Free [Half/Time 01] Half Upon a Time by James Riley Page A

a giant would possibly need to keep there.
    And then he remembered something fairly important.
“Princesssssss!”
Jack shouted into the night air. “Can you hear me?!” He imagined her ramming the broom right into the giant, or flying straight up into the sky until she hit a city in the clouds or something. When he got no response, he grimaced. Out of all the options, her landing safely on the ground didn’t seem too likely.
    The giant apparently didn’t like Jack’s yelling, though, as it began to wiggle its fingers back and forth. That small act threw Jack around violently, knocking his grandfather’s bag right out of his hands. As soon as Jack’s eyeballs stopped shaking in their sockets, he lunged to grab it, but he was much too late … the bag was already far out of reach. As he watched it fall to the ground, Jack said good-bye to his best shot at saving himself.
    Satisfied that his captive was done screaming, the giant began lifting Jack again. He passed the creature’s squat, creased neck and what seemed to be a chin or two before finally stopping at the giant’s face.
    A few feet below him, the giant exhaled, sending a brief, tornado-like wind that almost blew Jack right out of his shirt. The smell of the giant’s breath was even worse than the strengthof the wind, though: If a herd of animals had died in the giant’s mouth, it couldn’t have stunk more.
    Jack gagged his way past the breath, only to find himself staring up into a virtual jungle of hair jutting out from twin cavernous nostrils beneath the giant’s enormous hooked nose. Trying to look away, Jack found himself eye to eye with a pupil the size of his fist in the middle of an eye as blue as a robin’s egg. The monster stared back almost curiously.
    “So,” Jack said, twisting around at the end of the giant’s fingers. “
You’re
a big boy, huh?”
    The giant opened its mouth to respond, then paused, its enormous eyes spinning skyward, its attention suddenly elsewhere. Something was distracting the giant from above.
    This was it. This was his chance to fight! Jack took a deep breath, prepared himself, then kicked at the giant’s eye as hard as he could.
    Unfortunately, he didn’t come close to reaching, and only succeeded in spinning himself around in a circle. Beautiful.
    A moment later, the giant’s eye spun back to Jack as its other hand descended from above. It took Jack a second to realize that the giant’s other hand held something as well, but then he sighed, both from relief and frustration.
    The giant was holding a broomstick with a frightened-looking princess attached to it.
    “Oh, hey,” Jack said to May as she reached his level. “Been a while. What’s new with you?”
    “What is it with our luck?!” May asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
    “At least we didn’t
hit
the mountain,” Jack said. “Anyway, it could have been worse.”
    “Oh, yeah?” she said with a snort. “How’s that?”
    “Food!” bellowed the giant, his great voice shaking both of them. And then the monster tossed Jack up into the air and down into his open mouth, slamming it closed with a loud squish.

Chapter 13
    Jack hadn’t ever been eaten before, but the smell was just about what he would have imagined it would be like, if he ever had stopped to actually think about it.
    The absolute pitch-black darkness, though, was a bit surprising.
    As he passed the giant’s lips, Jack had just enough time to make out a dark tunnel of a throat before the giant’s mouth closed, taking all the light with it. As Jack fell straight down into the throat, he decided he was actually happy he couldn’t see. After all, wasn’t it better
not
to know exactly how disgusting his death was going to be?
    And then, Jack smacked face-first into something warm,slippery, and soft. Without thinking, he threw his arms out and grabbed the … well, whatever it was. As he hugged the slimy, soft column, his momentum sent him and the slimy thing flying forward,