#takingbackouat

They stayed in silence for a couple of minutes, and Emma could tell that neither of them were particularly looking forward to going back inside the restaurant and having to deal with the fallout of what had happened earlier in the evening. Everything had been going really well, everyone had done what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it, until the mark had started choking. Emma had decided to perform the Heimlich rather than having a corpulent Russian mobster whom they were hoping could lead them to the bottom of a money-laundering ring they’d been tailing for months collapse and die on them, and then there were bullets flying everywhere, poor Walsh had been shot in the shoulder and the corpulent Russian was not only purple from near choking but also had a perforated posterior.

“You know,” Neal began presently as Emma took a long slug of coffee, “they’re never going to give you an assignment to lead if you carry on like this.”

Emma looked at him with an expression that would have been affronted had her cheeks not been chipmunked with deep-fried dough.

“He was choking!” she said thickly through a mouthful of doughnut.

“So will you be if you keep talking whilst you’re eating,” Neal teased. Emma smacked his arm with a huff.

“Screw you,” she mumbled before swallowing and giving a sigh that was partly satisfaction at the excellent doughnut, and partly despair at her never-changing situation. She was a good agent. She knew that and the other members of her team told her that. She was just… headstrong. “You say that every time,” she lamented.

“I wonder why that might be?” Neal mused.

“Yeah, yeah, I always manage to screw it up every time.” Emma huffed and drained the rest of the coffee, tossing the cup up into the dumpster beside her. It was galling sometimes, seeing the friends she’d joined the bureau with moving on up through the ranks and starting to lead investigations whilst she stayed solidly where she was, never going anywhere, and it rankled even worse when more junior agents got promoted ahead of her, but it was a question of integrity. Emma wasn’t about to sacrifice her own code and identity in order to get ahead in life just because everyone else had done. If that meant constantly being held back because she chose to stop an apoplectic Russian from choking and almost got one of her colleagues killed into the bargain, then so be it.

“Walsh is going to be ok,” Neal said. “He was flirting with one of the EMTs as they were loading him into the ambulance so he can’t be that bad.”

“What about Lenov?”

“Couldn’t tell. He might have been flirting too but I don’t speak Russian. Didn’t sound like flirting though, unless they go about it in a very different way to us.”

Unable to help herself, Emma gave a loud snort of laughter. No matter what had happened on any assignment that she’d managed to throw completely off-kilter, Neal could always make her smile once it was all over. Now that she came to think of it that was probably why they were so successful as partners.

“Swan? Cassidy? Where are you?”

Emma groaned on hearing her boss’s voice calling through the restaurant kitchen, and Neal chuckled.

“Come on, we’d best get it over with. The longer you hide out here the more irate he’s going to be.”

“Can’t I just sneak off home?” Emma pleaded. Neal shook his head, not even trying to hide his amused smile, and Emma rolled her eyes with a huff, cramming the last of the doughnut into her mouth and swallowing hastily, leaving her with an uncomfortable unchewed lump making its way down as she got to her feet, brushed the doughnut crumbs off her clothes and went to face the music, Neal following just behind.

Spencer was standing in the middle of the restaurant surveying the damage; Billy, who’d been in the van doing the technical link-up, was hovering worriedly behind him and he shot the other two agents an apologetic look as they came in from the kitchen. As soon as he saw Emma, Spencer gave a long-suffering sigh, fixing her with a glare that made her feel like she was eight years old and about to be told off by her foster parents again.

“What the hell happened, Swan?” Spencer asked eventually. He sounded more pained than angry, rubbing his forehead with a grimace as he mentally totted up the compensation that the bureau was going to have to organise for the restaurant owner, who was sitting at one of the booths looking rather shell-shocked. He was evidently expecting to be arrested by the FBI at any moment despite Emma’s reassurances to him earlier that he was in no way implicated and just so happened to be unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I wasn’t about to let months of work go down the drain thanks to a single dumpling, Sir,” Emma said, refusing to be cowed by the presence of her superior in a place he wouldn’t normally venture. It was rare for Spencer to leave his office, so when he actually came to scenes like this, the agents working under him knew that things were serious. Emma thought it was no coincidence that she seemed to see him more often than most.

“I don’t think Agent Swan can be held entirely to blame, Sir,” Neal began, but Spencer held up a hand to stop him.

“Your chivalry is admirable, Cassidy, but everyone present knows what happened. Swan, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened on your watch. We’ve got one good agent in the hospital because of your snap decisions.”

“I know that, Sir.”

“Walsh could have been killed tonight!”

“I know that, Sir.” Emma bit back an exclamation of frustration, tried to think up a coherent and adult sentence with which to defend herself, and remained silent when her brain came up short.

Spencer opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but instead just sighed.

“I don’t know what the blazes I’m going to do with you, Swan. This can’t happen again, you know.”

“I know.”

“Needless to say you’re desk-bound for the foreseeable future.”

Emma had been expecting that; she had been on and off her desk ever since she joined the bureau, managing to get back out into the field just in time for something else to go wrong and coop her up in the office again. It didn’t make it any harder not to whine “but Sir!” though.

Spencer gave a final melancholy look around the restaurant and shook his head. “Well, there’s nothing more than we can do here. I want reports from both of you on my desk before noon tomorrow. Now I have to go and wrangle with the Russian ambassador for the rest of the night.” He turned to leave the building and paused. “Everyone tells me you did well tonight, Cassidy. Good job in handling the situation.”

“Thank you.”

Spencer left and Emma immediately sagged down into a chair with a groan.

Neal winced in sympathy. “Ouch. Desk duty again.”

“Don’t rub it in. I already knew it was coming.” She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “At least he didn’t take my gun this time, not like after that incident with the inflatable clown.”

Billy and Neal both burst out laughing and Emma glared at them.

“Sorry, sorry… That one’s gone down in FBI history though, you’ll never live it down.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Sometimes I really don’t like you, Cassidy. I do still have my gun and if it wasn’t for the fact it has no bullets in it at the moment I’d be very tempted to accidentally use it.”

Neal threw his hands up in surrender and Billy followed suit a second later.

“Come on,” Neal said after a moment in the truce. “There’s nothing more that we can do here tonight and I think we all need warm beds and some sleep after that.” The uniformed police had cordoned off the scene and were taking charge of the place, and the agents all left the restaurant, meandering along in the direction of the subway. Billy quickly peeled off to go in the direction of his own home, leaving Neal and Emma alone.

“You don’t have to stick up for me, you know,” Emma said, thinking about the conversation with Spencer those few minutes before. “I can handle myself.”

“Oh, believe me, I know you can,” Neal said. “I think you’ve kicked the asses of every guy in the office at least twice. You’re scary when you’ve got rage, you know that?”

“Never underestimate my rage.”

“I make a point not to.”

They had entered the subway at that point, wandering up and down the platform as they waited for the next train. Despite the comparatively late hour and the stressful evening she had just had, Emma was still keyed up, thinking about everything that had happened and wondering if there was any way in which she could have done it differently: still saved Lenov from choking and not ended up with everyone getting shot.

“Hey, it’s ok,” Neal said, seeing her lost in thought. “Just forget about it for tonight. Don’t let it stew. You did the right thing, he’d have been no use to us dead.”

“I just don’t get why the drama seems to follow me around like an imprinted duckling,” Emma grumbled. She didn’t say anything more throughout the journey to her stop.

“See you in the office tomorrow,” Neal called as she got off the train.

“You’re not going to see me anywhere other than the office for a while,” Emma replied. She tried to sound good-natured, as if it didn’t matter, but deep down it did. Emma was active, she loved fieldwork and being able to solve these things practically. Stuck at her desk she would go stir crazy, and once again, it was her own fault for getting stuck there in the first place.

She tossed her keys onto the sideboard as she entered her apartment and leaned back against the door, sliding down it with a muted groan at the prospect of being out of the field for the foreseeable future. What would she have to give for something exciting to happen whilst she was out of action?

X

It was shaping up to be another average day at the office when Emma arrived the next morning, that is to say, it was looking like carnage had already broken loose, with people running from room to room and desk to desk with papers, pens, cups of tea and other random implements. Lugging her laptop bag in one hand and her coffee in the other, Emma made her way over to her station, not at all looking forward to the prospect of remaining there for the foreseeable future. Neal leaned over the partition between them and grinned.

“How’s it going?”

Emma grunted. Neal should really know better than to attempt any kind of conversation before half-past ten in the morning.

“Ok, I’ll leave you alone. But the buzz is that the bureau’s received some kind of warning and we’re on high alert.”

Emma smacked her laptop to try and bring it to life, then settled for stabbing at it rhythmically with a pencil.

“It’s probably a false alarm, these things always are.”

“Well, we’re about to find out.” Neal nodded over towards the doors as Spencer entered. Almost immediately the hum of noise in the room died back and people migrated back to their own workstations.

“Good morning everyone; good to see you behind a desk, Swan.”

Emma narrowed her eyes and flipped her superior the bird under the table. Neal gave a snort of laughter and smothered it with a hasty cough.

“You’ll all be pleased to know that Walsh is going to make a full recovery, he’s asked me to remind you that hospital visiting hours are six till eight and he’s expecting lots of expensive gifts to keep him occupied whilst he’s recuperating.”

The laughter rolled around the room and dissipated, and Spencer’s slight smile fell.

“Don’t start celebrating too prematurely though; we’ve had a threat letter. We’re raising this one as high alert. It was encoded like a lot of the terror threats are, but the tech team have cracked it and we’ve worked out that it’s a threat against the Miss Fairytale USA pageant.”

Emma wrinkled her nose. Who would want to blow up a beauty pageant, of all things? Surely they weren’t important enough to warrant any terrorist’s time. Or any of the bureau’s time, for that matter.

Spencer came over to the projector in the middle of the room and switched it on; a copy of the letter came up on the screen and Emma squinted to read it over the top of her glasses, making out the words: it’ll be perfect princess pandemonium! I’ll be there to ensure that this happily ever after goes off with a BANG.

“Now, some of you who worked on the Citizen case might recognise the style; obviously he’s out of the picture now but we can’t rule out him having an accomplice on the outside or someone performing a copycat stunt. He’s high-profile enough to have followers, and the Miss Fairytale pageant finale is being held in Texas this year, which is his natural hunting ground. For these reasons we’re treating this as a serious threat. Cassidy!”

“Yes boss?” Neal shot up from his desk.

“You did well last night and I was impressed with your work, you’ve got the lead on this assignment. Assemble your team and get a prelim report to me by the end of the day. We have less than a week before the pageant finale begins and we know that this is going to be its most high profile year. We can’t let anything happen.”

Spencer switched off the projector and left the room, and slowly all eyes turned to Neal.

“Ok, no pressure there then,” he muttered. “Right, let’s get started on this. Billy, I’ll take you on tech, Em…”

Emma shot him a look.

“Sorry, I forgot. Ok, Archie, can you get onto the letter and see if you can pull any more clues off it? You worked on the Citizen letters, didn’t you?”

“On it,” Archie called from his partition.

Emma slunk down further in her seat until she was hidden on all sides by the desk dividers, and she shoved her headphones on, selecting a loud, pounding beat to drown out all the noise of the office getting down to business for fieldwork without her.

X

“You know, I think we’re going to need to send someone in undercover.” Neal and the team he’d assembled were sitting around one of the small tables in the meeting room with all the case notes in front of them. As thrilled as he was to be leading the assignment, Neal really wished that he hadn’t been thrown in at the deep end quite so much. Trying to stay one step ahead of the bad guys was one thing, but trying to stop a bomb plot with only three days’ notice was another altogether. “I just don’t think that there’s any way we’re going to get in legit. We just won’t have the access we need.”

“I think an FBI badge is pretty much an access all areas permit,” Billy pointed out.

“Yeah, but even if we can go everywhere, we’re never going to find out what we need if we go in all guns blazing,” Neal said. “We need a softly, softly approach. The letter makes it clear that the attacker is part of the pageant, heavily involved with it in some way, and it makes sense for it to be one of the contestants because all the staff and crew are vetted and tend to stay with the pageant from season to season.”

Keith from technical raised an eyebrow. “How do you know all this?” he asked.

Neal waved away the question and continued talking. “The only people who are wild cards are the participants, who change all the time.”

Billy nodded. “Makes sense. So how do we go in?”

“Camera crew?” Keith suggested. There was a gleam in his eye that Neal had seen before and always despaired the appearance of.

“Keith, you’re not going anywhere near that pageant, you’re supposed to be protecting those ladies from being blown up, not soliciting sexual favours.”

“I don’t!” Keith began to protest, but Neal gave him a look that told him quite loudly to shut up without the need for words.

“Anyway, the camera crew are only around for the televised preliminaries, and there’s so much more work that goes on behind the scenes,” Neal said. “No, I think the best way would be to send someone in undercover as a contestant. The contestants are the most likely suspects and if we’re in amongst them, then we can pick up on things that we wouldn’t if we were coming in as outsiders.”

“Sounds good,” Billy said. “She’ll have a cam and earpiece so whatever she finds out, we’ll find out too.”

Keith seemed even more pleased about this idea and Neal rolled his eyes.

“So who are we going to send in?” Billy asked. “Who would agree to do something like that, for a start?”

“And, obviously, it’s got to be someone who, you know, looks the part,” Keith said. He was really getting worryingly into this, and Neal wondered if he’d made the right choice in putting him on the team. He and Billy were two of the best techs they had and had spent many operations monitoring all the systems from the van, but his attitude to the opposite sex could be downright off-putting at times. “So we couldn’t have Potts from accounts, for example,” he added.

Beryl Potts from accounts was in her sixties and resembled a teapot. Neal gave a long sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It was going to be a long afternoon.

“How about Mary Margaret?” Billy suggested. “She’s into all that stuff, addicted to America’s Next Top Model.”

“Maternity leave,” Neal said.

“Tamara?” Keith hedged.

“No,” Neal said firmly.

“But she’s hot! You thought she was hot enough to bang her!”

“Jeez, Keith, have a little decency, we’re in the office, not on pay-per-view,” Neal groaned. “Besides, that’s the very reason why I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to work with her again.”

Keith just sniggered.

“Tamara was seconded over to Florida last week,” Billy put in. “And that really only leaves Emma. If you’re wanting someone of the right age and calibre.”

“You know that Emma’s desked indefinitely after last night,” Neal said. Billy shrugged.

“I’m sure that Spencer would make an exception when he knows the circumstances,” he pointed out. “Your theory’s sound, you just have to put it past him.”

“And put it past Emma,” Neal added. “That’s probably going to be harder than convincing Spencer to let her back out in the field, you know.”

“Yeah…” Billy grimaced. “Well, no time like the present.”

Emma poked her head around the meeting room door. Neal had wanted to get her involved in the case as it felt wrong to be planning things without her; they had done so much together that it felt a bit like he was missing a limb if he went on an assignment without her. Also, it was horrible to see her looking so down in the dumps because she couldn’t be a part of this operation.

“Well, I’ve looked through all the vetting for this year’s staff,” she said, dumping a pile of Xeroxed forms on the table. “There’s nothing to find in there, everyone’s clean as far as links to the Citizen are concerned; no signs of any questionable activity, no records apart from the odd speeding ticket or parking fine.”

“Hey Swan,” Keith began. Emma raised an eyebrow; she’d been on the receiving end of Keith’s lewd remarks more than once and she’d almost broken his fingers on one occasion. “Have you got a bikini?”

“Keith, shut the fuck up,” Neal warned.

“What?”

“Undercover,” Keith said. “Uncovered.”

“Keith, leave her alone you perv.” Neal turned to Emma with a long-suffering sigh, but the damage had been done. Her face was white and pinched, her expression neutral but one shade away from becoming a mask of boiling rage.

“Really?” she said. “Really?”

“We need someone to go undercover,” Billy said. “And you’re kind of our only option.”

“Right.” Emma paused. “And your desire to see me in a swimsuit has nothing to do with this?” she asked Keith.

“Well, if you’re offering.”

Emma gave a tight, extremely dangerous smile.

“Always good to know that sexism is alive and well in the workplace. If you’re so desperate to see a bunch of half-naked women, Keith, try the top shelf in the newsagents.”

“Emma,” Neal began, but she was already gone, storming away out of the room and down the corridor. Neal smacked Keith upside the back of the head with his case file.

“Hey, kid.” Tamara tossed him a package of crackers and a bottle of water from her bag. “I don’t want you starving to death before we get there.”

Henry dug into the food gratefully. He was not so proud as to refuse sustenance from his captors and he was really very hungry, but one question remained in the back of his mind.

“Where is ‘there’?” he asked Tamara.

“Where we’re going,” she replied shortly. Henry rolled his eyes but she wasn’t looking at him, so the effect was lost.

“What is ‘there’ then?” he continued.

Tamara gave him an unimpressed look. “We’re in Neverland kid. What do you think?”

“My name’s Henry,” he pointed out. “And I know we’re in Neverland and I know you’re taking me to Peter Pan. I just thought maybe you had some more details.”

“All right Henry, I don’t know any more details. We’re going to Pan, wherever he might be,” Tamara said. She paused. “You’re a lot like your dad.”

The mention of his father riled something inside Henry. Why should Tamara get to talk about him so casually after what she had done?

“Why did you kill him?” he asked.

“Because he was in the way.” Tamara’s voice was brittle. “He’d outlived his purpose.”

“Just like Greg outlived his purpose?” Henry snapped sourly. “Is that what you do to everyone who’s no longer useful? You just let them die? What about me? Will you kill me when I’ve outstayed my welcome?”

Tamara pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. “Kid, it’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that.”

“You don’t understand,” Tamara said.

“I’m in Neverland. I’ve been kidnapped by the person who shot my dad, apparently under orders from Peter Pan, who I always thought was a good guy…”

Here Tamara snorted. “You are seriously misinformed,” she muttered.

“…and I’ve got no idea why I’m here or what’s going to happen to me here. No, I don’t understand.”

Tamara looked at him through narrowed eyes.

“They said you were the truest believer,” she said cynically.

“I believe,” Henry replied, exasperated. “I just don’t understand. Why is this happening? Why did you have to shoot my dad?”

Tamara groaned and scrubbed a hand over her face.

“I have a mission, kid. I’ve been working towards this for as long as I can remember. And now I have this opportunity and I’m not going to let it go, and nothing is going to stop me or slow me down, and nothing is going to get in my way. Do you understand that?”

Henry nodded. He knew that mindset all too well, the idea of being so completely focussed on something that the ends always justify the means. He thought of Regina and her own single-minded determination, and he wondered if he would ever see her or Emma or any of his grandparents again. Presently his thoughts turned back towards Tamara and her dogged perseverance, calmly disposing of any obstacles in her path, and he thought about her words: you are seriously misinformed.

“So, if you agree that Peter Pan is not one of the good guys, why are you working for him?”

“Keep your voice down!” Tamara hissed, looking around at the shadows standing like sentinels between the trees around them. “Who knows how much they can hear?”

Henry just raised an eyebrow; at that moment he was not feeling exactly charitable towards his kidnapper. “At any rate, don’t you work for the Home Office, or whatever you call it?”

Tamara sighed. “Well, in for a penny, in for a pound as my grandpa always used to say.” She indicated for Henry to come a little closer and he obliged, still stopping a little short.

“All the fairy tales, all the stories, you believe in them?” Tamara began.

Henry nodded slowly. “My grandparents are Snow White, Prince Charming and Rumpelstiltskin. I believe all right.”

“Peter Pan is no different,” Tamara continued.

Henry gave his surroundings a cursory glance. “Since we’re going to see him I’d kind of gathered that.”

“The Darling family exist,” Tamara went on in a hushed undertone. “Wendy, John, Michael Darling, they all existed; they were the first contact between magical worlds and non-magical worlds.”

Henry gave another nod of understanding.

“The Darling family have been trying to get to Neverland for generations,” Tamara said. “I’m the last living member. My name is Tamara Darling, Michael Darling was my great-grandfather. I have to finish what the family started, and then you arrived and you gave me the perfect opportunity.”

“So I’m bait,” Henry said flatly.

Tamara shrugged. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time and I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Including using me as bait?”

Tamara ignored his words. “I have to finish what the family started,” she repeated.

“What did the family start?” Henry asked.

“The Home Office. Our mission has always been to destroy magic.”

“Why?”

“Have you any idea of the heartbreak magic causes?” Tamara hissed.

Henry nodded. “Yes. I nearly tried to destroy it myself once. But magic can do good too.”

Tamara shook her head. “Magic is the root of all evil.”

Henry didn’t have a response to that one, but he knew that it was nowhere near as clear-cut as Tamara saw things.

“We have to destroy magic and that will bring things back into equilibrium,” Tamara continued.

“You used magic to get here,” Henry pointed out.

“Sometimes you have to employ the enemy’s methods,” Tamara muttered.

“You’re making it sound like a war.”

“It is a war!” Tamara raised her voice involuntarily then looked around furtively at the shadows. They appeared to be out of earshot and paying no attention to the whispered conversation, and she continued. “Mary and George Darling set up the Home Office to fight a war no-one else believed existed.”

“But why?” Henry pressed. “Why do you think that magic is evil, and why were you so desperate to get here to Neverland, a place full of magic?”

There was a long pause.

“Vengeance,” Tamara said eventually. “Justice.” She paused. “There was a fourth sibling, older than the other three Darlings. He was adopted into the family. Peter Pan abducted him. Shortly after, he took Wendy Darling as well. Neither of them were ever seen or heard from again. That’s why we’re here. To avenge them.”

“So you kidnapped a child in order to avenge the kidnapping of a child?” Henry said. “Do you see what you’ve done? You’re no better than Peter Pan.”

“I have to do whatever it takes,” Tamara said grimly.

“I don’t think your family would be happy that you’ve just done exactly what was done to them in order to get revenge,” Henry retorted.

“That’s not the point,” Tamara hissed. “We’ll never know whether Wendy and Baelfire would have been happy because they were taken, they were stolen from us.”

“Baelfire?” Henry’s stomach was turning itself in knots.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t read any of the book, did you?” Henry continued. “Back when you first came to Storybrooke; you had to pretend that you didn’t know anything about it and that you didn’t believe a word of what my dad was telling you. But you really should have listened. My dad was Baelfire. That was his name before he came to the Land Without Magic for the first time.”

“What?” Tamara’s voice was somewhat strangled.

“Neal Cassidy’s real name, when he was young, was Baelfire. And I really don’t think that he’d be happy that you shot him and kidnapped me in order to avenge him.”

Tamara felt her blood turn cold in her veins and no more was said. She had been on her single-minded quest to rid the world of the magic that had caused her family so much pain, and she had not let anything dissuade her from her cause. In doing so, she had committed the very crime that her ancestors had sworn to bring Peter Pan to justice for – the loss of Baelfire. Still, she thought with grim determination, she had already come past the point of no return. There was to be no going back now. They could only continue on.

 London - Past

Wendy sat on the window sill of her bedroom, looking out across the city and further, off towards Neverland and Bae. "He's not coming back," her parents had told her when she had explained that Bae was gone and they needed to try and rescue him. They'd said some very uncharitable things about him taking advantage of their hospitality and then running away, and no matter how many times Wendy had tried to tell them that Bae hadn't run away, he'd been taken by the shadow whilst trying to protect them, she couldn't make them see. Still, they were correct in one respect: it didn't look like Bae was coming home any time soon. The shadow had brought Wendy back because Pan didn't need or want her. She was a girl, and he was looking for Lost Boys, one specific boy in particular. She wondered if that boy was Bae. At any rate, the shadow would not bring Bae back. But perhaps, if Wendy could get to Neverland again, then the shadow would bring her back to London again, and she could bring Bae with her. The only problem was getting the shadow to come back in the first place. Ever since it had taken Bae, it had not returned to the Darling house, despite her watching out for it every night.

"He's not coming back, Wendy."

John was sitting up in bed, hugging his knees.

"No," Wendy said levelly. "He's not going to come back. Which is why I need to go and get him."

"But how?" John's voice was forlorn. "The shadow hasn't been back since it took him. I'm starting to think that maybe Mother and Father were right. Maybe it was all just a dream, and Bae really did run away in the night."

Wendy shook her head. "A dream that all three of us had for so many nights, John? That's a more far-fetched idea than a shadow stealing children from their beds at night. We all saw what happened, and we were all awake at the time."

"Well, if it did happen, and if Bae really is trapped in Neverland, the fact still remains that we can't get him back." John was still melancholy, his tone disbelieving.

"There has to be a way," Wendy said firmly. "We just have to have faith."

"What are you talking about?" Michael had woken with the sound of their voices and was rubbing his eyes.

"We're planning to rescue Bae," Wendy said.

"Oh, good," Michael replied. "I miss him." He paused. "How are you going to rescue him?"

"We're not sure yet," Wendy admitted.

“You're not sure yet," John corrected. "I don't know, Wendy, I just don't believe it's possible."

"I believe!" Michael said, eagerly scrambling out of bed and going over to the window sill to sit with Wendy, who pulled him up beside her. "I believe we can rescue Bae! When do we start?"

"You and John won't be coming," Wendy said, ignoring Michael's pout on hearing that he wouldn't get to come on the adventure. "It has to be me, because the shadow will bring me back. And it has to be tonight."

"Wendy..." John began, but Wendy interrupted her brother.

"You heard what Mother and Father said last night. They think I'm now old enough to have my own room, and this is the last night that I'll be spending in the nursery with you two. If Neverland is the Land of Eternal Youth, I might be too old to go back there tomorrow. Whatever I do, I have to do it tonight."

“And what if the shadow doesn’t bring you back this time?” John asked. “Then we’ll have lost both of you.”

“You just have to believe in me,” Wendy said.

“I believe,” Michael muttered, his hands pressed up against the window and his breath creating a misty patch on the glass. “I believe.” His brow furrowed and his head turned on one side. “Look, Wendy…” he began, tugging on her sleeve nervously. “It heard you. It came back.”

Wendy looked out of the window and sure enough, the shadow that had taken Bae was floating outside.

“Michael, get back,” she warned, pulling him away from the window and setting him on the floor once more. “John, hide him, and yourself. I don’t want it to grab either of you when I let it in.”

“Wendy, don’t open the window,” John pleaded, getting out of bed and pulling Michael further away from the glass, towards the secret cubbyhole. “Please, you might not come back!”

“And if I don’t do it, Bae might never come back,” Wendy replied. “He went with the shadow to save all of us. It’s our duty to help him, to get him back! He’s part of our family!”

John looked back at the window, at the shadow that was watching them with its unnerving, unnatural eyes. How they could ever have thought that it was benevolent was beyond him. He shivered. There was something hungry in its gaze as it floated outside the window, never making any move to try and get through the glass but never showing any signs of giving up its quarry. It was not going to let a single pane of glass get in the way of its hunt. Like a bloodhound following a scent, it had been summoned and it was not relenting.

John pushed Michael into the crawl space and climbed in after him, shutting the door.

Wendy took a deep breath, and shoved the sash window up. A huge gust of air blew into the room, one that she was certain could not have been caused by the wind outside under the mild moonlight, and the shadow was borne inside upon it, hovering near the ceiling, looming above her and staring down with flickering eyes.

“I know what you want,” Wendy said to it, as bravely as she could, determined that her voice wouldn’t tremble. “You can’t have them. You’ll have to take me instead. Take me to Bae.”

The shadow ignored her and swooped down; Wendy stood her ground but the spectre flew straight over her, leaving her gasping for breath at the horrible sensation that it coming so close so fast had caused. It focussed its attention on the hidden door to the crawl space where John and Michael were hidden away. Wendy could hear their quick, frightened breaths through the wall and she wondered whether the shadow could hear them too as she ran over, putting herself between the dark shape and her brothers.

“You can’t have them,” she repeated, grabbing a hold of the shadow’s arm. It didn’t feel quite solid but not like walking through a shadow on a normal summer’s day either. There was a thick, almost liquidy substance to it, although Wendy’s hands were dry where they touched it. “Take me to Bae.”

Angered, the shadow rose up towards the ceiling, thrashing violently as it tried to rid itself of its unwanted passenger. Wendy held on tight despite being thrown around through the air.

“What on earth is going on in here…”

Wendy’s father’s angry voice faded out as he flung the nursery door open, the admonishment on his lips to his children for making too much noise in the middle of the night dying into nothing. When the powers of speech returned, his first thought was to intervene, his second to call his wife.

“Mary!” he shouted down the landing towards Wendy’s mother in their bedroom. “Alert the police!” He had no idea what the police could even hope to do against the abomination that was flying around the ceiling of his children’s nursery, but it was the only source of help that he could rely on. Knowing simply that he needed to stop the shadowy interloper, he rushed into the room without any thought or plan.

“No!” Wendy cried from her position, the increasingly frantic shadow still trying to loosen her grip on its arm. “I need to rescue Bae!” she continued. “I need the shadow to take me to Neverland!”

It was chilling, knowing that his daughter’s farfetched stories of malevolent shadows kidnapping the newest member of their family were completely true.

Just as Mary entered the room and screamed, fainting dead on the floor at the sight that met her, the shadow decided to cut its losses and it flew out of the window, Wendy still clinging steadfastly to its arm. It did not stop or try to throw her off as they flew towards the second star to the right, and Wendy did not see the horrified expression of her mother, father and brothers as they watched her fly away, until she was no more than a faint speck in the night sky, easily mistaken for a shooting star.

Enchanted Forest - Present

Neal stopped in his tracks and slowly turned full circle, carefully taking in every inch of his surroundings before he ended up facing in the same direction as before. There was nothing to see, at least, nothing that he was looking for. There was plenty to see if one wasn't looking for something. He had ventured into the part of the castle that was undeniably his father's domain, the West Wing filled with dark and dangerous treasures and the odd incredibly conspicuous gap where something should have been. Neal shuddered at the thought of what had been deemed necessary to take to the Land Without Magic. If there was anywhere in the castle where a way to contact Emma and Henry might be found, it was here, amongst the artefacts steeped in magic and mystery.

Still, his impromptu pirouette had not shown him what he had wanted to see.

"I know you're there," he announced to the seemingly empty air. "One of these days I'll catch you."

The feeling of being watched and tracked was weighing heavy on his mind and it had not let him go ever since that moment in the room where all his old things had been kept. He was certain that there was a shadow following him around, observing him from a distance, and he was beginning to feel rather a lot of unease about the situation. He was half-convinced that the shadow was his father, but his conviction was waning the longer that time went on. Surely if it was Rumpelstiltskin's shadow, it would have announced itself and made its intentions clearly known by now. Playing this game of cat and mouse as it was, it began to make Neal think that it was planning something nefarious. He wouldn't put anything past his father, especially when it came to self-preservation. Had Rumpelstiltskin sent his shadow to the Dark Castle to make sure that Neal didn't stumble upon something that his father wanted to keep hidden? And there was the small matter of the shadow, whoever its owner might be, not being attached to anything in the first place. In Neal's experience, unattached shadows had malevolent bodies and malevolent intentions, and the longer he went without seeing this particular shadow that was following him around, the more suspicious he became.

But even in spite of his natural aversion to all things remotely magical, he couldn't help but hope, fiercely, that this shadow was a benevolent one and that it could perhaps take him home. If Pan's shadow had been able to cross realms, there was no reason why other shadows shouldn't be able to. So his frustration with the unseen spectre stemmed in equal parts from suspicion and desperation. If he could only catch the damn thing, then he might be one step closer to reuniting with his family. As it was, he was stuck speculating.

Still, there was no use standing around and waiting for a shadow that evidently did not want to be found to show itself. Neal moved on along the corridor with a purposeful stride and the shivering sensation of unblinking eyes on the back of his neck that he chose to ignore. Perhaps he could lull the shadow into a false sense of security.

Neal had discovered an awful lot during the couple of days that he had spent at the castle, and he wondered dryly how much of it used to be human. The candelabra and the carriage clock looked particularly suspect to Neal's eye, but maybe he was just being influenced by too many Disney movies over the years. And even if the objects had never been creatures of flesh and blood, there was always the distinct possibility that they had undergone a magical makeover of sorts and were now used for a purpose entirely different to their intended one. It was in many ways a double-edged sword. He had not really spent enough time around his father's magic to have developed any kind of instinct for these things but although every nerve was screaming at him to leave well alone, he couldn't help but wonder if the next supposedly benign and useless trinket might provide him with exactly what he was looking for.

He gingerly placed his hand over the knob of the nearest door; it was not locked, nor even closed fully, standing just ajar, but Neal was still nervous about any and all doors in this part of the castle, or rather, what might be behind them. It opened silently, and Neal gave a start to find that the room was not, as he had first suspected, unoccupied. Mulan and Aurora were standing in the window together.

"Oops, sorry..." Neal made to back out of the room awkwardly, and Aurora just burst into a fit of the giggles.

"It's all right, I should probably go and check that Philip hasn't been attacked by any sentient kitchenware," she said and she left Mulan with a fond smile; Neal took a step back to allow her to exit the room. So far he had not had any trouble with feeling like he was a third (or in this case fourth) wheel. None of his three saviours-turned-companions were overly demonstrative in their affections towards each other, indeed it had taken him a while to realise that they were in a relationship, but on occasions such as this he was reminded that he was an unintentional observer.

"You look confused," Mulan said from the window.

"Hmm." Neal's voice was non-committal. "It was just a bit of a surprise when I found out about you all. I had assumed that Aurora and Philip were engaged."

"They are," Mulan pointed out levelly, "but this is a slightly different relationship."

"I'd gathered that." Neal shrugged. "It's not my place to pass comment on other's people's relationships. Yours are looking far more successful than my own at the moment. If you love each other, then why should anyone else judge?"

Mulan smiled. "I hope everyone sees things in the same way that you do," she said. "I love Aurora, and Philip loves Aurora, and she loves both of us, and that should be all that matters. But I can foresee some problems when we eventually reach her home."

"I don't know. I mean, Aurora seems like she could be pretty fierce if she wants to be."

Mulan laughed. "She is. She looks so delicate but she's steel on the inside."

Neal came over and perched in the windowsill beside Mulan. "I think you should be all right," he said. "Better than you'd be in the Land Without Magic at least. I haven't been a part of this land for a long time and most of the things I remember about it are the bad things. But there's one thing that is a constant throughout all the fairy tales, and that's the importance of love."

Mulan's brow furrowed. "Fairy tales? Tales told by fairies?"

"No, it's sort of complicated. In the Land Without Magic, they see the Enchanted Forest as a make-believe, fantasy place. You, Philip and Aurora, you exist over there as characters in books and movies, no-one knows that you really exist over here in this world."

"Movies?"

"They're... ok, too difficult to explain, you'll have to take my word for it, but they're really good. At any rate, the thing that's always stressed in these books is that love conquers all. Now, no-one in the Land Without Magic really believes in fairy tales and they don't tend to set much store by love, but I know that here, it's a heck of a lot more important and taken a lot more seriously."

"True love is the most powerful magic of all, in all its forms," Mulan agreed. "I can see why it doesn't have as much presence in a world where magic doesn't exist. I suppose that to us the two are so intertwined that it seems strange to imagine a place where they aren't. But doesn't love transcend all boundaries? It doesn't change between realms. Magic might not exist in the Land Without Magic, but surely true love does."

Neal nodded sadly. "Yes, it does."

"So if love transcends all boundaries and is the same in all worlds, maybe this is how you could get back to your son..." Mulan tailed off, staring hard at the dark far corner of the room, past the shelves of potion and lotions. "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"I think something moved over there." She turned away but her expression still remained uneasy. "Probably just a shadow."

"Hmm." Neal didn't make any other comment, but continued to glance into the corner where Mulan had seen the shadow, more convinced than ever that the thing was following him, biding its time for some reason as yet unknown. "I love Emma and Henry but I don't think that love's going to be enough to get me home."

"Perhaps not," Mulan conceded. "But if you love them and they know that, then surely they know that you would never stop trying to return to them until you succeeded?"

"I know. But I still want to send them some sort of message. They don't even know if I'm alive or not."

They fell silent for a moment, then a smile broke over Mulan's face.

"I think I know a way," she said. "Follow me."

"Ok... What are we doing?"

"Sending a message," Mulan replied. "Via the only method that transcends all realms. True love."

  Neverland – Past

The journey to Neverland this time around was nothing like her first excursion there. Before, Wendy had been mesmerised by the shadow and the sensation of flying, swooping and whirling in the air. She had felt so young and carefree and she could quite happily have done it forever. But it was different now. The shadow flew straight, with grim purpose, no detours. It had a job to do, and Wendy’s insistent grip on it was slowing it down, but it had decided that trying to free itself would waste more time than continuing onwards with its unwanted passenger would. The air was colder tonight and Wendy shivered against the wind chill that she was flying through, her fingers red where they dug into the shadow’s arm, but in spite of her discomfort she refused to relinquish her hold. She was on her way now, it would only be a matter of time before she and Bae were reunited, and then should could bring him back home to his family. She had to stay positive; there was no use getting cold feet now, however chilly her toes might be on her flight. She had to stay strong for John, and Michael, and their parents.

As dawn was beginning to break behind them, Wendy knew that they were nearing their destination, although the sky that they were travelling through remained as dark as ever, showing no signs of becoming a morning. Squinting, Wendy could just about make out the shape of the Neverland isle beneath them and at that moment, the shadow tried once more to throw her off, no doubt attempting to dump her n the sea and wait for her to drown before they reached land.

Wendy clung on for dear life, ignoring the shadow’s cold, spidery fingers yanking at her hair and trying to prise her hands away from its spectral form. She closed her eyes against the wind as it jerked violently this way and that, and only opened them when she felt a sudden drop in their altitude. The shadow, no longer trying to get her off, was nosediving towards the island at incredible speed; it was hoping to crash her head against the rocky side of the mountain in the centre of the island and finish her off once and for all. Wendy gulped. She had to time it just right: too soon and she would fall into the sea, too late and she would end up on the rocks anyway. She had to aim for the thick forest canopy which might stand a better chance of breaking her fall.

She let go of the shadow, as close to the mountain as she dared, and she continued to tumble head over heels towards the ground, landing heavily on the damp leaves. It was a painful landing, but she didn’t think that anything was broken, and she got to her feet tentatively, testing out each of her limbs in turn to assess the damage. She ached all over but her injuries were all superficial, some bruises and minor cuts that would stop bleeding of their own accord. She looked around at her immediate environs. When she had come to Neverland before, the shadow had taken her directly to one of the Lost Boys’ camps, but now there were no Lost Boys to be seen, nor was there any sign of Bae. She looked up at the starry sky above her, but there was no sign of the shadow either. Perhaps it had gone to warn Pan that she was on the island.

Wendy’s first instinct was to start running and keep moving, but on the other hand, being discovered could prove quite advantageous to her. If the Lost Boys were despatched to find her then she might find Bae amongst them, and then all they would have to do would be to find some kind of escape route. In the absence of Pan’s shadow, this might prove easier said than done. Truth be told, Wendy had concentrated most of her plan on getting to Neverland and finding Bae, not on what came after. She had assumed that the shadow would return her to London, but now that she was separated from it, she wasn’t so sure.

In the distance, a horn sounded. That would be Pan, summoning the Lost Boys. His shadow had obviously broken the news. Wendy set off through the dense jungle, making no attempt to hide or flee, and soon enough, she heard the rustle of movement in the trees beside her. When she looked, though, she found nothing there. The noise came again on the other side, and then again behind her, but she still could not see the shapes of boys moving swiftly through the undergrowth.

“It’s me, Wendy,” she called; they knew her by name from the last time that she had been in Neverland. She didn’t receive a response but the noises around her grew ever louder and closer, seeming to completely encompass her until she was certain that at any moment, the boys would suddenly jump out of the trees to scare her. No boys jumped from the trees, and what happened was far scarier than their attack would have been. Instead of the boys, several shadows slipped through the overhanging branches. Unattached shadows like Pan’s was, with their staring yellow eyes all fixed upon her.

“Boys?” she began, fear choking her voice in her throat. Where these the Lost Boys’ shadows or something else entirely? Had Pan turned the boys into shadows somehow? For the first time since arriving on the island, Wendy thought that running would be an excellent idea, but all her escape routes were blocked by these silent spectres. She ran at the nearest shadow but like Pan’s, it was solid. She was surrounded.

“Boys?” she asked again, hoping that perhaps she could reason with them. The shadows did not reply; they gave no indication of having heard her at all.

“Bae?” Wendy tried. She hoped that he was not one of the shadows, but she had to try and get through to him, even if he was. “Bae, it’s me, Wendy! Where are you?”

There was no response, and Wendy knew in her heart of hearts that she had not expected one. The shadows made no move towards her, but they did not retreat either. They appeared to be waiting for something, keeping her contained until reinforcements arrived. Was Pan himself coming?

Presently Wendy heard the sound of footsteps coming through the trees. Unlike the vague noises of movement prior to the shadows’ arrival, these were definitely made by people tramping through the underbrush, and sure enough, the Lost Boys appeared on the scene a few moments later. Against all the odds, Wendy was heartened to see that they were still alive and they had not become the grim spectres that they walked past in order to approach her. Not a one of them spoke to her, although she could see the melancholy looks on their faces as the two eldest boys came forward with a rope and began to bind her hands together. She was being taken prisoner, taken to Pan…

  Neverland – Present

“David! David!”

David jerked awake from the doze he had fallen into beside their small fire whilst Snow kept watch. It had taken a long time for sleep to come, his mind full of worries about Henry and Emma, and to only a slightly lesser extent the other members of their rescue party, and he was momentarily disorientated on his sudden return to consciousness.

“What’s up?” he whispered. Snow was listening intently, her hands paused in the motion of sharpening one of her arrows, and she slowly turned to him.

“Something’s coming,” she hissed, and then David heard it too, the soft sound of feet moving carefully over the forest floor, wishing to avoid discovery.

Keeping her movements measured and quiet, Snow picked up her bow from where it lay next to her, ready for action, and she notched the arrow, standing up and taking aim through the trees. David also stood, drawing his sword.

“I think it’s coming from over there.” Snow indicated a patch of trees off to her left, and David followed her around the log they were camped alongside to get closer to the rustling noise.

“You know, I’m rather disappointed.”

David and Snow both whirled round on hearing the voice behind them, and Snow shot on instinct.

The person who had spoken was a boy, sitting cross-legged on the log that they had just left and looking for all the world as if he had been there the entire time. Snow shivered at the thought, in a place as creepy as Neverland, he probably had been. He had caught the arrow an inch or so before it hit his chest. He raised one eyebrow at the projectile and snapped it in two before jumping off the log and coming towards them. David could see other boys hiding in the trees all around; they were surrounded.

“The famous Snow White and Prince Charming,” the boy continued. “Tales of your exploits even reached us here in Neverland. Although I must admit that I was expecting someone more… impressive. As it is, I’ve got a school teacher and a…” he looked David up and down “…whatever it is that you do. How long is it since you really did battle with that sword, Prince Charming? Aren’t you worried that you might be a little rusty?”

David moved the sword, itching to swing it, and the boy shook his head. “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The other boys hiding in and between the trees moved, and suddenly Snow and David found themselves with several spears and arrows aimed at them.

“I’ve just realised that I haven’t introduced myself,” the boy said. “My name is Peter Pan, and as you can see, I’m in charge of things around here.”

“So what happens now?” Snow asked. She had not lowered her bow despite the myriad other weapons around, and she kept her arrow trained on Pan.

“Well, I could advise you to give up now and go home, but where would be the fun in that? Also, I believe you are currently without any means of leaving the island, if the state of the good captain’s ship is anything to go by. So, since you’re going to be with us for a while, I think it would be more interesting if I just let you be and watched you struggle with your hopeless task, looking on as you get further and further away from your goal and you slowly spiral into despair.”

“What have you done with Henry?” David asked through clenched teeth.

“Oh, nothing yet. I’ve got something very special planned for Henry. I’ve been trying to get my hands on him for what feels like centuries. He’s a very unique boy,” Pan said. “One of a kind, I would say. He should be just what I need.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Snow snapped. “What do you need him for?”

“Well, to stay young forever, of course. Neverland requires a lot of maintenance, a land fuelled by belief. What better fit than the truest believer of them all, Henry? It’s going to be spectacular to witness. Almost as spectacular as your pathetic attempts to rescue him. Face it. You’re adults. Grandparents, even. And this is a game for children. The odds are against you, and you have no way of turning the tide. You don’t understand how we play, but you’ve jumped straight into the middle of the game anyway. It’s your move, but you’re playing to lose.” Pan gave a nasty smile. “Just remember that I make the rules. You’ll never find Henry. In fact, you’re losing him as we speak. Do you think he’s not wondering where his rescuers are? And the longer it takes you to find him, the more time is ticking away, the more he’ll start to believe that no-one has come after him, and that his family doesn’t care about his fate, and when that happens, well, he’s already mine, and it’s too late for you. But it’s so amusing to watch you try, and I like to be entertained. So have fun on your journey. This is Neverland, after all. Everyone has fun here.”

He left them then and made his way towards the nearest boy concealed behind a tree, thrusting the broken arrow towards him. The boy looked like he’d been handed a poisonous snake for a moment but then tucked the arrow into his belt and followed Pan into the darkness. Snow and David remained with their weapons ready for a long time after they were certain that the other boys had gone from their hiding places, and finally Snow lowered her bow.

“Well, that was encouraging,” David said drily. “If it really is as much of a race against time as he made it out to be then we have to find Henry, or at least send him a message, as soon as possible.”

Snow nodded and they put out their fire before beginning their walk through the trees again, this time keeping an eye out for armed boys as well as eerie shadows following them about.

“One good thing happened though,” Snow said eventually, “which makes me think that we’ll be able to beat Pan at his own game, maybe.”

“What’s that?” David sounded far from convinced.

“That boy has one of my arrows now,” Snow said. “If Henry sees it, he might recognise it. It’s got white swan feather fletches, and I don’t see any white swans on this island.”

“He’ll know you’re here.” David smiled. “Come on. Let’s find him.”

  Neverland – Past

No-one spoke as they made their way through the trees. Wendy was already hopelessly disoriented but the Lost Boys seemed to know where they were going. She noticed that each boy was being trailed by a shadow, and in the rare moments when the silver moonlight managed to break through the trees, it was clear to see that the boys themselves did not cast any shadows. Wendy wondered how the dark shapes had become detached, but when she thought of the uncanny strength of Pan’s shadow, she shuddered and decided that she’d rather not know, and she concentrated on surviving the coming confrontation instead. The one thing that gave her courage was that Bae was not amongst the boys who were escorting her to Pan. Although, she didn’t know if that meant that he had escaped or if he had met a fate even worse than that of the Lost Boys around her.

They walked straight past the small camp – long since abandoned – where the shadow had taken her the first time, and continued on towards the centre of the island. Wendy could hear rushing water, and she guessed that there must be a waterfall nearby. Sure enough, when the leader of the group parted the overhanging vines in front of them, they revealed a large lagoon in the shadow of the mountain with a cascade feeding into it. There was a big rock in the centre of the lagoon, in the chilling shape of a skull, and Wendy could see light and movement through the large eye holes.

A fleet of coracles was moored at the water’s edge closest to them, and the Lost Boys began to enter the small boats in pairs, casting off from the shore and paddling towards the skull rock at the centre. Wendy slipped as she was climbing into her coracle, her bare feet sliding on the wet pebbles at the water’s edge, and one of the Lost Boys grabbed her and helped her into the boat before she could fall into the water.

“Don’t want to give the mermaids any fodder,” he said grimly, before beginning to row away behind the other boats. Wendy looked down into the water to see dark shapes moving beneath the calm surface. There was not enough light to make out much detail but Wendy could see long, flowing hair and powerful fish tails. They were circling under the group of boats like sharks or other sea monsters ready to strike at the first sign of trouble, and even though she had not seen them up close, Wendy could already tell that mermaids were not the sweet creatures of fairy tales that she had always been led to believe.

When they reached the rock, two of the Lost Boys lifted her bodily out of the boat whilst the other younger ones rushed to secure the vessels. From inside the skull, Wendy could hear drums and pipe music, and it gave the night around her a haunted air.

They entered the hollow rock through one of the gaps where a tooth should have been, and Wendy looked around at what was obviously Pan’s prime base of operations. The only illumination came from a single lantern in the large cave, but it seemed to be emitting far more light than a solitary candle should have done, and the stark light threw grotesque shadows over the walls of the cave, unnerving Wendy more than the sudden appearance of the spectres in the forest had done. It was impossible to tell what was a natural shadow and what was moving of its own accord. The music and movement stopped once the Lost Boys entered with Wendy, and all the eyes within the cave turned to the new arrivals. There were several ledges and sills within the rock with more boys perched on them, but there was no sign of Bae anywhere. Whilst Wendy was grateful to know that he had not been made into one of Pan’s reluctant lackeys, she was still worried as to what had become of him.

“Well well well, if it isn’t the Darling daughter.” It was Pan’s voice, Wendy recognised it from the first time that she had been to Neverland. She held her chin up, determined not to show any fear to her captor, even though she could not yet see him. Suddenly, a rope dropped from somewhere near the ceiling and a figure could be seen swarming down it; it was Pan. He jumped the final couple of feet to the floor and clapped his hands, and the rope receded back up without any kind of outside influence. He came over to Wendy and stopped, regarding her with scrutiny, head on one side.

“I was certain that we’d got rid of you for good,” he said conversationally. “As I recall, you weren’t very enamoured with the place on your first visit. It was a surprise to find you so eager to return. I wonder what could have caused this sudden change of heart.”

“I have come to find Bae,” Wendy said firmly, her jaw set to try and mask the quivering in her voice. “Where is he?”

“A rescue mission?” Pan scoffed. “How very noble, especially for a girl. But, how do you know that Bae wants to be rescued? He seemed almost as eager to get here as you were just now.”

“Bae came here to protect his family,” Wendy said boldly. “You took him from us. And girls can be just as dangerous as boys.”

“You’re tied up,” Pan pointed out. “And you’re wearing a nightie. Much like my maiden aunt. Hardly dangerous.”

“And the mermaids in the lagoon outside that your Lost Boys fear so much?” Wendy said. “Aren’t they female?”

For a split second, Pan narrowed his eyes and Wendy knew that she’d caught him out for a moment, but only a moment. His previous demeanour quickly returned.

“Mermaids are a brutal species unto themselves,” he said. “But I have no use for girls on this island. It really is most irritating the way you insist on returning.”

“I’ve come for Bae,” Wendy said. “Let him go and I won’t come back here again.”

Pan appeared to consider her proposition for a moment before shaking his head.

“No, you see, then there would be no repercussions. You’re trespassing, Wendy Darling, and you need to be punished. I can’t just let you go free.”

“You let me go before.”

“Yes, but last time you were invited, you see. No-one asked you to come back. In fact, I don’t think even Bae asked you to come back for him, did he?”

“I don’t know, you took him away from us,” Wendy said through gritted teeth.

“Well, was he shouting ‘Wendy, Wendy, please come and rescue me?’ before he left? If not then he didn’t ask you to come back for him.”

“He was saving my brother, our brother! Family!” Wendy exclaimed. “But you don’t care about families, all you do is rip them apart!”

“Me?” Pan looked shocked. “I don’t take boys from their families, Wendy. I liberate them. You’ve seen Neverland. It’s a paradise. No rules, no responsibilities. I take them from their boring lives and I bring them here and I make them into my own family, a better family, where no-one has to be an adult ever again.”

“You make them into your slaves!” Wendy retorted. The Lost Boys remained silent, standing like sentinels around the cave.

“Nonsense,” Pan said. “They’re happy to be here, aren’t you, Porky?” He jabbed a plump boy, who looked as if he wanted to be anywhere in the world apart from Neverland, in the ribs, and the boy made no reply. “See,” Pan continued. “He loves it.”

“You’re mad,” Wendy said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Far from it,” Pan replied. “I just help people to see the truth, that there’s far more sense in staying here with me than in being at home with their families.”

“What have you done with Baelfire?” Wendy pleaded. Her own fate was up in the air, but she had to find out what had happened to Bae, if he was safe and more importantly, if he was alive.

“Well, it’s quite interesting that you should mention him.” Pan’s face took on a ponderous aspect. “He left. Quite some time ago, actually. Yes, apparently he didn’t want to accept my generous offer of a place in my little family of Lost Boys here. He’s gone. Vanished. Vamoosed.”

“Where is he?” Wendy screamed. Pan shrugged and spread his hands.

“I don’t know where he is. Have you considered the possibility that maybe he didn’t want to be part of your family either?”

Wendy shook her head. “Bae would never abandon us like that. He would do anything to protect us. He did do anything to protect us.”

“Well, as you can see,” Pan continued blithely, “he’s not here. He left. Such a shame that your paths didn’t cross, really. And such a shame that you won’t be able to pass the message on to your brothers. I wonder if they’ll come looking for you? It would be very amusing to collect the whole set, so to speak.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Wendy asked. She could feel her bravery waning, but she was determined to keep showing a courageous face to Pan.

“No, what a thing to suggest! I’m not going to kill you. Not yet, anyway. But you could prove useful in the future, I suppose. Bait for traps, target practice. We’ve all got to survive here, after all.”

Wendy saw movement out of the corner of her eye. One of the Lost Boys was inching closer and closer towards the mysterious lantern in the centre of the cave. Although he was out of his sight-line, Pan sighed and snapped his fingers, and a shadow flew across the cave, grabbing the boy and lifting him high into the air. Wendy could hear his choked screams getting fainter and fainter; the shadow had a hold on his neck and was slowly squeezing the life out of him. Wendy had to look away, nauseated, as his desperate noises became gurgles, and his body hit the ground with a dull thud.

“If anyone else tries anything stupid,” Pan said, indicating the light behind him without averting his gaze from Wendy, “then you know the consequences. Now…” He clapped his hands twice and the Lost Boys and other shadows began to move from their positions around the cave. “I think we need to take our new guest to her accommodation. Be careful now, we wouldn’t want to hurt her too badly. Yet.”

 Neverland – Present

“I can’t do it.”

“Yes you can. Try again.”

“I’ve already tried about twenty times, Gold, and I can’t do it! Stop pushing me!”

“How else do you plan on learning, dearie?” During the course of the exchange, Rumpelstiltskin had remained so calm and annoyingly serene, and Emma took a surprised step back to hear the anger in his raised voice now. His dark eyes flashed with something dangerous, something magical, and she half-raised her hands in defence, although against what she did not yet know.

“How do you plan on learning anything if I don’t push you?” Rumpelstiltskin asked again, no longer shouting, but still incredibly vehement. “What will you learn if every time you can’t do something, every time you find something difficult, you run away? Your magic could be the difference between life and death and I won’t always be there to take over when you throw in the towel because something’s too hard for you!”

“Don’t you lecture me about running away!” Emma screamed. “You know nothing about the things I’ve had to run away from! And you’re one to talk, you ran away from your own son!”

“And I spent three hundred years regretting that decision and trying to find him again, only to lose him for good! Your son is out there, my grandson, the only part of Bae I have left, and you can’t give up on finding him because it’s too damn difficult!”

“Shut up!” Emma yelled, clenching her fists, and the shrub beside her burst into flames. She jumped sideways in alarm. “Gold! What the hell?”

“That was you, dearie, not me.” He was calm again, or at least as calm as the glittering imp ever was. “Put it out now, we don’t want anyone knowing where we are.”

“There’s no water!” Emma said frantically.

“It’s a magic fire, dearie, use your imagination,” Rumpelstiltskin said sweetly.

“I don’t know how!” Emma let out a long howl of frustration, but when she opened her eyes and unclenched her fists, the shrub was still burning.

“Yes, you do,” Rumpelstiltskin retorted. He was standing with his arms folded, watching the scene with something akin to amusement. “Think about what you want to do and put all your will into doing it.”

Think about what you want to protect. Again the words floated back to her, and Emma held out her hands towards the fire, focussing all her energy into the image of the flames dying back until there was nothing left but smoking leaves. To her amazement, the blaze lessened and lessened until only a flickering embers could be seen, the faintest wisps of white smoke twirling and eddying around her fingertips.

“I did it,” she said, her voice equal parts proud and disbelieving.

“Yes, you did.” Rumpelstiltskin’s voice was neutral but when she turned to look at him, he was grinning broadly and bobbing up and down on his toes. “And that’s the purest magic I’ve seen for a long time, Miss Swan.”

Emma looked at the smoking bush and then down at her hands.

“What the hell just happened?” she murmured. “And how do you know that it was me?”

“Magic runs off emotions,” Rumpelstiltskin explained. “The tone of mind determines the colour of magic.”

“What, like a mood ring?” Emma asked.

Rumpelstiltskin considered this comparison for a moment before shrugging. “In a manner, I suppose. Anger, fear, hatred, conversely happiness, courage, love… All these things allow you to cast. Control your emotions and you can control your magic.”

“So the bush was my anger?”

Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “And putting it out, that was a positive emotion. You can tell by the colour. So pure and white. So shiny.”

Emma paused and looked at Rumpelstiltskin through narrowed eyes. “Whenever I’ve seen you use magic, it’s always been dark-coloured.”

He gave her a mossy-toothed leer in return.

“There’s a lot of darkness in me, dearie. I’m not called the Dark One for nothing.”

Emma nodded slowly. “Regina’s magic is also dark-coloured.”

“Hmm.” Rumpelstiltskin looked away for a moment, pointedly avoiding her eyes. “Yes, Regina’s magic is dark-coloured. Dark magic. So was Cora’s. So was another of my apprentice’s. That’s the way I taught them. You teach what you know.”

“So why aren’t you teaching me dark magic?” Emma asked. “How come mine is so light when everyone else’s is so dark?”

“Because you have so much light magic from your heritage, dearie. So much magical potential waiting to be tapped, and that magic, once you have it under control, once you can bend it to your will and work alongside it… Oh, you’ll give me a run for my money as the most powerful sorcerer in all the realms. Now, try that spell again.”

Mutely, Emma obeyed, holding out her right hand with the palm up and then curling her fingers into a fist.

“What’s the difference between light and dark magic anyway?” she asked.

“What’s the difference between happiness and anger?” Rumpelstiltskin replied, his voice clipped. “Negative emotions are powerful. Explosive. Forceful. But they, like the magic they inform, will fade. Positive emotions endure, make for stronger bonds. It’s harder to learn light magic. Harder to teach. It doesn’t come as easily, but it’s stronger in the end.”

“What about true love?” Emma asked. “Everyone says that’s the most powerful magic of all.”

“And rightly so.” Rumpelstiltskin smiled, a genuine smile rather than a toothy sneer, and Emma could see the traces of Gold in his face now. “Love makes for golden magic. Bright and beautiful….”

He shook himself like a cat that had just sneezed and was attempting to deny the fact. “Enough of that. Has it worked this time?”

Emma opened her hand. Above her palm, a silvery compass needle was spinning, finally coming to rest.

“Perfect, we can continue on with the compass and follow your shadow.” Rumpelstiltskin set off through the trees without any further ceremony and Emma rushed to catch up with him.

“Hang on, hang on.” She came up beside him and fell into time with his brisk strides. “Earlier, you said that you wouldn’t always be there to do magic for me. That’s not the first time that you’ve made it sound like you’re not coming back from Neverland. Why do you think that this is a one-way trip for you? What do you know that the rest of us don’t?”

Rumpelstiltskin stopped in his tracks and sighed.

“You know,” he said suddenly with a suitably flamboyant gesture that Emma was just about getting used to, although she didn’t think that she’d ever be completely comfortable with it. “I don’t think you want to know.”

Emma just raised an eyebrow, speaking through her teeth as she tried to keep a lid on her worn down patience. “Try me.”

He gave another sigh; she wasn’t going to let him off so easily. Well, he had told her to be persistent with her magic, and she had never been one to let things go even without the magic.

“Many centuries ago, there was a prophecy. A seer told me that I’d reunite with Bae, that a boy would bring us together again. She also told me that the boy would be my undoing.”

Emma let out a long breath. “Henry. Henry is your undoing.”

She folded her arms, stance set, blocking the trail that they were following east to find Emma’s shadow and, by proxy, her son.

“How do I know that you aren’t finding Henry to do away with him?” she asked coldly. “How do I know that this eagerness, this willingness to sacrifice yourself isn’t just you wanting to get to him first to put him out of the picture to secure your own future?”

“Oh, the thought crossed my mind back in Storybrooke, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin snarled, and Emma felt heat prickle at the tips of her fingers. Looking down, she was not surprised to see tiny tongues of flame licking there.

“You’re a bastard,” she growled.

“I told you, there’s a lot of darkness in me. But really, Emma, think about it logically. Henry reunited me with my Bae. But Bae is now gone, lost to me forever, and the only way I can atone for everything I’ve done is to make sure my grandson, my last surviving relative, is safe. Bae’s gone. Why would I destroy Henry? It won’t bring my son back.”

Emma looked at him hard, the flames still warming her fingertips.

“I still don’t trust you,” she said after a long silence.

“Well, what’s new?” Rumpelstiltskin giggled.

“But you’re not lying,” Emma continued. “I know my self-confessed superpower can be off at times, but I’m pretty certain that this isn’t one of them. You’re teaching me the very things I would need to stop you. But be warned. I’m not going to hesitate to make you resemble that bush if I have to.”

“I consider myself duly forewarned.” Rumpelstiltskin bowed. “Shall we?” he added, indicating the trail. Emma nodded and continued the trek through the forest. She was thinking about Neal, about his antagonism towards magic and special powers; his understandable antagonism given everything that he had gone through. Thinking about his relationship with his father. If he was here now, how would he react to the knowledge that she had so much magical potential just waiting to be unleashed? Bright magic. Good magic. Not like Rumpelstiltskin’s. She glanced sideways at her companion, but she knew better than to ask his opinion on the subject.

  Neverland – Past

Wendy was put back into a coracle and paddled away from Skull Rock with a small contingent of Lost Boys as a guard. Away from Pan's chilling influence, she found it easier to think and plan. She had no idea how she was going to get off the island, but before she could do that, she had to get free of the Lost Boys. It couldn't be impossible; Bae must have done it before, after all. She refused to believe Pan's assertion that Bae had abandoned her, John and Michael. He was on his way back to them, she knew it.

They were going in the opposite direction to the one that they had taken to arrive on the rock, moving further and further away from the jungle at the water's edge and rowing instead towards the waterfall that crashed down from the mountain. The mermaids were still swimming around the boats, hoping for a spill, and as they neared the cascade, Wendy saw a couple of them sitting on the rocks there. Although at first glance, they seemed to be humanesque, it was obvious once the boats came closer that Pan was right and they were truly a species of their own. Their fingers were webbed, and instead of clothing, the scales on their shimmering fish tails continued up over female torsos to the neck, and back down to scatter over their arms. They viewed Wendy with suspicion as the fleet of boats neared the waterfall and the Lost Boys began to fix covers over the little round vessels to keep them dry; as they passed under the falls the mermaids hissed at them. Wendy shivered and avoided their sharp gaze, not looking back until the boats hit the stark rock face behind the waterfall and the Lost Boys jumped out.

Although it looked like a sheer cliff face, once she was out of the boat, Wendy could see that there was an uneven path cut into the wet rock, and it was this that they were travelling up. Wendy didn't want to look down as they continued to climb up behind the waterfall, but she couldn't help herself and risked a small glance over the edge. They were very high up, and there were no handholds of any kind. Wendy felt dizzy all of a sudden and stumbled on the path before being hauled to her feet again by the Lost Boys around her. None of them spoke as they kept climbing higher, and Wendy knew better than to ask where they were taking her. She wouldn't receive an answer. She glanced over at the skull rock in the centre of the lagoon, and although it was impossible to see it clearly through the rushing water, Wendy could still feel its chilling and oppressive influence. She wondered at the significance of the lantern; she could just about make out the points of bright light coming from the holes in the rock, and her stomach turned when she thought again of the unfortunate Lost Boy.

"We're here."

The leader of the group stopped up ahead and indicated for the others to follow him into a crevice in the rock face; Wendy would never have guessed it was there otherwise and would have assumed that it was just another cosmetic feature of the cliff. There was no light inside the narrow passageway and she followed her captors blindly along the wet, uneven floor, listening to the water trickling down the walls. Ahead of her, one of the Lost Boys lit a torch, although by what means she did not know; Wendy was simply grateful for the light and chose not to ask questions whose reply she might not like. Soon, the tunnel opened out into a larger chamber, filled with small cages. There were no other people inside, but Wendy could see something that looked suspiciously like a pile of clean white bones in one corner. The place smelt of death; she remembered it from Great Aunt Ida's funeral.

For an awful moment she thought of Bae, and forced her mind away from that terrible fate that might have befallen him. She was going to get out, she was going to get home, and the family was going to be reunited. One of the Lost Boys went over to open the nearest cage. It was only made of wood and rope but it seemed to be a sturdy enough structure. Another boy pushed her forward and Wendy knew that she was expected to get into the cage. Meekly she complied, shuffling into the little box to spare herself the indignity of being manhandled inside, and the Lost Boys shut it up behind her. There was barely enough room for her; she had to curl up as small as she could. None of the boys said anything as the oldest fastened the cage tight again, but she could see one or two of them giving her awkward, sympathetic looks before hastily turning away in case any of their brothers in arms caught them at it. Once they had checked that the cage was fastened securely, they turned and left the cavern, filing back into the narrow passageway.

It was only once she was sure that the sound of footsteps had died away that Wendy chanced to look around properly at her surroundings. The boys had taken the torch with them and it took a while for her eyes to adjust to the outlines of shapes in the vaulted room, but it quickly became clear that she was completely alone. Wendy gave a small smile and looked down at her hands, clasped tightly together, and she opened her cold, stiff fingers to drop into her lap the wet flint that she had picked up when she had stumbled on the path up to the cavern. Wendy was good at concealment. She’d managed to hide Bae from her parents, after all, and what was a simple stone after that? It took her several attempts to get a good hold on it and get it into the correct position to saw through her bonds, and on more than one occasion she was tempted simply to give up. The rope that they had tied her with was strong and the flint was not particularly sharp, but maybe if she could just use it to loosen the knot enough, she’d be able to slide her wrists free. It was a slow and painful process, the rope was rough and it grazed her hands, drawing blood as she eased it over the soft skin, and it brought tears to her eyes. Finally, after what might have been an hour or might have been a day, her hands were free. Wendy flexed her wrists and assessed the damage; it would heal soon enough. She was not an overly tough child, she had never needed to be until now, and now that one layer of her awful situation had been solved and crisis was no longer quite so imminent, the pain made her cry. She wiped her face and the salt burned her wounds, but it also gave her the fire she needed to continue, picking up the flint once more and setting to work weakening the ropes that attached the door to the cage. She heaved her slight weight against the bars; with so little space it was hard to get much leverage, but she persisted. Desperation to be free was winning out over every other thought or feeling in her mind, and with a quiet exclamation of triumph, she managed to loosen one of the hinges. Maybe if she could just squeeze out…

It was easier said than done, especially as she could not really stretch out her limbs within the cage, but eventually she succeeded in getting one arm out, and once one was out, the rest of her body followed, if slowly and painfully. Free from the cage, Wendy looked around the pitch black cavern. She would have given anything for a light, but she could only walk through the darkness with arms outstretched until her fingertips brushed the cool, damp wall. From there it was just a question of feeling her way around until she reached the opening, which she slipped into. A small part of her worried if she had found the correct way out or if there were more tunnels and she was just going further and further into the mountain and towards unknown dangers, but she soon began to make out a faint sliver of something that looked lighter, and the odd twinkling of what could have been a star in the night sky, and the further she crept along the tight corridor, the more distinct the sound of rushing water from the cascade became. Once or twice, she slipped on the damp, slimy rock underfoot and scraped her already injured hands even further. Wendy blinked back tears; she could not and would not cry now, not when she was so close to freedom. She had no idea how she was going to get home, but she was formulating a plan, if she could just capture one of the shadows…

She reached the entrance to the tunnel and breathed in the fresh air, very welcome after the mouldy smell of decay that had permeated the cave, and she stepped out onto the narrow, slippery ledge that they had walked up. She was still concealed behind the waterfall, but she was cautious in her movements in case any of the lost boys should see her. Wendy glanced down at the trail in front of her, closing her eyes when the dizziness of the height became too much. There were still a couple of coracles moored at the bottom of the path. Excellent, she wouldn’t have to negotiate the water and the mermaids.

It was in that moment that Wendy’s heart began to beat painfully in her chest. There was no reason for the little boats still to be there after the Lost Boys had deposited her in the cavern. Not unless they had also remained behind the waterfall.

Wendy realised a split second too late that there were far more hidden entrances in the seemingly sheer rock face than she had been led to believe, as the Lost Boys, armed with spears and bows and arrows, came rushing out of the cliff onto the ledge in front of and behind her, blocking her route no matter where she decided to go.

“You didn’t think that you were going to get away that easily, did you?” one of them asked. Wendy thought of her aching arms and legs and bleeding hands; her escape had not been easy so far but it had been a piece of cake compared to the dilemma she now faced. She could not go up and down. The only way out was to go down the quick way.

Wendy took a deep breath and jumped off the ledge into the churning water below.

  Enchanted Forest – Present

“Where are we going, Mulan?” Neal asked as he followed the soldier through the Dark Castle’s corridors towards their unknown destination.

“Here.” Mulan stopped outside a door at the very end of the landing on the second floor of the castle. It was in one of the parts of the place that was obviously not as well-used as the rest.

“I found it yesterday whilst I was looking around,” Mulan explained, “but I didn’t realise the significance or usefulness until our conversation just now.”

Considering that their conversation had been on true love, Neal was rather intrigued and slightly nervous about what Mulan might have found. His concern must evidently have shown on his face as she caught his expression and laughed.

“There’s no need to look quite so worried, I assure you.”

They entered the room; it was pretty empty apart from a few stuffed bookshelves and a very large wire cage in the corner by the window. The cage looked to be unoccupied, but on closer inspection, Neal saw a small white shape inside, perched on a branch. It was a dove, asleep, head nestled under one wing and feathers puffed up.

“Has it been in here all this time?” Neal asked.

Mulan nodded. “I think so. I think the castle must have made sure that she had enough food and water whilst she was in here during the curse. She seemed happy enough when I got her out yesterday.”

As relieved as Neal was that the dove was unharmed from her extended stay in confinement, he still didn’t see quite how it related to his current predicament.

“This is great, Mulan, but I think I’m missing the point slightly. Unless you’re suggesting that we use the dove as a carrier pigeon.”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” Mulan said excitedly. Neal just raised an incredulous eyebrow, hoping that he could convey his doubts in his friend’s plan without the need for words. Mulan sighed at his reserved judgment and continued her explanation.

“Birds carry messages,” she said. “Most birds can carry a simple message to within a few miles. Bluebirds are the best as they can repeat verbal messages. Other birds can carry written messages. But doves and pigeons, they’re different. When doves fly home, they aren’t flying to a place, they’re flying to their mate. They mate for life with such strong bonds, what they have is true love, just like we humans do.”

“Ok, I’m listening.”

“What are the chances that her mate is in the Land Without Magic?” Mulan asked. “This cage looks big enough to ordinarily house two birds. What if Rumpelstiltskin arranged things so that he had one half of the pair here and one with him, so that he could always send a message back here if he needed to?”

“Because true love transcends all boundaries and doves always fly to their true loves. If anything could take a message between worlds, it’s a dove separated from their mate. Oh Mulan, you’re a genius!”

“Thank you.”

Neal wondered where the other half of the pair could be; he hadn’t seen any sign of a caged dove in the pawn shop, which was where most of his father’s important possessions from the Enchanted Forest seemed to be, but he presumed that he had a home somewhere as well, perhaps the bird was there. It wouldn’t be free, because surely it could have already flown back to the Enchanted Forest to reunite with its mate. He wondered… For the first time, he couldn’t feel the creeping sensation of being watched, and he began to take heart from that. Neal did not trust his father with a lot of things. He didn’t trust him not to receive the message and immediately start trying to rip yet another world apart in order to find him again. He didn’t trust him not to do something completely ridiculous. But if Neal knew his father, which he was somewhat confident that he did, then Rumpelstiltskin would know that Neal would be fighting as hard and as ferociously to reunite with his own son as he had done to reunite with Neal. And his father had been all for Neal and Emma’s reconciliation, much to Neal’s chagrin at the time. Yes, if he sent a message and his father received it, Neal was confident that he’d pass it on. As for anything else he might choose to do, well, Neal wouldn’t be held responsible for that. Mulan opened the cage – it was fastened securely but not locked – and entered carefully, going over to the dove.

“Hello, my dear,” she said, stroking its soft plumage. “Are you ready to stretch your wings a little? You’re going to be going on a very long journey, but you’ll find your true love at the end of it.”

The dove cooed quietly and hopped onto Mulan’s hand, and she bore it out of the cage. The bird seemed docile enough, and together Mulan and Neal made their way back through the castle in search of pen and paper so that Neal could write his missive to Emma and Henry.

“It has to be quite short and to the point,” Mulan said as they sat down in the main hall. The dove had since left her hand and had flown over to perch on a suit of armour. “They can’t carry much weight.”

Neal tore off a tiny strip from the parchment he had found and wrote out a short message.

Emma & Henry. I am ok. In EF looking for way home. With friends. See you soon love Neal.

Emma would be able to recognise his handwriting at least, even if the message was slightly garbled.

It took a little while to coax the dove down from her comfortable perch on top of the suit of armour; it took all four of them, and in the end Philip had to resort to tempting her with tidbits from the kitchen. Even once she was happily nibbling on dried fruit on the table, the logistical difficulty of attaching the message to her in some way became apparent. They sourced some twine from somewhere and Neal held the dove securely whilst Mulan tied the little roll of paper to its leg.

“Do you know the way?” he asked the dove. He wasn’t quite sure why he was asking because he didn’t expect a reply, but given the important task that the bird was about to undertake for him, he felt it prudent to check.

Philip had already opened the window and Neal let go of the dove, throwing her out into the warm mid-morning sun. She wouldn’t be back; what reason would she have to return if she had reunited with her true love in Storybrooke? Neal leaned heavily on the windowsill, watching the white shape vanish over the horizon.

“It’ll be all right,” Mulan said beside him. Neal nodded. Even if his message never made it to its intended recipients, he was no worse off than he had been before. Now assured that he had given Henry and Emma hope of seeing him again, Neal returned his attention to his other pressing task. He had to find and entrap that errant shadow and use it to get home.

  Neverland – Past

As she fell, her limbs flailing hopelessly, Wendy heard the commotion break out above her and saw a couple of loosed arrows fly past her. Then she landed with a splash and thrashed to the surface. Wendy could not swim, not much more than a gently bobbing in the sea, and she swallowed several mouthfuls of the freezing water before she managed to open her eyes and take another gasping breath. She risked a glance upwards; the Lost Boys were no longer aiming their weapons at her and were rushing down to the water’s edge. Wendy began to dog paddle awkwardly towards the boats, but she could not have gone more than a couple of feet when she felt something deceptively strong snake around her ankle. She had a split second to catch a final gasp of air before it yanked her under the surface.

Below the water, the mermaid who had hold of her gave Wendy a sweet smile which quickly became a terrifying leer, and she pulled Wendy further down towards the bottom of the lagoon. Just then, a flash of scales swam past and the mermaid was smacked in the face by a fast-moving tail, leaving an angry red mark on the pale skin. The mermaid hissed and looked around for the culprit, but she still did not relinquish her hold on Wendy’s ankle. The attacker returned; her tail was that of a stingray and she smacked Wendy’s captor around the face again before grabbing one of the drowning girl’s injured wrists and pulling hard. Wendy felt as if she was being torn in two, and she was becoming increasingly light-headed. She felt another set of arms come around her waist and tug her away from the other two warring mermaids, and she was on the verge of giving herself up for lost when she broke the surface again and choked on her instinctive intake of breath. The mermaid who had hold of her waist looked concerned, head on one side.

“Are you all right?” she asked, before levering her tail out of the water to slap an advancing mermaid with the fin. “Take a deep breath, you’ve got to trust me.”

What other choice did Wendy have? She filled her lungs as much as she could, gagging on a mouthful of water, and the mermaid dived under the surface, taking Wendy with her. She was swimming furiously down to the bottom of the lagoon, and for a moment Wendy thought that she had indeed been lulled into a false sense of security. Then she levelled off and swam onwards with powerful thrusts of her tail, fins flapping so fast and the water rushing past them so ferociously that Wendy was almost convinced that they were flying. She couldn’t hold her breath much longer; her chest felt like it was about to burst, and she let out a stream of bubbles, inadvertently gulping in a lungful of water. She spluttered, but the mermaid’s hold on her was tight and unrelenting.

Wendy could feel herself losing consciousness. Even if the mermaid was going to get her to safety, she didn’t know if she would live to see it. Surely they had reached the edge of the lagoon by now, especially with the speed that they were travelling at. Vaguely, something in the back of her air-starved mind told her that the water in her mouth tasted salty, unlike the fresh water of the lagoon…

When she came to, Wendy realised that she was lying on a sandy beach somewhere, and she opened her eyes to see a weak morning sun beating down on her. She couldn’t be dead, she reasoned. She ached too much for that, and her chest felt like it was on fire. Gingerly she looked around. The mermaid was lying next to her, eyes closed but obviously breathing, and Wendy got a closer look at her saviour. She was a lot younger than anticipated, she could not have been much older than Wendy herself, and her tail and body were covered with scales of a rich, jewel green colour. Her hair was bright red. Wendy touched the mermaid’s arm gently.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

The mermaid groaned. “Never doing that again.”

Wendy looked around. “Where are we?” she ventured. The mermaid shook her head without opening her eyes.

“Don’t know. Somewhere that’s not Neverland.”

Somewhere that was not home, either. Although there was not much to see, Wendy knew instinctively that she was nowhere near London. Was she even in the same world as England was? She turned her attention to more immediate concerns.

“Thank you,” she said to the mermaid. “You saved my life.”

“I could save you. I can’t save the others,” the mermaid replied despondently. “The shadows, you see…. And the one who got away, he wouldn’t come near the water.”

The one that got away…. Bae. Bae was all right, and he was trying to get home. Now all Wendy had to do was get home herself.

“I’m Wendy, by the way,” she said.

The mermaid at last opened her eyes and smiled. “Ariel.”

  Neverland – Present

Tamara had not spoken since Henry’s revelation that Baelfire and Neal were one and the same. Henry couldn’t say that he was particularly sorry about that, but it would have been interesting to know what she was thinking. He didn’t ask, though. He wasn’t that concerned, and he knew that he didn’t have much hope of trying to sway her from her mission of destruction. He added a couple more sticks to the fire and stirred it with a slightly too-bendy twig.

“How long are we stopping for?” he asked eventually. Although his mind was still wide awake and churning over everything that he had learned in the past couple of hours, he knew that his body was tiring.

“Until we’re summoned,” Tamara said. Her voice was neutral, as was her face. She was completely unreadable, unlike Regina who had always worn her heart on her sleeve. Did Tamara feel remorse for what she had done, or in the end did she not care; was the mission for the greater good so important to her that she felt that shooting the very cause of that mission was worth it, as long as she achieved her goal?

“How do you mean?” Henry asked.

“Pan’s sending an escort to guide us the rest of the way,” Tamara explained. Henry looked around at the shadows that were hovering between the trees around them.

“And the shadows aren’t escorting us?”

“Too slow,” Tamara snapped. “Too slow, too stupid, too full of magic. We’re going to need human help for the rest of the journey.”

“How do you know he’s sending someone?” Henry persisted.

“Because that’s the plan! Listen, they’re coming now.”

Sure enough, Henry could hear the sound of several sets of footsteps marching through the forest and converging on them from several different directions at once. He listened to the noise getting closer, and he wondered what kind of people he was about to meet given his intensely magical surroundings. He was quite surprised to find that they were just ordinary boys when they appeared, dressed in clothes suitable for hunters living in the depths of the forest. They were all quite young, with some no older than Henry, then going on to late teenage years. These must be the Lost Boys. None of them spoke for a long time; they simply stared at the other two humans in the clearing, until finally one, the oldest and obviously the nominate leader, stepped forward.

“Pan’s expecting you,” he said gruffly.

“I know,” Tamara replied, her voice calm. “He sent you to guide us to him.”

The Lost Boy nodded and Tamara got awkwardly to her feet, leaning heavily on Henry as she did so. Even after she was vertical, she still kept a tight grip on his shoulder. As she had said to the shadows before, she was not letting the boy go without a fight. Now that he knew the whole story about her, Henry was not too shocked at this. He was her lynchpin.

As they continued to walk through the woods along faint trails that no-one other than a Lost Boy would be able to find, Henry briefly considered making another run for it. The boys probably wouldn’t be as fast as the shadows were, but unlike the shadows, the boys were overtly armed with all kinds of nasty-looking weapons. For now, Henry decided that it was probably safer to go along with it. Perhaps once they reached Pan, Tamara would make good on her desire to kill the boy who never grew up.

Suddenly, the Lost Boy who was leading the procession stopped. From his position near the middle of the group with Tamara, Henry could see that he was examining the bark of the nearest tree carefully. He strained to see; the boy was using a broken arrow to scrape something off the bark. Henry’s brow furrowed. It looked like make-up, lipstick, and it was obviously not meant to be there. Who would have lipstick in Neverland? Unless someone had brought lipstick to Neverland….

A new spark of hope ignited in Henry’s heart. Only one person of his acquaintance would bring lipstick to Neverland, and his heart skipped again when he focussed his attention on the arrow that the Lost Boy was now studying intently. It was one of Snow’s arrows, he recognised the fletching. Snow and Regina were in Neverland. Henry didn’t care how one of Snow’s broken arrows had ended up in a Lost Boy’s possession, nor why Regina’s lipstick was smeared on a tree. All that mattered was that they were there. They had somehow found out where he had gone and they had come after him to rescue him.

“What’s got into you, kid?” Tamara asked, one eyebrow raised. Henry’s face had broken into a grin with his new realisation, and he quickly dropped the expression, trying to appear more scared and sombre. It wasn’t hard; even with the revelation that he was not alone here and help was somewhere on the island, however far away from him, he was all too aware of his very immediate predicament.

“I’m right here,” Mulan assured the princess. “And I’ll wake you if it seems like you’re having a nightmare.”

Aurora nodded and came over to sit beside Mulan, watching the flames flickering as the sky began to lighten in the east.

“You’ll stay?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Aurora curled up and after a moment, shuffled a little closer to rest her head in Mulan’s lap. She was less afraid knowing that she was with someone like that, and that whatever happened in the depths of her mind whilst she slept, she would not be alone. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift until it reached its ultimate destination, the abandoned fortress where they had laid Philip to rest.

“Do you think we’ll be able to bring Philip back?” she asked Mulan. “Cora said that it was possible, but Cora said a lot of things. I was so desperate for this one to be true though. They always say that magic can’t resurrect the dead.”

Mulan sighed. “Philip isn’t really dead, though,” she said. “His body was not physically killed, but his soul was separated from it. If we can reunite his soul and his body then perhaps he can live again.”

“How do we go about finding his soul, though? The wraith has it.”

“Where does a wraith take the souls it steals?” Mulan pondered the question in silence for a while, and against her better judgement, Aurora felt herself dropping off to sleep. She felt Mulan shift a little, and she did not fight the oncoming oblivion.

Once Aurora’s breathing had evened out and she seemed to be sleeping peacefully without any signs of her slumber turning against her, Mulan reached across for her pack and pulled out the small book that Belle had left with her after the other woman had defeated the yaoguai. It was a collection of myths and legends and other not-so-fantastical beasts, and maybe the wraith could be found within its pages.

Absentmindedly she stroked Aurora’s hair, and she thought she saw the princess smile in her sleep. Hopefully she was having pleasant dreams of reuniting with Philip. Mulan was certain that it was going to be possible, she just wasn’t sure how. Had anyone even tried to reunite a soul with a body before?

Mulan flicked through the book’s pages, coming to a stop by an illustration that seemed particularly pertinent. The chapter was entitled souls, shades and shadows.

“Well, that looks promising,” she murmured.

“Found something?” Aurora asked sleepily.

Mulan looked down at her friend with an unimpressed expression, but Aurora’s eyes were still closed, so the effect was somewhat lost.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said.

“I am. I was. Sort of. Have you found something?”

“I’m not sure.” Mulan skim read over the page. Not all of it was as useful as she’d hoped for. “Nine precincts of death…. Banishing escaped souls… No, this is all about how to put stray dead souls back where they belong, not the other way round. It’s for exorcising malevolent ghosts.” She turned the page. “Shades becoming unbound from their corporeal counterparts… retrieving unbound shadows and souls… This seems better.”

Aurora shifted around and finally sat up with a yawn, resting her chin on Mulan’s shoulder to read the book. She couldn’t make any sense of the text, but the picture was clear enough, a pair of shadows holding hands.

“What does it say?” she asked.

“When a soul or shadow enters the realm of death when separated from its owner by great force, it will remain in the Well of Lost Souls,” Mulan read aloud.

“Do you think that’s where Philip’s soul would be?” Aurora murmured, more to herself than to Mulan. “You can’t deny that it was separated from his body by great force.”

Mulan nodded. “I think it’s likely.” She read on. “In these cases, the soul will remain trapped until it is collected by its owner – when the owner’s physical body also dies – or by another soul or shadow that it recognises as its own deepest desire.”

“When that person dies too?” Aurora asked. Her stomach was churning and she was suddenly very awake and aware of her surroundings where she had been drowsy before. She sat up straight and looked at Mulan in fear.

“I don’t think so,” Mulan said. She flicked forward a few pages in search of more information. “It doesn’t specify that the collector has to be dead.”

“But how would we get to the realm of death without dying?” Aurora pointed out.

“I’m not sure, I’m just looking. It started talking about life-bound entities and things that can’t die that are also part of the Well,” Mulan said. “I’m having to skip forward a lot.” She turned over a couple more leaves and found what they were looking for. “There were are. The entrance to the realm of the dead is beyond the Netherworld.”

Aurora let out a long breath. “I’d really not go there again.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to,” Mulan continued. “It gives instructions for a heavy sleeping draught. One that would knock you out enough to take you straight to the gate, but only gives you a limited time before it drags you back.” She peered at the recipe again. “It looks a lot like the sleeping draught I made for you once, but stronger. And it uses burned tea leaves in it to wake you. It’s like a standard sleeping spell, I suppose, but more potent.”

“Sleeping spells don’t work on people who have been under a sleeping curse,” Aurora said.

“No, but my medicine worked, didn’t it?” Mulan said. Aurora had to concede that; the draught had worked a little too well and she had been groggy for several hours after waking and had declined to try the brew again.

“Besides…” Mulan looked across at Aurora but the other woman shook her head before Mulan could continue.

“I’m going,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t care how dangerous it is. Philip is my True Love, and I’m his, and the book says that a lost soul has to recognise another as its soul’s desire.”

Mulan gave a sad nod. “Yes, you are Philip’s True Love. I just don’t want to put you in harm’s way; I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”

“I trust you,” Aurora said simply. “I trust you to make a draught that will wake me.”

Mulan smiled minutely. “Thank you. I’m honoured. I wish I had the same faith in myself.”

“It’ll be all right,” Aurora said, although she could not deny that she too was nervous at the prospect of venturing into the place between life and death, a place she had come so close to before in such terrifying conditions.

“We’ll need to move on,” Mulan said. “We should return to Philip’s body, as his soul will return to it when he wakes. We should be there, ready for him.”

Aurora nodded her agreement. “Let’s move.”

“Aurora…”

“Mulan, I’m about to have a very deep sleep when I get there,” Aurora said. “I’d rather arrive as soon as possible. Now that we have a way, I want to use it.”

Together they packed up their small camp and began to move in the direction of the dawn that was beginning to break over the horizon, back towards the abandoned citadel where first Aurora, and now Philip lay, waiting patiently for their True Loves to come and free them from wherever they were trapped.

  Neverland – Present

“We should probably think about setting up camp.” David looked around and the trees. “Time moves differently here, I think. The sun should have risen hours ago but it’s still as dark as ever.”

“My watch has stopped,” Snow agreed. “Do you think time even exists here? If Neverland is the place where people never age, maybe it’s because time just doesn’t move here whilst it moves everywhere else.” She shuddered. “Who knows how much time will have passed in Storybrooke by the time we return.”

The idea made David uneasy. “Let’s not think about that,” he said quickly. “Let’s just focus on what we have to do here and cross that bridge when we come to it. Concentrate on one problem at a time.”

“I can’t help planning ahead,” Snow said. “Has anyone given any thought to how we’re going to get home? That was the last bean that we used to get here.”

“There are other ways to cross realms. We need to find Henry and the others first.”

Snow nodded and they continued on in silence for a while.

“Have you heard any birds?” she asked presently.

“No,” David replied. He hadn’t heard any sounds of natural fauna except for the crickets now that he came to think of it, and the more he thought about it, the more uneasy it made him. What kind of a place was this with no wildlife? Was it naturally so desolate or had something happened to dispose of any creatures that there had originally been?

“I thought that if there were birds, they might be willing to act as messengers like they do in the Enchanted Forest. I thought we could perhaps get a message to Henry, telling him that we’re looking for him.”

David nodded his agreement. Whilst it was going to be somewhat impractical to try and pull off in the absence of any birds, it was a good idea in theory. Perhaps Henry had seen the ship flying overhead or perhaps one of the others had already found him, but he knew that the chances were slim and Henry had no idea that his family had come after him and were actively attempting a rescue. He didn’t know that he was not alone in this worrying new world.

“It looks like there’s a clearing up ahead,” Snow said. “It’s as good a place to rest for a while as any.” They reached the clearing and Snow dumped her bag beside a fallen log. “It’s a shame that the ground is so damp. Do you think we’ll be able to find any dry wood for a fire?”

“I’ll go and look for some.”

David drew his sword and set off through the trees again, but Snow’s voice pulled him back.

“Wait, David, come and have a look at this.”

He turned and made his way back towards Snow. She was crouched by the log, evidently in the process of getting something out of her bag, but whatever it was had been forgotten and her attention was fixed on the ground.

“What is it?” David asked.

Snow picked up a small piece of transparent film.

“It’s the wrapper from a roll of crepe bandage,” she explained. “I recognise them from the first aid kits in the classrooms at school.”

“Something tells me that it’s not meant to be there.”

“No, and I’ve got the first aid supplies in my bag, so this isn’t from one of our party.”

“Henry and Greg and Tamara,” David concluded. “They must have been this way at some point. Is there anything else?”

They scoured the area, but there was no sign of anything else that might give them a clue as to Henry’s whereabouts or the direction that he might have gone in.

“I don’t like this, David,” Snow said. “This means he might be injured. What if he’s badly hurt?” She was clutching the plastic bandage wrapper tightly in her fist.

“Well, that’s all the more reason to find him quickly,” David replied levelly.

Snow nodded, and with the action some of her conviction appeared to return, so that she was once more the warrior and tactician that David had known in the Enchanted Forest when they were taking back their kingdom.

“We have a place to start from now,” she said, grabbing a stick and shoving it in the ground beside the log as a marker. “We start here and work our way in a circle outwards until we find something, or someone.” She turned sharply, narrowing her eyes and watching for a moment before shaking her head. “I’m seeing things again,” she muttered. David was not keen to agree with that assessment. Ever since they had landed on the island he had been certain that there was something there, but it was simply not revealing itself. The things that Snow was seeing; he was sure that they definitely did exist.

Snow went to say something but then decided against it and shut her mouth for a while before eventually speaking.

“Let’s make a fire and rest. We won’t be as observant if we’re half-asleep.”

David agreed and went to find some viable firewood. He kept his sword out as he crept through the trees in case he should meet something native to the island. On the ground a little way in front of him he saw a pale shape, and he made his way over to it cautiously. The closer he got, the clearer the shape became until David realised with horror that it was a human body.

“Snow!” he yelled back to his wife through the trees, and he heard her come running through the undergrowth as he dashed across to the body.

It was Greg, lying flat on his back with his eyes open. They were glassy, staring, and very, very dead, and the expression on his lifeless face was one of anguish.

“What is it?” Snow asked as she arrived on the scene, bow at the ready, but she dropped the weapon and clasped her hands over her mouth when she saw David crouched down beside Greg’s corpse. “Oh David,” she breathed, kneeling down next to him. “What do you think happened?”

David closed Greg’s eyes; the picture immediately seemed less horrific now that he was no longer looking up at them. Together they cast an eye over his body for any obvious cause of death. Snow’s brow furrowed. There were no marks of a weapon anywhere, no blood at all, and his neck was not broken. There was no sign of him having been hit on the head.

“Poison?” David suggested. “Maybe some of the foliage here is more dangerous than we think.”

Snow shook her head. “You’d think that there would be some kind of physical sign.” Gingerly she looked into Greg’s mouth. “His airway is clear. I don’t see what it could have been, unless he was literally scared to death.”

“Don’t dismiss it out of hand,” David muttered. “This place would give the most courageous of souls the creeps.”

He picked up Greg’s arms and made to cross them over his body with the intention of covering him with some of the leaf bed in a hasty burial, but Snow reached out and stayed his hands, staring at a point a little way from them.

“What is it?” David asked.

“Look.”

He followed Snow’s gaze.

“He has no shadow, David. His shadow’s gone.”

David blinked. Against the back drop of the trees he could just about make out his own shadow in the moonlight, but there was nothing where the shadow of Greg’s arms should have been.

“This just keeps getting stranger,” he said, quickly putting Greg’s arms down. “Let’s move on, I don’t like it here.”

They got to their feet and they were about to make their way back to the other clearing, the place they had nominated as their starting point, when Snow felt David tense up beside her.

“Snow…” he began, but he didn’t need to say anything else. Snow could see it too; several pairs of glowing yellow eyes watching them from between the trees. The eyes did not appear to be attached to anything, and it was only when Snow saw the slight rippling motion in the darkness that she realised that they weren’t attached to anything, at least not anything physical. They were shadows, and they were closing in.

“Run,” David said simply. Snow did not need any further encouragement and grabbed David’s hand as they began to tear through the forest. The shadows gave chase, moving silently through the trees. It was an eerie feeling, running from a pursuer that they could not hear, and dangerous too, as they had to keep looking back over their shoulders to check the distance between them and the shadows.

“We should split up,” David panted as they continued their sprint.

“What?” Snow exclaimed. “In a place like this?”

“Divide and conquer,” David replied. “It’s always worked for us before.”

“All right.” Snow acquiesced reluctantly and let go of David’s hand. “We’ll double back and meet back where we started.”

David nodded and turned a sharp left; Snow went right. She could see some of the shadows break off from the pack and follow her whilst the rest went after David. It was going to be hard to shake them off or lose them; without physical bodies they would not tire. She was going to have to face them, but how did one go about attacking a shadow?

The first thing that sprang to mind was of course light, but that was going to be somewhat hard to come by.

Snow stopped abruptly and notched an arrow to her bow, turning and firing at one of the three spectres that were following her. To her surprise, the arrow hit its mark, pinning the shadow to a tree. It writhed and wriggled, trying to pull the arrow out, and the other shadows hung back.

“Don’t come any closer or you’ll get the same treatment!” Snow yelled, readying another arrow.

The threat worked; whatever the shadows were and whatever their motivations were, they did seem to have some sense of self-preservation. One of them floated over to its comrade and began to help it get the arrow out.

Snow realised then that she was stuck in a stalemate. As long as she was threatening them, the shadows would not attack her, but she did not want to waste arrows that she might need to use against something to which they could actually cause injury as opposed to simply slowing down. The shadow seemed no worse for wear for being pinned to the tree, just incapacitated. She also knew that as soon as she turned her back to run, they would come after her again.

They stayed in the tense stand-off for about a minute before a low noise could be heard coming through the trees. It sounded like a horn or bugle being blown, a summons. Immediately the shadows heeded its call, finally succeeding in freeing the one that had been stuck and tossing the arrow away before flying up into the black sky. It was hard to make them out; they were only visible when they passed across the stars and hid them from view, but as she squinted to see them, Snow thought that she caught glimpses of the same shadows rising from other parts of the island, all heading towards the mountain at the centre.

With any luck, the shadows chasing David would have gone as well.

Snow went over and picked up the discarded arrow, and she put it back in her bow, ready to shoot in case anything, spectral or otherwise, decided to come after her.

So much time spent living in the forest when she was younger had honed Snow’s navigational abilities, so much so that finding places in woods and thick underbrush was almost second nature to her. She could map forests in her head from only a few distinct markings of trees, having spent so many hours moving from hiding place to hiding place to avoid the guards, and it did not take her long to find her way back to the clearing with the fallen log that she had marked with a twig. It would take David a little while longer, but he too was no stranger to having to fight his way through thick forests. Some of their most effective attacks against George and Regina’s forces had taken place in the heart of the woods. Snow sat down on the log to keep a look out, and it was only a few moments later that she heard movement in the trees. David came into view; Snow put down her bow and ran over to throw her arms around him.

“The ones chasing you vanished too?” she asked. David nodded, but his face still looked concerned.

“Snow, look.”

He held up a length of dark thread; Snow recognised it as having come from Henry’s jacket.

“Oh David…”

“It was caught on a branch about fifty yards that way.” He pointed back in the direction that he had just come from.

Snow nodded. “Then that’s the direction we take until we find him.”

   Enchanted Forest – Present

Once they were all safely within the walls of the Dark Castle, Neal, Mulan, Philip and Aurora took a moment to look around at their new hideout and get their bearings.

“We should be safe here,” Philip said. “We can take a few days to regroup and plan the next stage of our journey.”

“And find Neal a way back to the Land Without Magic,” Mulan added.

“Yes. Are you all right, Neal?” Aurora asked, coming over and fussing over his bandage. “You seem to be much improved to when we found you.”

“I’m ok, thank you.” Neal was still having a little trouble coming to terms with the fact that this trio if people whom he’d never met before had taken him under their protection and cared for him despite their own dangerous circumstances. They moved through from the entrance hall into what was presumably the main room of the castle, a vast chamber full of mostly empty display cabinets and pedestals. The place had obviously been unoccupied for several years; every surface was covered in a thick coating of caked-on dust, and large, intricate spiders’ webs hung abandoned in the corners of the high ceiling and around the chandeliers. The place gave an impression of having been packed up and moved on, with so much conspicuous empty space, but at the same time there was still the air of a sudden departure, as if the owner had left one day expecting to return, but had not done so.

“Where is everything?” Mulan asked in disbelief. “Maybe the looters have come after all.”

Neal shook his head. “No, I don’t think anything’s stolen,” he said. “Everything magical or potentially useful got taken to the Land Without Magic.” He remembered the curios packed into the pawn shop, some legitimate junk but others definitely more sophisticated and altogether magical things that were not at all native to Maine. “It was a powerful curse, he didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”

The other three looked at each other, no-one really sure how to broach the subject that was forefront in everyone’s mind. Philip eventually opened his mouth to say something, but Neal had already moved on, poking around in cupboards and chests and opening doors.

“I’m going to see what state the kitchen is in,” Aurora announced unnecessarily loudly. “It’ll be nice to have a meal that isn’t cooked over a campfire.”

She left the room and the others listened to her footsteps growing quieter along the corridor.

“I’ll go with her,” Mulan said. “I’m not entirely sure I trust this place not to spring any more surprises on us.” The Dark One himself was not in residence any more, but as the blood-locked gates had already proved to them, the castle itself had some degree of magical sentience to it. Even if someone had been able to fool the gates, it was possible that there were more traps within the walls themselves, even if most of the enchanted objects had been removed.

Philip was left alone with Neal, and he took a moment to watch the other man. There was no kind of method in his search, it was obvious that he had never been inside the castle before, but he was familiar with the Dark One from the Land Without Magic, and he had been able to open the gates…

There were all sorts of rumours that floated around the realm regarding the Dark One and his fearsome reputation, but it was almost unanimously thought that he was alone, and had been for the majority of his long existence. Philip was not quite sure where Neal fitted into the picture. He went over to join him.

“Would you like some help?” he asked. “What are you looking for?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Neal admitted. “Something that can take a message across worlds. I need to let my son and his mother know that I’m all right, and I’m on my way home. That part might prove a bit more difficult. But as long as I can give them hope, that’s the key thing.” He paused and shook his head. “Hope. That’s the difference.”

“The difference to what?” Philip asked.

Neal shut the chest that he had been rifling through and sat down on the lid, looking up at Philip.

“You’ve all already guessed that I’m related to Rumpelstiltskin,” he said. “The gates made that pretty obvious.”

Philip nodded. “I was going to ask about that. I wasn’t sure if I might cause offence.”

Neal shrugged. “We can’t change our relations, however much we might want to.” He paused. “He’s my father.”

Philip drew up a chair, sensing that this might take some explaining, and he sat down opposite Neal.

“I never knew that the Dark One had any family, let alone a son,” he said.

“All things considered I’m not exactly surprised that he didn’t make it common knowledge. He wasn’t proud of how things happened.” Neal’s voice was clipped, bitter. “But he did spend centuries trying to find me again. The trouble was that I didn’t know. All that I knew was that he’d abandoned me to a completely new world. I had no hope. I need Emma and Henry to have hope.”

Philip pondered the things that he had just been told.

“From what you tell me, you and your father’s circumstances are very different. You don’t appear to have had much of a choice when you returned to this land.”

“No,” Neal agreed. “I didn’t. But the principle is the same.”

He gave a snort of laughter. It was truly ironic that his own life was now mirroring his father’s. Separated across worlds from his son and willing to stop at nothing to find him again. A particularly painful case of history repeating itself.

Presently Mulan and Aurora returned to the room, the latter carrying a steaming teapot.

“We found a teapot and a kettle but no cups,” she said. “What kind of a person takes the cups but not the rest of the tea set?”

“There are some cups in that cupboard over there, I think.” Neal pointed to the cabinet in question, one full of random oddments of junk that had evidently been deemed useless to take to the Land Without Magic, and Philip went over to retrieve them whilst Mulan added tea leaves to the pot of hot water.

“It’s so nice to use a proper teapot again,” Aurora sighed. “If I’m not careful, I’ll get used to this.”

“You have your own castle,” Mulan pointed out.

“That may or may not still be standing by the time that we get back to it,” Aurora added drily. She poured out the brewed tea into the cups that Philip was cleaning with the edge of his cloak. “We reach safety and the first thing that we do is have a cup of tea. I wonder about my priorities.”

“We need to make the most of these moments of respite whilst we have them,” Philip said. “Who knows when we might have access to a teapot next?”

“There’s nothing wrong with finding small moments of pleasure in a difficult existence,” Neal added. “My father always used to say that a cup of tea can make everything brighter.”

“Father?” Mulan mouthed to Philip, giving a minute gesture around the room to indicate the idea of the Dark One in general. Philip nodded, and Neal smiled wanly as he caught the silent communication between the two of them.

“It’s a very long story,” he said.

Aurora shrugged. “We’ve got time, if you want to tell it.”

Neal shook his head.

“Maybe later, I need to try and contact Emma and Henry as soon as I can.”

“Would your Emma be an Emma Swan, by any chance?” Mulan asked. “And your son, Henry?”

“Yes… How do you know?”

“We met Emma a little while ago; she travelled with us briefly. She was looking for a way home like you are,” Aurora explained.

“How did she get back?” Neal asked eagerly.

“A portal was created using ash from a magical tree. Sadly there’s none left, but there are other ways to cross realms,” Mulan said on seeing Neal’s face fall. “If you’re half as determined as Emma was, you’ll find a way.”

Neal nodded, his hope renewed. Emma had been in his position before and she had come home, and he could too.

  Enchanted Forest – Past

“Are you ready?”

Aurora nodded. “Are you?”

“Nearly.”

After a day of travelling, the two ladies had returned to the empty citadel where Philip lay in state just after the sun had set behind the trees. Mulan was sitting on the floor, carefully measuring out the ingredients of her sleeping draught and charring a few of her precious tea leaves over a small fire.

Aurora did not voice her innermost thoughts to Mulan as she did not want to worry her, but she had a small consolation in the back of her mind telling her that even if she never woke, it would not be so very bad as she would be with Philip. At the same time, however, the thought of never seeing Mulan again was not at all a pleasant one. They spent the next few minutes in a companionable silence as Mulan continued to prepare the potion. Aurora had seen her do it before, but this time there was an extra element of mystery and magic to it. She looked around, checking that everything was prepared. They had moved Philip’s body from the pedestal down onto the floor, and Aurora had set up her blankets beside him. Although there was nothing to say that physical proximity had any bearing on metaphysical proximity, it had made sense to them both at the time.

Mulan ground up the burned tea leaves and added the resulting powder to the sleeping draught, and she blew the steam away from the cup before handing it to Aurora. The fear in the other woman’s eyes was very visible, but Mulan knew better now than to ask her if she wanted to back out. Aurora had made up her mind and Mulan had to respect her decision, even if she did not like it.

She swallowed the brew and made a face. “I have to say it, that’s absolutely disgusting.”

Mulan laughed.

“Well, hopefully, you won’t have to taste it again,” she said.

Aurora lay down, making herself comfortable as she dropped off to sleep. Mulan sat cross-legged by her feet, watching over the two still forms in front of her. Too still. It was clear that this was no ordinary sleep. Time continued to pass and the night became darker and darker until finally the first light of dawn could be seen peeping over the top of the hills in the east. Mulan looked again at Philip and Aurora. Neither one of them had moved and they showed no signs of stirring, although Mulan was sure that the effects of the tea should have worked by now.

“Something’s wrong,” she muttered. She left her lookout spot and took up the cup that rested beside Aurora’s hand, and she looked down into it. There was still enough for another dose, and she weighed up the risks. It would leave them completely undefended in the waking world if Mulan were to venture into the Well of Lost Souls as well, and there was the real danger that none of them would make it back.

On the other hand, if Philip and Aurora were somehow trapped and needed her help…

Mulan drained off the last of the sleeping draught (Aurora was right, it tasted vile), and leaned back against her pack, closing her eyes.

X

Aurora looked up at the heavy gates in front of her. If all had gone to plan then beyond them lay the Well of Lost Souls. Should she knock? Should she just try to open the gates?

She reached up to knock, but the moment her hand touched the ornately carved wood, the gates began to open silently. Perturbed, Aurora took a step forward. Beyond the gates, the world was dark and misty, almost like clouds of steam rising from the wet ground, but the air was cold and dry rather than damp. Aurora shivered and cast a glance around to get her bearings. There wasn’t much to look at, just a vast expanse of water and mist as far as the eye could see. As her vision adjusted to the darkness, she became aware of shapes floating between the puffs of mist. They seemed to be human, but there was no substance to them, just shadows. She reached out towards one as it brushed past her, but her hand went straight through. The spectre, however, must have felt her, as it turned sharply and Aurora saw bright lights flickering angrily, like eyes.

“Sorry,” she gasped, and withdrew her hand. The shadow moved on past and did not look back. These must be the lost souls that were trapped. How was she going to find Philip if the only reference she had were these strange shapes? Still, she was here and she had to press on; she didn’t know how long she had before the draught would pull her back into wakefulness. She continued her slow progress through the water. It didn’t seem to be getting any deeper than her ankles, which was encouraging.

“Philip?” she called. “Philip, where are you?”

She got no response, but she felt something brush past her and she turned quickly. There was nothing there, except her own shadow, which was bobbing along beside her as if it had always had a life of its own.

She put out a hand and was surprised when she encountered resistance instead of going straight through like she had done before. The shadow felt warm and soft, a little like human skin but not quite similar enough, and it unnerved her somewhat.

“Philip?” she called again, still to no avail. She went on along through the mist, her shadow silent next to her, until it stopped and went very still, prompting Aurora to do the same.

“Are you ok?” she asked the shadow, although she expected a response from that even less than she expected a response from Philip. Unsurprisingly, the shadow did not speak, and instead simply raised its right hand. Unsure of what else to do, Aurora copied the action. They remained still for a while, until another shadow came through the mist towards them. Carefully, it reached out for Aurora’s shadow, touching fingertips together before clasping Aurora’s shadow’s hand tightly.

“Philip?” Aurora breathed. “Is that you?”

The shadow nodded, and Aurora startled as another shape suddenly appeared in the mist, a pale, slightly translucent shape, not a shadow.

It was Philip.

“Aurora?”

“Philip!”

She ran towards him, stumbling in the shallow lake, and she felt his arms come around her. They were not quite solid, but they were tangible enough.

“Why are you here?” Philip asked. “Did you come to find me?”

Aurora nodded. “Yes, Mulan found…” She broke off as a sudden shiver ran over her whole body, keeping her rooted to the spot.

“Aurora, what’s happening?” Philip asked, alarmed.

The chill passed, but Aurora found that she still could not move her feet, and when she glanced down, she saw that her skin was the same translucent white as Philip’s. She looked up in horror.

“Philip, I’m stuck.”

 Neverland – Present

Emma gave an incomprehensible grumble and smacked Rumpelstiltskin’s hand away as she felt a sharp, claw-like fingernail jab her in the ribs to wake her. Instead of having the desired effect, however, she simply received a giggle and another prod.

“Do that again and I’ll take your hand off,” Emma growled. Finally she opened one eye and looked up at the stars. “What the hell? Gold! Why have you woken me up now?”

“If you were expecting to wake to the pale light of dawn breaking then you’d be sorely disappointed, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin said mildly.

Emma looked at her watch but it appeared to have stopped.

“That won’t be of any use either,” Rumpelstiltskin intoned. “Time doesn’t pass here. You’ve got to use your own judgement.”

Somewhat grudgingly, Emma pulled herself into a sitting position and leaned back against the rock that they had chosen to take shelter behind, stirring the fire with a twig.

“Anything I ought to be on the lookout for?” she asked Rumpelstiltskin. “Lions? Tigers? Bears?”

“Oh my,” Rumpelstiltskin finished. “No, as long as you keep the fire nice and strong we’ll both be fine.”

“And if the fire goes out?”

“In that case I’ll be fine and you’ll be slightly… deceased.”

Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. “Deceased at the hands of what? And how come you won’t end up slightly deceased as well?”

“Look around you, dearie.” Rumpelstiltskin was lying flat on his back with his hands pillowed under his head, paying his surroundings absolutely no attention whatsoever and ignoring her second question. “Our would-be assailants are mere yards away.”

Emma looked around and startled at the many points of yellow light watching them through the trees. At first she thought that they were twinkling stars, but then she realised that they were blinking eyes, staring at her. She scrambled to her feet, pressing herself flat against the rock.

“Gold! Do something!”

“We’re fine, they don’t come near the light,” Rumpelstiltskin said airily. “They’re shadows, light defeats their object somewhat. No, they won’t come within reach of the flame unless they absolutely have to.”

“That’s hardly reassuring!” Emma yelled. “And why are they a hell of a lot more interested in me than they are you?”

“Maybe because you’re the one waving your arms around and panicking. They can smell fear, you know.”

“Gold!”

He sighed. “They are more interested in you because you are more interesting.”

Emma looked down at Rumpelstiltskin’s glittering skin and dark leather ensemble.

“Somehow I find that difficult to believe.”

Rumpelstiltskin sighed and opened his eyes. “Fine. They are more interested in you because you have something that they want. Something that I do not have.”

“There are so many responses to that, but I’ll refrain,” Emma muttered. “This may well be a ridiculous question, and I may well regret asking, but what do I have that you don’t?”

“A shadow of your own.”

Emma’s brow furrowed.

“Everyone has a shadow, Gold,” she said. “Even you.”

“Yes, everyone has a shadow. Not everyone’s shadow is attached to them.”

“That’s impossible,” Emma said flatly.

“Is it really?” Rumpelstiltskin replied, his voice annoyingly calm and matter-of-fact. “Those shadows over there don’t appear to be attached to anything.”

Emma had to concede that point.

“But what about yours?” she continued. Rumpelstiltskin sighed and waved one hand in the air above him. Sure enough, he cast no shadow against the smooth rock.

“Right. Ok.” Emma slid back down the rock and sat down on the ground again. “Why isn’t your shadow attached to you?”

“Because I cut it off,” Rumpelstiltskin said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Of course you did,” Emma murmured faintly. She looked again at the shadows hovering in between the trees, still staring at her. “So, if I had no shadow, or at least no shadow attached, they wouldn’t follow me?”

“No. They wouldn’t be able to see you clearly. They see shadows first, then physical forms.”

“How do you know these things?” Emma asked.

“I think it is known in common parlance, dearie, as having been around for three centuries longer than you have.”

“All right, all right. So, you cut your shadow off.” She paused. “Can you cut mine off too?”

“No.” Rumpelstiltskin’s reply was flat and forceful.

“Gold…” Emma began.

“You can cut your own shadow off, but I can’t do it for you. It’s too risky. If you free your shadow, you have to free it yourself.”

“Ok.” Emma took a deep breath. “Show me how.”

Rumpelstiltskin raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“As long as it’s not going to cause me any physical damage.”

“No physical damage at all. It stings a little when you first cut though.” Rumpelstiltskin sat up, a ponderous expression on his face. “Actually, I think it might be incredibly useful to us. Yes, yes, very useful.”

“What will be useful?” Emma asked warily.

“Detaching your shadow. Now, first things first.” He sprang to his feet and indicated for Emma to stand too. “You will need magic and a knife. I trust you have both of these things.”

Emma nodded and took out a pocket knife. She was slightly less confident about the magic part of the equation. She hadn’t really had enough practice on that to suddenly start on removing her own body parts. Did a shadow count as a body part?”

She turned to the rock so that she could see her shadow. Nothing seemed to be any different about it, it still looked to be the correct size and shape and it moved at the same time as her body did. It wasn’t showing any signs of eerie yellow eyes, either.

“First, you need to freeze your shadow,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “Concentrate on what you want to do and then do it. You need to put will into the action. Visualise what you want to happen, then put all of your force into making it happen.”

Emma closed her eyes and held out her hands, wrinkling her nose in concentration as she visualised the shadow remaining still as she moved. She felt the smallest tingling sensation at the tips of her fingers and dared to open her eyes, waving tentatively. The shadow stayed put.

“Excellent.” Rumpelstiltskin gave another high snicker and clapped his hands. “Don’t tell Regina, but you’re a much quicker learner than she and her mother were. Soon you’ll be able to do it with your eyes open and not look as if you’re trying to lift an elephant at the same time.”

Emma raised her eyebrows. “You can hardly talk about looks,” she snapped.

Rumpelstiltskin did not reply to the barb. “The more effort you put into the magic and the less into contorting your face into odd positions, the easier it will be.”

Emma had to snort; she’d received similar advice whilst giving birth and she’d taken no more notice of it then than she intended to do now.

“Now that you’re moving independently of your shadow, you can cut it away,” Rumpelstiltskin continued. “Just trace the outline of your foot.”

He was right, it did sting, even through her boots, but after a moment the pain faded to the same kind of tingling as at the tips of her fingers. As soon as she’d traced around both feet, she saw the shadow raise up a little, flexing and stretching all its joints, and the bright lights where the eyes should be blinked into life.

“That is quite possibly the creepiest thing that I have ever seen.” Emma shuddered and Rumpelstiltskin just gave a huff of laughter.

“Welcome to Neverland, Emma. Everything’s creepy here.”

She glanced sideways at him, still not quite used to his new appearance, and gave a small nod.

“Now what?” she asked, looking back at her shadow.

“Now we let it go,” Rumpelstiltskin said.

“Let it go where?” Emma’s shadow turned this way and that, almost as if it was sniffing the air. “What’s it doing?”

“It’s doing what it’s supposed to do,” Rumpelstiltskin snapped. “Now calm down and let it get on with it. And watch where it flies to.”

Suddenly the shadow flew off in an easterly direction.

“East. That’s where we have to go.” Without any further ceremony, Rumpelstiltskin lay back down on the ground and closed his eyes.

“Gold!” Emma prodded his shoulder. “Gold, I’m not going to let you sleep until you tell me what the hell just happened!”

Rumpelstiltskin sighed. “Why don’t you work it out for yourself, Emma?”

“Because…” Emma gave an exclamation of frustration.

“All right, all right. Shadows are manifests of the soul, like hearts are manifests of the heart.”

“What you do mean, hearts are manifests of the heart?”

“When you rip out someone’s heart, you don’t rip out their actual heart,” Rumpelstiltskin explained.

“I don’t intend to do any heart-ripping,” Emma muttered. Rumpelstiltskin ignored her.

“Not only would that be instantly fatal,” he continued, “it would also be extremely messy.”

Emma nodded her understanding, sitting down beside Rumpelstiltskin once more.

“It still functions like a heart,” he went on. “It still pulses all bright and shiny with love. It can still control you. And if it’s crushed, you’ll still die.”

Emma pressed a hand over her mouth. “Graham,” she mumbled. He’d said that he felt numb, like he couldn’t feel, like he didn’t have a heart, although she had felt it beating beneath her fingers.

“Yes,” Rumpelstiltskin said. For the first time he sounded sombre. “Yes, like Graham.”

They fell into silence for a while, in memoriam almost, until at length Rumpelstiltskin began to speak again.

“Shadows are a little like that, but they represent the soul, not the heart.”

“I thought that eyes were the windows to the soul,” Emma said.

“Why do you think that the shadows have eyes, dearie?”

Emma shivered, bringing her knees up and hugging them.

“So if shadows represent the soul, then where has mine gone?” she asked.

“In search of your soul’s deepest desire,” Rumpelstiltskin replied. Immediately, Emma realised what had happened and everything fell into place.

“Henry. My shadow’s gone to find Henry.”

“Precisely.”

Emma pondered for a moment. “I suppose yours is searching for Belle.”

“It seems highly probable.”

Something in Rumpelstiltskin’s voice made Emma think that perhaps it was not as highly probably as he said it was, but she didn’t push the point. They were not quite on good enough terms yet to be revealing deep and dark desires.

“Gold,” she began again presently. “Or do you prefer Rumpelstiltskin now that you’re…” She wasn’t quite sure what adjective to use so she just tailed off.

“Whatever works, dearie. I’m both, after all.”

“Can shadows be controlled?” she asked. “Like hearts?”

“Not as long as you remove it yourself,” he replied with a yawn. “That’s why I couldn’t do it for you. Only you have dominion over your shadow now.”

Emma nodded. “And if you did do it for me?”

“Then someone with malfeasant intentions might take advantage of a shadow that its owner can’t control.”

His voice was clipped, its tone signalling the end of the conversation, and they lapsed into silence once more. Looking through the trees again, Emma saw that the shadows had gone. She almost asked Rumpelstiltskin why they were still keeping watch if the shadows didn’t want to attack them anymore, but then she realised that the shadows were not the only things in the jungle. For one thing, the shadows probably had owners, and they would not be so easily put off by a simple fire.

  Enchanted Forest – Past

Mulan did not often feel dear at her surroundings; it was rare for the atmosphere to make her shiver. She felt fear for other people and their fates, but she was not often afraid for herself. This place, however, sent a horrible chill down her spine, and made the hairs of the back of her neck stand on end. She felt like she was being watched on all sides, indeed, everywhere she turned, she thought she saw pairs of yellow eyes blinking at her through the heavy mist. She was wading in murky water that was about ankle-deep, and she wasn’t sure why it surprised her. It made sense, after all, it was a Well of Lost Souls. She looked back over her shoulder at the gate she had come through; looking at the foreboding wooden arch now, it seemed like it was free-standing in the middle of the lake and going through it would not lead her anywhere. She hoped that this was not the case as that was the way she planned to return to the waking world.

Mulan looked down at her feet but she couldn’t see them, only a vague reflection of herself in the dark water. It was more like a shadow than a true reflection, with points of light sparkling in the indigo head. Mulan stopped walking for a moment.

“Shadows are manifests of the soul,” she murmured, repeating a line from the book. She shuddered again as she looked around at the many eyes watching her progress. All these shadows – were they all lost souls waiting to be rescued? Mulan pushed the unnerving thought to the back of her mind and kept walking, keeping an eye on her own shadow in front of her. It still seemed to be attached, but every so often it would make a move that Mulan would have sworn blind that she hadn’t made.

“Aurora?” she called. “Philip? Aurora?”

There was no response. The grey mist stayed as silent as ever. She kept wading further into the great lake; it wasn’t deep but the more she moved the harder it became to do so. It was almost as if the lake was trying to hold her back. She stopped again and looked down at her shadow. The book had been quite vague about how souls and shadows interacted, seeming to use the two words interchangeably, but it had mentioned that shadows were naturally drawn to their soul’s desire.

“I wonder…”

She bent to look more closely at her silhouette in the water, and tentatively put a hand down to touch the shadow’s fingers. They felt warm and dry, not like how an image on water should have felt, and as Mulan brought her hand back up, the phantom hand stayed with it, slowly pulling its form up out of the water until it was floating in front of her, bright eyes blinking.

“Hello,” Mulan said to her shadow. It was a pointless pleasantry, she knew, but how else was she going to start a conversation with a manifest of her own soul?

The shadow did not reply, but turned towards what Mulan presumed to be the centre of the lake and floated along ahead of her as she continued to move away from the large gate. She didn’t like the way it got rapidly smaller the further she went away; there were no other reference points for distance and she had no idea how far she had travelled, whether it was yards or miles. At least the going seemed easier with her shadow unattached.

Suddenly, the shadow took off, picking up speed and flying rather than just drifting. Mulan had to run to catch up to it. It was on the track of her deepest desire, and hopefully she would find Aurora and Philip when it stopped.

“Aurora!” she yelled, unconcerned for the shadows in her way as she passed through some and pushed others to the side. “Aurora! Philip!”

“Mulan!” she heard Aurora’s voice call back, still sounding horribly far away. “Is that you?”

“Hold on, I’m coming!” She continued to splash blindly through the lake, hoping that she could reach them not too far behind her shadow. Suddenly, she saw them, and she explained away their appearance out of nowhere with the fact that the thick mist all around was disorientating her. They looked pale and ghostly almost, just shades of their physical selves, and Mulan wondered if she looked the same to them.

“Mulan, I’m stuck,” Aurora said as Mulan finally approached them. She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I came to save Philip from being stuck and now I’m stuck myself.”

It was at that point that Mulan saw the shadows, undeniably Philip and Aurora’s. They were a little way off from where Aurora was rooted, and whilst in their more physical forms, Philip held Aurora in a close embrace, their shadows showed a completely different aspect. Philip’s shadow was clutching Aurora’s shadow’s right hand tightly with both of its own, but the left hand was hanging limply by its side.

Mulan felt a rush of air beside her as her own shadow sped away, moving towards the other two. She felt a small knot of fear begin to climb up the back of her throat. Her shadow had led her to her soul’s desire, but the revelation of that desire was now unavoidable.

Mulan’s shadow touched the shadow Aurora’s face gently, and pressed its forehead against the other silhouette’s before taking her free hand. Aurora’s shadow rose a few inches, bringing it clear of the water, and in the same moment, Aurora herself staggered as her feet were released.

“Mulan?” she began softly, turning to her friend.

Mulan swallowed.

“Come on, we need to go before we’re all stuck here.” She turned and led the way back towards the gate that they had originally come through to arrive in this strange world.

“You’re right, I don’t want to spend a second longer than I have to here,” Aurora said with a shiver. She glanced over her shoulder at the three shadows that were following their owners. A lost soul could only be freed if it recognised and found the soul that was its deepest desire. But what if a soul had two desires, both of equal value? She had rescued Philip, but she had needed both Philip and Mulan to rescue her.

“Is it just me or have we gathered a crowd?” Philip asked. Aurora looked around. The shadows that had left them alone until now were closing in.

“They don’t want us to leave,” Mulan said grimly. “They’re going to try and pull us back, make us wait for death.”

Aurora looked up at the gate in the distance.

“Everybody run!” she yelled. The other two needed no further encouragement, and they careened towards the gate, thoroughly soaked by the splashes and spray that they were kicking up as they ran through the dark water. Aurora could feel the shadows pulling and pawing at her, but she kept going, her lungs feeling like they were on fire; dragging Philip along with her, Mulan keeping pace on her other side.

At last they made it to the gate, and they rushed through it into a flash of green light.

  Neverland – Present

Killian walked around his beached ship several times, trying to ascertain the damage before actually beginning his repairs. Ideally he would need a magician; they would be able to do the thing in a finger snap. But the magicians were elsewhere and there were tools below the deck, so his limited knowledge of ships’ carpentry would have to come to the fore. The mast was the main problem. Killian clambered onto the ship and ran his hand down the beam, jumping back quickly when it gave an ominous creak. Although it had not broken in two completely, it was so splintered halfway up its length that it seemed like the slightest gust of wind might tear the thing apart. There wasn’t a lot he could do about that. Then there were the ripped sails. Those he could do something about, so feeling like he was at least achieving something, no matter how small, he set about taking down the sails and preparing to sew them up again.

It was a task easier said than done. Neverland’s perpetual night still had not shown any signs of daybreak, although Killian lived in hope, and trying to perform fiddly manoeuvres like stringing an awl with only one functioning set of fingers was nigh-on impossible. Killian leaned back against the ship from his position sitting on the sand beside it. It had landed on an angle, the starboard side higher than the port side, and the side nearest the sea was in shadow. Killian was not altogether happy with this turn of events as he would have much preferred to stay on the side of the ship that was as far away from the jungle as possible. Still, at least on this side he could see anything coming and could come up with a plan of attack before it arrived. He wondered if the cannons still worked. Feeling rather nervous at the prospect of his already bruised and battered ship being a sitting duck, he climbed aboard to check the cannons.

The Jolly Roger’s gun deck was a mess; during the flight the cannons had all broken loose and the starboard side guns were now tucked in amongst the port ones. Killian wondered for a moment whether firing the port side cannons would right the ship with the recoil, but then decided not to risk it and wait for a magician to find him. Surely one of them would find him sooner or later. He had a certain sense of self-preservation left over from his last excursion in this realm that told him that going into the jungle to look for them would not be a good idea as he might never come out again. The last time he’d been here, he’d had a full compliment of crew with him, and they’d only just managed to make it out alive as it was. He did not fancy his chances alone, especially with several of the island’s inhabitants out for his blood.

Killian returned to the deck and searched the forest for any signs of life. There was nothing to see, and he was just about to jump back down onto the sand and continue with his repairs when he caught a glimpse of something moving between the trees. He squinted; there was nothing but empty darkness there now, but Killian could have sworn blind that he had seen an extremely familiar tricorn hat.

He jumped down off the ship and struggled to his feet again in the thick sand, ignoring his own earlier mental warnings about staying away from the jungle and setting off in the direction of the hat. Presently he saw it again, a dark blue tricorn hat with a very bedraggled and worse for wear peacock feather tucked into it.

“Pa?” Killian murmured in disbelief.

Killian’s father had been drowned at sea after his ship collided with rocks in a freak storm, and his body had never been recovered. He had always worn that hat, a blue tricorn with a peacock feather. It had been his trademark. And now Killian had just seen it again.

“Pa?”

He increased his pace through the trees, unconcerned with anything except catching up to the hat that was moving along in front of him. It was too dark to see the owner of the hat, he could only make out the brief flashes of moonlight against the blue fabric.

“Pa, wait!”

Killian had always known that his father was dead, drowned, and that the storm had been just that. But what if it hadn’t been? What if the freak storm had been magical? What if the hurricane and swirling waters were in fact a portal to another world? What if his father wasn’t dead, hadn’t abandoned him at all but had been here in Neverland for centuries?

He ignored the nagging little voice in the back of his head that was telling him that surely, if his father had been here all this time, he would have crossed Killian’s path during the years he spent in Neverland before. It was not the largest of places in which to bump into someone by any manner or means. But Killian didn’t think about that, too consumed with the idea that maybe his father wasn’t lost to him.

He caught up to the hat in a clearing, seeing clearly now that the hat was attached to a body that was wearing a moth-eaten blue coat and brown boots.

“Pa?”

The figure did not turn.

“Pa, it’s Killian.”

Still no movement. Perturbed, Killian went up to the figure and lightly touched his shoulder. The man turned and Kilian screamed; it was not his father beneath the tricorn hat, just a skeleton, its empty eyes staring at him. He tripped as he took a step backwards and scrabbled on the floor; the skeleton made to move towards him but then collapsed within its coat and boots into a pile of bones. Horrified, Killian looked around, realising that he’d managed to get himself lost in the jungle. Before he could dwell on the fact any further, a fireball came roaring through the trees towards him and he threw himself down on the ground to avoid it.

“Oh,” said a voice above him. “It’s you.”

X

Regina could safely say that she had no idea where she was going or what she was doing, but she knew that she had to find Henry and that thought supplanted all others in her mind. Having picked herself up and ascertained that she had not caused herself any lasting damage during her fall from the ship, she had set off through the trees in search of her son. It was only once she had passed the same gnarly tree stump three times that she realised that she was going round in circles and she probably ought to go about her search in a slightly more logical manner. The problem was, she kept seeing things. Just shadows, really, and reflections of moonlight when she actually got a proper look at them, but out of the corner of her eye, she thought that they were images of people in between the trees. Once or twice she thought she saw her father, or Daniel, or others long since passed. She shook her head crossly; it was the chilling atmosphere, causing her fraught imagination to play games with her, and she couldn’t and wouldn’t succumb to it.

It was like a maze, Regina thought. The entire island was one huge maze. There had been a small hedge maze in the gardens of the summer palace back in the Enchanted Forest. Apart from riding, it had been one of Snow White’s favourite pastimes when she had been a little girl. Regina searched in her pockets for anything that might be of use and came up with a tube of lipstick. Well, it was better than nothing. She started to draw markings in shiny red on each tree that she passed, colouring in her route as she went. Light, or the lack thereof, was not so much of a problem for her. She kept a handful of flames flickering, both a source of illumination and a ready weapon, and the heat licking her fingertips was something of a comfort to her. The fire, however, could not do anything for her ears and the strange sounds that made her jump at every turn. Presently she came across a tree she’d already lipsticked and sighed, setting off in the opposite direction before stopping abruptly and whirling round, lifting the fireball to illuminate a bigger area.

“Henry?” She could have sworn that she had just heard his voice.

The sound came again, the sound of a child’s laugh that she was certain was Henry’s, once more behind her, accompanied by a rustle of leaves, but when she turned there was nothing.

“Henry, is that you?” No response. “Henry, this is no time for games!”

She thought she caught a glimpse of him then, running through the trees in the distance, and even though her mind was telling her that this was impossible and it was just the island playing tricks on her, instinct had her running before she could think rationally about it.

“Henry!”

She vaulted over a tree stump, possibly the same one she’d seen so many times before, and she heard a scream. She saw a dark shape in front of her, one that was obviously not Henry, and she’d launched the fireball before she knew what she was doing.

Everything went quiet then, no signs of Henry, no childlike voices just out of sight, and Regina took a moment to come back to herself. It was clear now that someone had sent her on a wild goose chase. But the scream she had heard, that had been real, not something echoing in the caverns of her mind. Cautiously she made her way towards the dark shape that she’d so nearly charcoaled. She wasn’t sure why she was so surprised to see Hook lying there.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Well observed,” Hook said faintly. She offered a hand to help him up, and once they were both on their feet, Regina cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Sorry about the fireball. Didn’t realise it was you.”

“I didn’t think you wanted to kill me that much,” Hook said.

“Was it you who screamed?”

“Yes, yes it was.”

They remained in an uncomfortable silence for a while.

“Have you been seeing things too?” Regina asked.

Hook nodded and looked back over his shoulder quickly before nodding again. The pile of bones and hat had vanished, as if they had never been there.

“I was looking for Henry,” Regina continued. “I thought I’d heard him.”

“It’s the island,” Hook said. “It does things to you. I’ve never been here alone, I’ve always had the ship’s crew with me. But some of the things they saw when they went off alone… Everyone stayed in pairs after that. I should have learned my lesson, really. But sometimes you see things that you’re desperate to be real.”

Regina nodded her understanding. “We should probably stick together too.” She did not sound at all thrilled by the prospect, and Hook was equally reluctant as he nodded, and he looked around at the dense jungle. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one, at any rate.”

“Yes, I don’t suppose you happened to pass my ship on your way here, did you?” Hook asked.

“Your ship?”

“It crashed on the beach and I’m trying to remember the way back.”

“I’m not talking about finding your ship, I’m talking about finding Henry!” Regina exclaimed.

“If we don’t fix my ship then there’ll be no way to get home even if we do find Henry! I came on this venture to provide transport, transport that is in dire need of magical repairwork!”

“If we don’t find Henry then there’s no point in taking us back!” Regina screamed.

They stayed staring at each other for a long time, at the grab-ready, both very eager to turn tail and continue on their separate ways but neither willing to succumb to strange hallucinations again.

“All right, I’ll help you find Henry. The Jolly can wait. But she will need a magical fix.”

Regina nodded. “I’ll fix her as best I can, once we’ve found Henry.”

Hook held out his hand and Regina shook it. A tentative truce had been reached.

“I still don’t trust you,” she muttered.

“You left me to die in an underground cavern!”

“You sold me out to a couple of magic-fearing lunatics! I was tortured!”

“Guess we’re even then, Your Majesty.”

They continued on through the forest together, conversation having run dry already.

“You say you’ve been here before,” Regina said presently.

“Aye.”

“Could you map the island? Maybe that way we can find Henry and find our way back to your ship quicker.”

Hook nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

Regina handed him a stick, and Hook set to work drawing in the soft earth.

  Enchanted Forest – Past

Aurora sat bolt upright with a start, and it took her a few moments to get her bearings and realise where she was, why she was there, and more importantly, that she was awake. She looked to her left and saw Philip stirring from his own long sleep.

“Philip?” She shook his shoulder gently, then a little harder when he did not stir fully. “Philip!”

Finally he opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, and came round properly.

“Aurora.”

Aurora threw her arms around him. “You’re back! We did it! We really did it! Oh, I missed you so much.”

“And I missed you. I thought my chances of seeing you again had gone for good that time.” Philip tilted Aurora’s chin up towards him, slanting his mouth over hers, and Aurora smiled against his lips, giving a giggle of slightly disbelieving joy when she broke away. She opened her mouth to say something, then decided that it could wait, and pulled Philip in for another kiss.

“How did you find me?” Philip asked once she had finally relinquished her hold on him and let him speak, content to rest her chin on his shoulder and enjoy his embrace. “How did you get to the Well of Lost Souls?”

“It was Mulan. She has a book of ancient lore, and there was a potion to get us to the gate, wasn’t there…”

Aurora tailed off on looking round to find that Mulan was nowhere to be seen.

“Mulan?” Philip called.

“All her things are gone,” Aurora said, a cold feeling of dread beginning in the pit of her stomach as she realised that Mulan’s belongings had vanished from the place that they had been when she had fallen asleep. Had someone attacked whilst they had all been in the Well of Lost Souls?

“She’s there,” Philip said, pointing out Mulan’s silhouette leaving the citadel grounds. “Mulan, wait! Why is she leaving?”

“I know why,” Aurora whispered, and it all fell into place. “She’s leaving because she doesn’t want to get in our way. It would break her heart too much.” She turned to Philip. “You saw what happened in the Well. She belongs with me, with us.”

Philip nodded. “Go after her.”

She kissed his cheek in gratitude and scrambled to her feet, running down the steps of the ruined fortress.

“Mulan, wait! Please don’t go! Wait!”

Mulan stopped and turned to her, and Aurora could see the tear tracks glistening on her face although the other woman tried to hastily wipe them away. They made Aurora want to cry herself.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Mulan took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in her throat.

“You’re reunited with your prince now,” she said. “My work here is complete. I helped Philip to find you when you were under Maleficent’s curse, and I helped you to find Philip when his soul was lost. You’re together now, and there’s nothing more for me to do.”

“There’s so much more,” Aurora said softly. “There’s an entire life ahead of us.” She paused. “And to think, all this time, I thought it was Philip that you loved.”

Mulan shook her head.

“No, Aurora, it’s always been you. Not from the very beginning, but from very near the beginning.” She sighed. “So now you know. You should go back to Philip, you have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

“Only if you come too,” Aurora said. “I think that our paths crossed for a reason. I think we’re meant to be together.”

“You and Philip have True Love!” Mulan exclaimed. “I can’t, and I won’t, come between that.”

“Yes.” Aurora’s voice was calm and matter of fact. “Yes, Philip and I have True Love. But who says that there’s a finite amount of love in the world? Philip is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. You are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Really?”

Aurora nodded. “It was a little strange at first, I’ll admit. The feeling. I thought it must be because you were my last link to Philip that I felt so strongly. But then I realised that there’s nothing to say that you can only love one other person at a time for the rest of your life.”

“Aurora…” Mulan began, but she didn’t know what to say in response to her friend’s forthright remark.

Aurora brought her hand up to cup Mulan’s cheek, brushing away the silvery tear tracks with her thumb.

“You saw what happened in the Well,” she continued.

“My shadow ran to yours as my soul’s desire,” Mulan said flatly.

“And my shadow couldn’t return from beyond the gate until yours was with it,” Aurora added, her voice firm. “I needed both of you. My soul wanted you and Philip equally.”

For the first time, Mulan gave a small smile, and Aurora gave a bigger one, almost as if she was trying to encourage the tentative expression on Mulan’s face to grow.

“It’s always said that people are in two parts, and everyone will find their other half, their True Love,” Aurora went on. “But what if some of us are in three parts? What if you, Philip and I are all three parts of the same heart?”

Mulan’s smile widened a little. “I like that idea.” Then her happy expression faded. “What about Philip? Will he understand?”

Aurora nodded. “I think he will. He was there too, after all.” She looked back over her shoulder to the fortress. Philip was standing in the entrance, watching them, and she waved to him before turning back to Mulan. “I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy, and I’m not saying that everyone will understand as well as we do. But we’ve seen each other’s souls. We know the truth. So, if you’d like to try, I think we can find a way.”

Mulan nodded.

“Let’s try.”

Aurora positively beamed, and she leaned in to press her lips against Mulan’s. The other woman was rather surprised by the action, as evidenced by her small squeak, but she relaxed then, breaking away and pulling Aurora into a close hug. They stayed like that for a few long moments before walking back to the fortress hand in hand. When they reached Philip at the top of the stairs, Aurora took one of his hands in her free one, and for a second, their shadows in the pale, early morning sunlight looked like they had done in the Well of Lost Souls.

“So what now?” Philip asked. “Where shall we go next?”

Aurora looked at Mulan, who shrugged. “I’m happy to follow your lead.”

She had already followed Aurora into the Well of Lost Souls, and nothing could be worse than that.

“In that case,” Aurora said, “I think I would like to go home.”

   Enchanted Forest – Present

Neal stood at the entrance to the room that he had just discovered, upstairs in the castle, tucked away and almost unnoticeable, and he stared at the contents. His entire childhood was in this room, or as good as. Everything he remembered from the cottage before things had gone south, everything so neatly and reverently kept. He ventured a little further inside and opened a box that stood on a small table near the door, blowing away the dust that had settled on the lid, and inside he found a pile of paper scarps: all of his childhood drawings and sketches. His father had kept everything. Packed away neatly elsewhere were old clothes, and the soft sheepskins that they had used to sleep under. The spinning wheel was nowhere to be found, but that was somewhat understandable; of everything that would have been taken over to the Land Without Magic, that was the most likely thing.

In the corner, propped up beside an old dresser, was his father’s walking stick. That had been one of the things that had been the hardest to get used to after he had become the Dark One; seeing him without his stick. Neal had been so used to taking his father’s injured leg into account whenever he was doing anything that it seemed strange not to have to worry about it anymore. It was odd that he’d kept it, Neal thought. A reminder of the weakness that he’d once had. He went over and picked up the stick; the feel and weight of it still familiar after so much time. He ran his hand over the smooth wood, feeling the little notches in it where they’d marked his height. He smiled at the memory of drawing himself up as tall as he could and standing with his back straight as Papa held the stick, sitting on the spinning wheel bench and carefully carving out a nick. They measured him every year on Midsummer’s Eve, sometimes sooner if Neal felt that he had definitely grown a lot in the last week and wanted to make sure. He’d always been much smaller than his peers whilst he was growing up and there were a series of notches very close together from a time when he’d insisted on being measured every month to reassure himself that he was actually growing. Looking back, Papa had probably added an eighth of an inch’s license every time to make him feel better. Papa used to do things like that.

Neal sat down heavily on the chair that had once been Papa’s and looked around again, still holding the stick and still having trouble taking it all in.

“Are these all your things?”

Neal turned to see Aurora standing in the doorway.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude, but the door was open and I thought you might want companionship. May I come in?”

“By all means.”

Aurora entered the room and looked around respectfully. “It’s like another world in here.”

“I think that’s the whole point,” Neal said. “All the memories of me, of the time before.”

“Out of sight, out of mind?” Aurora suggested.

Neal shook his head.

“No. Out of sight, but not out of mind. Not at all.”

It was more like a memorial, the room, a eulogy for an existence that had been lost, remembrance of Baelfire. The room was carpeted with same thick layer of dust that coated everything else in the castle, but it did not appear to be forgotten or unused. His father had spent lifetimes trying to find him, and this place was a reminder of the things that he had let go and the goal that he was working towards. Neal wondered what would happen when their paths crossed again, for he knew that they would. They hadn’t really had chance to speak to each other properly. After near death had come a murderous evil queen, and after that had come Lacey, and after that, Tamara, and all the while Neal was trying to come to terms with other revelations.

“He must have loved you very much,” Aurora said presently, coming to sit beside him.

Neal nodded and took another look at the stick, running his fingers over the carvings again.

“Yes, he did. He used to mark my height on his stick. It’s strange seeing it again now that I’m taller than him.”

Aurora smiled. “We’ll find a way to get you back to your own son,” she said brightly. “Even if it takes a little while. Don’t give up hope. From what you say and from what Emma and Snow told us, your family has endured several separations over the years, but you always find each other in the end.”

Neal nodded. “I’ve missed enough of Henry’s childhood already, I don’t want to miss any more of his life.” He sighed. “I don’t think that there’s going to be anything in here though,” he said. “If there was any means of crossing worlds here, he would have already used it to come and find me as soon as he could. I’ll have to look further afield. Magic beans perhaps. Many years ago I was told that I had the last bean but I’ve just been rather abruptly proved that’s not the case.”

“The beanstalks were all destroyed,” Aurora said sadly, “and the remaining shoots were taken to the Land Without Magic. There are other ways to cross worlds. We’ll think of something.”

“Shadows,” Neal said suddenly. The sun was setting and pink light was pouring into the room, casting his and Aurora’s shadows long against the walls. “Shadows can cross realms. At least, one particular shadow can. The only problem would be summoning it here.”

Neal lapsed into silence, lost in thought, and Aurora gave his shoulder a friendly pat before leaving him alone in the midst of his childhood memories. Neal watched her shadow leave the room, not really paying the movement much mind until he saw something out of the corner of his eye by the window. He turned, but there was nothing to see. Perturbed, he went over to the window and opened it, leaning out and looking all around. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but he still couldn’t help the feeling of being watched. Perhaps it was his surroundings making him uneasy, finding this preserved microcosm of his early life inside a castle so steeped with inherent magic.

He tried to put it to the back of his mind as he closed the window again and replaced his father’s stick where it had been leaning before. Just about to turn back and face the main room, he caught another glimpse, but this time he did not move and he tried to ascertain the shape without actually looking at it. Someone had once said that you had to look out of the corner of your eye to see the truth.

He could just about make out two twinkling points of light, but he couldn’t tell if that was the sunset catching on something metallic in the room or if they were the eyes that he was looking for. Neal had caught shadows before, with much less equipment than was currently available to him in the castle, but if he couldn’t be sure then there was no point in trying to cook up any kind of plan.

It was not Pan’s shadow, if it was a shadow at all. He had long since learned that Pan’s shadow was not at all subtle. If it was Pan’s shadow, then he would definitely know about it and he’d be halfway home by now. Besides, it wasn’t clear if Pan’s shadow only abducted young children to take them away to Neverland, or whether it could be used by adults as a makeshift taxi service.

He turned very slowly, but the shadow had gone. He was determined that it was a shadow now; there was nothing in the room that could have caused the light to reflect like that.

One possible conclusion battled its way to the forefront of Neal’s mind. It seemed completely impossible, but after everything that had happened to him in his long and eventful life, Neal was beginning to re-evaluate his definition of impossible.

“Papa?” he asked softly. “Is that you?”

There was no response. He had not expected one. All the same, he opened the window a crack before he left the room, just in case.

“What’s wrong with putting pixie dust on a boat?” Snow asked from the other side of the ship.

“Oh, I don’t know, what’s wrong with our current situation?” Gold snapped. “Pixie dust, among other things, enables flight, and boats aren’t designed to fly!”

“I bloody know that!” Hook shouted, just as the Jolly Roger gave a tremendous groan of wood under strain and jolted sideways, throwing its passengers around.

“Can’t you do something?” Hook called back to Regina and Gold over his shoulder, looking frantic as he wrenched the ship’s wheel in utter futility.

“Like what?” Regina asked. “I never took lessons in boat piloting!”

“Do something magical!” Hook roared. “Get us back in the sea!”

Neither Regina nor Gold responded to this desperate request, but Emma saw both of them roll their eyes.

“It’s not quite as simple as that,” Regina began, but it was at that moment that the ship came to a halt, no longer climbing but just hanging awkwardly in the air, silhouetted against the bright moon.

“This isn’t good,” Hook muttered to himself, flexing his hand on the wheel to regain the feeling in it where he had been grasping it so tightly, and he dug the point of his hook into the damp wood, hoping for more grip.

“What isn’t good?” Regina asked coolly, or at least, as coolly as was possible from her windswept position.

“Simple law of physics, dearie,” Gold replied. “What goes up must inevitably come down.”

To Emma, it was the same as that horrifying moment in Titanic just before the ship broke in half, the single moment of stillness and silence. Then the Jolly Roger gave an ear-splitting screech of wet wood completely unprepared for the demands being made of it, and the ship suddenly tilted into the opposite angle, the bow pointing down towards the island.

“Hang on!” Hook shouted to his passengers.

Everyone was already hanging on, but as the ship began its rapid descent, the rush of air made it difficult to keep a grip on anything, and the vessel gave another lurch and a terrible crack.

“What was that?” David yelled.

Hook cringed. “That was the main mast. Duck!”

Regina ducked as the mast splintered and broke, but Emma, who had been holding onto a rope that attached to the top of the main mast, was sent flying as part of the beam fell and she let go of her hand hold to avoid being crushed under the wood. She landed hard against the angled deck and slithered down, her nails scrabbling for purchase against the boards.

“Emma!”

Strong fingers grabbed her wrist and she looked up to see David clinging to the rigging with one hand, and her with the other.

“I’m not losing you again,” he said grimly as he readjusted his grip on her arm and tried to pull her back onto her feet, but it was to no avail, and Emma felt her slippery hand move in David’s grasp. She shot him a fearful look, one that said ‘don’t let go’ without the need for words.

At the same time, the piece of broken mast swung low over the ship on a collision course with Regina and Snow. Regina let go of her grip on the rope she was holding with one hand to send a pulse of magic towards the beam, sending it flying in the opposite direction before it could make contact. Hook ducked the beam, but in doing so he inadvertently caused the ship to give another violent lurch, and David was thrown back against the ropes, losing his grip on Emma’s hand.

“Dad!” she screamed as she fell.

There was a sound like a whip crack and Emma felt something warm snake around her ankle, holding her upside down, but arresting her movement. Above her, Gold had one hand outstretched, his face a mask of concentration.

“Don’t move,” he muttered gruffly. Emma could only give a small nod and hang where she was.

“The sail!” Snow yelled. The splintered mast had caught on one of the billowing sails, and the fabric ripped cleanly down the middle, tearing a hole and causing part of the sail to flap freely. David braced himself for the smack of the canvas as it fell, but Gold, distracted as he was with Emma, was taken by surprise and the slap of the torn sail sent him clean over the side before anyone else could do anything to stop it.

Emma felt the warm pull of magic around her ankle snap as Gold went over, but it was too late, he had already dragged her with him and she followed him down, plunging into the cold, dark sea.

“Emma!”

Snow screamed as the ship continued its haphazard descent over the island. “We have to go back!” she said, frantically searching over the side of the ship.

“She landed in the sea, she’ll be fine!” Regina snapped, finally succeeding in securing all the loose parts of the main past from causing any more damage. “If you follow her now, you’ll only end up on the island with several broken limbs!”

Snow and David looked at each other and at the sea and island below them that were coming closer with every second.

“We’re not leaving her again!” Snow yelled. “Not again!”

“It’s too dangerous!” Regina retorted.

“And staying on a crashing ship isn’t?” Snow asked. “I’d rather take my chances!”

Hook interjected: “Well whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly or don’t do it at all!”

Snow nodded to David and the pair jumped from the boat together, freefalling down into the trees that covered the island.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, Your Majesty,” Hook said.

“I suppose a captain always goes down with his ship?” Regina shot back, but the cynicism was lost in the violent rush of air around them.

“Not usually quite this literally!”

Regina’s magic was holding the ship together, but only barely, and another splinter of wood from the mast came loose with a crack. She had a split second to make the decision, and throwing her other hand up to destroy the sharp shard of wood that was about to skewer her was her instinctive action. It saved her from being impaled upon the splinter, but it also lost her tenuous grip; her magic the only thing keeping her on the ship. The recoil from the pulse of magic caused her to lose her footing, and before she could grab anything to stop herself falling or cast any kind of spell to anchor her, she had tumbled over the side to land heavily and painfully in the thick forest.

Hook waited until the very last moment before cutting his losses and jumping clear of the ship onto the sand, rolling away and flinging his arms up to cover his head as the Jolly Roger ploughed into the beach. He closed his eyes, grimacing as he heard the cracking and splintering of wood as the ship continued to break apart without Regina’s magic keeping it in one piece. Eventually, when all was quiet, he dared to look up and survey the wreckage.

The main mast was broken and splinters were hanging off it and scoring huge rents in the sails, and there were stress cracks in the decks and the other masts. Loath as Hook was to admit it, Gold was right; ships were not designed for flight, or at least, not designed for falling out of the sky when their powers of flight failed them.

Staring at his broken ship, Hook smacked his fist against the sand and swore violently.

 Enchanted Forest - Present

Philip looked out of the narrow window across the wide expanse of fields that lay before them. The ground was blackened and barren; the townspeople who had fled so recently had elected to burn their crops rather than have them looted and destroyed by the marauding ogres, but the raging flames had done nothing to slow the progress of the brutes across the land. He pulled his small telescope from the pocket of his cloak and extended it, scanning the horizon. They were safe for now, but no-one could guarantee for how much longer. Night was closing in, and the ogres, near blind as they were, always seemed to be at their most active and bloodthirsty at night. Philip stowed the telescope again. There was no point in trying to look for anything in the misty half-light. For now they’d simply have to content themselves with knowing that the coast was currently clear.

“You should get some rest.”

Philip turned to see Mulan standing beside the window. Her arms were folded and her expression was stern, but there was genuine concern in her eyes.

“I can take over the watch for the next few hours,” she continued. “We all need to be as alert as possible during the coming days.”

Philip nodded his agreement.

“Indeed, I don’t want to have quite as narrow an escape as the last one.” He paused and scanned the horizon again as a pink sun began to sink fully out of sight behind the trees. Everything still seemed to be quiet. A great advantage to ogres was the noise they made by dint of their huge bulk and irrepressible natural rage. It was hard to be taken by surprise when one’s attacker could be heard a mile away, but their speed could be uncanny at times, and Philip and Mulan could not hold off more than a couple of the beasts at a time. “Do you think they’ll come this far west?” he asked Mulan.

The other soldier shrugged.

“They’ve been concentrating their attacks on the remaining populated areas, but this is the Frontlands,” she said. “This is the heart of traditional ogre territory. All of the old accounts of ogre wars always begin here, in the triangle of Marchlands, Frontlands and Avonlea.”

“They always stop here, too,” Philip muttered drily. “But this time we don’t have a handy sorcerer to make them all vanish.”

Mulan did not respond to this comment, and Philip relinquished his spot on the windowsill. Mulan took it up, making herself comfortable on the narrow stone ledge so that she could observe the panorama at leisure.

“I’ll wake you at dawn,” she assured him, and Philip gave another nod of understanding before making his way down the rickety wooden ladder that served as the only way up to their vantage point. Their current hiding place was a long-abandoned hall, left either half-built or half-rebuilt; it was just the bare bones of the structure supported with sturdy wooden scaffolds, and all but one of the high windows were boarded up securely. It made for an excellent hideout from the ogres, but it really wasn’t viable as a long-term place of residence.

Philip crossed the floor softly, moving as quietly as he could as he approached their small encampment in the centre of the room. Aurora was sitting there, watching over her charge. Ever since they had found the strangely dressed newcomer on the beach just a few miles south, Aurora had become his nominate nurse and protector.

“How is he?” Philip asked, indicating the sleeping man.

“He’s doing well,” Aurora replied. “The wound is healing nicely although he’s taken a slight fever.” She dipped the cloth that she had been worrying between her fingers into the small bowl of water beside her and carefully positioned it on the man’s brow. “I think Mulan’s sleeping draught may have been a little too strong. All we can do now is wait for him to wake up.”

She wiped his lips with a second cloth before accepting a long swallow from the water-skin that Philip offered to her. “We’re running low,” she said, shaking the container with a grimace. “We’ll need to find somewhere to replenish our supply soon. I’ve checked our rations as well; everything could do with a top-up.” Aurora sighed and lapsed into silence for a little while before she spoke again. “Philip, do you think we’re ever going to get home? And even if we do get there, what’s the chance that the ogres have got there first and all that’s left will be rubble?”

Philip shuffled closer to Aurora on their pile of bedding and put his arms around his princess.

“We will make it home,” he said as she leaned into him. “We will find a way home, and if it’s gone when we get there, then we will make a new home, it’s as simple as that. Now, we need to get some sleep. We aren’t sure how long we’ll be able to stay here and we need to make the most of the opportunity to rest whilst we have it.”

Aurora gave a soft hum of acquiescence.

“I always sleep better when you’re here,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder and closing her eyes. Philip narrowed his own.

“Are you having nightmares again?” he asked.

“No.” Aurora yawned and shook her head minutely. “No, I don’t really dream, not since we got you back. But it’s always easier when I know I’m not alone.”

Satisfied with this explanation, Philip leaned back against the packs, making himself comfortable with Aurora by his side. Above, he heard the creak of leather shifting and out of the corner of his eye he saw Mulan changing position in her lookout spot, barely more than a silhouette against the stark moonlight. Philip closed his eyes, but he could only have been dozing for a minute or so when he heard a groan beside him, and then felt Aurora’s presence suddenly move away. He jumped up to find her kneeling beside her patient, who appeared to be coming round a little.

“Easy now,” Aurora soothed, helping him to drink some water. “You’re still groggy from the sleeping draught, just rest. You’re safe here with us, you have my word.”

“Emma?” the man mumbled, his voice slurred and woozy.

“My name is Aurora. Go back to sleep for a while longer. You’ve been hurt and you need to rest.”

The man nodded sleepily and closed his eyes again. Aurora readjusted the cloth on his forehead before returning to Philip.

“He’s stirred like that a few times,” she explained. “He always asks for Emma.”

“Could it be the same Emma you met before?” Philip asked.

“It’s likely,” Aurora conceded. “He’s dressed in the same style as those from the Land Without Magic, and his mysterious arrival was not dissimilar to Emma and Snow’s sudden appearance after the wraith came.”

She glanced across at the newcomer, who had fallen back into slumber again, Mulan’s potent powders taking effect once more. Her expression was worried. “I hope everything’s all right, back where he came from. I’d hate for anything to happen to them whilst they’re trapped somewhere so unpredictable. Lands without magic should not have magic added to them.”

“I’m sure he’ll be able to tell you everything you want to know when he wakes up properly,” Philip said.

Aurora nodded and they resumed their previous aspect, although perhaps due to the sudden disturbance, neither of them made any concerted effort to sleep. Aurora kept her eyes on the unconscious young man; Philip’s gaze flitted between the woman snuggled under his arm, the newcomer, and Mulan in the window. Presently he saw the latter stiffen, then peer out of the small hole in the stone wall, shielding her eyes against the bright white moonlight. That did not bode well. The warrior jumped down from her perch and flew down the scaffolds on light feet, making no sound as she ran across towards Philip, her hand outstretched, and he handed over his telescope without needing to be asked. Mulan took off again like a flash and Aurora, fully awake again, got to her feet. Philip did likewise.

“This does not appear to be good news,” Aurora murmured, and Philip could only shake his head. At length, after a few more agonising moments, Mulan returned to the ground.

“There’s a small group about forty miles out,” she reported. “There aren’t a lot, but there are more than we can manage between us and they’re travelling quickly. I wouldn’t want to wait until morning to make a move.”

“Where can we go?” Aurora asked. “There’s no shelter for miles around, most of the smaller buildings have already been ransacked.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Mulan said. “If we can get to the other side of the mountain pass, we should be able to make it to the Dark Castle. We’ll practically be on the doorstep.”

“It takes us miles out of our way.” Aurora was not convinced as to the efficacy of her friend’s plan.

“I know,” Mulan replied levelly. “But it’s safe, and it will be safe for a long while yet. It’s the one place in this part of the land that remains untouched. The ogres are scared of the Dark One, rightly so when you consider that he was responsible for ending their last two wars here. They don’t know that he’s no longer in residence, and it would give us somewhere fortified to hold out in until…” She tailed off, looking at the newcomer who still lay prone beside them.

Philip nodded. “It’s a sound plan.”

Aurora took a while longer to ponder the idea before she too gave a slow nod.

“All right,” she said eventually. “We’ll go to the Dark Castle.”

  Storybrooke – Present

Belle stayed staring out to sea long after the final ripple from the whirlpool had died away to leave the water eerily calm, with no trace of the maelstrom that it had just seen. She sat on the edge of the landing stage where she and Rumpel had shared their tearful farewell, dangling her feet over the side and turning the scrap of paper and vial of magical potion over and over between her fingers. Occasionally she looked down at the spell that Rumpel had entrusted to her, but although she understood the basic meaning of the words and could translate the long-forgotten tongue that they were written in, they might have been gibberish for all the sense that they were making to her.

“Hey, sister.”

It was Leroy’s voice, but Belle did not look up from the magic in her lap until she saw him sit down on the landing stage beside her, and she glanced sideways at him, squinting against the sun that was now hanging low in the sky. He was staring out at the horizon too, but presently he turned to face her and nodded to the spell.

“Parting gift?” he asked. Belle gave a quiet huff of melancholy laughter.

“Not exactly. It’s a spell, to protect the town from the other Gregs and Tamaras of this world.”

Leroy considered this for a moment and conceded the practicality of the notion with a shrug.

“He’s got a point. We don’t want Storybrooke becoming a tourist attraction for anything other than the canned seafood.”

“I know.” Belle sighed. “But closing off the town again, sealing it all up in a little magical bubble… It feels so final. He’s not expecting to come back and he’s trying to make sure that he can still protect me after he’s gone.”

“Surely that must be some kind of comfort,” Leroy said gently. “He wants to make sure that you’re safe, and happy.”

“I’d be happier with him here, though.”

Belle set the spell on the ground beside her and leaned back on her hands, looking out to sea again. “I suppose it’s too much to ask for them to come back right now.”

“Maybe it’s a bit soon. Give them a couple of days.” Leroy picked up the spell, read the paper and made a face of slightly unimpressed incomprehension before putting it back down. “In the meantime, Rumpelstiltskin is relying on you to keep the rest of us out of harm’s way.”

“I don’t know the first thing about magic,” Belle muttered. She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees.

“Nonsense,” Leroy said firmly. “You just need to have a little faith in yourself. If Rumpelstiltskin thinks you can do it, then you can do it.”

“Leroy, I’m really not sure, I don’t understand the spell.”

“Well, I can’t help you there. I’m a man of action, no great literature scholar. But I’m sure the fairies would help if we asked them. No-one knows magic better than the fairies.”

Belle gave a small nod.

“I guess not. We’d have to do it somewhere central, so that the magic could spread evenly over the town. That seems like the most logical way to protect us efficiently. That’s how I would do it if I was creating a spell.”

“Now you’re talking,” Leroy encouraged. He leaned over her shoulder as Belle picked up the paper and re-read it. “Do you need any extra ingredients?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. Everything should be in the potion already. Just uncork it and let it work its magic.”

“Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s protect our town.” He scrambled to his feet and offered Belle a hand up off the ground. She gave herself a cursory brush-down and together they made their way towards the clock tower, picking up a few more spectators and possible helpers along the way.

“Do you want me to get the fairies?” Leroy asked as they passed the end of the road that would eventually lead to the convent on the edge of the town. Belle looked down at the spell in her hands again. She didn’t know the first thing about magic, that was true, but she knew that true love was the most powerful magic of all, and she knew that was something that she definitely had.

“No,” she said. “No, I’ve got this. If Rumpel has faith in me then I can have faith in myself.”

“That’s the spirit,” Leroy agreed. They reached the clock tower without any further conversation and Belle let the small crowd into the library and up into the tower above. Through the glass clock face, she could see the majority of the rest of the town. Yes, this was definitely the correct vantage point from which to cast. She looked at the paper scrap again, reading and rereading Rumpel’s elegant if almost illegible scrawl, the words sorting themselves into a little more semblance of order.

“Open it up and let it go,” Leroy said. “You can do it.”

Belle was about to ease the cork out of the vial when a shout from the bottom of the staircase stopped her progress. She and Leroy leaned over the railing to see the Mother Superior and a couple of junior nuns rushing up towards them.

“Stop!” the Mother Superior cried again. “You have no idea what you’re doing! You can’t just go around uncorking spells, the effects of which you cannot hope to predict, in the middle of the town!”

“It’s all right, I know its effects,” Belle assured the fairy. “It’s a spell to protect the town; Rumpelstiltskin gave it to me.”

“All the more reason for us to be extremely wary of it then,” the Mother Superior snapped, snatching the spell from Belle’s hand. “You cannot trust anything that the Dark One gives you, especially not if he gives it for free.”

Belle narrowed her eyes and held out a hand for the spell. The Mother Superior ignored her and stowed it in the folds of her cape.

“I might not know much about magic, Mother Superior, but I do know Rumpelstiltskin, and I know that he would never give me something that would cause me any harm.”

“She’s got a point, Blue,” one of the other fairies murmured. “No-one would intentionally harm the one they loved, not even the Dark One.”

“Be quiet, Theresa, this does not concern you, and you have far less experience in these matters than I,” the Mother Superior snapped, before returning her attention to Belle. “I don’t think you know the Dark One as well as you would like, my child.” Her voice had taken on a calm, honeyed tone, condescending and sickly sweet, and both Belle and Leroy were immediately set on edge. “I have known him and his methods quite a few centuries longer than you have.”

Belle shook her head.

“No,” she said, her voice hard, and she pointed an accusatory finger at the senior fairy. “You are the one who doesn’t know him as well as you think you do. You may have known him longer, but you do not know him well. You have never seen the man he is underneath.”

The Mother Superior shook her head. “There is no man underneath.”

“Yes there is, and his name is Rumpelstiltskin. Now give me back his spell, please. He has entrusted me with a job and I am proud to do it. And I am not a child.”

The Mother Superior turned on her heel and began to descend the stairs again; Belle ran halfway down after her but stopped short when the fairy drew her wand and Leroy rushed round in front of Belle to block the course of anything magical that the Mother Superior might throw at them.

“We will work out what the contents of the spell are, and then you can have it back,” the fairy said coolly. “In the meantime, the fairies and I will work out a way to protect the town; in the absence of our other magic users this is a task that necessarily falls to us.”

“Rumpel gave that task to me,” Belle said. “I trust him, and he trusts me, and you are doing me a great disservice in not doing the same.”

The Mother Superior stopped at the foot of the stars and looked back up at Belle.

“You are young, and you are infatuated, and you are allowed to be foolish in such a state,” she said. “But I will give you a piece of advice that you would do well to heed. A man like the Dark One does not, and cannot, love.”

Belle snorted and shook her head sadly. “You really don’t know him at all.”

The fairies left the clock tower without another word, and there was silence among the dwarfs for a few moments.

“We’ll think of something,” Leroy said. “Don’t despair.”

“I’m not despairing,” Belle said. A few moments before, down by the seafront, she had been despondent, but now she only felt anger. “And I have thought of something.”

“So what’s the plan?” Leroy asked.

“We’re going to get that spell back,” Belle said, determined. The dwarfs looked at each other before coming to a mutual unspoken agreement and nodding as one.

“All right, let’s do it,” Leroy said. “And I know just the person to help us out.”

 Neverland – Present

There was a flash of green light and a rush of magic, and three figures dropped onto the soft forest floor. Henry was the first to get to his feet, despite his hands being tied together, and he scrabbled backwards, a few yards away from Greg and Tamara who were still picking themselves up and dusting themselves down. Tamara had landed badly and her knee buckled under her as she tried to put weight on it.

“Are you ok?” Greg came over and knelt down beside her; she batted him away with an air of frustration, like she was swatting a fly.

“I’ll be fine, let me take care of it.” She hobbled over to a fallen log nearby and sat down on it heavily, gingerly pressing her fingertips into the injured joint.

“Ugh,” Greg groaned. “I am never doing that again.”

“Well, you’ll be staying here for a long time then,” Tamara snapped. “Come on, we need to make a plan, we’re working to a deadline.”

Henry looked around his surroundings: the dense jungle-like trees and the full moon peering through the canopy above them.

“Where are we, anyway?” Greg was asking. “I thought we were going to see the boss?”

“We are,” Tamara said through gritted teeth. “Different boss.”

Greg raised his eyebrows. “I hate to say it, Tamara, but this really doesn’t look like the Home Office.”

“It’s not,” Tamara said. “The plans have changed.”

“I know the plans have changed, that’s why we’ve got the kid,” Greg said. “What I want to know is what the plans have changed to, because you haven’t been completely straight with me from the moment that we started this whole venture.”

Tamara looked up at Greg, her arms folded.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said. “So wrapped up in your own little visions of vengeance against the Evil Queen that you can’t see the bigger picture. This is so much bigger than you realise, Greg. We’ve been preparing for this opportunity for decades. You just gave us a way into Storybrooke but this…” She gestured around herself at the forest. “This is the place we’ve been aiming for. Storybrooke, August Booth, Regina, they were only ever a stepping stone. And then we found him and everything fell into place so neatly.”

They both turned to Henry, who had been backing up away from them until he hit a tree and could go no further.

“There’s no use running, kid,” Tamara called to him. “There’s nowhere to run to.”

Greg pulled out his phone. “I’m calling the Office.”

Tamara rolled her eyes.

“Do you really think that’s going to work out here?” she said. As expected, the phone was dead. Greg smacked it a couple of times but it still did not turn on, and he rounded on Tamara.

“Where even is ‘here’?” he shouted. “We’re in a jungle, in the middle of nowhere, with no means of communication with the outside world, and I’ve got no idea what’s going on! And we have a tied-up kid!” He pointed to Henry, who was trying to make himself as unnoticeable as possible. He was looking around the trees for possible exit routes, still trying to work out whether or not running away was a particularly good idea. On the one hand, he believed Tamara when she said that there was no way out. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to spend a moment longer with his kidnappers.

Tamara gave Greg a look of annoyance. “Where do you think ‘here’ is, Greg? We’re in Neverland. This is the place that we were always meant to find. Even if you could call the Office, they’d tell you exactly what I’m telling you now. It’s time to stop wasting our time with little pockets of magic here and there that we happen to stumble across. We’re here, and we take the kid to him.”

Immediately, recognition dawned on Greg’s face and he smiled.

“So this is it then? The big one?”

Tamara nodded.

Henry didn’t stick around to find out any more of the details of Greg and Tamara’s plan, well, Tamara’s plan from the sound of it. He saw his chance to flee whilst Tamara was occupied with her knee and Greg had begun an impatient pacing around the clearing that they had landed in. Henry peeled around the tree that he had been pressed against, running through the forest as quickly as he could. Whatever his kidnappers were planning to do to him, he knew he’d far rather take his chances in this dense undergrowth than wait around to learn more.

He didn’t get very far before he stumbled on the rough ground, slimy from the fallen leaf mulch that no sunlight had touched to dry, and it took him a while to get back onto his feet with his bound hands. Greg had caught up to him at that point and Henry felt the man grab the back of his jacket, pulling him back. Had he been able to tear the garment off, he would have done so, but Henry knew that there were some battles that were destined to be lost and that this was one of them.

“We did warn you,” Greg said with a sigh. He called back to Tamara: “I’ve got him.”

“Good, he’s our only leverage in this godforsaken place,” Tamara muttered, back in the clearing where she was winding a bandage from her small first aid kit around her knee to keep it aligned.

“What are you going to do to me?” Henry asked. He was certain that the two adults weren’t actually going to kill him, but he didn’t hold out much hope for mercy from the other inhabitants of the forest, as yet unseen.

“We’re taking you to meet someone,” Greg said. “He’s been waiting for you for a long time.”

“Who is he?” Henry asked, although considering that they were in Neverland, he didn’t need more than one guess at his ultimate destination. “What would Peter Pan want with me?”

Greg opened his mouth to answer, but before he could do so – and Henry wasn’t certain from the look on his still slightly confused face that his response would be particularly satisfactory – the man jumped back with a yelp of alarm.

“What the hell is that?” he exclaimed as Henry felt something cold and soft brush against his shoulder. He turned sharply, but there was nothing to see. He felt it again on the other side, a bit like a hand, and this time when he turned he saw it. There were human shadows drifting past him, seemingly without owners. Bright points of light were twinkling where the eyes should have been. Suddenly, he felt one of them take hold of the back of his collar; the phantasmic fingers were surprisingly strong considering the lack of substance to them.

The shadows were beginning to converge on Greg.

“What’s happening? What are you doing?” He was being herded back, away from Henry. There were at least five shadows encircling him now, beginning to pull and paw at him, but it was hard to pick out the individual shapes with no distinguishing features. They just seemed to be denser pockets of darkness in the already dim night, melting and merging into each other. Greg attempted to fight them off but they seemed to be semi-intangible, and half his desperate blows went straight through the swarming shapes.

“Tamara!” he screamed. “Tamara, do something!”

For a moment, Henry wondered if Tamara had also been caught by the shadows, but then there was a sudden burst of light from the clearing, and Tamara limped towards them carrying a flaming torch made from a tree branch with a length of bandage soaked in antiseptic spirit. The shadows shrank back at the bright light and Henry felt the grip of the one holding him begin to lessen. Tamara continued towards him, holding up the torch and ignoring Greg, who was still surrounded by a sea of swarming black shapes.

“The boy stays with me,” Tamara said firmly. When the shadow did not relinquish its hold on Henry, Tamara waved the torch in its face and Henry screwed his eyes shut; he could feel the flames dangerously close to the top of his head. The shadow let go and Henry stumbled forward as his spectral captor was forced back by the light. Tamara caught him with her free arm, but a second later, that arm was around his neck, holding a penknife to his throat. Henry gulped, beginning to panic, and he looked from Tamara to the gathered shadows, wondering which of the equally unpleasant options was worse.

“I know he wants the boy alive,” Tamara continued, addressing the shadows. “So take us to your master.”

The shadows in front of them parted, pointing the way into the depths of the forest, and Tamara gave Henry the torch before prodding him forward in front of her.

“Go on, you’re safe. They don’t like light.”

“It’s kind of hard to believe that I’m safe when you’re pointing a knife at me,” Henry said bluntly.

“Just watch it, kid, I’m saving both our skins here,” Tamara muttered. “Let’s just get to Pan in one piece.”

“Tamara,” Greg yelled from behind them, still cornered. “Tamara, you can’t just leave me here!”

“Sorry, Greg,” Tamara said under her breath. “You were useful for a while, but now you’re just a liability. I have a job to do and I’ve waited a long time to do it.”

She didn’t turn round as Greg yelled again.

“Tamara, please!”

Once Tamara, Henry, and the all-important light were no longer in sight, the shadows began to move again, more vicious than they had been before. Greg felt in his pockets for a lighter or match, but he came up empty handed.

Henry heard Greg’s scream cut off sharply and suddenly, and the sound made him feel sick, but Tamara did not break her slow, limping stride.

  Neverland – Present

Emma fought her way to the surface and took a huge gulp of air, swallowing not a little sea water with it and choking against the burn of the salt in her throat. She paddled or a while, taking in her surroundings as best she could with her wet hair plastered over her face and getting in her eyes. Above her there was no sign of the ship and she assumed it must have come down on the other side of the island, leaving an eerily calm night sky, the full moon stark against the blackness and showing no sign of the tense scene that had taken place in the air only a few moments before. Still treading water, she looked around for Gold, shaking her hair out of her eyes. She couldn’t see him, so she decided to cut her losses, swimming towards the shore. It was not a particularly long distance to traverse, but the sea had become choppy since she’d landed in it, or perhaps it had always been rough and she just hadn’t appreciated the waves from the height of the flying ship. Eventually she made it to the shingle and collapsed on the smooth pebbles with a groan, closing her eyes against the moonlight whilst she got her breath back.

She heard another human-sounding groan a little way to her right and opened one eye, making out a bedraggled suit-clad shape a few yards away.

“You ok, Gold?” she called.

“Well, I’m not dead,” he replied.

“Ok, that’s a good sign. I think.” Emma’s brow furrowed, because there was something wrong about Gold’s voice. It seemed higher than normal, fluting and twittering beneath the weariness. She sat up and looked across at him properly as he heaved himself into a sitting position and set about emptying water out of his shoes, lamenting the irretrievable ruin of genuine Italian leather.

“Are you all right, Emma?” he asked eventually, turning to face her and running a hand through his sodden hair to get it out of his face.

Emma didn’t scream, but that might have been because she was simply too surprised to do so. She scrambled up and tripped a couple of steps backwards over the stones.

“Jesus Christ!”

“What?” Gold asked, looking around to see the cause of her alarm before realising that it was himself.

“What the hell happened to you?” Emma exclaimed, still not quite able to believe her eyes. Gold’s skin was green, a dark greyish green speckled with flecks of gold-dust and looking almost lizard-like in appearance, his brown eyes now an unnatural slate grey. For a terrible moment, Emma wondered if it was something in the water that had caused the change and she looked down at her own hands, relieved to find them still the same pink colour.

Gold looked down at himself, turning his hand this way and that with what appeared to be utter fascination.

“Well, that’s unexpected,” he said.

“Unexpected is an understatement,” Emma snapped back. “What happened?”

“Although, perhaps not entirely unexpected. It must be the magic; kicked in when I landed.” Ignoring Emma, Gold licked one clawed finger and held it up in the air like a sailor testing the wind direction. “Yes, definitely the magic,” he said, before looking over at Emma, who was still having a little difficulty processing the sudden change not only in his appearance but also in his manner. Rumpelstiltskin had always been a shadowy figure in Henry’s storybook, popping up in passing here and there but never really getting his own tale, and as such there were comparatively few pictures of him. Now that she thought about it though, she could see him in the illustrations as she was now. The man sitting on the shingle bemoaning the loss of his shoes was Rumpelstiltskin as he had been in the Enchanted Forest, not the Mr Gold of a magic-less Storybrooke. Because Emma too could feel something in the atmosphere. She gave a tentative sniff but couldn’t smell anything even though she felt like she ought to be able to.

“You can sense it too, can’t you?” Rumpelstiltskin was looking remarkably smug as he looked up at her, and the expression, coupled with the mismatch of his half-reptilian complexion and Gold’s sedate and expensive suit made him look a little bit ridiculous. “You’re a powerful magician, Emma, more powerful than you want to admit.” He got up and picked his way over to her, barefoot and light of step across the stones. There was no sign of his limp, which was probably just as well given the state of his cane; lying washed up beside his discarded shoes in three pieces.

“This is a land with magic, he continued as he approached her. “A lot of magic.”

Emma backed up a step and Rumpelstiltskin obediently stopped short. “You and I can feel that magic, that power. The magic in the air reacts to the magic in your veins. Don’t fight it, dearie, it’s going to be useful.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re green,” Emma murmured faintly.

Rumpelstiltskin gave a huff of annoyance. “Land with magic, green, land without magic, not green. Sorcery works wonders for the complexion, better than any face cream on the market. Now, I don’t know what you plan to do now that we’ve arrived at our destination, but I came here to find my grandson and that’s what I’m going to do.” He moved away from her, heading towards the trees at the edge of the shingle.

Emma nodded warily and began to follow him up the beach towards the jungle. As unnerved as she was by Rumpelstiltskin’s new look, she appreciated the need to stick together, at least until they found the others. Part way, Rumpelstiltskin stopped and with a finger-snap, his soggy and likely ruined suit was gone, replaced with dark leather and what appeared to be dragon hide from top to toe. Emma stopped in her tracks; whilst she was already having trouble equating the slightly mad magician to the scheming man she had known in Storybrooke, this put the icing on the proverbial cake.

“Much better,” he said to himself before continuing his trek up the beach. He flexed his fingers. The pull of the magic in the air here was intoxicating and he took a deep breath, feeling it coat his lungs. It was too long since he’d felt this kind of raw power bristling in the atmosphere around him; it was stronger here than it had been in the Enchanted Forest and he’d had three hundred years to acclimatise to it there. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He was here for Henry. That was the only aim of this trip, a trip that would likely be one way for him. He had to save Henry. He shook his head against the creeping thoughts and continued on his path. At the edge of the jungle, Emma stopped him.

“Hey, wait.”

He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. She looked fierce and determined, the same Emma that he had seen briefly when he had been dying in his shop: not happy with her situation but determined to do the best thing.

“We’re finding Henry,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And then we’re finding a way home.”

“Well, I doubt you want to stay here, unless you’ve discovered a hitherto hidden desire to spend the rest of your days in a treehouse,” Rumpelstiltskin pointed out. “Yes, you’ll need to find a way home.”

Emma noticed that he said you and not we, and she narrowed her eyes but made no mention of it, and she kept pace beside Rumpelstiltskin as they continued through the trees. She plucked at her wet top where it was sticking to her.

“Don’t suppose you could snap your fingers and get me some dry clothes too?” she asked, only half-joking. “Perhaps not what you’re wearing though,” she added hastily on seeing him raise his hand. Rumpelstiltskin gave an explosive giggle, the likes of which Emma could categorically say that she had never heard come out of Gold’s mouth, and the sudden noise made her jump. There was something about the air on the island, and the all-encompassing night, that made her instinctively on edge.

“Please don’t do that again,” she muttered.

Rumpelstiltskin shrugged.

“You’ve got magic of your own, dearie. Isn’t it time you put it into practice?”

Emma took in Rumpelstiltskin’s skin once more and shook her head.

“I’d really rather not,” she said.

“Afraid you’ll end up looking like me?” The maniacal glee had gone from his voice now, he just sounded bitter. “You’re a child of true love, Emma, the most powerful magic of all, and you’re filled to the brim with pure, light magic.” He laughed again, a harsh, hollow bark this time. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Unless you start breathing in magic from my books, like one of my pupils.” He gave a wistful sigh. “Oh dear, that really was a particularly virulent shade of green. It clashed horribly with her hair.”

“I was more worried about it going wrong and ending up with no clothes at all,” Emma interrupted.

“You’re right, that wouldn’t be good.” He snapped his fingers and Emma instantly dried out, her clothes feeling like they’d just come out of the tumble dryer.

“Thank you.”

“Consider it an insurance policy. You’re no use if you catch your death of cold.”

He continued on, and Emma followed with a small smile, still not entirely trusting, but knowing that she had no other real choice.

  Storybrooke – Present

“Are you mad?”

Evening had fallen in Storybrooke and crickets were chirruping in the twilight. The sun was little more than an orange streak on the horizon and it lit up Astrid’s face with an unnatural glow as she leaned out of one of the upper windows of the convent.

“Quite possibly,” Leroy replied to the fairy’s question. He and Belle were standing in the shadows of the building, out of sight of any prying eyes, and anyone who was looking on would think that Astrid was simply leaning out of her bedroom window to get a breath of fresh evening air. She leaned heavily on the windowsill and shook her head.

“I don’t know, Leroy, it seems fraught with danger to me.”

“It’s not dangerous,” Belle said, “just a bit awkward. And the aim of the mission is a noble one. We have to protect the town.”

Astrid sighed. “I know, Theresa told me what happened in the clock tower. I don’t know, Leroy,” she repeated.

“Please, you’ve got to believe us that this is the right way,” Belle said.

“I don’t doubt the spell,” Astrid replied. “It’s the part of the plan involving sneaking around behind Blue’s back and stealing things from her room that I’m not so sure about.”

“Please, Astrid,” Belle pleaded. “Just let us in, you don’t have to do anything else. We’ll take responsibility from there.”

Astrid was visibly torn, and the moment when she caved was clear to see.

“All right, I’ll help,” she said. “Because I know you’re right about the spell and Blue’s attitude. Go round to the side and wait by the kitchen door; I’ll sneak down and let you in.”

Belle and Leroy picked their way through the convent’s small vegetable garden, trying to avoid stepping on any shoots and leaving too many clear footprints in the pitch blackness.

“Is she going to be all right?” Belle asked quietly.

“We can trust Astrid,” Leroy said. “She won’t rat us out to the Mother Superior.”

“I’m not worried about her loyalty,” Belle whispered. “More her ability to sneak.”

“She’ll be fine,” Leroy replied, although he didn’t sound quite as convinced this time. They leaned against the wall, waiting for the door to open.

“Breaking in like this still feels really wrong,” Belle said. “Especially with the nuns. If it was anyone other than the Mother Superior, I might be having second thoughts.”

“You can’t back down now,” Leroy interjected with alarm. “We’re nearly there.”

“Oh, I don’t intend to back down. I intend to prove her wrong and prove Rumpel right.”

There was a loud clang, hastily muffled, from the kitchen, and the sound of voices speaking in a frantic although very quiet hissed whisper. Leroy and Belle looked at one another with worried expressions. At length the door opened a fraction and Astrid’s face appeared around it, blinking in the dark.

“I knocked over a bowl,” she said sheepishly by way of explanation. “Come on in. Blue’s in the chapel at the moment so the coast is clear for another few minutes.”

Belle and Leroy entered the kitchen; it was illuminated solely by a couple of candle lamps flickering on the central table. Belle started on seeing that they were not alone in the room. Another nun was carefully – and silently – putting a metal bowl away in a high cupboard. As she turned, Belle recognised her as the fairy who had tried to reason with Blue in the clock tower earlier in the afternoon.

“You can trust Theresa,” Astrid said, following Belle’s gaze to the other nun. “She’s a lot better at sneaking around than I am.”

“You’re doing fine,” Leroy said chivalrously. “So where do we find this spell?”

“It’ll be in Blue’s room, she keeps all the magical things in there under lock and key,” Astrid said. They left the kitchen without further incident; Astrid leading the way.

As they moved through the corridors, Belle kept a watch out on either side for any signs of movement from the other quiet rooms in the convent. The nuns were early to bed and early to rise, and those who were not in the chapel with the Mother Superior appeared to be sound asleep. Still, it made no sense for them to be drawing any more attention to themselves than absolutely necessary.

“It’s this one,” Astrid said, stopping abruptly in front of a door on the first floor. Theresa had peeled off and was waiting by the staircase ready to rush back and warn them of anyone’s imminent arrival.

Belle tried the door handle tentatively. It was locked, which was to be expected, but there was no harm in hoping for a miracle.

“Can you zap it?” Leroy asked, miming blasting the door lock with a wand. Astrid shook her head sadly.

“No, our wands are in there.” She indicated the Mother Superior’s door. “She doesn’t let us have them unless we need to leave the convent for any reason.”

“Fairy dust?” Leroy asked, but it was clear from his tone of voice that he knew it was a long shot but he couldn’t bear to overlook any possible angle. Again, Astrid pointed to the door they were standing beside.

“I’ve got this.” Belle knelt down to bring her to eye level with the door and she felt around in her handbag for the set of picks that she had taken from the shop before coming up to the convent with Leroy. “They’re Rumpel’s,” she said by way of explanation.

“Did anyone ever teach you how to use them?” Leroy asked.

“No. I’m teaching myself as I go along.” She slid the probes into the lock and began to feel around for the tumblers. “Could I have some light please?”

Astrid obediently held up her little lantern over the lock and Belle continued her work. A particularly loud scrape of the probes within the metal lock made them all jump and fall into a statue-like stillness, but there was no sound from the rest of the convent and Belle began again. She tried the door handle again, gingerly, and this time the door swung open without any effort. She got to her feet and crept inside, followed by Leroy and Astrid. Immediately Belle’s eyes were drawn to the cape that was draped over the sparse metal bedframe, but a quick feel through the pockets left her empty-handed.

“The wands and fairy dust are kept in here,” Astrid whispered, opening a small wooden cabinet on the wall above the desk. Belle came over and stood on a chair to peer into the cupboard, but Rumpel’s spell was nowhere to be found, and a search of the desk and drawers proved similarly fruitless.

“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Leroy hissed.

“She wouldn’t leave it lying around where anyone could get to it,” Astrid agreed. “It has to be hidden in here.”

Belle spotted the bible on the nightstand beside the bed.

“I wonder… My father used to use books as hiding places,” she said. “I was horrified that he’d abuse good books like that.” She snatched up the bible and opened up the front cover, quickly flicking through the first few leaves until, sure enough, she found a hollowed out section. In it were several different vials of varied unknown magics, but most importantly, Rumpelstiltskin’s protection spell was there. Belle pocketed it and put the book back in the same position on the nightstand.

“All right, let’s get out of here,” Leroy said. He moved towards the door but stopped on hearing pattering footsteps along the corridor. Theresa’s face appeared in the door frame.

“She’s coming,” the other fairy said.

“How do we get out now?” Leroy asked. Belle went over to the window, opening it and looking out. Below them was the vegetable garden that they had walked through earlier.

“We can jump, it’s not too high,” she said. “The ground will be soft to land on, although we might squash a few carrots.”

Leroy looked worried but nodded his agreement, and Belle wasted no time in swinging her legs over the edge of the windowsill and jumping out.

“What about you two?” Leroy asked the fairies. Theresa and Astrid looked at each other, then Astrid looked at Leroy.

“You go,” Theresa said. “I’ll cover for you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I used to do it for Tink all the time. Now scram before she gets here!”

Leroy jumped first, landing heavily in the cabbage patch, and he held out his arms to catch Astrid as she followed him down. They staggered a little on the uneven ground before finding their footing and glancing back up at the window. Theresa gave them a friendly wave and then bolted the glass shut, and Leroy and Astrid crept through the garden to catch up to Belle, who was waiting out of sight beyond the boundary of the convent’s grounds. Together, the three of them made their way back into the town towards the clock tower.

   Neverland – Present

Snow and David had jumped from the ship together as it had tumbled out of the sky, and they clung to each other until the rapidly oncoming ground forced them to part by necessity in order to each break their fall as best they could. The earth was soft where they landed, covered in a thick bed of slimy, half-rotting leaves, and apart from a few bruises, Snow ascertained that no damage had been done from the impromptu leap.

“Are you all right?” she asked David, who had landed a few feet away and was patting himself down for injury.

“I think so.”

Snow checked her bow where it had been slung over her shoulder; she’d lost a couple of arrows that hadn’t been fastened securely in her quiver, but the weapon itself was intact and not too bent. Sensibly, David had tossed his sword away from him lest he land on it and it was half-buried under the leaf cover a little way off. He got to his feet and moved towards it, and Snow heard a tiny snap, almost inaudible, but enough to put her on her guard.

“David wait, don’t…”

But the words came too late; David had taken another step towards his sword and in a ferocious rustle of leaves, he was pulled up into the trees in a net trap.

Snow immediately drew an arrow and looked around the trees.

“Who’s there?” she called. “Show yourself!”

There was no sound or movement in the jungle and Snow continued to look around, moving cautiously with measured steps to avoid springing another trap that might have been laid close by.

“This isn’t right, people normally stay close to traps,” Snow muttered.

“Only if they want to catch something alive,” David said, looking around as best he could from his awkward position in the tree canopy. “Otherwise they might just leave it to do its work and check back later. At least we know now that this island is definitely inhabited.”

“Yes, but are the inhabitants friend or foe?” Snow asked. “That’s what I’m more worried about.” She picked up David’s sword and fastened the belt around her waist before taking up her bow again and performing another sweep of the immediate area. “Will they help us find the others or not? In my experience, locals aren’t usually too happy about newcomers dropping abruptly out of the sky.”

“True.” David peered through the treetops in case any assailants were concealed above the ground. “I think we’re safe.”

Snow nodded and moved over to the tree that David was dangling from, looking around it for the guide rope that would release him. Above her, David gave a snort of laughter.

“You know, I can’t help but be reminded of our first meeting,” he said. “Things have changed a bit since then.”

“Yes, back then if I’d seen you in a net I wouldn’t have hesitated to leave you there.” Snow found the guide rope. “Brace yourself, I’m going to cut you down now.”

She drew the sword but caught flickering movement out of the corner of her eye. She whirled around to face it, sword outstretched, but there was nothing there.

“Snow?” David called down to her. “Snow, what’s the matter?”

“I thought I saw something.” She narrowed her eyes and peered through the trees again, but it was impossible to see very far in the dull night. It was odd that the jungle should seem so dark, despite the bright full moon and the many twinkling stars above; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“There’s something very wrong with this place.” Snow shivered. “Ok, I’m cutting you down now.”

She cut the thick rope with one sharp chop of the sword blade, and the net fell from the tree in a flurry of leaves. Snow rushed round to help David untangle himself.

“Well, you can’t deny that was an eventful start,” he said. Free from the ropes, he looked around. “I know what you mean. This is a very strange place. We should move on.”

Snow handed back his sword and he strapped on the belt.

“How are we going to find Emma?” she asked. “And Henry? How do we even know where to start looking? Hook’s been here before, and I get the impression Gold has as well, but that doesn’t help us right now. Oh, I hope Emma’s all right.”

“She’ll be fine,” David said. “She can swim, and she’s got magic to defend herself, and she’s with Gold.”

“You trust him?” Snow asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Not as far as I could throw him, but I know that he cares about Henry, and I trust that.”

“And she’s barely used magic,” Snow continued. “This time last year she didn’t even know she had magic. We’ve got no idea what we’re going up against.”

“Emma can take care of herself,” David reassured his wife firmly. “She’s done it before and she’s good at it.”

“Don’t remind me,” Snow said sadly. “I just don’t want to think of her alone again now that we’ve found her. Can this family ever stop being separated?”

“Maybe not just yet, but Snow, we always find each other, against all the odds.” David heard a rustle in the trees behind them. “We really need to keep moving, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Snow nodded and took David’s hand, and they walked on through the forest.

“We’re all here looking for the same thing,” David said once they were assured, with several looks around and false starts, that they were not being followed. “All we have to do is keep our eyes open for Henry and the others. Whilst we may not all be looking for each other, we are all looking for Henry, so sooner or later our paths will converge.”

“I can’t understand how you’re so calm,” Snow said.

“Because nothing is ever gained by panicking,” David replied. “I’ve learned that. We have to keep a clear head. Especially here.” He looked around again, still uneasy at his surroundings. There was something in the trees, he was sure of it, but it was not showing itself. He could only hope that whatever it was, it was more scared of them than they were of it.

“No, I mean about Emma,” Snow said quietly again. “I can’t believe we lost her again.”

“Don’t think that I’m not worried about Emma.” David stopped and Snow turned to face him. “I am worried about Emma. I’m worried about everyone. But I’m just trying to keep some perspective. In the circumstances that we’re in, I’m most worried about Henry.”

“She’s our baby, David.”

“She’s not, though, Snow. Not anymore. She’s our daughter, and she’ll always be our daughter, but she’s not a child anymore. She’s an adult, and she’s a mother herself. In this situation, I think she’d far rather that we focussed our energy on finding Henry.”

“What kind of parents lose their child as often as we have, David? This isn’t a question of leaving a baby in a supermarket, this is a question of crossing worlds.”

“Parents who have to deal with dark curses, evil queens, soul-sucking wraiths and magic beans on a regular basis,” David pointed out. “Those kinds of things don’t happen every day.”

Snow raised a despairing eyebrow.

“Well, they happen to us more regularly than they happen to other people,” David amended. “Snow, none of this makes you any less of a mother.”

“How do you know that, David?” Snow broke away with a soft sigh and continued to pick her way through the forest. David closed his eyes and gave a long exhalation before catching up to her.

“Snow…”

“I have no idea how much of a mother I am. I’ll never know. Because I never got to chance to be a mother. I never got the chance to raise my child. I held her for five minutes and then she was grown. It’s different for you. You knew that you wouldn’t see her till she was an adult. You were prepared for that. But I thought I’d be with her. I thought I’d raise her, and now I can’t, and you tell me that she’s grown up now and she can take care of herself, and I know that, but I can’t help wanting to be her mother. I can’t help wanting my baby girl!”

There was silence for a while after Snow’s outburst, broken only by the chirruping of the crickets. The sound was comforting, a shred of normality in this strange place, and it helped to ground them.

“I’m sorry,” Snow said eventually. “Not sure where that came from. I think it’s this place.” She looked around at the densely packed trees around her. “It’s bringing out the worst in me.”

“It’s ok, I understand. You don’t need to apologise for being worried.”

David pressed a light kiss to her cheek and Snow gave a weak smile before taking his hand again.

“Let’s find the others.”

  Enchanted Forest – Present

None of the gathered company had ever had cause to visit the Dark Castle before, and although they had heard many tales about it and its inhabitant, they had never seen the grand building nestled in the foothills of the mountains. It was certainly an impressive structure, looking no worse for wear for having been abandoned for so long. Mulan looked up at the gates in front of her. There was something foreboding about the tall iron, and she could well see why most people thought that coming to the Dark One for assistance in a crisis was a very last resort. Although the magician himself was not in residence, the air of power and darkness remained, and she gave an inward shiver.

“How do we get inside?” Aurora asked plainly. They’d had a hard night’s ride through the mountain pass and they were all tired, and the horses needed rest and shelter. Getting inside was paramount, but it was proving easier said than done. Philip was crouched in front of the gates, looking at the lock. When he reached out to touch it tentatively, a red spark of magic shot out, burning his fingertips even through his gloves. He took a step back, rubbing his sore hand.

“The place is sealed magically. Normally the gates would be open all the time; I assume that they’re closed because the Dark One isn’t here. They’re protecting the castle for his return.”

“Is there anything we can do to counteract it?” Aurora asked.

Mulan drew her sword and touched the blade to the heavy lock, but the reaction from the metal was the same, a shower of violent magical sparks.

“Normally magic weakens over time,” Aurora mused. She came over to the gates from where she had been making sure that her patient, still sleeping despite their journey, was well and on the mend. “When I was in hiding, the fairies began to worry that their protective enchantments were starting to wear off before my birthday arrived. But this magic seems to have become stronger over time.”

“Blood magic is strong,” Philip said. “And often used for sealing things off against intruders. I wonder.”

He went over to Mulan, who still had her sword drawn, and he pulled off one glove, carefully holding the blade steady and nicking his thumb on the edge so that a drop of blood welled there. He went back over to the gates and let the ruby droplet drip onto the metal. It fizzed and hissed like fat over a fire, eventually absorbing into the dark iron until there was no trace left, but the gates still did not move.

“Yes, it’s a blood lock,” Philip said. “Probably getting stronger because he’s been away for so long. Unless we find a long-lost relative of the Dark One, we won’t be getting inside.”

Mulan put her sword back in its scabbard.

“I still say we should stop here,” she said. “We’re close enough to the castle that the ogres shouldn’t come near, and we really can’t travel any further today. We’ll be safe here until we work out what to do next.”

The other two nodded their agreement and began to set up camp in the shadows of the forbidding castle.

Taking the first watch, Mulan leaned back against the gates. They felt warm against her back, although it was not a particularly hot day and the sky was overcast, and she assumed it was the inherent magic trying to ward her off. Still, she was comfortable for now, so she continued to keep a look out. Just because they were not expecting ogres in this part of the land did not mean that there weren’t other threats out there; bands of thieves roaming the country and causing unrest in the small pockets of society that had escaped Regina’s curse and were trying to continue functioning as best they could in the absence of any kind of power structure. Added to that, of course, there were the usual dangers from wild animals. Mulan rested her hand on her sword hilt, ready to spring into action if necessary. Aurora and Philip were sleeping peacefully in the shade of a tree, and she gave them a wistful smile. Something caught her eye, it was the mysterious man from the beach. He was waking up. She put her sword down and went over to him as he sat up.

“Hello.”

He startled slightly, and Mulan stopped at a safe distance.

“You’re safe here,” she said. “My name is Mulan.”

“Neal.”

“How are you feeling, Neal?”

Neal looked around him, bewildered. When he had fallen through the portal, clinging onto consciousness by the barest thread, he hadn’t really had any kind of destination in mind. He had been occupied solely with one thought, that of home, the home of his childhood, before everything went to hell. Back when his father was still Papa.

“Where am I?” he asked Mulan.

“This is the Enchanted Forest,” she replied. “We found you washed up on the shore several miles south-east of here, near the Frontlands.”

“We?”

“Myself, Aurora and Philip.” Neal looked around and saw the two sleeping figures pointed out to him. “You were injured when we found you, we thought it best to let you sleep it off.”

Neal grimaced and pressed a hand to the aching place where Tamara had shot him. He was never not trusting Emma’s character judgments again. Still, it had all seemed so far-fetched at the time. Then again, he could hardly talk, not given his own tumultuous history that spanned three realms and three centuries depending on whose timeline you used. His thoughts came full circle to Emma. He had to let her know that he was ok somehow; he had to get back to Storybrooke, for Henry’s sake even if not for hers.

“Here.”

Mulan offered him some water which he accepted gratefully.

“You’re from the Land Without Magic, aren’t you?” she asked.

Neal nodded. “Yes. From here originally, though. Not too far from where you found me, actually. But I generally think of back there as home. Most of the time.”

“How did you end up here?” Mulan asked. She sat down next to him, still maintaining a respectful distance.

“It’s a long story.” Neal sighed. “But I have to get back.”

Mulan shrugged. “We’ve helped people cross worlds before, we can do it again.”

The simple statement gave Neal hope, and he gave a small smile.

“Are you hungry?” Mulan asked. “We don’t have much, but you’re welcome to share.”

“Thank you.”

They stayed in silence for a few minutes whilst Neal nibbled his fruit, and presently he looked up at the gates that they were camping beside.

“I’m going to assume that there’s a reason why we’re outside the gates and not inside?”

Mulan nodded.

“We can’t get in.”

“Locked? I’m good with locks, maybe I can help.”

“Blood locked,” Mulan said. “The Dark One has gone but his magic remains.”

“The Dark One?” Neal was not quite sure what emotion he felt on hearing the name spoken so casually. Mulan, evidently mistaking his surprise for lack of knowledge, continued.

“The Dark Castle,” she said, indicating the huge building behind them. “Home to the most powerful sorcerer in all the realms. At least, it was, until Regina’s curse came. We came here to be safe from the ogres, they never venture near here.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Neal muttered. Gingerly, he got to his feet. He did not know a lot about magic, indeed he actively tried to avoid it as much as he could – although somehow it seemed inevitably to find him again. But blood locks weren’t so far-fetched an idea, like biometric locks back in the Land Without Magic.

“What are you doing?” Mulan asked. “I wouldn’t touch the lock if I were you, it burns.”

Neal paid her no heed and hovered his hand over the heavy metal. Nothing happened. Gently he inched closer; he could feel the warmth radiating off it. It felt welcoming almost, like it was inviting him in. He touched the lock and it sprang under his fingers, the heavy iron gates creaking open.

“What’s going on?”

Aurora and Philip were startled awake by the sound, and they looked up at the sight of Neal framed by the gates.

“What were you saying about long-lost relatives of the Dark One?” Aurora murmured.

  Storybrooke – Present

“Ready?”

Belle, Leroy and Astrid were standing at the top of the clock tower, looking out over the town. The sun had set fully, but it was not yet very late in the evening and there were still people around on their way home or to Granny’s. Belle wondered if any of the pedestrians below could see them up in the tower, and she wondered how many people realised what they were doing.

Astrid and Leroy nodded.

“Go for it, sister,” Leroy said. “The sooner the better.”

Belle eased the cork out of the vial and a small wisp of gold-coloured magic wafted out. She reread the instructions on the scrap of parchment. Think about what you want to protect.

“Is that it?” Astrid asked, her voice worried. “I don’t think that’s going to protect the whole town.”

“No, it needs a little encouragement.” Belle closed her eyes, visualising the town and all its inhabitants, snug and safe under Rumpel’s spell, hidden away in this remote corner of Maine where no prying eyes could enter. And then she thought of Rumpel and all the others on the Jolly Roger. There had to be a way to counteract this spell. Even if Rumpel himself was not planning on coming back, surely he planned on everyone else coming back.

She blew a little puff of breath into the wisp of magic, and the rest of the vial emptied into a large shimmering cloud in the air. This, Belle knew instinctively, was good magic.

“Look at it,” Astrid breathed in wonder. “It’s so pure and bright.” She reached out and moved her hand through the glittering cloud, and Belle had to smile at the look of joy on her face. “This is a spell created from love, anyone can see that,” the fairy continued. “I don’t know why Blue was so set against it.”

“I don’t think she’s against the magic so much as the man who created it,” Leroy muttered drily. “Only the good can be good, so it would seem.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Astrid said mildly. “Go on,” she said to the cloud in a happy, encouraging tone. “Show us what you can do.”

Belle blew into the cloud again and the bright, golden light burst forth from the clock tower to the astonished gasps of the people on the street below. It continued to climb before spreading out and slowly creating a blanket over the town. Anyone looking on from the sky would see a bright golden dome slowly creeping down until it encircled the whole of the town before vanishing completely, and taking the town with it. From overhead, all that could be seen was thick woodland. Anyone coming into the town on the ground would simply see a road that led to nowhere. Storybrooke was once more off the map.

“Well, that was easy,” Leroy remarked as the last vestiges of light from the spell grew dim and faded altogether. “I wonder why no-one did it sooner. Then we wouldn’t have had this problem in the first place.”

“I think there were too many other things happening,” Belle said. “We didn’t realise how dangerous a position we were in until it was too late.”

“Well, better late than never,” Astrid said brightly.

Together the three began to make their way down the steps of the clock tower again, Astrid leading the way and Belle bringing up the rear.

“Now what?” she asked as she locked up the library. Having completed the task that Rumpel had entrusted her with, she really wasn’t sure what to do now except wait for his return.

“Now, I say we go to Granny’s and celebrate our success with beer,” Leroy said.

“Seems like a sound plan to me.” Perhaps beer would help ease the loneliness of being separated from Rumpel for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. “Lead on.”

“I don’t know,” Astrid replied sadly. “I really should be getting back to the convent.”

“You don’t sound too thrilled by the prospect,” Belle laughed as they all began walking in the direction of Granny’s. Astrid hung back a little and Belle broke step to remain beside her.

“It’s not that I don’t like being a fairy,” Astrid said. “All I ever wanted was to be a fairy godmother. But sometimes I feel like there are other important things in life, and I don’t see why I have to choose between them.”

Suddenly it all clicked into place in Belle’s mind.

“You’re Nova, aren’t you?”

Astrid nodded. “Yes, that was my name in the Enchanted Forest.”

Belle looked between the two, Leroy in front just out of earshot, and Astrid next to her.

“You never got your boat.”

“No, it wasn’t to be. But sometimes I can’t help wondering, you know? What could have been if things had gone a little differently?”

Belle smiled. “If there’s one thing that life has taught me, it’s that sometimes, you do get second chances, and you have to grab them with both hands. Maybe this is your second chance. So I’d take it. The Blue Fairy may have stopped you before, but there’s no reason for her to do so again. You have the right to love and be loved. No-one should be able to stop you.”

Astrid smiled. “You’re right. But what if…”

She nodded towards Leroy.

“You’ll never know if you don’t try,” Belle said.

They had reached the diner at that point, and Leroy held the door open for the two ladies before going over to the bar to order their drinks. If anyone was surprised to see a dwarf, a fairy and a librarian sharing a booth and drinking beer, then they didn’t show it, and the three were left in peace to toast the success of Belle’s spell-casting.

“It’s good to have you back, Belle,” Leroy said presently. Belle blushed, remembering Lacey’s antics, and she wondered what would have happened had Leroy not procured the potion for her. Would true love’s kiss have restored her memories if she had fallen in love with Gold and vice versa? And what if she hadn’t? She shook her head, not wanting to think about it.

“It’s good to be back,” she said. “And thank you. For squaring it with the fairies.”

Leroy shrugged. “Just doing a favour for an old friend.”

Presently, Astrid excused herself to the bathroom, and Leroy sighed as he watched her leave the room.

“You know she still loves you,” Belle murmured, leaning in so that anyone who was within eavesdropping distance could not overhear.

Leroy shook his head. “I broke her heart.”

“I think a certain superior fairy broke both your hearts,” Belle said sagely. “But you’ve got a second chance here in Storybrooke.”

“She’s a nun,” Leroy pointed out.

“That’s just the calling that the curse gave her, like all of the fairies,” Belle said. “But Nova was never an ordinary fairy.”

Leroy smiled. “No, she wasn’t.”

“So… do you think you might want to try again?”

Leroy didn’t respond, studying the depths of his beer, before he eventually nodded.

“Yeah. I think it might work.”

“Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks,” Belle said. She thought of her father and his reaction to her relationship with Rumpel. “And go for it. Life’s too short not to take these chances.”

A look of understanding passed between them then.

“He will come back, Belle,” Leroy said. “He loves you.”

Belle smiled. “I know he does. I just don’t quite know what to do with myself now that he’s gone. All the time I’ve been in Storybrooke has been defined by my relationship with Rumpel, and now I have the chance to redefine things. I just wish that it hadn’t come so abruptly, and in such unfavourable circumstances.”

“You’ll work it out,” Leroy said. “And we’re all here for you. Me, Astrid, the rest of the dwarfs. If you need anything, just yell.”

“Thank you, Leroy.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for.”

Astrid had returned to the table, and Belle chose that moment to make a strategic exit and leave the two to take their first little steps back towards each other. She meandered down the street towards the harbour, looking out over the calm sea, out across the many realms to where Rumpel was, off finding Henry. She wondered if he missed her as much as she was missing him.