Henry was six the first time his mother scolded him for letting Khuera bump into her. She sat them both down, and Corrin explained in his croaky voice of his that touching other peoples daemons-or letting your daemon touch other people-was bad, just like calling people names or pushing them was bad.
They'd sat through the lesson seriously, because they didn't want to accidentally hurt anyone's feelings, and promised her that it wouldn't happen again.
They were seven when they started noticing that things in Storybrooke were weird. The books they read in class-when they skipped ahead of the rest of the students because it was boring reading the same chapter everyday-talked about going on adventures where everyday was different.
The kids in the books didn't always talk about the same things at lunch, or run around playing the same game everyday at recess. The teachers didn't go over the same lesson every day, and birds that were released weren't let go the next day all over again.
It was after this realization that they started to really look at the world around them.
They started noticing all the things they'd never noticed before. All the things they'd taken for granted.
Khuera left behind her soft, playful forms and started taking on sharp-eyed hawks and falcons. She would soar high above him in the sky, so high that it hurt, and each day she would be able to fly higher, and each day, their view of the town grew without him ever having to leave the playground.
It wasn't even a conscious decision on their part. They just knew that something was wrong, and they had to find out what. So Khuera started flying. Higher and higher until she was out of sight. But they knew they would get in trouble if anyone found out that she was leaving the playground without permission, so when they found a young mouse in their backyard, they realized what they needed to do.
They had to give Khuera a secret identity. Otherwise, people would start to notice that she was missing, and they weren't sure why, but it was very important that they keep what they were doing a secret.
So they brought the mouse inside, and looked up on the internet how to take care of him, and raised him in secret. They named him Khu, after Khuera, so that Henry wouldn't mistakenly call him something else and blow his daemon's cover. As long as no one looked too closely, they wouldn't realize that Khu wasn't actually Khuera.
Everyday, Henry hid some of the bird-seed from Mrs. Blanchard's class in his pocket, and brought it home with him for Khu to eat after he found out that mice liked seeds. They kept the seeds in a bowl they'd taken from the kitchen, and, after figuring out that Khu refused to drink out of a bowl, stole a water bottle from the animal shelter on their way home from school the next day.
But keeping a mouse in your room was harder than they thought, and after the third time they had to track Khu around the house after he got out, they went back to the animal shelter and tried to steal a fishtank by climbing in through one of the windows near where they stored their supplies, which Khuera acting as the lookout above the building so he would know if anyone was coming.
Unfortunately, they didn't keep fish at the animal shelter, which he found out only after searching through the various bags of animal food and boxes of paper towels and cleaning products. He almost got himself caught when the kenneled dogs caught his sent and started baying up a storm, almost scaring him right out of his skin. He had to hurry to climb back out the window when the doorknob to the room started to jiggle, and he caught his elbow on the window sill on the way out, leaving a deep, bloody gash.
Heart pounding in terror of being caught and the pain in his arm, he'd raced all the way home, sure that someone was going to start chasing him at any moment. By the time he got home, a short trail of drops of blood marred the sidewalk, making the way he'd come. When his mom asked why he was out of breath when he got back—he hid his bleeding arm behind his back while Khuera took the form of a dog and danced around the room as though hyper as a distraction—he lied and told her that he'd raced one of his classmates home from school. She believed him, but for the rest of the day, he'd been jumpy, expecting someone to knock on the door to tell his mom that he'd been caught stealing.
Before dinner, he pretended that he tripped over his shoelaces on the stairs, and made sure to hit his elbow on the railing so that he would have an excuse for why his arm was hurt. His mom had been more worried than he'd ever seen her as she ran over to help him, with Corrin flapping frantically through the air ahead of her. He landed next to Khuera, who was pretending to be crying in the form of a kitten, and ran his beak through her fur comfortingly. His mom helped him get upstairs to the bathroom, where she washed the cut out for him, and helped him put a bandage on it.
The worry on her face made him feel bad for lying, but he knew that the only way to help her, and the rest of the town, was to keep Khuera's secret identity a secret. If she couldn't fly around to watch people each day, they wouldn't be able to find out what was wrong. He had to fight back tears from the guilt at lying, but it was easy for him to pass them off as nothing more than from the pain in his arm.
From that moment on, they promised themselves they would be more careful. He didn't want to have to lie to his mom ever again.
Because they wouldn't be able to use a fishtank to safely hold Khu, and nothing else they tried—including a box they'd poked holes into, because they couldn't bear putting him in it because it was so dark—they had to get creative.
So they started training him. They figured out very quickly that he liked apples, since he would appear without fail anytime they were eating one their mom had picked from her tree, so, at night when they knew their mom was asleep, or during the day when she was still at work, Henry used apple slices as rewards, and taught Khu to follow him around and wait. Getting him to stay in the room itself was difficult at first, but Khu was intelligent, and after a month of training every day, he no longer left the room unless he was in Henry's pocket—which he learned to crawl into whenever Henry whistled—and by the second month since they'd caught him, Henry was confidant enough to take him to school.
While they were in class, Khuera made sure to take the form of a mouse often enough that people got used to seeing her like that, so while they were out at recess, no one glanced twice at Henry as he sat at the edge of the blacktop, letting Khu run from one hand to the other and across his shoulders.
Khuera could now fly so far away from him that she could get back to their house without even a twinge of pain. And she was fast, too, mixing and matching animals until she could keep up with cars with ease. When she wasn't traveling to and from her destination, she took on the form of small birds or insects so no one would notice her.
With everyday, they increased the mental map they were making. With every week, they had memorized more and more of the actions people took everyday. Each day, Ruby would go for a walk around the block with her friend Ashley, who was pregnant. Ruby would always try to convince Ashley that it didn't matter what anyone thought of her, but Ashley never believed. Ruby's daemon, Tailen, a scissor-tailed swallow, always flew playful circles around Ashley's yellow-beaked magpie as the two girls walked, until Asher's wings got tired and they flew back down to sit on their respective human's shoulder.
Archie took his dog Pongo for a walk around the park every afternoon, and every afternoon, Pongo managed to get off his leash to chase a squirrel up a tree.
They couldn't risk writing their observations down, in case anyone ever found it, so they committed everything to memory. Henry was the best at keeping track of times, and the bigger pictures of what had gone on when, and Khuera challenged herself to remember as many details as possible.
If you asked them what Mr. Gold did every afternoon, they would be able to tell you that he left his shop at 1:05 each day, and went for a walk up to the old clock tower. For three minutes exactly, he would just stand there at the corner of the road, leaning on his cane, staring up at the clouds while his bear daemon stood at his side, her head lowered to the ground, her nose twitching every now and then as she closed her eyes, as though she were looking for one smell in particular.
But each time, she would lift her head and look up at him with solemn, sad eyes. "Nothing," She would say, and he would sigh, as though he'd been expecting the answer, and they would start back toward the shop, his limp more pronounced than before, and his face sad, as though his heart had just broken.
This went on for two years without noticeable incident. And then, on their ninth birthday, disaster struck.
Their mom came into their room in the morning to wake them up early for the special breakfast she'd made for them. She knew how much they loved her homemade apple pancakes, and brought in a plate.
Khu was able to smell the apples, and woke up from his nest of paper towels hidden under their bed, but he was trained well enough by then to know not to come out until Henry or Khuera whistled to let him know it was okay, and he remained hidden until their mom left the room.
When they whistled for him to come out, though, he didn't climb up onto the bed like he normally did. After a few moments, Henry whistled again, but still, nothing happened.
Suddenly worried that his mother had scared Khu into leaving the room, Khuera flitted over the bed in the form of a small kestrel and peered under the bed in concern.
But there he was, safe and sound, blinking out at her, half hidden beneath his paper nest. Henry gave her a piece of apple to offer him, but his only reaction was to shift slightly, as though he wanted to move, but thought better of it.
Worried, Khuera pushed the piece of apple closer to him so he could reach it, and was about to crawl under with him to find out what was wrong when their mom came back into the room.
Forced to pretend nothing out of the ordinary was happening, they had no choice but to accept her invitation to drive them to school.
Khu wouldn't come out when they called him, so Henry told him to wait here, okay? And the two quickly got dressed and followed their mother outside before she could get impatient.
The drive to school was short and uneventful, mostly because the two were distracted with their worry for Khu.
The day passed agonizingly slow, and even their favorite teacher, Mrs. Blanchard and her stoat daemon, Kaeron, couldn't cheer them up.
At recess, Khuera went back home, and flew to the window of their bedroom to try and look in. But Khu's nest was on the other side of the bed, and she couldn't see a thing. She thought about trying to open the window, but decided it would be too risky. She had returned to his side before recess was even halfway over.
When they got home that day, their mother was already there, in the kitchen, preparing to bake a cake.
Hardly paying her any heed, Henry and Khuera were just about to rush up the stairs to check on Khu when their mother called out, stopping them in their tracks. "Henry, can you come here for a moment?" Her voice was reproachful.
Disappointed, they followed her voice into the kitchen, and when he spoke, it was in his most innocent, curios voice. "Yeah, mom?"
Corrin, perched on the counter, spoke for her, his black eyes sparkling at them in the light. "You need to clean your room." He said, tilting his head to the side slightly, "We found a mouse under your bed. Have you been leaving food in there?" He tilted his head to the side suspiciously.
Even as terror was racing through his veins, Henry kept his cool. They didn't realize that they'd been purposefully keeping Khu. "A mouse?" He asked, as though surprised, "What'd you do with it?" He intentionally avoided answering the crow's question, trying to convince his mom that he had been keeping food up there, and this had all been an accident.
His heart was pounding in his chest, but his voice held steady.
His mother turned away from the oven, and pulled off her oven-mitts. "I put it outside, past the tree. You really need to be more careful where you leave things. It was making a nest under your bed."
"We will." Khuera answered quickly, in the shape of a cat, "Can we go look at it?"
Their mom raised an eyebrow, but didn't argue. "I don't see why not," She said, "But don't touch it, okay? I don't want you getting sick."
For one, insane moment, Henry wanted to tell her that Khu was their pet, and that they'd never gotten sick from holding him, and why would she say such a thing? But his offense was lesser than his wisdom, and he just nodded, before quickly leaving the kitchen, confidant that his mother would just mistake his urgency for childish excitement.
His hopes soared when he spotted a small path of brown in the grass next to the tree, and he ran forward faster, Khuera clutching at his shirt as a grey squirrel.
A whistle was on his lips before he even skidded to a stop, and by the time the sound left his mouth, Khu was clearly visible.
For a moment, they just stared.
For a moment, they allowed themselves to pretend that he was simply sleeping.
For a moment.
And then the moment passed, and they knew, somehow, without even having to get any closer than they were, that he was dead. His stillness was unnatural, the air around him haunted with his departure.
Their sorrow and horror sent them stumbling backwards, away from the sight of him lying there so still that the next thing they knew, they were back inside the house, and they were running for the kitchen, for their mother, and tears were streaming down his face, and he couldn't breathe for the sobs tearing up his throat, and Khuera was shaking like a leaf, still in the form of a squirrel, pressing her head into her chest as she cried.
Grief mixed with their need to keep their secret, and the only thing that managed to make it past his lips were the words, "The mouse—it-it's dead!"
Their mother tried to console them, but she couldn't understand their pain. She was upset that they'd found the mouse dead, because that hadn't been her intent, but she couldn't understand why they were so, devastatingly upset. It was just a mouse, after all.
But she took them into the living room, and sat Henry down on the sofa with her, and wrapped her arms around him in a hug, and told him that everything was going to be alright. She told him that there was no reason to cry, because the mouse had gone to a better place. It wouldn't ever be sad again. Corrin folded one wing around Khuera, and they cried until they ran out of tears, and before they knew what was happening, sleep was pulling them down into its embrace, their grief too much to bear all at once.
The next morning, their mom woke them up, and drove them to school again. She promised them that she would help them bury the mouse when they got back from school, but even that couldn't bring them out of their melancholy.
That day, they spoke to no one, and Henry sat with his head on his desk throughout all the lessons, struggling not to start crying again.
Khuera didn't leave his side that day at recess, and they sat in their usual spot at the edge of the blacktop, letting the heat that radiated off of it burn his legs while she sat against his side as a black-bear.
The other kids stayed even farther away from them than normal. They were afraid of her huge shape.
Maybe that was why Mr. Gold's daemon always looked so sad.
When the final bell rang, he got heavily to his feet, biting his lip as he prepared to follow the rest of the students outside.
Mrs. Blanchard had to call his name twice before he heard her. He blinked at the sight of her standing behind him, her arms behind her back, Kaeron standing on her shoulder, watching them with concern.
"Henry," She said, "I wanted you to have this." She pulled a large book from behind her back, and held it out to him. After a moment of hesitation, he took it, then looked up at her quizzically, too drained for words.
"It's a book of fairytales," She explained, showing him the cover, where the words Once Upon a Time were embossed in large golden letters against its dark brown leather, "For your birthday." She smiled at him gently.
"I—uh, I mean—t-thanks." He stammered, confused. No one but his mother had ever noticed his birthday before, "I, uh, I better get going." He shrugged his backpack onto his shoulder, and Khuera poked her head out of his pocket in the shape of a small gecko. He didn't mean to be ungrateful, but Mrs. Blanchard was looking at him in the same way his mom did when she wanted to talk to him about something he wouldn't like, and he didn't want to have to tell her why he was upset.
He still had his secret to keep, and as long as he could pretend nothing had happened, then there would be no reason to be upset.
That's what he told himself, anyways.
"Henry?" Kaeron called out to them just as they were about to leave the room. He paused, but didn't turn to look, swallowing hard against the sudden lump in his throat. The stoat's voice was gentle when he spoke, "You can talk to us about anything, we just want you to know that."
Henry nodded, and hurried to leave the room, the book held safely to his chest.
After they buried Khu that night, he and Khuera were at a loss of what to do. Khuera hadn't gone flying that day, so they had no new information to memorize, and they had finished their homework before they even left the school.
Finally, Henry remembered the book their teacher had give them, and brought it back to his bed so they could read it together.
With a mounting sense of déjà vu, he opened the book to the first page—
—And knew that their lives were never going to be the same again.