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

pretending he understood any part of what she’d just said.
    “She wanted to leave right then, so I quickly got dressed and followed her out,” May said, glancing at the illustration forming on the page. “Or, at least, I started to.”
    A picture slowly formed of a room more richly furnished than any Jack had ever seen. An enormous bed covered in linens filled most of the room, right next to the large wooden desk that May’s glowing square sat on. The walls were some kind of smooth, uninterrupted stone, white as clouds.
    All but one small part, that was. Though the May in the picture seemed oblivious to it, a small, familiar blue flame burnedon the wall right behind her. And inside the blue flame … Jack leaned closer to look.
    Inside the flame was a small hand, like that of a child. The hand was reaching for May.
    “See?” May said sadly. “This is where they come for me.”

Chapter 4
    “Downstairs I heard this huge explosion,” May said quietly, staring at the picture of the hand in the flame. “Voices yelling, too. One of them was Grandma, but I didn’t know who the other one was. So I ran to the stairs to look.”
    A new illustration began to paint itself onto the page, this one showing May glancing down the stairs to find her grandmother and one of the largest men Jack had ever seen, dressed entirely in green.
    “They were talking about something … I can barely remember,” May said softly. Jack nodded, then absently glanced over at the text, where words that May could barely remember drifted up from the ether.
Snow White … betrayal … cursed … Mirror
.
    And then three words that made his blood run cold:
The Wicked Queen.
    Jack gasped, suddenly understanding who the man in green was, and what might be happening.
    “I know, right?” May said, not exactly on the same page as he was, at least not figuratively. “And things are about to get worse, ’cause while my back was turned, the things from my wall attacked.”
    The picture showed what May remembered: A vicious monster about half her size leapt at her, a horrifying axe in one of its hands. Behind it, more monsters were swarming in from the burning blue hole in the wall, eager looks in their eyes.
    “They all jumped on me,” May said with a shiver. “I kicked as hard as I could, and I know I hit a few, but there were too many of them. They picked me up and carried me into the hallway.”
    The new picture showed May held in the hands of the monsters, being presented to the man in green like some kind of gift. Her grandmother’s hands, feet, and neck had all been chained together with huge iron bands, and the older woman looked both furious and worried.
    “He asked me who I was,” May said, pointing at the man in green.
    “Who might you be, girlie?” said the man in green, according to the book.
    “And I called him some names,” May said.
    The book printed something garbled.
    “They weren’t the nicest names,” May admitted. “Anyway, he told those monsters to take me back to the palace, then to look for something.”
    “Find that crown; we need it to use the Mirror!” the man in green yelled in the book.
    “My grandmother struggled,” May said, her eyes locked on the illustration, “but he just picked her up and carried her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing. And then he said something I didn’t understand, and another blue fire showed up.”
    The next picture showed a circle of blue flame burning on the wall in front of the man in green, who was carrying May’s grandmother into the circle. Inside the circle, Jack could make out some kind of tunnel of the same fire, ending in a second circle. And in that second circle of blue flame stood a figure he couldn’t make out, a figure that looked almost like a woman. Jack shuddered, the room feeling colder all of a sudden.
    “Grandma yelled something about how he should leave me behind, that I wasn’t important,” May said, “but he just laughedand said if she cared