Read Online [Half/Time 01] Half Upon a Time by James Riley - Free Book Online Page A

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.

Chapter 11
    “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 thenight 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.
    “If we hadn’t found the broom …” May said, then stopped in midsentence, thankfully. Jack glanced down again, but as they rose, the children quickly blended into the forest floor. Soon, even that was blocked by the trees, the tops of which they quickly rose past.
    “We’re a bit high, aren’t we?” Jack asked, feeling his toes go cold with nothing beneath them.
    “This?” May said, looking down,