This scene wouldn't leave me alone. In the interest of getting on with my other projects, I had to share.
There are a few things you'll never understand until you're a parent. My moms told me this numerous times growing up. Things like unconditional love, the superhuman, nigh-magical strength you're imbued with when your child is in danger, and of course, my favorite, the ability to wake from a dead sleep when your offspring crouches by your bedside at an unholy hour and whispers,Daddy, wake up.
I groan, throwing back the unzippered portion of my sleeping bag as a small hand jostles my shoulder. "Emma Mackenzie Mills, there had better be a bear outside our tent or a fire in the forest."
Not that I'm eager to add to our list of things gone wrong, but it's the middle of the night and cold, and Mac, in the grand tradition of the women in my family, is as tenacious as she is sweet.
We've escaped ninety percent of the catastrophes I planned for when we organized this camping trip last month. Bears and fire are numbers two and three on that list, following grievous injury while out of cell tower range. We have less than twenty-four hours left on this trip. I'd like to keep the Big Three out of this year's anecdotes. I'd also like a good night's sleep.
"Dad, you have to see this." She pushes her purple frames further up her nose and tugs on my sleeve as her flashlight beam hits me right in eyes, pulling a wince across my face. "Get up, get up."
"Okay, I'm getting up. Give me room to breathe, Mac."
She flounces back on her heels, scooting until she's sitting on her own blankets, tapping her fingers on jean-clad thighs as I grope along the foot of my sleeping bag for my left sock.
"Why are you awake at…" I glance to my wristwatch, "Three in the morning?"
"Nature called and I was honor-bound to answer," she says. The shadow of a smirk dances on her lips.
Moms would be so proud. And smug. I wish they'd had a chance to meet her. That's the whole reason we're out here this weekend, to remember them.
Eleven years ago, Mac's mother, Melody, and I drove up the east coast from New York to Storybrooke for a visit and found nothing. No sign, no town, no orange line spray-painted along a now pothole-infested road. The entire city and all of the people, all of my family, had vanished as if they'd never existed.
My fingers close around the bunched sock, and I tug it over my heel, followed by my boots and jacket while Mac chews her lower lip. "Alright, what's so important?"
"You'll see," she says, scampering out of the tent as I crawl behind her, yawning into my collar.
When Mac was four years old, she asked why the town was gone, why the magic left only lonely highway and desolate woods where so much vibrancy lived before, and I told her we didn't know. For her, and me, that's never been a satisfactory answer. My past may be untenable, but every year we drive from Boston to Maine and walk the southernmost perimeter of the old town line. She knows the stories of my youth as well as I do by now, tales of reformed evil queens and princesses engaged in banditry, of dragons who love fiercely and thieves with hearts of gold, of pirates who trade ships for love, shepherds who become princes, and saviors willing to sacrifice everything for happy endings.
Like I said before, though, we're at the end of our trip. Nothing out of the ordinary here. In the morning, we're going down to the coast to muck about in the shallows for a few hours, and then it's back to Boston. Once I get a cell signal again I'll call Melody, let her know we're on our way home. I hope she's feeling better by now. A nasty stomach bug has been cutting a wide swath through her vocal students, and it finally hit her the night before we left. She insisted we go on without her, but both Mac and I have been antsy the whole trip, her absence keenly felt.
The night air seeps through my jacket as we trudge through the woods, the column of Mac's flashlight bouncing across the forest floor. She adores science, anything and everything she can get her hands on. Maybe she found an animal or a patch of bioluminescent moss, or a meteor shower we'd missed hearing about before leaving.
Oh, please be moss or comets and not something rotting.
The horizon glows as we approach the bluff. Not with approaching dawn, but with electricity. Adrenaline pushes the last of my sleepiness away as the light grows stronger.
It's impossible. It can't be. I'm still dreaming.
But Mac is pulling me closer to the edge, her fingers gentle on my wrist. "Look."
She releases me and stretches her hand toward the valley below us.
"Oh my god," I whisper, clutching her shoulder.
"Is that Storybrooke?"
Our breath condenses in the air and evaporates as we stare.
"Yeah," I say. "That's Storybrooke."
"Try to call Grandma or Grams!"
My palm snaps to my jacket pocket, but my cell isn't there. "It's back in the tent."
"Well, let's go get it!"
We both turn, scrambling over the terrain to the campsite.
Eleven years. Over a decade without so much as a flicker of magic, and now my hands won't stop trembling as I dig through my sleeping bag, looking for my cell phone.
"Dad."
I turn, expecting to see Mac with my phone. Instead, she's clutching a sheaf of papers, eyes wide as she flips through them. My nose tingles as I crawl forward, my belly churning as I realize what she's holding.
"It's just like the storybook you told me about," she says, running her fingers across the words, handing me one of the pages. "Why didn't you tell me you wrote this?"
"Because I didn't realize I had."
I trace the outline of a fuzzy illustration of an illuminated Storybrooke as seen from the bluff, all blurry orbs of white and yellow light atop sharp gray and black lines. Twenty years ago, when I was first learning what being the Author meant, I couldn't record anything while conscious. I'd wake up with stacks of parchment scattered across the bed, once with a page stuck to my cheek, until I relaxed and the words started flowing while I was awake instead of the demand of my subconscious.
My nose tingles again, and I sneeze into my elbow. Yep. Still mildly allergic to squid ink after all these years. But where did it come from? I took the pen with me to New York, but I left the ink with my mom.
Beneath my pillow, my phone starts ringing, a tone I haven't heard in some time, muffled but unmistakable.
"Whose ringtone is that?" Mac asks, scooting closer as I lift the pillow.
A smiling, freckle-faced redhead twirls on the screen, daisies threaded through her hair and strung in chain resting on her collarbone. I swallow hard as I cradle the phone in my hands. Peanut.
"It's my little sister."