[Half/Time 01] Half Upon a Time (7 page)

And then something startlingly red and blue slammed into the witch’s head, knocking her over.

Jack crashed to the floor, landing right on top of the witch. He frantically pushed himself off the witch’s squirming body and tried to crawl away from her on the sticky floor but didn’t get very far.

And then hands pulled the witch’s body away from him. May, a disgusted look on her face, had hooked her hands underneath the witch’s arms and was dragging her body toward the black
ropes that had tied Jack up. On the floor next to May lay a large blue and red circle with a white stick.

It was a lollipop, easily as big around as Jack’s head.

“Uh … what?” he said, having trouble following.

May quickly circled the ropes around the witch’s body, then pulled them tight, eliciting a groan from the groggy witch.

Jack grabbed the table and slowly pulled himself to his feet, his legs still wobbling under him. “How …? Where did
you
come from?”

May nodded over his shoulder. “She tied me up and threw me in the closet.” The princess smiled. “She might want to empty it out next time instead of leaving all kinds of sharp gardening tools around for someone to cut themselves free with.”

Jack grunted. “I’m actually kind of glad she didn’t think that far. And … the lollipop?”

May picked her weapon up off the floor. “What, this?” she said. “Have you taken a look around?”

Jack raised an eyebrow, then took a closer look around the room. “Oh, wow,” he said, his breath catching in his throat.

The walls, the ceiling, the furniture: Everything was made of candy.

Peppermint chairs had gumdrops for cushions. Walls made
of graham crackers were held in place by white frosting. The table Jack had woken up on was made of chocolate bars; the end nearest the oven had even melted a bit. And the ropes now tied around the witch looked to be black licorice strings braided together.

The oven was metal, probably for practical reasons, but the chimney above it seemed to be made of hard toffee. The colors on the ceiling that he’d noticed when he woke up were actually … well, he couldn’t tell what kind of candy they were, but they looked good. Even the windows looked like thin panes of lollipop candy.

Jack’s stomach rumbled in spite of everything. “It’s … it’s a candy house!” he said, taking a step toward the graham cracker walls. As he walked, the sticky floor caught his attention: peanut brittle. “Don’t you want to
try
it?!” he asked the princess, fighting off a wild desire to taste everything at once.

May gave him an exasperated look. “Are you kidding?” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking of … Jack, you’re
not
going to eat any! After what the witch was going to do to you? Do you know how disgusting that is?!”

“Very?” Jack said, not really listening as he considered the chocolate table.

May gagged. “She’s been
walking
on this stuff! Sitting on it! Not to mention the fact that I haven’t seen a bathroom. And you’re going to put it in your
mouth
?”

“It’s
candy
,” Jack said, running his fingers over the chocolate table. “Who cares where it’s been?”

May sighed. “I can’t tell you how disgusted I am right now. At least don’t eat the floor. Or the chairs or tables. The walls might be the cleanest, up high.”

Jack nodded and climbed up onto the chocolate table to get close enough to the wall for a taste. He picked a frosting seam to try first, put a hand on either side of it, then stuck out his tongue and licked the wall.

A sugary explosion burst in his mouth, and he almost fainted in pleasure. It was as if every candy or dessert he’d ever eaten had been in preparation for this one moment! The sweetness, the texture … it was making him light-headed!

Actually, it really
was
making him light-headed. And when had the room started spinning?

And then everything went dark, and Jack was falling. He heard May scream something right before he tumbled off the table and slammed into the floor.

A few seconds later, Jack opened his eyes to find May
standing over him, shaking her head in amazement. “I hope that was worth it,” she said, pulling him up to a seated position, then leaning him against the same wall he’d just tasted.

“It almost was,” he said, still a little faint. “Too bad … she must have poisoned all the candy.”

“Poisoned it?” May asked. “Is that what happened?”

“I should have realized,” Jack said, shaking off the lingering effects of the frosting. “Of
course
she’d poison it. That’s probably how she caught most of her prey. Bait the trap with a house made of candy, then add a little something to knock out anyone who eats it. Wham, she’s got dinner.”

“That’s pleasant,” May said, helping Jack up. “But that’s not how she got us. How exactly did we get here, anyway?”

“She mentioned something about her children,” Jack said, his head clearing as he slowly followed May to the candy house’s front door.

“Her children? Wonder what she meant by that?” May asked as she yanked the door open. One look outside, and the princess immediately slammed it shut and spun around with a look of terror in her eyes.

“What?” Jack asked, his stomach going queasy, and not from the frosting. “What was out there?”

In a very small voice, she said, “I think they’re her children …?”

Jack frowned. “Okay, so there are a few kids. We should be able to get past them.” He picked up a nearby lollipop. “Especially if we have weapons,” he said with a smile, a smile that May didn’t return. “What?” he asked her again.

“A lollipop’s not gonna cut it, Jack,” May said quietly.

From outside, Jack heard a giggle, the same one he’d heard before falling asleep. A second giggle quickly joined it, then a third, and soon what sounded like hundreds of the creatures began laughing right outside the door.

A second later, the witch began laughing too. “Come in, my children!” she shouted. “I know I said the girl was to be left alone, but mother’s changed her mind. Come untie us, and we shall feast on both of these delicious morsels!”

Jack sighed, grabbed May’s lollipop from the floor, and knocked the cackling witch on the head. May, meanwhile, grabbed one of the peppermint chairs and slammed it down into the peanut brittle floor to hold the door shut, just in time: The chair crunched into place just as one of the little giggling monsters outside pushed the door open, its little hand reaching in. As the chair slammed the door shut again, the creature’s cry of pain harmonized eerily with the witch’s.

“There’s no escape, my darlings!” the witch screamed. “My children will not let you leave until they’ve eaten their fill!”

“Can you shut her up?!” May yelled. Jack swung the lollipop again, but this time the witch was ready. Her cracked eggshell
mouth grabbed the lollipop and crunched down, biting it in half.

“Gah!” Jack shouted, dropping his half of the lollipop.

“I took her down on my first try, you know,” May pointed out.

“She’s not the main concern,” Jack said. “We need to find something to use against her children!” As he spoke, they could hear loud scraping sounds on the door, followed by little plaintive cries, as if the witch’s children were babies crying for milk.

“What about that?” May said, pointing at the curved knife the witch had been using to cut open Jack’s clothing when he first woke up.

“We might want to think bigger,” he said. “One knife’s not going to protect us very long against all those creatures.”

“Fine,” May said. She paused, then grabbed Jack and pulled him toward a small door in the corner of the house. “We still have all the noncandy tools in the closet, though!” she said, yanking the door open. “Maybe there’s something in here we can use as a weapon.”

Jack made his way over to her, dodging random gardening equipment she threw out of the closet. A hoe, a saw, a rake … none of these were big enough. There was some wood for the fire, still not enough … oh, his grandfather’s bag! Jack
grabbed it as it flew by and threw it over one shoulder. May hadn’t stopped, though. A hammer whizzed by his leg, followed by a broom, then a metal pot …

A broom?

“Hold on!” Jack yelled, spinning around to pick up the broom. He hated to use magic, but it didn’t look like they had much of a choice.

May tossed a few other assorted instruments out of the closet, then turned around. “What?” she said. “That hammer’s no better than the knife.”

“Not the hammer,” Jack said. “The broom. That’s our way out.”

Outside, the clawing grew louder, and not just at the door. It sounded as if the creatures were trying to claw—or eat—their way right through the walls of the house. Apparently the poison didn’t affect them.

“Are you still drugged on candy?” May asked, narrowing her eyes. “You do realize that’s for sweeping, right?”

“Don’t you know anything?” Jack said. “How do you think witches get around?”

“Don’t touch that!” the witch cried out, struggling harder against the licorice bindings.

“One more word, and you’re going in the oven!” May said, then turned back to Jack. “You’re saying witches actually ride around on brooms?” she asked, one eyebrow up. “Wow, how old-school.”

Jack shrugged. “It’s tradition.”

“So how does it work?” May said, taking the broom from him. She straddled the handle and began hopping around the room with it under her. “Giddyup!” she shouted. “Let’s go! Bibbity-Bobbity—”

“Don’t just
yell
out magic words!” Jack shouted at her. Did she even know what she was saying?! Who knew what spell she might cast!

“I think we’re safe,” May said as she came to a stop. “And apparently I just ran around on a regular broom. Great idea, genius.”

Jack grabbed the broom and looked it over, thinking. Finally he shrugged, held it horizontally at shoulder level in both hands, then brought the broom down as hard as he could toward his knee, as if he was going to break it in half.

Just before it hit his knee, the broom leapt out of Jack’s hands and into the air with a squeal. It bucked wildly, then tore off around the cottage, madly flying in every direction like a trapped insect looking for a window.

May threw herself out of its way, but as the broom tore past Jack, he jumped up and grabbed it with both hands, holding on tight. The broom didn’t even slow down, continuing its frantic dash around the cottage, only now dragging Jack along behind it.

“Little help?” he asked as he flew by May. The princess grabbed Jack on the next go-around, and between the two, they managed to pull the broom back down to the floor.

“I think I figured out how to make it go,” Jack said, grunting as he held the still struggling broom with both arms.

“How’d you know it would do that?” May asked, tentatively approaching the broom, which seemed to be calming down a bit.

“It was just a guess,” he said. “I figured I’d try scaring it, see if that got any reaction out of it.”

“Just a small one,” May said, reaching out to pet the broom. As she touched it the broom jerked a bit, then quieted down, as if it were a frightened cat. “Where’d you learn this stuff, anyway?”

“School, mostly,” he said with a shrug. “The rest is just common sense.”

“Glad you caught the witch lesson,” May said, still petting the broom, which now seemed to be purring.

Suddenly, the lollipop chair holding the door closed bumped backward. Fortunately, the chair stuck briefly in the peanut brittle,
falling back into place after the initial jolt. A second hit from outside, though, knocked the chair completely out of the way just as Jack leapt forward and smashed the chair back into place. The chair’s legs cracked a bit, but held firm in the sticky floor.

May turned from the front door back to the broom. “Right,” she said. “Time to go.”

As she straddled the broom again, Jack quickly grabbed the knife from the table and threw it into his bag. It wasn’t much, but it couldn’t hurt. “Ready to try this?” he asked May as he threw a leg over the broom behind her.

“Not even a little bit,” she said, turning around to look at Jack. “Let’s go.”

Before Jack could respond, another hit sent the chair skidding across the floor as the door banged open.

Seeing the creatures for the first time, Jack gasped. The witch had called them children, but these creatures looked nothing like any child he’d ever seen. Yes, they were small, no more than two feet tall, but not many kids in his village had sharpened fangs and claws. Also, most children he knew didn’t have empty sockets where their eyes should have been.

Even without eyes, though, every one of the witch’s children managed to look at them hungrily.

“Grab them, my children!” the witch shouted.

“Get us out of here!” Jack screamed, kicking up from the floor. “
Go, go, go!
”

“Fly!” May yelled, pulling up on the broom. “
Fly
, broom!”

At the princess’s command, the broom leapt into the air just above the first few children that lunged at them, then shot forward like an arrow, straight at the monsters blocking the doorway. Jack ducked his head and May screamed in terror as they plowed right into the creatures.

Claws and teeth ripped at Jack’s clothes and skin as the witch’s children grabbed and bit, but the broom never stopped. A second later, they were through the mob of creatures and out into the
night sky. A few of the witch’s children held on to May, Jack, and the broom, but Jack managed to kick and poke the little monsters off as May angled the broom up into the sky.

As the monsters tumbled off the broom, Jack watched them fall. Despite the fact that it was now dark again (how long had he been knocked out?!), the lights inside the cottage lit up the area around it, giving Jack just enough light to see by. And what he saw made him sick.

The entire forest floor, as far as Jack could see, was covered in the witch’s children. There must have been hundreds of the tiny, swarming monsters, including the ones climbing all over the cottage … the same cottage that just minutes ago Jack had tasted.

He swallowed hard, pushing down the bile. That’d teach him to eat candy from strange houses.