The Inn

The cheshire watched the crowd drift through the Black Forest, putting their faith in the Ice Princess. He licked his paw, and they followed a path Jesse seemed to know well. He followed, sometimes invisible, sometimes visible, hardly ever touching his feet to what was beneath the mist. Whenever he wasn't grooming himself, he allowed himself to think about Jefferson.

That Hatter had really driven himself mad just to see Grace again. He spent all his time making hats just to travel out of Wonderland, albeit at the behest of the Queen of Hearts. The cat had met the hatter during one of these long days spent hatmaking, and between the chanting of how each hat had to work, he had overheard Jefferson mumbling about his daughter.

The only thing the Hatter didn't know about the situation was what happened to Grace after she returned to Wonderland and was trapped. The cat had decided to watch her for a bit, out of curiosity, and he found that Grace had slipped out of Wonderland with the help of the Hatter's friend, one March Hare, and has since vanished, so far as Hare was concerned. But the cheshire, being ever curious, followed Hare's path out past the hinterlands of Wonderland and into the wood between it and the Black Forest. From there, it was a matter of following her scent and keeping out of the sight of the wood's many beasts and the Black Forest's even more numerous collection of creatures.

He had been among the first to notice what had become of the Enchanted Forest after the curse. The snow was still wet, and it fell thickly. The snowflakes sung a song of rejoicing, as if they had been liberated from the realms beyond the wood, but this wasn't so. The cat could tell that immediately. He continued into this new world, to find a city of ice being formed. Already this realm's new ruler had prisoners.

The group decided to camp, and the cheshire nearly struck a tree before the news registered in his brain and he flipped onto his feet and trotted over to the group's new clearing. The Robin Hood had fallen asleep relatively quickly, alongside Rumpelstiltskin and two women whom the cheshire hadn't bothered to learn the names of. He turned his gaze to Jefferson, who noticed after a moment and walked over to her. "Oh, good, you noticed," the cat said.

Jefferson squatted and eyed the cat. "What do you want?"

"I've tracked your daughter." Jeffereson's eyes widened, and the cheshire grinned. "I take it you're interested?"

OUAT

Jesse kept one eye on Tuck and the other on the cheshire, who at the moment seemed to be doing nothing but grooming himself and discussing something with a man from Storybrooke. Jefferson, she guessed, from the cat's first arrival. He was the first to engage the cat, so he must know the cat, she reasoned.

Tuck was fast asleep, so she could focus on what was keeping them. After all, they looked like they had very important business to discuss. But she couldn't hear what they were saying, and after a moment, she realized she had no potent desire to. She turned her gaze toward the sky instead. The sky in the Black Forest was always dreary, but a different dreary than the one over her old home. There, the sky was nothing but white, just like everything else there, but here, the sky was a nice dark grey, perfectly befitting the forest itself and not subject to send down a blizzard or sleet storm just because the queen is angry. Jesse smirked at her own strangeness. There was no ruler in the Black Forest but the dead ones and the doppelgangers, who were only rulers in name and attitude.

Maybe if she was lucky, they wouldn't meet the doppelgangers, but the forest had a mind of it's own, and she had no power to persuade it against its plans, if it had any in the first place. She guessed even the forest had no idea what it was doing. Tomorrow they could walk through a trod to Timbuktu without her even noticing until too late.

At least the only monster that attacked them thus far was a giant lamprey that she and Bae had managed to kill. But that wasn't going to stop them from being ambushed by anything and everything just as they reached an inn at the edge of the forest.

Jesse glanced first at Tuck, still asleep, and then at Jefferson and the cheshire cat, who had just concluded their business and were parting ways. The cat vanished, and Jefferson lay down, another face at camp.

Jesse pondered the group she and the Merry Men had fallen in with. Each one had a story from the Golden Age, be it happy, sad, or bittersweet; they were all taken away in one fell swoop. This was long before she was born, but somehow she wondered if she had been party to it, irrational as the thought was.

And even if I did play a role in it, Jesse thought, now, I'm gonna fix it.

OUAT

Deep into the next day's leg of the journey, Jesse stopped the group and said, "Bae, Morraine, Tuck, come ahead with me."

Once the little subgroup assembled around Jesse, Bae asked, "What is it?"

Jesse peered into the forest. "Pretty wide clearing. May be an inn there, too."

"Is that a good or bad sign?"

"Usually it's good, but not always."

"Oh, how fun," Tuck said.

The four crept through the forest into the snow-covered clearing, three with arrows nocked and the fourth with her knives out.

Something snapped a few twigs off at least one of the dead trees. All four tunred in the sound's direction, ready to launch an attack if anything stepped out of the forest. For a long moment, all around was silent. By degrees, the party relaxed slightly and continued through the clearing to the building at its edge. "Just like Sherwood," Bae whispered.

"Yeah, but smaller," Tuck replied. "Creepy."

"So I'm not the only one with bad vibes about this place," Jesse added.

"If by that you mean the strange feeling I have in my stomach, then you're not the only one," Morraine replied.

"Okay, so it's all of us."

On that note, the four proceeded slowly toward the building at the edge of the clearing, armed to the teeth. After several heavy moments, Jesse put one of the knives back into its hilt and reached over to knock on the door of the building. When she recieved no answer, she eased the door open and held her knife in front of her as she entered, followed closely by the other three.

The building amounted to something of a small Bed and Breakfast in which all the furnishings were covered in a heavy layer of dust, and dust drifted through the air such that it seemed thoroughly mixed with the stuff. "An inn," Jesse whispered. "What luck."

The door slammed shut behind them.

OUAT

All four turned in slow circles, tense, coiled, and ready to attack. "Hello," an elderly woman said as she appeared behind the desk. "Can I help you?"

"This is an inn, right?" Jesse asked, turning toward the woman.

"Of course. You'll be perfectly safe from all those nasties here."

"We're the scouting party of a group of travelers, a group I fear too large to fit here. Is the clearing equally safe."

"Absolutely."

Jesse took a step back and pulled the other knife out of its hilt. "Excuse us for being armed, but we fear we might still be-"

"Under attack?" The woman's sweet, high-pitched tone took on a much more sinister quality, if that was even possible to the ears of the four young people. Then she lowered her hood, revealing her to be Ruby's grandmother, from the Bed and Breakfast in Storybrooke, except the fact that her eyes were black as pitch. With a wicked smile for effect and a flick of her wrist, she pinned the kids to various dusty furnishings; their weapons clattered to the floor.

Oh, shit, Jesse thought.