25
Mischief and Merrymaking
The little girl looked up at her uncle with an impish smirk, her face and hands covered in flour, and repeated, "I's made it snow, Unca Rumple!"
"Snow? You've made a . . . a disaster out of my kitchen!" he groaned. "What on earth are you doing playing with flour, you little imp?" He shook a finger at her. "You know perfectly well you're not supposed to do that."
Regina looked slightly uneasy now . . . for she did know she wasn't supposed to make a mess . . . but it had been fun to throw the "snow" around the kitchen and walk through it. "But Unca Rumple . . . I's made a snow angel," she pointed to a rather lopsided "angel" she had made by lying in the flour on the floor before the sink.
Rumple heaved a long suffering sigh. This was rather like the time Alina had "painted" her room with magic markers trying to make pictures because she was a "famous" artist when she was three. Luckily, the magic markers had been washable and he'd gotten them off with a solution of vinegar, water, and dish detergent.
He gazed in dismay at the kitchen again, then said, "Young lady, the snow is outside, and now you've made a very big mess all over the kitchen." He put his hands on his hips and shook his head in disappointment. "Is that how a good little girl behaves?"
Regina gulped, wondering if she was now in serious trouble. "I sorry," she said, hoping to avert any sort of punishment.
"For what?"
"Umm . . . for making a big mess," she gave him one of her best puppydog looks.
"Good, but all actions come with a price, young lady," he said. He snapped his fingers and a large bucket of soapy water appeared by his feet, as well as two mops, one large one, and one sized for a toddler. "And now you're going to help me clean this up, Regina. And after that you'll have five minutes in time out to think about what you did and then I'll give you a bath." He also recalled that he needed to bring the enchanted rocks back to his sister and the rest of the family. So he did that first, sending the sack to her with a note explaining why he hadn't returned.
Then he went to hand Regina the small mop so she could help him clean. Naturally, he didn't expect her to be much help in that department, but she could at least make an effort, and learn the consequences of her actions.
The toddler pouted. "Aww, Unca Rumple!"
"Don't you Uncle Rumple me," he frowned at her. "You made this mess, now you're going to help me clean it. Take it."
She glared at him sulkily, her lower lip sticking out. "I don't wanna."
"I'm not asking if you want to, I'm telling you to. Now take this and start cleaning, imp." He thrust the mop at her.
Regina shook her head. "No!"
"Regina Nolan, shall I count to three?" he gave her one of his patented Looks.
"No!" she cried, moving a floury hand back to cover her bottom. "No countin'!" She sniffled, her lower lip sticking out even further. Then she took the mop and swished it around the floor.
"Hold it, dearie. The mop won't do anything unless you wet it first," he said. He gently took the mop back, dunked it in the cleaning solution, and wrung it out. Then he handed it back to her.
Regina took it and began swishing it around, muttering, "This is no fun!"
"Next time don't make a mess and you won't have to clean it up," he pointed out, and went and started washing his own section of the floor.
In about fifteen minutes the kitchen floor was clean. Then Rumple used magic to clean the counters, as flour was the devil to get out of fine wood grain cabinets. He banished the mops and bucket, waved a hand at his flour-coated niece, and cleaned her clothes, so she wouldn't get flour on the floor. Then he said, "Corner, Regina. Five minutes."
The toddler burst into noisy sobs. "No-o-o!"
Not minded to put up with her defiance, Rumple just Looked at her. "Now, young lady."
Regina pouted, cried, and stamped her feet. She detested time out, even though she knew she had been naughty and deserved it.
"No! No time out!" she bawled.
"One."
Abruptly the toddler shook her head and still sobbing, ran to the corner and stood there. "You is mean, Unca Rumple!" she wailed. "I don't like you no more."
"Okay, dearie. But you still have four minutes," he answered, familiar with that tactic.
She sulked and whined and kicked the floor, prompting him to say, "Stand still, or else I add another minute. This is what happens to naughty little girls who play with flour and mess up my kitchen."
She began to howl loudly, hoping to get him to take pity on her.
Rumple winced and fought to keep from covering his ears.
Suddenly, he heard Belle's voice. "Regina? Where are you?"
She waddled into the kitchen, wincing. "Rumple! You're home! When did you get back? And why is Regina screaming?"
"About twenty minutes ago," he replied. "And she's yelling like she's being tortured because she doesn't want to be in time out."
"Why is she there?"
"Because she totally wrecked the kitchen playing with flour," he replied, explaining what he'd come home to and what he had made her do to fix it.
"Oh, Rumple!" Belle groaned. "It's partly my fault. I . . . I fell asleep by mistake . . . and I thought she was going to also . . . and instead she got into mischief."
"Even so, dearie, she needs to learn that she can't make a mess like that," Rumple said over the child's howls. He could have reprimanded her for making such a fuss, but he chose to ignore her instead. Sometimes doing that was enough to make the little drama queen stop acting up.
Belle sighed regretfully, knowing he was right, yet she hated hearing the little imp cry. "Rumple . . . maybe you should . . ." she began.
He shook his head. "She has to learn, Belle. Five minutes isn't long . . . it just seems that way because she's fussing about it."
After about two minutes, Regina realized that wasn't working, and stopped wailing quite so loud. Having heard Belle, she directed her attention to her, sobbing, "Auntie Belle! Unca Rumple's being mean!"
"No, Uncle Rumple's trying to teach you to behave," Belle remonstrated.
Seeing that she wasn't getting sympathy from Belle, Regina started pouting and sniveling. But she was starting to realize that wasn't going to lessen her punishment any, and finally stopped and just stood there.
At last Rumple let her out, and she turned and ran to Belle and hid her face in the pregnant woman's skirts. "I sorry!" she wept stormily.
"I know," Belle said. "And so am I for falling asleep like that." She stroked her niece's hair until the child stopped crying, then said, "You look like you could use a bath."
"I was going to do that next," Rumple said. "Regina, would you like a bubble bath?"
"Uh huh. Can I play with Ariel an' the other mermaids?" she hiccupped.
"Of course, dearie. Now let's go."
Regina released Belle and took Rumple's hand, leading him towards the stairs, now chattering to him about how Ariel needed to rescue Eric from Ursula, the evil sea witch, that had eight arms like an octopus.
Belle smiled at how the child didn't seem to hold any grudges towards Rumple, and watched as the two climbed the stairs, with Regina hopping up and tugging Rumple after her. She gazed fondly at the pair, and thought about how good her husband was with children, and hoped she would be as well.
Page~*~*~*~*~Break
Regina was squeaky clean and in her new pajamas by the time Rhea and the others returned from their missions of mercy. She was sitting in the den watching Frosty Returns with Belle, Rumple, and Henry and Alina.
Once everyone had gotten out of their coats and cold weather gear, everyone helped themselves to Belle's beef stew and biscuits, plus some blueberry cobbler courtesy of Granny, then most everyone took a nap, including Jimmy, who Emma put back in the guest room, though she didn't put the cuffs back on him, figuring he was too tired to try anything.
After supper, Regina went upstairs to play with her dolls in her room, while Alina and Henry tried to find something else to do, because mostly everyone was sleeping. The two young apprentice mages had already taken a nap while watching a movie before, and so weren't tired.
Alina went and dug through the game closet in her room, and found something totally unexpected inside it. "Look, Henry!" she cried. "Remember this?" She pulled out a blue fabric stage with a working red curtain and several fabric backdrops, as well as a plastic bag full of various kinds of puppets. "It's my old puppet theater!"
"Hey, I remember this! We used to play with it all the time when we were little with Grandpa," Henry grinned.
Alina dug through the bag and held up a princess puppet, dressed in a blue and pink gown with real blonde hair and a crown. "Look! It's Princess Priscilla!"
"The persnickety princess from Purple Heart Mountain!" Henry finished. "Where's Dex the Dragon?"
"Right here," Alina pulled a red dragon puppet with golden wings from the bag. "Dex the Dreadful . . . who was called that because he was dreadful at being mean . . . and was Priscilla's friend." She went and found other puppets. "Jock the Westie," she said, finding a white terrier, another friend. "Sir Stammer-A-Lot, the knight who couldn't say a whole sentence without tripping over his words." There was a knight in shining cloth armor with a sword. "His trusty steed, Mr. Quicksilver," Alina recalled, taking out a white and silver-maned horse puppet.
"Where's Brunhilda the Bad Witch?" asked Henry, recalling the villain of the piece.
"Here," and Alina took out the witch who was an ugly scary old woman with a black hat and dress with a broom. "And here's her wicked helper, Fang the Gargoyle." She found the gargoyle next, with a scowling face.
There were other puppets as well, Pete Pegleg the pirate, and his cat Krusty, King Michael and Queen Layla, the princess' parents, and Silva the wood sprite.
The two smiled as they recalled playing with the puppet show for hours . . . and also being entertained by Rumple, who used it to make fantastic make-believe scenarios and skits.
"Let's show Regina!" Alina said, and gathered up all the puppets and put them in the bag.
Henry took the stage and then they went to find the little girl.
Ten minutes later, the three trooped downstairs and Alina called, "Papa! Look what we found in the closet!"
Rumple was paging through a magazine, bored. He looked up and saw the three kids holding a familiar object. "Good heavens! We still have the puppet show?"
"Unca Rumple! Can you tell me the story of Princess Priscilla an' Dex an' everyone?" asked Regina.
"Yeah, Grandpa!" urged Henry. "I remember a little bit about it."
"I remember a lot of it," Alina said softly. "Do you, Papa?"
"I do, dearie. After all, I invented a lot of it," he said.
"Can you tell me the story, Unca Rumple?" Regina asked, bouncing up and down on her toes. "I promise to be good an' not talk or nothin'." She gave him a winsome look from her dark eyes.
"Okay, dearie. You twisted my arm," her uncle laughed. "Besides, I'm bored and maybe it'd be a good idea to resurrect Priscilla, Dex, Brunhilda, and all the rest of them."
"Where shall we put the stage, Papa?" asked Alina.
"Right where we've always put it," Henry reminded her. "On the dining room table." He went to place the stage there, and Alina carried the puppets inside, setting them out behind the stage.
Rumple followed them, and took his place behind the stage, sitting on a chair and using some discreet magic to "hide" himself and then he said, in a rather loud voice, "Come one, come all, to Gold's Magical Puppet Show, and hear tales of princesses and pirates, knights and dragons, evil witches and gargoyles!"
Regina squealed and clapped her hands, sitting before the stage along with Alina and Henry.
Rumple tugged on a string and the backdrop of a castle fell into view and he pulled the cord and the red curtain went up, and Princess Priscilla came onto the stage.
"Once upon a time, in a far away land, lived a princess named Priscilla. She was called the persnickety princess because she was always fussing about something-her dresses, her hair, everything had to be just so . . . or else Priscilla was unhappy . . ." Rumple began. "And when Priscilla was unhappy, the whole castle knew it." He narrated. "Mommy, my dress is wrinkled!" he made his voice high and whiny, like a little girl's. "My soup is cold! My tiara is crooked!"
Then he had Queen Layla come out on the stage, and try and reason with her fussy daughter . . . and the king also. Rumple told the tale of the dissatisfied princess meeting Dex the Dragon, and finding out that making a new friend was better than fussing over silly things like tiaras and dresses.
Regina watched, spellbound, as Rumple brought each puppet to life, using different voices for each one, and different personalities. Dex and Priscilla went on many adventures, meeting Sir Stammer-A-Lot, Knight of the Twisty Tongue, and Mr. Quicksilver, and fought against the dastardly Brunhilda, who wanted to take over the kingdom of Purple Heart Mountain.
But each time Brunhilda and her gargoyle were thwarted, because . . .
"Villains don't get happy endings and true love always wins in the end!" the two older children chorused, repeating the familiar lines of the show.
"Yay!" Regina cried when the knight knocked the gargoyle off his perch on the castle wall and into the moat. "Get that nasty bad guy!"
Rumple made Dex roar and breathe fake fire, and Brunhilda "fly" on her broomstick, cackling as she threw curses down on Priscilla and her dragon, who incidentally was her true love, turned into a beast.
"That would have been the end of our brave heroes, but then a new person came on the scene," Rumple said, and brought out Pete and Krusty.
"Har har, matey!" Peter crowed. "Let's see how well Her Wickedness flies with a net about her!"
And Pete threw a net around Brunhilda and dragged her from the sky, and Krusty rubbed up against her, since Priscilla had noted she seemed to sneeze around animals, like horses and dogs.
"Because that wicked witch had a weakness . . . she was allergic to animal fur . . . and that's how Krusty and Jock saved the kingdom . . . because Brunhilda sneezed herself right into the next one," Rumple concluded.
"And then everybody sang, "Bye bye, Brunhilda!" warbled Alina to the tune of Bye Bye Blackbird.
"Hooray!" Regina cheered, clapping. "Unca Rumple, that was so cool!"
Rumple appeared from behind the stage. "Thank you, dearie. I'd forgotten how much fun that was."
"Now let's sing Cwistmas carols!" Regina said, and started singing "Frosty the Snowman".
The other two children joined her, as did Rumple, before Regina said, "Unca Rumple, play you guitar!"
Rumple shook his head and muttered, "What is this Rumple's Variety Show?" But he summoned his Martin to him and carefully tuned it. "Okay, dearies. Let's play Name That Christmas Carol." Then he began to play lines of carols and sing snatches of them as well.
Regina, Henry, and Alina all had a blast trying to name them, and yelling out answers and singing along with Rumple, who would play the carol if it were named correctly, and laughing at each other if they made mistakes.
"Henry, it's chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, not Jack Frost snipping at your nose," Alina corrected, giggling.
"I like snipping better," her nephew argued. "Cause it feels like that when your nose freezes."
They all cracked up when Regina sang about "Bringing some freakin' pudding, now bring it right here!" as they sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
Their merriment brought someone else downstairs, as Emma had forgotten to lock the door to the guest room, and Jimmy lingered in the foyer, listening to the three younger Gold children and Rumple with something akin to envy and something similar to nostalgia.
He knew several songs about the Yuletide season, though most were bawdy sailor's chants and not fit for children's ears.
He was shocked that the sorcerer could also sing and play an instrument like a minstrel, and found himself humming and tapping a foot on the floor in spite of himself.
In their rambling house on the island, Jimmy could recall the most recent Yule celebrations had been ones where the crew of the Jolly Roger, including his parents, got roaring drunk and some pirates chased the housemaids and servants through the hallways and fields, his father gave the crew gold coins from his treasure hoard and his mother's servants cooked a feast where everyone ate till they threw up.
When he was a child, he'd been allowed to stay up until nine, eat some marchpane and drink syllabub, then go to bed while his parents had a party downstairs.
He could never recall doing what these Golds did, and helping out those less fortunate, or his parents interacting the way Rumple did with him as a child, especially not one as young as Regina. When he was older, Hook taught him how to sail and wield a sword, but for most of his early years, he was left to the care of nursemaids and tutors while Killian sailed off looking for treasure and adventure on the high seas and Milah brooded and concocted potions to try and heal her ravaged face and cursed Rumplestiltskin.
He watched Rumple strumming his guitar and listened to the children singing along and tried to equate this picture of merriment and harmony with the one Milah had always painted of the accursed Dark One in his gloomy castle, plotting to kill the Jones and destroy them, of the beast who hated children and skinned them and ate them.
Unknown to them, Jimmy had listened to a bit of the puppet show as well, standing in the middle of the stairs, and he was slowly beginning to have doubts about what he had been told was true, as it was obvious that Rumple did not detest children, in fact he was more patient with Regina than Milah had ever been with her son.
Hook had described Rumple as a "crocodile with golden skin and no heart" and Milah as a "cowardly milksop". But now Jimmy began to wonder—were they right, or were their perceptions skewed by bitterness and vengeance? What should he believe, what he'd always been told, or the evidence of his own eyes?
Confused, the pirate crept back upstairs and returned to the guest room, pondering these strange new feelings about the Gold sorcerer and his family, who had suddenly become more than monsters and enemies, much as he tried to deny it.
A/N: Who thought the puppet show was cool? I could see Bobby Carlyle doing one for some kids, couldn't you?
Rumple's Recipe Corner:
Granny's Blueberry Cobbler
2 1/2 cupsfresh or frozen blueberries
1 teaspoonvanilla extract
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 cup white sugar, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons white sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons sugar
1 pinch ground cinnamon
Directions
Lightly grease an 8 inch square baking dish. Place the blueberries into the baking dish, and mix with vanilla and lemon juice. Sprinkle with 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of flour, then stir in the tablespoon of melted butter. Set aside. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 3/4 cups of flour, baking powder, and 6 tablespoons sugar. Rub in the 5 tablespoons butter using your fingers, or cut in with a pastry blender until it is in small pieces. Make a well in the center, and quickly stir in the milk. Mix just until moistened. You should have a very thick batter, or very wet dough. You may need to add a splash more milk. Cover, and let batter rest for 10 min. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Spoon the batter over the blueberries, leaving only a few small holes for the berries to peek through. Mix together the cinnamon and 2 teaspoons sugar; sprinkle over the top. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the top is golden brown. A knife inserted into the topping should come out clean - of course there will be blueberry syrup on the knife. Let cool until just warm before serving. This can store in the refrigerator for 2 days.