Frost and Fire

Once upon a time there was an enchanted mirror.

The mirror was the type that distorts the images it reflects; a type that, it is said, was first designed by malicious spirits as a mockery of God's creation. This particular mirror was neither so devilish nor so arcane, having been made for the sake of a woman. Still, the legend does still hold some truth. For it was conceived in malice, and formed through a perversion of love – as love is not love that returns only a dumb echo of the lover's own wish.

The mirror was a prison for the heart of a Djin, held captive by a treacherous Queen. Bound by his obsession for her, the Djin took everything that entered the mirror's frame and murmured it back into her ear, transforming it into rumors, mockery, and deceit. Within the gaze of that mirror, her suspicions were twisted into his espionage; her whims, his praise or slander; her enmity, his homicide. And so the more she listened to her reflection and her echo, the more she twisted and she tangled into its empty heart, fomenting power, malevolence, and the end of the world. So much for the queen, and so much for her love.

Soon enough, a great curse fell over all the land, blasting it into oblivion. With a great tug, the Djin was ripped from his mirror. And that might have been the end of this story; but as he burst out, a small corner of the glass, almost unnoticed, shattered - sending tiny shards and slivers flying across the firmament. There, the glass shards fell onto rich earth and green trees, and also onto heads, and hands, and eyes – still steeped in the icy poison of their history. They wormed their way inward like a rot.

Fortunately, in this new world, the shards of the enchanted mirror could have little influence. There was no magic, and so the shards were blind – cold, deadening, but without malice. Perhaps a builder might wonder why all his floors went subtly askew; or a chef, why her soups tasted flat; and this was all.

But then, magic returned…

1. The Substitution

One of the biggest headaches caused by the sudden disappearance of Mary Margaret was also the most mundane: the need for a long-term substitute teacher to take her class. The other teachers in Henry's grade complained of their increased class sizes, caused by taking on her students; and since the chaos of magic's return had not, in fact, caused Maine's Department of Education to make a special exemption to the tally of mandatory class days for K-12, the Storybrooke School District had a problem. Emails were sent. Favors were called in.

The first few attempts at a replacement did not go well. Henry and his cohort, now that their memories had been restored, abruptly found that they had a great deal of experience in the art of annoying substitute teachers. More than one eager young educator left in frustrated tears. But then, week after Snow and Emma had vanished into the crown of a hat, Mr. Feuerstein arrived.

Mr. Feuerstein was not so young as the others, but he had jet-black hair, a way of craning his head forward while he smoothed it back with his fingertips, and long, broad hands. He was an unemployed art teacher from Bangor. Henry's immediate thought was that Mr. Feuerstein looked like a weasel. The girls in the class, on the other hand, seemed to feel differently about him.

On the first day, Mr. Feuerstein was confronted by a crude chalkboard drawing of himself. He responded with a long lesson on proportions in portraiture, using Paige and then Helen as his models. The portraits were stunning. The girls blushed furiously. Seven more hands immediately shot up.

"But we're supposed to be doing social studies," whispered Henry.

"Shhh," said Gretel. "I know Ms. Blanchard wouldn't approve, and she's your grandmother now or whatever, but don't spoil it for the rest of us."

The second day was supposed to be math and earth science. Instead of teaching, Mr. Feuerstein read aloud out of the textbook, making funny voices and stupid faces. Everyone laughed. The class took a long and early recess.

"Mr. Feuerstein is sooo great," said Gerda. Gretel and Paige giggled. No, not Paige anymore, but Grace: the three "G girls", a giggling gaggle of them.

"I think he's actually kind of mean," Henry suggested.

"He's just being funny," said Grace, who was wearing a fashionable new cloche. "He's not like the other teachers; he's sort of nuts. I like it."

"Well, but what if he makes fun of our homework when he gets home, too?" Henry said. "You wouldn't like it if you were the one getting targeted."

"Henry, we understand that you miss Ms. Blanchard," said Gretel, condescendingly. "And it's to-o-o-otally understandable. But you shouldn't take it out on an awesome teacher like Mr. Feuerstein. Don't you see how unfair that is?"

"No, that isn't it at all!" Henry said. "He's mean and he's stupid and I don't think he's even a real teacher!"

"Whatever," said Gretel. "It's not like your mom is the real mayor, either. She's just evil. Also, she tried to get me and my brother eaten by a witch."

"And she got my dad's head chopped off," Grace chimed in.

"Yeah," said Gerda, though there was a glimmer of regret in her eye – or maybe it was just dust? - "Whatever, Henry."

"For the last time, that's not my real mom!" Henry yelled after them as the three girls flounced away across the schoolyard. They didn't turn. "Seriously?" he shouted at their backs.

At home that afternoon he made at least a hundred circles with little angry faces in them all across his math homework until David stopped him and fixed him a sandwich and sat him down to talk about it.

"Why are girls like that?" Henry asked. "Grace and Gerda aren't stupid. Gretel kind of is though. But Gerda's usually pretty nice to me; I don't understand."

To Henry's surprise and consternation, David burst out laughing, and had to go get them both a glass of water before he could calm down.

"God, I was worried that this was going to be about Snow and Emma," said David. "What a relief - Henry, you don't need to worry about this. Try to forget about it and put it out of your mind, it's totally harmless. Don't you remember how idiotically Mary Margaret and I behaved when we were falling in love last winter?" He shook his head, amused. "That's all this is – your friends have a crush on your teacher. You just need to be a little careful what you say – even twelve-year-old girl love is still love, and trust me, nothing is going to get between those girls and Mr. Feuerstein. If I were you, I'd back off a bit."

Henry cocked his head, remembering. "But back then, that was different," he insisted. "It only seemed like you were acting stupid because of the curse. You and Snow were really married; you were supposed to be together."

"Trust me," David smiled. "In this case, it might not be true, eternal love, but it's still completely normal. Don't borrow trouble, Henry; we have enough of our own, with your mom and Snow missing. Okay?"

"But he really is a terrible teacher," Henry insisted. "I think he has an ulterior motive. Why did he come to Storybrooke?"

"I'll look into it," said Charming, drily.

Yeah, Henry sighed. Just like Emma used to "look into things," back when she didn't believe in the curse…

On the third day, they dropped the planned curriculum entirely and painted. The subject was supposed to be a vase of flowers that Mr. Feuerstein had put on the desk, but Henry, never much given to artistic inclinations, amused himself mixing colors and using them to draw a rainbow assortment of jagged lines down the page, and peeked around him at the others' work. Helen was stuck on the glass vase, painting the same reflection over and over in different proportions. Gretel was trying to paint Mr. Feuerstein. Henry rolled his eyes.

Gerda's painting was already very good – there was something about the way she had caught the contours of one white lily that made it seem to catch the light of the canvas, to emerge out of it like a living thing in its own right. When the class left for the cafeteria, Mr. Feuerstein kept her behind. They were both hunched over the painting, and Mr. Feuerstein was speaking almost inaudibly into her ear.

Henry ate his sandwich quickly, ignoring the bustle of the lunchroom, then crept back down the hall. Mr. Feuerstein had gone; Gerda was alone in the classroom, covering her canvas with harsh strokes of grey paint. Her face was flushed, and her eyes looked very red.

"What did Mr. Feuerstein say?" asked Henry.

"Nothing," said Gerda. "It's not about him. I'm not a very good painter."

"Don't listen to him!" Henry said. His heart sank; it was like the old days, everything going wrong, everyone ignoring him, bad things happening all the time, and nobody believing the truth…

Grey paint beheaded a yellow carnation.

"I told you before," Henry repeated, "you can't, don't listen to him, there's something wrong - wrong with him, or about him, I don't know what it is, but I know it's bad. Please, trust me."

Gerda paused. "I think," she said, "that Mr. Feuerstein is very sad."

Henry recoiled. Despite his grandfather's admonition, he couldn't stop the words tumbling from his mouth. "What? How can you look at an evil person like that, someone who's only interested in being mean to everybody around him, and still think about his feelings? How can you not see what's going on?"

Gerda put her brush in the water jar. The grey was complete. "Henry," she said, "nobody cares about your stupid theories. Come on, we all know you've been seeing a psychiatrist since you were what, two years old? Maybe it's about time for you to actually find one that works."

Henry felt as if all the blood in his torso were draining down into his toes, leaving him stiff and cold. He had not explicitly told the other kids about Dr. Hopper, even though all the adults kept explaining to him therapy was nothing to be ashamed of – Archie, Regina, Emma too – but it was one of those too-cautious explanations that only brings back the reality of what it denies, like "don't be afraid of that monster, you know, the one sitting right over there with the very sharp teeth – see?" Henry had gotten the message: don't worry, kid, but keep your mouth shut. Now, with his hands trembling, he understood why: the real truth couldn't always stop a lie from hurting you. And no matter how blatantly unfair that was – his theories had been right! Regina had been evil! – it didn't matter.

"All right," he said.

Then Gerda turned -

- turned her bleeding eyes toward him, wiping a streak of red absently down her right eyelid and across her temple –

- and he gasped, "Gerda," and stepped backwards, all shame driven out of him, as if his soul had been hit by a gust of cold wind.

"Get lost," Gerda snapped.

He did not wait for the rest of the class to return from recess.

In his room, Henry flipped frantically through Mary Margaret's fairy-tale book, but there was nothing in it, nothing helpful at all– no evil teachers, no bloody eyes, no sudden cruelty, nobody named Gerda, no schoolgirl crushes gone horribly wrong. Charming didn't know, either, when Henry called him frantic and made him come home; but he seemed to at least be taking the matter a bit more seriously, which was gratifying. He called up Red to send her nosing around the school. And finally, after pacing four times around the entire apartment, Charming called Regina, too, just to rule out the possibility of her involvement. That phone call earned him an earful that Henry could hear from his bedroom.

Henry closed the book in frustration. "If only Pinocchio were still around," he said. "He would know. He always knew what was really going on."

"Maybe," said Charming. "But you know, Pinocchio's not the only story expert in town anymore. Didn't you hear about our new librarian?" He pulled an arm into his jacket. "I asked Regina to look up the town records to find Gerda's address – I'm going to check on the family right now. I could drop you off at the library on the way. I think it's worth a shot, Henry, your book never led us wrong before."

Not five minutes later, Henry was pushing open the library doors, his own book, hanging in its satchel, bumping up against his thighs as he ran.

The building remained in terrible shape. The lower floor's windows were boarded to cover missing panes, and dust billowed, it didn't just eddy, in the light that fell from the second floor. The main atrium was a huge heaping mess of old books that seemed to have been thrown to the ground from several emptied shelves off to the left. In the midst of this dim chaos stood a single table occupied only by an old laptop roughly the size of a small briefcase, which whirred along merrily, all alone.

Henry came around to the screen side, clambering over a small mountain of multilingual dictionaries as he did so, and hit the spacebar. On the screen was a spreadsheet. Alcott, he read. Little Men. Alcott, Little Women, 2 copies. Aldiss, Frankenstein Unbound. Aleman…

"I haven't made it past Aristotle."

Henry jumped around. The woman standing behind him had unkempt hair and piercing eyes, and she was smiling, just barely, a little crinkle at the corners of her mouth. She carried a steaming mug.

"Sorry," she said, and transferred the mug to her left hand, extending her right. "How rude of me. I'm Belle."

"Henry," he said, taking it. "You sound kind of like Mr. Gold."

"I suppose, a little. We're from the same part of the world, originally."

"Originally originally?"

She smiled all the way. "Are you interested in books, Henry?"

"Definitely," he said. He plunked his satchel onto the table, pulled out the fairy tale book, and without further ado, launched into the full saga.

As he spoke, the smile fell from her face; she began to leaf through the pages, furrowing her brow, as if looking at words let her listen more deeply.

"And you say Regina is… your mother?" she asked at last.

Henry sighed. "Adoptive," he said. "Why, did she do something awful to you?"

"So they tell me." Belle closed the book with a snap. "Henry, I think I understand why you've had difficulty researching this. I can't help noticing that all the stories in your book come from Grimm – that is, these are all versions of stories that were collected, in this world at least, by two brothers in nineteenth century Germany. It's an amazing collection, and ah – seems to be one highly relevant to your family history, but it's only a tiny, tiny fraction of the fairy tales in the world. Now, it just so happens the story you want isn't in Grimm. You want Hans Christian Andersen." She grinned. "And that's Andersen, A-N: you're in luck. You can find the book on the second shelf, third from the bottom."

Henry jumped over the dictionaries, half diving for the shelf.

"I believe the story you want is called 'The Snow Queen,'" said Belle. "But it's a fairly long one, and a cold one, too – do you want me to get you some hot chocolate? I could run back over to Granny's for it. We don't get many visitors here yet."

"But… isn't this a library?" Henry held up the volume. "Can't I just take it home?"

Belle looked surprised. "Technically, we're not open for loans yet," she said. "But I suppose I could let you borrow it from me – hm. Actually, how would you feel about a trade? I'd love to look at that remarkable book of yours a little closer, if that's all right."

Henry hesitated.

"One night?" Belle urged. "I promise I'll be nice to it. After all, I am a librarian. Come back tomorrow, and you'll find every page in its place."

"I guess I do know all the stories in it," he hedged. "And it's not like it's a big secret anymore. Now that everybody remembers. It just… feels wrong to leave it. My grandmother gave it to me, you know."

Belle put her hands in her lap. "Henry, I won't force you to give up something important to you," she said. "I just have a friend I thought might be interested in taking a look at it. Here, take the Andersen book – it's all right. I trust you."

Henry cocked his head. "No, I think it's okay," he said. "I think I trust you, too. But will you swear you'll have it back for me tomorrow?"

"I swear." She extended her pinky finger.

"No," said Henry. "This is serious. Shake on it."

Solemnly, the boy and the young woman shook hands.

In the two hours it took Charming to get back from Gerda's house, Henry walked home, made his own cocoa, with cinnamon on top, and ploughed straight through most of "The Snow Queen." The words of the tale washed over him until he traveled alongside the fictional Gerda through cold stream, sheltered garden, and the gait of a reindeer, close on the heels of cruel, frozen Kay.

It was enough, the part of himself that remained aloof from the story thought – only just enough, one name and one wounded eye, but it would have to do. But how could Kay have come from outside Storybrooke, and why hadn't they been granted their happy ending? Perhaps if this cursed Kay hadn't managed, there, to escape the thrall of the Queen – if Gerda hadn't found him, if she were only finding him now, here, in the mundane world of Storybrooke – the ages were off, the story elements subtly shifted, but there must be a way to resolve it, to bring Kay and Gerda together. How to do it?

So intent was he on the story's ending, he barely heard his grandfather come in.

"Henry," said Charming.

"I know what's going on," Henry blurted out, not caring that he was interrupting. "I think Mr. Feuerstein is Kay. I don't know how he got out of Storybrooke and escaped the curse, but if he and Gerda can just realize that they've found one another, it will melt the mirror, and everything will be okay again – "

"Henry." Charming put his hand on the boy's shoulder, calm and steady. "Gerda and Mr. Feuerstein did find one another. Paige's father saw them through his telescope. They crossed the town line together. Gerda was riding on the back of his motorcycle."

Henry dropped the book onto the table, clattering the spoon against the side of his mug. "No," he said. "That isn't how it happens. It's Kay who is infected with the shard. It's Kay who rides away in the Snow Queen's sleigh. Gerda is supposed to follow them afterwards. And it's supposed to have happened already, not be happening now."

Charming shook his head. "That poor girl will have lost everything when she crossed the town line; all her memories, gone. And she is far too young to be riding away with a middle-aged man. I don't like this at all, but there isn't much we can do about it, given our… unique circumstances. I've already alerted the Maine state police. Gerda's parents are with Red, she's trying to talk them down."

Henry was not listening; a chill was creeping up his arm and along his spine, as if rising out of the pages of the storybook, to shiver at the base of his skull. "No… Gerda is Kay. Kay is the Queen. Grandpa, listen: the fairy tales are happening right here in Storybrooke."

Charming lifted his hand from Henry's shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"Because of Rumplestiltskin," said Henry. "He brought the magic back, and now everything is changing. The stories aren't just things that happened back in the old lands. They're happening here, now. That means a book can't tell us what the happy ending is supposed to be anymore." He looked up, his face white. "All the stories – it means they're changing."