Once Upon the End (Half Upon a Time)

by James Riley

  The golden imp paused at this, throwing his cousin a weird look. “Why would we do that?”

  “So we’d always know where it was!”

  “But wouldn’t that mean anyone could find it?”

  “Why would anyone ever think to look for gold at the end of a rainbow?”

  “YOU did.”

  “I’m not stupid like humans are.”

  “You’re CLOSE.”

  “Gentlemen!” Jack said. “We haven’t discussed what I get!”

  “YOU get?” the red-hatted imp said. “You get your life!”

  “Oh, that book is worth at least three of my lives,” Jack told him, hoping his math was correct. Both imps nodded reluctantly, so he plowed ahead. “But I’ll only take the one life, and . . .” He pulled out the Story Book page he’d ripped out and showed the imps a picture. “I want you to send me there.”

  The imps squinted at the picture. “That would take most of the magic we have left!” the golden imp said.

  “Why would you need it anymore if you have pots of gold?” Jack asked.

  “I used to be able to spin straw into gold,” the golden imp muttered. “Never needed money before now. Life isn’t very fair.”

  “You’re telling me,” the red-hatted imp said. “We’re letting my mortal enemy go free!”

  “Mortal enemy?” Jack asked. “Honestly, I barely remembered you.”

  “Even worse!” the imp shouted.

  “So do we have a deal?”

  The imps looked at each other and sighed, then nodded their heads. They put their hands together and concentrated, sweat breaking out on their foreheads, their eyes clinched close, and Jack felt something pulling at him, something that grew stronger and stronger.

  “There it is,” the golden imp said, gritting his teeth. “I found it. But it’s in another time entirely!”

  “Another what now?” Jack said.

  “Hundreds of years in the future,” the red-hatted imp said. “This really will drain us completely!”

  “Well, if it’s that far off, put me there a day or two ahead of time,” he told them. “That’ll give me a little time to make a plan.”

  The red-hatted imp sputtered at Jack’s request, but the golden imp just smiled. “A deal’s a deal, cousin.” He winked, and seemed to show the red-hatted imp something Jack couldn’t see. “See, the deal is complete even if we drop him right . . . here.”

  “Wait, drop me where?” Jack said, but the imps disappeared as something dragged him away with enough force to double his entire body over.

  Faster and faster he went, until finally whatever it was let go, and he popped back into the world, skidding to a stop on what felt like a road made of rock, which hurt in at least twenty different places. Had that been what the imp meant?

  And then Jack looked up to find an enormous metal beast charging straight at him, screaming loudly in a strangely high-pitched squeal of anger as it descended on him, and he realized that THAT was what the imp meant.

  “STILTSKIN!” Jack shouted at the top of his lungs as the metal monster descended on him. “STILT . . . SKIN!”

  CHAPTER 26

  Phillip reappeared back on the familiar battlements of his castle, Penelope and Lian both by his side. All around him, his soldiers and guards were shouting and pointing, and Phillip looked in the direction they were all staring.

  There, on the horizon, were six giants, all as tall as mountains, all marching toward the kingdom, followed closely by a giant easily half again as tall, holding a club made of the tallest trees Phillip had ever seen, strapped together.

  “Your Highness!” a man shouted, and Phillip turned to find the captain of his guard running toward him. “Thank goodness you’ve returned!”

  “Goodness had nothing to do with it,” Phillip said, finding it hard to swallow, his throat was so dry. He had betrayed May. Him! Jack had protected her to the very end, something Phillip himself could not do!

  “Where’s my father?” Lian demanded, and the captain of the guard looked at her oddly.

  “Answer her, my friend,” Phillip told him. “Did you find anyone . . . out of place here? Someone who appeared much as we did?”

  The guard nodded. “Yesterday, in the throne room. We almost killed him, but he instantly gave up. But how did you know?”

  “He’s a genius,” Lian said, looking at Phillip like he were something unpleasant she stepped in on the road. “Where’s this out-of-place man?”

  “We locked him in the dungeons,” the captain of the guard told her. “He refuses to answer any questions, just asks us for news every few minutes.” He made a face. “It’s quite irritating.”

  “Runs in the family,” Lian said. “Bring him up here. He needs to see this.”

  The captain of the guard looked at Phillip, who nodded. Whether or not Jack’s father needed to see anything, Phillip needed to see him. More than ever, after what had just happened.

  Penelope touched his shoulder. “You made the only choice you could.”

  Phillip flinched from her touch and moved to the ramparts to get a better look at the giants. “How far would you say they are?” he asked the nearest guard.

  “Maybe a week out, Your Highness. Possibly less.”

  He nodded, looking at the land in between the castle and the giants. Houses dotted the landscape in the distance, growing more plentiful as they neared the castle, until about a half mile out twenty-foot-high walls enclosed the city proper. “Evacuate everyone outside the walls into the city. I want it done by nightfall.”

  “Of course, Your Highness,” the guard said, and ran off, passing the captain of the guard, who returned with a bearded man wearing horribly dirty rags.

  “Your Highness,” the captain said, and pushed the man to his knees in front of Phillip, two other guards holding swords on the bedraggled man. “As you requested, the man who appeared in your throne room yesterday.”

  “I know you won’t necessarily believe this,” the man in rags said, looking up at Phillip with a half smile. “But you made the smart choice.”

  Phillip froze. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  The man shrugged. “Leaving the girl. You had to do it, or you might have lost your entire kingdom.”

  “Because of you,” Phillip whispered. “I had to betray someone dear to me, leave her behind in the clutches of pure evil, solely for a tiny chance to save my people. All because of you.”

  “If that helps you.”

  Something inside Phillip snapped, and he leapt forward, dragging the man to his feet. Phillip grabbed a sword from one of the guards and shoved it into the man’s hand, then stood back, taking another sword for himself. “Attack me!”

  Jack’s father just raised an eyebrow. “Why would I do that?”

  “ATTACK. ME.”

  The man dropped the sword, so Phillip growled and picked it up again, then forced the man to take it. “I cannot strike you if you do not attack me first. I give you permission. Strike me, so that I might avenge my father’s death!”

  “That’d be pretty stupid of me, then, wouldn’t it?” the man said. He pointed with his sword out toward the largest giant. “Besides, I think you want that guy.”

  “YOU stole from the giant!” Phillip roared, grabbing the man by his rags and holding his sword to the man’s throat. “YOU caused my father’s death as surely as that giant did! And now you made me leave her behind!”

  “Phillip,” Lian said behind him, “put your sword down, or I will take it from you.”

  Phillip heard guards surround her, but she didn’t seem to care. “My father demands justice, Lian,” the prince said, his mouth curled into a sneer. “May demands justice!”

  “Is that what this is?” Penelope asked him. “’Cause it seems a lot more like guilt.”

  Phillip looked from the man, who smiled, to Penelope, who was glaring at him, and dropped his sword to the ground. “What . . . am I doing?” he said, sliding to the ground. “I
do not know what to do.”

  Penelope squatted down next to him. “What would your father do right now?”

  “He would ride out and defeat the giants.”

  “By himself?” Penelope snorted. “He wouldn’t get far against seven of them.”

  A few of the guards gasped. “The king bested seven in one blow, Princess!”

  Phillip looked between Penelope and the guard, then suddenly had the urge to laugh. He chuckled softly at first, then louder and longer, eventually shaking and having trouble breathing, he laughed so hard. “They were flies!” he said when he could breathe, between the laughter. “Not giants, flies! My father was a tailor and killed seven flies with one blow. He bragged about doing so, and someone believed that he meant giants somehow. He killed but one giant in his life, and that was almost by accident!”

  Lian snorted, and Penelope gave Phillip an odd look. “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that he had no idea what he was doing!” Phillip shouted. “He died fighting the giant in the clouds because he only beat the one giant by luck!”

  Penelope shrugged. “So?”

  “SO?!”

  “You’ve bested giants, quite a few more than seven,” she said. “Who cares what your father did? What matters is what you can do. And you can save your kingdom, even if he couldn’t.”

  “Is anyone else hearing this?” Lian said from behind him. “Am I really the only one who thinks we should just run for it?”

  “Running won’t help,” the man in rags said quietly. “He has our scents. He’ll hunt everyone in your kingdom down one by one until he finds us.”

  “How did you escape him the first time?” Phillip asked him.

  “I tricked him back into the clouds,” the man said. “Your father . . . we’d met before, on another adventure. He might not have killed seven giants, but there was no one more clever. He almost even outwitted me at one point.”

  Phillip almost laughed again. Jack’s father . . . was complimenting his own on his cleverness?

  “Together, we convinced the giant I’d escaped back up the beanstalk. He followed me up but took your father. I cut the beanstalk down and trapped him up there,” Jack’s father said. “He was never that big, though. He must have only been a teenager when I met him, because he’s almost double the size now. He could climb down from the clouds and not hurt himself. There’s only one option.”

  “We have to defeat him,” Phillip said, standing up and wiping his face with his sleeve. For some reason, he felt better.

  Lian stepped over to the wall. “So, how do we do this?”

  “We?” Phillip asked her. “I never asked for your help.”

  “Oh, I’m going to help you now,” she said, “and then you’re going to help me take down the Queen once and for all.” Lian paused, staring at her father. “She . . . stabbed Jack in the heart, Father. With his own sword.”

  The man raised an eyebrow, then threw a look at Phillip. “I see.”

  Lian and her father shared another look, but Phillip ignored them both, sizing up the houses between the giants and the castle again. Perhaps they might have a chance after all. “I may have a plan. But we will need help. And for that, I will need you two,” he said, turning to Penelope and Lian. “What would you say to asking some friends for their assistance?”

  Lian looked between Phillip and Penelope, then sighed. “I really don’t like where this is going.”

  Phillip grinned. “No. You will not. Though I do hope you know where to find some mermaid tears.”

  His satisfied expression lasted for all of two seconds before a pirate monkey landed on his face, screeching in happiness to see him.

  CHAPTER 27

  The Wicked Queen pulled the sword out of her heart and handed it to May with just a trace of sadness. “You weren’t the first to try that.”

  The sword dropped from May’s hand as she struggled to speak. “But . . . you . . . no!”

  “There’s nothing there to hurt, May,” the Queen said. “It hasn’t always been such. At one point, I was much like you, of course. So much like you.” She reached a hand out to touch May’s cheek, but May shuddered and pulled away.

  The Queen narrowed her eyes, and grabbed May’s chin, pulling her toward her, electricity playing between her fingers. “I could kill you now,” she said, her voice now quieter. “I could do it, don’t you see? The part of me that held me back before, that part died in the other world. Magic is weak there, if it exists, and dies away quickly. So there. . . .” She moved, and her shadow moved a fraction of a second later, as if it weren’t just an absence of light but a second figure. “There, these shadows that haunt me could not live forever. And neither could I.”

  “You didn’t feel anything,” May said, every word a struggle against the Queen’s grasp on her jaw. “You never loved me!”

  The Queen’s eyes flashed like a lightning bolt, and she raised a hand to slap May, her face a grotesque mask of hatred. But she paused, then lowered her hand.

  “Perhaps I should share . . . a story,” she said, and gestured. The room morphed around them, and May found herself in a chamber that seemed to extend higher than the sky, all four walls completely covered with books. A table in front of her could barely be seen under stacks of books four or five high, with titles like Thrilling Tales of Science and The Myths and Stories of the Norsemen.

  The Queen pointed, and May turned to find a book resting on a pedestal, its cover blackened and charred as if it’d been on fire yet somehow survived.

  The Queen gestured at the book, then stepped away, her back to May. May rubbed her aching jaw, then, not knowing what else to do, she stepped over to the book and pulled open the enormous cover, wondering if it would fall apart in her fingers.

  Instead, it felt as solid as a brand-new book. Inside was a beautiful painting, a watercolor picture of a girl with black hair and a joyful smile, holding an armful of apples.

  Once upon a time, Princess Eudora lived happily with her king father and queen mother, the perfect family, content in every way. If the princess had a flaw, and many would argue that she did not, it would be that she was a trifle vain and believed herself to be the most beautiful girl to ever live.

  Yet even with a dash of arrogance, Eudora was good and kind and loving, treating any and all equally and justly, even her uncle, who was jealous that the princess would take over the kingdom instead of he himself.

  The next page showed a painting of the princess sitting by a well in a courtyard, singing with some birds, while a man dressed in black watched from above, his expression clearly not loving.

  The man looked . . . familiar. Black hair and a gaunt face. Where had she seen that?

  For a while, the princess lived happily, unaware of her uncle’s plot against her. But then her parents were called away to visit another kingdom, and she was left alone with the man. And her uncle wasted no time.

  The painting here showed Eudora’s uncle grabbing the princess from behind and stabbing her in the heart.

  The court magician, desperate to save the girl, tried everything he could. No medicine, no herb, no magic he knew of could keep the girl alive. So, despite his reservations, the man turned to the shadows to save his princess.

  This time, the girl lay on what looked like a funeral pyre while a river of shadows flew into the spot where her heart was.

  Her heart was just a step away from death, so the shadows healed it so that it might beat forever, then removed it from her body and hid it away in a wooden box, filling her chest with their evil. That evil kept her alive, but turned her into a shadow of her former self.

  The girl stood over the magician, who cowered in terror from her. One of her hands was raised, and blue lightning played through her fingers in a very familiar way.

  Her uncle, upon learning she still lived, tried again to murder her, but without a heart in her body, Eudora could not be hurt. And the heart in the box had its own protection: The shadows had placed a cruel c
urse upon it.

  Now the princess stood behind her uncle, who frantically attacked the girl, desperate to somehow kill the monster he’d unknowingly created.

  Indeed, the princess’s heart was now safe, but for the very thing that had hurt her in the first place . . .

  May turned the page, but the rest of the book had been ripped out. She put it back down on the floor, only to have it disappear in a sizzle of lightning.

  “I apologize for the abrupt ending,” the Queen said from behind her. “But the story revealed a bit too much. You’d be surprised how much power it took just to destroy those pages.” She smiled mockingly. “The shadow’s curse is less effective when no one knows it but me.”

  “So . . . they live in you now?” May asked, pushing herself away as subtly as possible.

  “They do in this world,” the Queen told her, her expression completely devoid of any love or joy. “As I said, in the other world they were weakened and dying. I would not have lived much longer, in fact. But . . . I was much like my old self, from before my treacherous uncle decided to murder me.”

  And despite herself, despite the stories, despite the cruelty and hatred and horribleness, May actually felt something other than fear of the woman. “Maybe there’s a way to cure you,” she said quietly.

  The Queen smiled just a bit. “If there was, it has been lost to the ages. I myself don’t have the power, and I am the most powerful magic-user still alive in this world. I know, for I killed any more powerful than myself early on.”

  “The fairy queens—”

  “They would kill me as soon as cure me, but even they’d find that practically impossible. Not without the knowledge of the curse.”

  “The missing pages,” May said.

  The Queen smiled again. “There are those who knew, of course. Malevolent figured it out before she betrayed me. That was why I had to take the Mirror from her: She knew far too much. Of course, it turned into quite the benefit on its own, but I’ve found ways to make do without it.”

  Malevolent knew? If that was true, then the Queen’s secrets had died with the fairy queen. But what, then, was the Fairest supposed to have done . . . ?