The Magic Within
By Schroederplayspiano
Chapter 7: It Makes You Feel Happy Like An Old Time Movie
"Graham!" Emma yelled through the castle's basement. It was hard to enunciate with beaming smile, but she could not relax. Emma added a skip between her jogs. "Graham!" Three knocks pounded the door.
"What do you want, Emma?" He spoke from within.
"I have good news," she caught her breath. "Open the door. I want to tell you face to face."
There was a long silence behind the door. "Now is not a good time."
"Come on," Emma knocked lightly again. "Just for a minute." Emma froze to listen for movement in the room. There was none. She tried a different approach. "My Dad needs our help."
The door creaked open. If Emma noticed his hesitancy, she ignored it. "Our help?" Graham looked everywhere but at Emma. "How does he need your help and my help together? We can barely help ourselves."
"Okay, I am going to tell you secret information-" Emma spoke too fast, still beaming, and ignoring Graham. "And you are-"
"No, Emma." He spoke over her. "Stop. I don't want to-"
"Going to help me and be very happy."
"Emma." Graham kept repeating over her. "Emma. Stop."
"And we can work together."
"Emma!" Graham final attempt to bring her back to reality caused him to morph into someone she did not recognize. His pronouncing of her name was cold and deep. Not quite a yell, but something more grand and detached. It reminded her of when her class did a play of Greek gods in middle school, and a older boy played Zeus. Only then did Emma look at him. His eyes were puffy; lines were etched in his skin. Her smile faded.
"What's wrong with you?"
After Graham recovered from shock, he leaned in a little closer. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I somehow imagine our last interaction? The one about you," he emphasized his words. "Totally threw me under a horse for being concerned for you?"
Emma nodded, but said nothing to confirm his words. "I want your help," she whispered.
"Why," he spoke over her. "To cover for you?"
"To protect me from my own worst instincts."
Graham crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.
"I'll take that as 'I'm listening, Em.'" Emma took a deep breath. "Okay. The secret information is Robin Hood's army is preparing to attack us." Graham dropped his folded arms. "And I know you are in the Royal Military, but you are also an huntsman and my mom's friend and my friend-"
"Is that what we are, Emma, friends?"
She ignored him. "So under that pretext, you are already sworn to secrecy. Okay?" She waited just long enough for him to nod. "Apparently, both my parents and their advisors are worried about it and we need someway to win the upper-hand."
"So?" Graham creased his forehead and then let it go.
"So Rumpelstiltskin has a tool that will let us do that. But," Emma took a deep breath again, preparing herself for his outrage. "He won't allow my Father to use it. He will only teach me how."
Graham sighed and shook his head. "Emma…"
"I want you to come with me."
"Do I need to tell you again?" Graham stepped back, preparing to slam the door in her face. "You. Are. Insane."
Emma's flat palm hit the door with a loud thud. He hesitated fighting her back when he saw the intensity in her eyes. It was their depth of desperation that frightened him. "I am trying to show you I am using magic for good." She paused, searching for another angle. "Given that you work with the military and have to fight if we go into battle, don't you want to secure the advantage?"
Graham lowered himself until their eyes were straight across from each other. "Not if we have to use magic." Emma spent her energy trying to recognize the Graham she knew. He was harder and harder to find. "Even in Fairytale Land there are few rules attached to warfare. Using magic is one of them."
"I don't plan on using in it battle!" Emma started to grow frustrated. "Surely spies are allowed in warfare."
"Fine. Go ahead then." Graham conceded. "Who's stopping you?"
"You are!" The yell boomed down the corridor.
In response, Graham lowered his voice. Its harshness was made worse by its detached undertone. His eyelids went into slits. "My mistake for following you, for trying to stop you before. It won't happen again."
"Graham." Emma sighed before her hands shot up towards his cheeks. The only softness in their interaction was in her eyes. She held on to his cheeks with such firmness as to trap him in her gaze. "I need you to follow me. I need you to come with me. I told my mom you were helping me because you are. If we work together, you get what you need and I get what I need."
Still forced between her two hands, Graham fought to speak. "I don't need anything."
"You do," Emma lost some force behind her actions. She dropped one hand while the other thumb stroked his skin. "You need to start believing in the purity of magic again."
"There is no purity in magic, Em. It is vulgar and evil."
"Look at me," Candles highlighted Emma's misty eyes. Graham's gaze drifted over her porcelain features. Her voice broke, "Am I evil?"
Graham watched blood drain the face, turning the fierce lion before him into a doe-eyed kitten. He couldn't help himself from reaching out and running his fingers through her hair. Emma closed her eyes, her breath catching at his touch. "Emma…" His longing tugged her closer to him.
"Come with me, Graham. Let me show you how I can use magic to protect, and not to harm. Can you do that? Can you believe in magic again?"
"It's hard to live here and not believe in magic, Em." Graham shared dryly.
"No. Real magic, Graham." Emma glowed with yearning. "The type you brought me to the other night. Fairy-dust-magic. The type of magic that fills children's dreams when they sleep or the magic that twirls millions of color shades into a sunset in the sky. Or," Emma eyelids fell. Graham jerked back and gaped around them as the sunlit corridor transformed into a purple midnight. Stars twinkled above them and orbs seemed to spin around them. Emma opened her eyes and tucked her chin, leveling his gaze. "The mystery of the night sky." Graham stepped back further into his room. The night sky followed him inside. He tripped backwards on a box and fell, knocking over an oil lamp, smashing it into pieces before landing on his bottom. Emma's concentration broke when Graham plummeted to the ground. The magical night sky dissolved instantly. Emma fell to him, her hair flowing following behind her. "Graham," she stroked his forehead with her thumb. "Everything's okay. See," she motioned around them. "Everything's fine. Wasn't that amazing?"
"Uh." Graham pushed himself up to a sitting position and leaned against his bedside. Still confused, he offered, "That's one word for it."
Once Graham was settled, Emma scanned his small living corridor. "Oh, your lamp," she kept her tone casual. The lamp's oil had started to ooze out. "I'll fix it."
She took a step towards the scattered pieces, but Graham grabbed her arm and forced her back. "Don't." He converted back into the man she barely recognized; austere contours shaded his best features.
Emma tore herself from his grasp. She approached the lamp's broken pieces and stood above them. Under her open palm, every piece bonded back together and the oil was sucked back in. For some reason, Graham thought Emma would use magic to lift the oil lamp back to his nightstand. She didn't. Much more comfortably, at least for him, Emma crouched down and returned the oil lamp to its proper place. "See I saved you a horrible mess to clean up. I can't see how that's a bad or – evil thing."
"And yet," Graham found a smirk somewhere within him. "Cleaning up an oil lamp is not quite as convincing as the night sky."
"Aha," Emma teased a small smile. "Not quite." The pair stared at each other for several moments. The oil lamp's light flickered between them. She searched Graham's face and slowly could make out her favorite features. She placed her hands in her riding pant's back pockets. With her shoulders raised, her innocent voice asked, "What is it going to take to convince you to come with me?"
"Depends," Graham whispered. "Why do you want me to come? So your story can check out for your mom or so I can protect you from your own worst instincts? Which," he added, "I don't even know how to do."
If Emma was being honest with herself, she knew it was both of his reasons. Still, he was missing something important. Like before, Emma realized his belief, his imagination, needed saving more than anything else. "I want you to come because you want to come, Graham," she came up with. "There's no point in forcing you do to something you don't want to do."
Graham parted his lips to say something but quickly closed them again.
"Okay," Emma shrugged at him and began to exit the room. "Maybe next time." She offered a genuine smile before turning her back on him.
Tucking a curl around her ear, she rounded the doorway and started down the hall. Emma wished she could replace the bland walls with the starry night again, but she knew she was too disappointed to try. Through door leading outside, the path to Rumpelstiltskin's automatically sketched itself out in her mind. She knew where she was going.
Graham heard riding boot clicks increase their pace. He closed his eyes to listen to what direction they were going, but all he could see inside his eyelids was Emma's magical night sky. He popped his eyes open and cursed. Grabbing a jacket from his messy bed, he sprinted out the room. "Emma!" He called after her.
Emma turned back to the door and waited for him to catch up with her. "Changed your mind?"
Graham didn't stop until he had closed the entire distance between them. Emma scanned him up and down as he lowered his forehead to hers. "Two things." He started out breathless. "I would follow you wherever you went. You are not forcing me to do anything. And," he traced down her arms. "I was wrong before. Magic can't be vulgar and evil if it flows through your veins."
"So," Emma turned sideways and rested her chin on her raised shoulder. Her cuteness flirted with him. She swayed back and forth. "Will you come with me to Rumpelstiltskin's?"
"Actually." Graham pulled back. "There are three things."
"What?" She dropped her shoulders.
"Thing number three." Graham raised three fingers. "I hate that man," he said and pointed in the direction he thought Rumpelstiltskin's would be.
"Ah, well," Emma grabbed Graham's sleeve and dragged him out the door. The fall crisp chilled Emma but the harvest smell excited her. "You'll just have to get over that," she said and led him to the barn.
George was tacked immediately. Graham picked a horse from the few the castle guard had at their disposal. They set off through the woods until Emma led the way down an obscure path.
Their journey was silent. Graham didn't speak to Emma and she often wondered what he was thinking. When Rumpelstiltskin's castle was in sight, Graham noted Emma's speed. She didn't look back at him until their horses were tied in the fields below the dark castle.
Emma ran up the incline to Rumpelstiltskin's towering front doors. Not bothering to wait for Graham, she pounded her knocks.
Graham sped when he saw Rumpelstiltskin appear at the door. He tried his best to hear what their conversation.
"-Don't worry dearie, I saw your huntsman coming."
Emma spun to Graham before returning to her host. "You saw him-?"
"Of course, dearie. I used the device I plan to train you with."
"The device?"
Graham finally caught up with them. He looked between Emma and the imp until Rumpelstiltskin caught his eye. It was his twinkle in his eye that told Graham he could not be trusted.
"Oh, yes. The only way you can spy on anyone else – a couple or an army," Rumpelstiltskin raised his eyebrows. "Is through a magic mirror."
A/N: DUN-Dun-dun!
Enjoy the new episode of ONCE. This is season is so good!
