wise to heed the warnings of my pig here!”

  “Thank you, Pig Keeper,” Phillip said, and placed a few gold coins in the boy’s hand.

  The boy’s eyes went wide as he felt the weight of the gold, even as he absently corrected his prince. “Uh, Assistant Pig Keeper, actually. But, my Princeness, what did I do to deserve—”

  “Use it to give your divining friend a grand meal and have one yourself,” Phillip said, patting the boy on his shoulder as he led him toward the door. “Mother, who’s next?”

  “That’s it for today, darling,” said a woman seated on an intricate opal throne, dressed in a dress very similar to Penelope’s, only with elaborate stitching in silver. This woman feared neither spinning wheel nor evil fairy queen but still managed to love her son as warmly as her now-deceased husband. “Well, for your subjects. But there’s still the matter of the wedding.”

  She may love him warmly, but she also could stop Phillip’s heart with one word.

  “I believe I am late for . . .” Phillip began, then froze at any possible lie. Why could he not tell even the simplest untruth, even to his own mother?!

  “For what?” his mother said, her gaze filled with as much steel as her dress was with silver. It was not a lightweight piece of clothing, yet nothing would so much as stoop this woman.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Penelope said, grabbing Phillip’s hand and pulling him toward the door. “He meant to say he’s late to take me into town, like he’s been promising since we got here. Today’s finally the day! You’re welcome to come, we’re just going to see . . . well, the entire thing.”

  “That sounds . . . lovely, dear,” Phillip’s mother said. “I will leave you two to it, however, as I have seen the town before, once or twice.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Penelope said, and a minute later they were alone in the courtyard.

  Phillip smiled at Penelope in thanks, and gently removed his hand from hers. “Did I really promise that?”

  Penelope looked up with a shocked expression. “Of COURSE! Are you accusing me of lying to your mother?!”

  Phillip instantly blushed red. “Of course not, I am deeply sorry that I even—”

  And then Penelope laughed. “I like that color you turn. It makes you look like a tomato. A very dignified tomato. A tomato above all other tomatoes, one that rules his garden with a squishy iron fist.”

  Phillip blinked at that, unsure what to say and even more unsure how they had ended up outside the castle gates with two guards smiling evilly at him as Penelope somehow had his hand again, dragging him farther into the city. How did the girl do that—turn off his mind so easily?

  “Where first?” she asked, her head bobbing around to look at everything.

  “I, uh, had not really planned on an outing tonight,” Phillip said, then shrugged. It was preferable to speaking to his mother about the wedding. “How about the marketplace? It is quite something to see, and it might give me the opportunity to drop my sword off at the blacksmith to be sharpened.”

  “In case we meet a dragon or something,” Penelope said, looking up at him with her eyes barely open. The girl seemed perpetually either on the brink of falling asleep or as if she had just woken up. Phillip was never quite sure if he had her full attention, and if he did not, what that might look like.

  The citizens of the town of Tailorsville nodded respectfully to their prince, as well as the mysterious princess who had arrived with Phillip three months earlier, claiming to be the long-lost princess of a neighboring kingdom, destroyed during the war. Penelope had no family left and had never known them . . . in fact, she had grown up without knowing many humans at all, living in the Fairy Homelands, surrounded by some of the most magical and oddly incomprehensible creatures Phillip had ever met.

  He was beginning to see where Penelope might have picked up some of her habits.

  The marketplace rumbled with activity, with calls of breads for sale, customers haggling with shopkeepers, farmers showing off their wares, and children running everywhere.

  A few children screamed in delight from the opposite side of the market as Phillip strode purposefully toward the blacksmith, Penelope at times behind him and at other times in front. He wasn’t sure how the girl moved, as he never seemed to see her. It was as if she just . . . appeared wherever he was not looking. Strange.

  “You don’t like this idea of a wedding, do you?” she said while feeling a magical cloak of rain deflection. “Hmm, smooth! But why would someone not want to be rained on?”

  Phillip started to answer the first question, then the second, then decided the first was more pertinent and a question that needed to be answered. “Penelope,” he said, taking the princess by the shoulders and gently turning her around to face him. “You are correct. I do not like the idea of this wedding. Our parents betrothed us at a very early age—”

  “Well, to be fair, I’m apparently your true love,” Penelope said, making a half-disgusted face at him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to kiss me awake back when that Eye girl hit me with a spindle, putting me and everyone close by asleep. And somehow making vines grow. Huge vines. I didn’t get that part. So I must be your true love, which is good to know, in case someone sets the sleeping curse off again. Oh, I see we’re back to dignified tomato?”

  “Yes, well,” Phillip said, and pulled her into the shadow of the blacksmith’s booth. The children’s delighted screams echoed closer, as if they were moving in this direction. “I do not know that there is anything to that, beyond the silly belief of some old-fashioned fairy queens—”

  “Don’t say such things about my sisters,” Penelope said, staring a bit more intently at him, though still with her half-closed eyes. “Even if I am your true love, it doesn’t mean that you are mine. And I never asked you to fall in love with me.”

  “I did NOT do any such thing!” Phillip shouted. The children seemed to be screaming in his head now, as if they were everywhere. What was causing all
this commotion?!

  “Well, then this must all be a dream, and I never woke up,” Penelope said with a shrug. “Listen, I’m sorry I don’t feel the same way about you—”

  “YOU do not feel the same about—that is not the point!”

  A girl of about four years of age shrieked in his ear, and for a moment, the prince lost his dignity, if just a bit. “If you are quite through?!” he said, turning to the girl.

  And that’s when he saw a monkey dressed like a pirate, robbing the poor blacksmith while a small group of children waved and shouted encouragement. The blacksmith looked from Phillip to the monkey and back, almost pleading with his eyes.

  “YOU?!” Phillip said to the monkey.

  The monkey shrieked in joy and threw himself at Phillip, hugging his most likely vermin-infested body against Phillip’s chest. Finally, it looked at Phillip and held out a lock of bright blue hair.

  “Malevolent,” the monkey shrieked.

  The pirate monkey. Phillip’s bit of magic that he had arranged, just in case May ever found herself in danger. The monkey had been put under a spell by his court magician to appear to Phillip instantly if May’s life was ever threatened.

  Apparently the town was as far as the magic had taken it.

  Phillip was halfway across the market before either the monkey or Penelope caught up. Finally. This was the moment the Wicked Queen must have seen. This was the moment Phillip had been born for.

  And it would be the most noble of deaths.

  CHAPTER 7

  May smacked the blaring alarm to her right and shut her eyes again. Ugh. School. Too early.

  Then she sat bolt-upright. “Wait, I don’t have to go to school!” she shouted to no one. “There’s no school in fairy tales!” Maybe not 100 percent good news, but still, the school part had been a nice relief. She swatted her old alarm clock off her old nightstand. “Nice try on that, by the way. But we’re not going to do the whole Was this all a dream? thing.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here, not like this,” said a voice from somewhere behind her, which shouldn’t be possible, since all that was behind her was her bedroom wall. May whirled around and found herself no longer in bed, now fully dressed, only . . . wrongly. Her black PUNK PRINCESS shirt was pink, and her blue hair was on the wrong side, like she’d come out the other side of a mirror.

  Well, Alice had dreamed the whole Wonderland thing, hadn’t she?

  Oddly, the changes felt completely normal, just like weirdness always did in a dream. Maybe that’s also why she wasn’t surprised to find a man made entirely from glass, like a translucent statue, with sand flowing through him like in an hourglass, standing right in front of her.

  “You’re dreaming, but you’re also here,” the man made of sand said. “I don’t see many of you physically in my world like this.”

  “I don’t see many of you anywhere like anything,” May told him. “Who are you exactly?”

  “You know me,” the man said. “I build your dream stories. Whatever I imagine comes true for you here every night.”

  “You could stand to brush up a bit on plot and character, then,” May said with a grimace. Maybe the Sandman didn’t enjoy criticism, but seriously, every dream she’d ever had was all over the place. “Or at least just tell one story, you know? I feel like I’m living four or five different ones in dreams. Sometimes all at once.”

  The man stared at her strangely, his glass eyes darkening a bit. “The fairy queen sent you, didn’t she? The one who sent all those goblins.”

  May paused. “Goblins? She didn’t say much about that—”

  The glass eyes darkened further. “I imprisoned them all forever in their nightmares.”

  May backed away, only to find herself in a room no bigger than a closet, bumping up against the wall. “Nope, I’ve never heard of any fairy queen. Just made it here myself! I’m not here to cause any trouble, just, you know, find some glass ball called the Fairest, take it back to the real world, use it on a bad lady, that kind of thing.”

  The glass man gestured and spilled sand out before him. “You will do no such thing,” he said as May watched the sand fall, almost mesmerized. She blinked and found herself in class, her teacher Mrs. Murray standing in front of her, hand out, as every other student in the class stared at her.

  “Well, May?” Mrs. Murray said, stamping one foot. “Where’s your thousand-page book report on a book you’ve never heard of, let alone read?!”

  May’s stomach dropped, and she struggled to speak but couldn’t. . . . Her mouth was too dry. “Glargh,” she said, which just seemed to anger Mrs. Murray more.

  “No book report?!” Mrs. Murray shouted. “You know what we do to children who don’t do their homework, May!” With that, all the other students began shouting insults at May as they swarmed her, picking her up and carrying her out of the classroom and into what looked like a zoo.

  Into the Spider-Snake-More-Spider Hut of Fun.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” May shouted, struggling to get away, but the other kids just tightened their grip and carried her toward the Hut door. This was all like a bad dream!

  Uh, of course it was. Why exactly had she fallen for that? “Alright, sand guy!” she shouted over the kids’ insults. “I’m not buying this anymore! It’s just a dream!”

  That made her feel better. Only, the Hut kept getting closer.

  “Seriously, just a dream,” May said, struggling against the kids, beginning to panic even more. “JUST A DREAM!”

  Mrs. Murray opened the door to the Hut of Fun. An enormous snake uncurled itself from around a spider bigger than May was, and both licked their lips. Even though neither one actually had lips.

  “DREAM!” May shouted, frantically pinching herself.

  “You can’t wake yourself if you’re here physically,” the man of glass told her, his face expressionless. “Instead, you’re stuck here until something pulls you back out.”

  Well that wasn’t good news. Would Malevolent know to pull her out? Would she even care if May was being eaten by giant spiders and snakes in her dream?

  Wait, this was her dream. She’d had this nightmare before . . . or parts of it. Sort of. But that meant it was happening within her head, somehow, even if she was here, somehow, which just gave her a headache, somehow. But if it really was within her own head—

  May squeezed her eyes closed just as the kids tossed her into the Hut, concentrating on someone, anyone, who could help her. Concentrating on help as hard as she could, even as she fell toward the worst things in the world.

  She landed on something hard, and for a moment, May didn’t want to open her eyes in case it was something that was not only hard but spider- or snakelike. Finally, a pleasant breeze on her cheek convinced her that she wasn’t being attacked, so decided it was okay to check things out.

  A man dressed in a midnight blue cloak with black armor beneath it stared down at her, a large oak tree behind him swaying in the wind. His armor had a large white eye right in the center of the chest.

  “You must be May,” the Eye said, offering her a hand. “Jack has told me so much about you.”

  CHAPTER 8

  You know what’s fun?” Penelope said to the goblin holding a knife to her throat. “Rescuing princesses. I don’t know why only boys get to do it. I think they keep it a secret just so we won’t rescue the princesses before them.”

  The goblin snorted. “And what a good job you’re doing. Who’s going to rescue you, then?” He pointed up at Malevolent’s dragon castle, rising into the air above them. “More guards?”

  Phillip stepped out from behind the goblin and held his sword to the monster’s neck. “I believe that would be me.”

  A deep voice behind Phillip growled, and the prince felt something annoyingly sharp and metallic pressed into his back. “Would it?”

  “This is getting too complicated,” Penelope said with a sigh. “Ambushes on top of ambushes? Enough twists—it’s too hard to keep up!” With that
, she fell forward, kicking backward. The goblin behind her slammed into Phillip, who in turn hit the goblin behind him, and all three went down in a heap. Both goblins yelped out in surprise, then began to snore, and Phillip noticed two tiny wooden needles sticking out of their arms just inches from his own.

  “From the spindle that Lian girl used on me,” Penelope told him, looking a bit embarrassed. “It absorbed some of the curse, so I broke it into a bunch of different pieces. Looks like it works! They should be out for a couple of hours, unless, well, someone kisses them.”

  Phillip pushed the first goblin off himself, then carefully got to his feet, deliberately avoiding close contact with any wooden needles. “You . . . might have told me about those,” he said, keeping a few feet between himself and the princess. “How many more do you have?”

  Penelope felt around in a pocket of her light green traveling cloak, covering a darker green dress that his mother had insisted she wear, despite Phillip actively encouraging a more travel-friendly outfit. And to be fair, that was only after he had encouraged her not to come at all, then tried to leave in secret without her. Unfortunately, he had been caught by the princess quite quickly. “As many as I could throw in my pockets,” she said. “More back at the castle.”

  With that, she turned and led the way up the beach, toward the stump of a beanstalk rising out of the sand. Above them, the dragon castle’s mouth lay open, operating as a drawbridge for the goblins patrolling the surroundings, though there were now two fewer awake guards doing so.

  “Next time, I will handle the goblins,” Phillip told her, leading the way into the woods surrounding the castle.

  “Were you meaning to handle them this time?” Penelope asked, and Phillip had no idea if she was mocking him or serious. “Maybe you were just waiting for your moment.”

  “I do not need your help here,” he told her, pushing on through the woods.