Once Upon the End (Half Upon a Time) (9 page)

CHAPTER 16

T
his is why I told you to leave me alone, Phillip,” May whispered through clenched teeth.

The prince and Penelope sat next to her, all chained together and seated around a fire on the beach beneath Malevolent’s castle, armed goblins in a circle around them. The wolf, meanwhile, hadn’t come near them yet. Apparently he was off checking on their ride home, back to the Wicked Queen.

“You were in danger, Princess,” Phillip said. “I had to rescue you.”

She wanted to yell at him, tell him he’d made things worse, but he just looked so concerned, she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to him. It’d be like taking away his entire reason for being.

P
hillip turned to Penelope and offered her some of the dirt-covered bread the goblins had tossed their way. Penelope looked at the bread, then at him. “Okay, Phillip, we need to talk.
”

Phillip looked at her blankly, still holding the bread between them. She looked at him, then at the bread, then took it out of his hand and put it back on the ground. May tried to stop her, then gave up; it’s not like the bread could get any dirtier.

“I get that this is what you do,” Penelope said, gesturing around at herself and May, absently dragging Phillip’s chained hand along with her. “You rescue princesses. I get that. And on some level, it’s sweet. But on a lot of other levels, it’s ridiculous.”

“Sorry?” Phillip said.

“Don’t apologize yet, I’m not done,” Penelope said. “May, feel free to jump in here.”

“I’m . . . okay with you handling this for now,” May told her, having no idea where she was going.

“Up on the roof,” Penelope told Phillip, gesturing up to the top of the castle above them, “you tried to protect me. But you were the one who needed protecting. I had a plan, Phillip. I had magic. You . . . you’ve got a sword.”

Phillip sat up straight, his eyes flashing angrily. “I have killed more giants than—”

“Shh,” Penelope said, and touched his mouth with her finger. “I don’t care. What I care about is that you almost got yourself killed because I thought you had to. Because the Wicked Queen
told
you that you were going to die. Does she seem like someone any of us should be listening to?”

“But the Mirror—” Phillip said.

“I’m not sure what mirrors have to do with this,” Penelope told him, “but last I remember, they’re for seeing if you have anything in your teeth after eating. Try to stay on topic here, Phillip. I don’t want to have to worry about you next time.”

“Worry about
me
?!” Phillip said, and one of the goblins chuckled.

“See?” Penelope said, pointing at the goblin. “He’s with me.”

“He is a monster!”

“HEY!” the goblin shouted. “
You’re
the ugly one, human!”

Penelope bobbed her head from side to side. “Okay, that’s an interesting point about culture, but that’s not really our focus right now. You need to understand that we can handle ourselves, both of us. Yes, May needed help—”

“Yeah, you were a huge help, getting me caught by the wolf!” May yelled.

“But that doesn’t mean that you need to go running in, swording everything in sight, only to get smacked around by a dragon.”

“Or getting us caught by the wolf!” May added again.

Phillip just gave her a look of confused horror.

Penelope patted his leg. “I get it. You mean well. And you did save me, back in the Fairy Homelands. But let’s be honest . . . you were born for that. I’m your true love, and that’s all that was important for that spell. So yes, you heroed just fine there. But that’s not who you’re meant to be.”

“And who . . . exactly . . . am I meant to be?” Phillip said carefully.

“I hope it’s someone who uses contractions,” May said quietly.

“You’re meant to be king someday!” Penelope said, getting the closest to annoyed that May had ever seen her. “You have a responsibility to your people, Phillip. Take care of
them
. Be a great leader, a noble one . . . that’s what they need. They don’t need you getting eaten by any old dragon that happens along just because some window says so!”

“Mirror,” May pointed out.

“It’s all glass,” Penelope said with a shrug.

Phillip opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and went silent.

Penelope patted his shoulder, then turned to May. “So what were you doing there, anyway, May?”

“Turns out, a whole lot of nothing,” May told her. “I . . . well, I asked Malevolent for help in defeating the Queen.”

“You WHAT?!” Philip shouted, and the goblins all began to laugh.

“And then you had to go and dragon-slay her before I got the rest of her plan!” May shouted back.

“You asked Malevolent for HELP?!” Phillip said.

“She just said that,” Penelope told him. “Weren’t you listening?”

Phillip turned to Penelope. “YOU hated her more than I did! Why are you not upset by that?”

Penelope shrugged. “I did what I needed to. She got what she deserved, but that’s over now. Why hold on to it? Besides, if she was helping May, maybe she was trying to make up for some of her past.”

“She wasn’t,” May told her. “It took a lot of bargaining. Most of which involved having you two never come anywhere near her.”

“Oh,” Penelope said. “Whoops.”

Phillip looked between them, his mouth hanging open, as the Wolf King approached. “While I’m all for this pleasant reunion,” he told them, “the Queen is opening a portal for us now.”

And then the entire beach lit up in blue crackling lightning, and a tall, beautiful woman stepped out into the darkness. “Children,” the Wicked Queen said with a smile. “So lovely to see you again.”

CHAPTER 17

I
t’d been twelve years since Jack’s father had planted the Wicked Queen’s beans on this land. At some point, the beanstalk had collapsed, the magic apparently just getting used up, but in that time, a lot of the remaining beanstalk had been reabsorbed by the forest or cut for fires by the local villagers. Well, at least the villagers who hadn’t had their houses cave in from the toppling plant: Here or there, you could see the outline of where the beanstalk had hit, in that there was a specific lack of houses there now.

Then there was the enormous chasm shaped like two giant feet about a hundred feet past the base of where the beanstalk had been. There were even
fewer
houses there. A lake had sprung up in a few places from the footsteps where the giant chased Jack’s father into the distance, but the initial hit, where the giant had landed . . . that was far too deep. Nothing would grow there.

And here was Jack, growing another beanstalk. Add that to the list of things he’d owe people for later. If there was a later.

The ground rumbled a bit as the first sprout broke through the dirt and began to rise toward the sky. Though the day was cloudy (made sense, given there was an entire castle in the clouds above him), at least it wasn’t as dark as the last time he’d done this. That night hadn’t been Jack’s favorite memory, the beanstalk rising toward Malevolent’s castle, with Phillip and . . .

And, well, whoever else might have been there. Stop it. Stop thinking about things that aren’t supposed to be
thought
about!

To distract himself, he pulled out his sword and the potion Jill had gotten for him, then poured it over the glass-like blade. The sword glowed oddly as the potion soaked in to the weapon, absorbing right into the blade. Huh, it worked. Hopefully.

The potion now empty, he put the bottle back in his pocket, replaced his sword on his back, then pulled out his grandfather’s Story Book. He quickly flipped through it, reading the specific pages that held everything he needed to know. No one knew all of his plan, other than the Charmed One, who didn’t approve but agreed that there was no other choice. He’d come up with it while traveling to the Wicked Queen’s castle with Jill, trying to ignore his sister during the long trip by reading through the Story Book just like he was now. And a few pages seemed to keep jumping out at him.

And that’s when he saw
it
and realized what it might be. Now that Gwentell had confirmed things from the Queen’s raven—he smacked the fairy awake so she’d be ready, and she smacked him right back—he knew that this was the right plan. There was no turning back. The moment he arrived with the harp, that was it.

The first sprout now crept higher than the trees, and just like last time, Jack figured it was easier to rise with the magic than to climb. Did his father climb it? The man had planted the beans at night and woken the next morning to find it there, so Jack supposed he had. That couldn’t have been fun, especially considering that the whole way he must have been thinking about his wife, Jack’s mother.

Before the Wicked Queen killed her.

Stop it.

Jack stepped into a loop on the beanstalk, grabbed another shoot, and wrapped it around his wrist to make sure he didn’t get knocked off if the stalk hit anything hard, like clouds. What were clouds made of, anyway? Would he hit one and bounce off? They looked pretty bouncy. Maybe that was something he should have talked to his father about. That, and why the man never came back for Jack yet let his daughter serve the woman who killed their mother and kept their father in prison, using her as what, bait? A secret weapon? Or was it more just that he couldn’t stop Jill when she had the chance to strike back?

That thought led Jack to think about Phillip, safe somewhere on his throne, probably having servants feed him grapes carefully sliced into perfect likenesses of the prince’s face. Would he be thinking about his part of the Queen’s prophecy? Or what about Malevolent, who said that the prince would eventually cause her death?

Yeah, right.
If
that happened, it wouldn’t be for, like, decades.

Jack was high enough now to see over the trees, and he swallowed hard. He was already higher than he’d been last time he’d been on the beanstalk and was quickly approaching the height he’d once reached on a witch’s broomstick. Had that really only been half a year ago? So much had changed.

Like never seeing May again.

Stop it stop it stop it.

The beanstalk jumped suddenly, and Jack’s feet lost their hold, the shoots around his wrist the only thing keeping him from falling right off. His stomach dropped past his toes, and he frantically grabbed for something, but the shoot he managed to reach just ripped off in his hand. Meanwhile, the shoots holding his other wrist sounded like they were ripping out by the roots.

And then, for no reason he could think of, his heart quieted down, and he stopped breathing in quite so quickly. Instead, he closed his eyes, then reopened them. He gently swung himself away from the main beanstalk, hanging out over a whole lot of nothing, then let his momentum carry him back toward the stalk, just close enough for him to reach it with his legs, just close enough for him to kick off . . . assuming the shoot would hold.

What other choice did he have?

Jack kicked off, and out he swung, out over the path the last beanstalk had fallen, the destruction it left behind clearly visible from this height. He began to turn back around, to swing back toward the main stalk, only to have the shoots holding his wrist groan, then rip. Off Jack fell—

Only to slam against the main stalk, just a few feet lower. His swing had barely worked, but barely was still good enough.

And yet he still wasn’t breathing hard, and his heart still wasn’t racing. On his back, he could almost feel his sword glowing, but he hadn’t slowed time down or done any of the other tricks he’d been taught by Captain Thomas.

Well, unless you called staying calm a trick. Which, in a lot of ways, it was.

Jack worked both his hands and feet into shoots this time, securing himself much more safely as the tip of the beanstalk continued to push up against the lowest cloud. Apparently it had hit and caused the rumbling that still threatened to knock Jack off the stalk at any moment. And even more apparently, the clouds turned out to be floating rocks, or something just as hard, as the beanstalk was having as much trouble with this cloud as it had the base of Malevolent’s castle.

Jack shook his head, not sure why he hadn’t figured that out before. If a giant could live in a castle in the clouds, how could the clouds NOT be floating rocks? What else would hold a castle up? It was just logic, really, something he honestly should try relying on more often.

And then, something odd happened. A crack appeared in the rocks, right about where the beanstalk was pushing up through. The crack grew bigger, then suddenly exploded open, and a hand as big as a house reached down through the white rock to grab the beanstalk like a weed.

The hand yanked abruptly, and suddenly the entire beanstalk was rising up and through the hole, dangling before a man the size of a mountain.

“Well well,” the giant said, his breath blasting against Jack like a unpleasantly stinky wind. “Look what we have here. Another little thief, trying the same trick as the first one. Never repeat, little thief. It will always get you caught.” He pulled Jack off the beanstalk and raised him to eye level.

“Oh, right,” Jack said. “Good advice. I guess.”

“Well, down you go,” the giant said, tossing the beanstalk away like a weed, then dangling Jack over the very empty hole, a lot of very empty air, and some very hard ground. But before he let go, the giant paused, then sniffed in, the vacuum of his nose pulling Jack closer with each inhale. The giant’s eyes widened, and he stared at Jack.

“Your blood,” he said. “It smells just like that last thief, the one that I never caught!”

Giants could smell blood? That might have been good to know.

CHAPTER 18

W
eirdly, Penelope was the first to act. The princess stood up, her eyes back to their usual half-mast, and curtsied to the Wicked Queen.

Then, as she stood back up, she threw something small and sharp right at the Queen.

The whatever-it-was stopped right in midair, just inches in front of the Queen’s forehead.

“You must be Penelope,” the Queen said, and the object snapped in half. “I appreciate the effort, my dear, but we can’t have you trying such things again.” She glanced over Penelope’s shoulder, and three goblins moved to grab the princess and drag her off, Penelope silent the entire time.

“If you hurt her—” Phillip started to say, but the Queen just held up a hand.

“Oh, Phillip, we really don’t have time right now for your inane little threats. Do be a nice boy and keep that mouth shut, please.”

And just like that, Phillip’s mouth slammed shut. He clawed at his lips with his fingers but couldn’t open it even a tiny bit.

“And you, my darling little month of May,” the Queen said, turning to May finally, looking her over. “You’ve grown, haven’t you?”

“People do that,” May said, her hand on the glass ball in her pocket. And then the image of Penelope’s splinter stopping in midair flew through her head, and she let go of it, then took her hand out of her pocket, deliberately keeping any thought of the Fairest out of her mind. She couldn’t do anything, not now. Not yet.

The Queen smiled. “Oh, my darling, there was
never
anything you could have done.

“This isn’t you,” May said, not trusting herself to say much else. Too many other things kept bubbling up. Most of them would get her killed.

“It isn’t?” The Queen pretended to be confused.

“It’s not. This
isn’t
. . . you aren’t the woman . . . who raised me.” She took a deep breath, desperately trying to keep herself calm.

Beside her, Phillip groaned, falling to his knees, pushed by an invisible force. Almost robotically, he bent over and kissed the Queen’s foot, then stayed bowing low to her.

“You really should follow your friend’s example here and address me with more respect, May,” the Queen said softly. She looked past May, and more goblins came for Phillip. The prince caught May’s eye, and he shook his head violently.

The message was clear and was the same one that she couldn’t stop repeating in her head.

Unfortunately, May’s heartbeat was so loud in her ears she almost couldn’t hear anything else.

Who was this
monster
who would do that to another human being?!

“You seem . . . upset,” the Queen said, stepping closer to touch May’s cheek. May jerked her head away, and the Queen’s eyes narrowed. “You would do well to not disobey me right now, May. We aren’t talking about some simple grounding for a bad grade or you dyeing your hair. Not anymore. My punishments now are far, far worse.”

“Don’t . . .
please
don’t hurt them,” May said through clenched teeth. Her entire head seemed to be beating in time with her heart. “I’ll come with you, I’ll do what you want, but
please
don’t hurt either of them.”

The Queen paused, then moved in close, just inches from May’s face. “One will betray you, May, and the other will die for you. You know that’s going to happen, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that time will be here very, very soon. So I can’t very well agree to anything of the sort, now can I?”

May didn’t see the look this time, but goblins grabbed her arms and legs and carried her away as the Queen turned and walked calmly back toward the portal. May watched her go, her hands clenched into fists, until a goblin pulled some sort of hood over her head, and everything went dark.

Hours passed, or maybe just very long minutes. It was hard to tell what was going on while being carried. They didn’t even bother tying her hands and feet together, just carried her by her limbs so that she had no leverage at all to escape. Not that she didn’t try, but it wasn’t anything like when the dwarfs had taken her. Now, she knew that if she did get away, she might be leaving Penelope and Phillip behind. And who knew what would happen to both of them without her there.

This was why they were supposed to stay
away
from her! She couldn’t do this if other people might get hurt too!

The sizzle of the portal came and went, and May heard goblin feet slapping on stone. They carried her up and down stairs, everything silent besides the occasional muttering here or there by the goblins, mostly complaining about having to carry her so far.

Finally, they tossed her into the air, and she shouted in surprise, only to land on something fairly soft. One of the goblins yanked the hood off, and she quickly looked down, hoping it wasn’t anything horrible, only to find an enormous bed sculpted from gold.

“Sleep tight, Princess,” the goblin said with a creepy smile, then pushed the other monsters out the door and slammed it shut behind him. She heard one lock, then another, and a third. They weren’t taking any chances.

Not only was she alone in the room, but so was the bed, apart from one lone chair. Bars covered a large window that looked out into darkness, and May couldn’t be sure if it was still night, or if there just wasn’t anything to see. For all she knew, she was in some other dimension without a sun. Or maybe it had an evil sun, one that sucked the light out of the world. And maybe the full moon turned wolves into people, instead of the other way around.

That’s it, distract yourself. Don’t think about what’s waiting for you outside the door and what’s coming . . . soon, if the Queen could be believed.
And why would she lie?

Someone knocked on her door. All three locks turned, and May quickly went to hide behind the door, ready to surprise whoever entered.

She ended up almost punching Penelope, who stumbled into the room like she’d been pushed. The princess looked around, holding something folded and clothing-looking in her arms.

“Hello?” Penelope said as the door slammed shut behind her, the locks turning again.

May tapped her on the shoulder, and Penelope whirled around and punched her.

“OW!” May shouted. “It’s me!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Penelope said. “You, well, you surprised me!”

“I SEE THAT!” Her cheek throbbed where the girl had hit her, and her jaw felt sore. Not exactly what she needed right now. “Is that all you came in to do, hit me?”

Penelope shook her head. “I actually didn’t intend to do that at all.”

“Shocking.”

“If you say so.” She held out the fabric in her hands, which May could now see were two dresses that looked like they cost more than her friends’ families back home made in a year. “They told me that we had to get dressed up to officially appear before the Queen.”

May took one of the dresses, a shimmering blue that she knew was meant for her. It looked like every drawing of Cinderella’s dress she’d ever seen. “What does that mean, appear before her?”

“Well,” Penelope said, “from what the guard said, it sounds as if she intends us to declare our loyalty to her in front of her subjects, and if we don’t, we’ll be sentenced to death.” As all the color drained out of May’s face, Penelope leaned in conspiratorially. “You know, if this all comes down to the fact that I tried to stab her with a cursed spindle splinter, I am going to be pretty annoyed!”