[Half/Time 01] Half Upon a Time Read Online Free

response, then settled back to fall asleep. “I guess you don’t need technology when you’ve got fairies, huh,” May said, then seemed to realize something. “Speaking of technology …” She reached into a front pocket and pulled out a small, fat card with numbers on it, some of which she pushed a few times. When nothing happened, she frowned and slipped the card back into her pocket. “I figured there wouldn’t be a signal, but it would have made things a lot easier.”
    “Well,
yeah
,” Jack said. “We … we don’t get a lot of signals out here. Not anymore. We used to. But they all died. Eaten. By monsters. It wasn’t a good situation.”
    May nodded slowly at him. “Sounds … pretty bad,” she said, turning back to the book. “So what, I just have to start talking, and it’ll write down what I say?”
    “Try it,” Jack said, flipping back to the blank page.
    “Well, I was up later than I was supposed to be, so I had all my lights off,” May said. “I was—” And then she stopped as text began to appear in the Story Book.
    “Once upon a time,” it read, “a beautiful young girl disobeyedher grandmother.” On the opposite page, an illustration appeared, showing May in a dark room, her face lit blue by some kind of glowing square.
    “That’s so creepy!” she said. “I didn’t even say I was on my computer!”
    “It takes both what you say and what you think, Princess,” Jack said, ignoring the fact that he had no idea what a computer was. “And don’t think I didn’t see the part about calling yourself beautiful.”
    “It’s a smart book,” May said, the corners of her mouth rising a bit. “All right, then. I was up late when I heard Grandma coming upstairs, so I quickly turned off my computer and jumped into bed.” Text rose to the surface of the Story Book’s page as May talked, but Jack soon forgot it, as he always did when someone was telling a story. The illustrations were so realistic—it was hard not to stare at them.
    “Grandma knocked, and came into my room,” she said, and a new illustration appeared: a woman silhouetted in a doorway, light spilling in behind her.
    “That’s my Grandma,” May said, her voice catching a bit.
    If she was, the woman certainly didn’t look the right age: Her face was perfect and beautiful, unmarred by any worry orsmile lines. Her long black hair was tied up in a bun, though Jack could make out a white streak or two playing in and out of the hair.
    Despite May’s protests about not being a princess, this woman clearly had a royal bearing. In fact, she reminded Jack of nothing less than a queen, even in what looked to be a simple dressing gown.
    “Wow,” Jack blurted out.
    “Yeah,” May said. “Kinda intimidating, but you get used to it. She told me I had to get up, but she sounded … worried. She said that someone had broken into the house, that they had stolen something: a box she’d always had, a box with a heart on it.”
    An illustration appeared of a wooden box with a heart on its front. Jack couldn’t tell much else about it, since most of the box was obscured beneath piles of books, clothes, and other items he didn’t recognize.
    “She never let me near that box,” May said. “It was always hidden away somewhere. The only time I ever saw it was when we’d move, which we did a lot.”
    “So this box … it was stolen?” Jack asked.
    “That’s all she said was taken,” May said. “Not sure whysomeone would just steal that, and not take any of our valuables. She told me it wasn’t safe, though. At the time I thought she just meant because someone had been in our house, and they could come back at any time, you know? It made sense. So she told me to get up, that we were leaving. Oh, and she handed me a note with emergency numbers on it and told me to call them if anything happened.”
    “Numbers?” Jack asked.
    She frowned. “Yeah, kinda useless, though, considering my phone doesn’t work.”
    Jack nodded,