A/N: 'Diagramless Challenge' is my own invention, based on Zynga's "Words with Friends" (a knockoff of Scrabble), though I've made a couple of tweaks to their parameters. New York flashback happens between S2E14 (Manhattan) and S2E15 (The Queen is Dead).
Chapter 30
"Well," Carstone said, handing Bae back his sketchbook. "Well."
Bae waited. "Uh… well?" he repeated.
"You say you've had no formal instruction at all?" the art instructor asked, peering down at Bae through a pair of rimless pince-nez spectacles.
Bae shifted a bit in position, but his voice was firm as he replied, "None, sir. I-I didn't even know that was an option. I've just always drawn is all."
Carstone sniffed. "It's really quite remarkable. Oh, don't mistake me, lad; while you seem to have mastered a few techniques admirably, this is still the work of a talented amateur. You're scarcely a candidate for the Slade." At Bae's blank look, he huffed a bit. "The Slade School of Fine Art, boy. You don't mean to say you've never heard of it?"
"I'm sorry," Bae said uncomfortably. "I didn't know that there was such a thing as a school just for art. If I had," he added a bit more quietly, "maybe I would have worked harder for the scholarship exam."
Carstone shook his head. "A scholarship for secondary school? No, the Slade is a level beyond that. Fortunately."
"Fortunately?" Bae repeated.
The art instructor smiled. "It gives you a few years to fill in the gaps. I called you a talented amateur a moment ago, and I meant it," he stated firmly. "You do have talent, lad. A great deal of it. But it's raw and uneven. If you're to be considered for acceptance at the Slade or another school like it," his voice took on an ominous note, "I fear you'll have a great deal of work ahead of you."
"I… How much would it cost?" Bae asked faintly.
Carstone frowned. "Well, if you're to take lessons jointly with my other students here," he said slowly, "I suppose we might do with…" He named a figure and it was Bae's turn to frown.
"I-I think I can manage that," he said, tacking on a 'Sir' belatedly. "At least, for now." He wasn't going to think about what would happen when Papa wouldn't be able to work anymore. Or how he could think to pay for art lessons now, when they might have to pay for medicines or special foods or who even knew what in short order. "And anything I learn from you will be more than I know now, won't it?"
Carstone sighed. "I trust I shan't be instructing a mere dabbler," he cautioned. "I wouldn't consent to this arrangement if I didn't think that there was a chance you could be more with a bit of tutelage."
"I'll do my best, sir," Bae assured him.
"Yes," Carstone said firmly. "For I'll accept nothing less. Right, then. Turn to a fresh sheet. While my other pupils," he added, gesturing to a bowl of fruit on the nursery table, "will continue with still life, I have a different exercise in mind for you." He held out his hand and Bae hesitated for a moment before handing over his sketchbook.
"Right," Carstone said, holding the book upside down. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and scratched it briefly on the page. "My signature," he said. "No, don't turn the thing right-side up. Draw what you see from this perspective. We need to break your preconceptions. Copy the design without thinking about what it represents. Just capture the loops and swirls, note where the lines are thicker or thinner. Don't see letters; focus on the design elements." He picked up a charcoal and handed it to Bae. "Proceed."
Bae accepted the narrow stick. Still not entirely certain what he was doing—with the charcoal or with this instructor—he frowned at the inverted signature and set about trying to replicate it.
Rumple still wasn't sure that he was doing the right thing, but he was doing something, which felt a great deal better than doing nothing. He'd done nothing in the Enchanted Forest and events had unfolded more or less as they were supposed to; the only difference, he thought, was that he'd been able to watch them from a slightly-more-detached perspective.
His future-sight was being decidedly silent and had been since… Well, since he'd been resurrected after defeating his father. He couldn't say which events were fated to transpire no matter what and which were merely likely to. He only knew that if Bae was doomed to go to Neverland, then this time, his son would be armed with the knowledge he should have had in the first place.
On the other hand, Rumple thought he might hold back with details of Emma and Henry. If it was meant to be, then it would be. And if Bae somehow managed to avoid Neverland, then Fate would simply have to make other arrangements.
As he waited for his boy to return from the Darling household, Rumple found his thoughts straying to Bae's questions the evening before. The lad had managed to pinpoint the most puzzling aspect of the whole business: how this realm without magic could possibly have knowledge—however distorted—of events that were going to transpire in another realm entirely. Why, he'd even discovered a copy of Pinocchio in the shop that he might yet return for after he received his next wages, and Gepetto's parents hadn't even been born yet, much less the toymaker himself!
Rumple had considered the problem before. During those first weeks, when Emma had arrived in Storybrooke and his true memories restored, he'd spent some time pondering those stories and wondering how they'd reached this realm. There were a number of possibilities, but none completely satisfied him.
First, Neverland was a place that was accessible to children across every realm in their dreams. And perhaps, some of those dreams could be shared. If young Snow White had, say, met Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm—or Andrew Lang, for that matter, and shared her story with him—well, first, she wouldn't know how her story ended while she was still in the middle of it, and second, it was a common thing for a person to awaken and remember some of what they'd dreamed, but not all. So, if the brothers Grimm had tried to write down their dreams in the morning, it was entirely possible that they would have used their own imaginations to fill in any gaps. But although people didn't age in Neverland, if time didn't pass there, then when Bae finally escaped, it would be to find himself returned to the precise moment when he'd left—something Rumple knew wouldn't be the case. So a meeting of two people separated by two realms and two hundred years was, well, perhaps not impossible, but decidedly improbable.
Second, while divination could be a form of magic, not all divination was magical in nature. The two talents were similar and there could be overlap, but it was also possible for one to be a seer and yet possess no magic. And Rumple knew first-hand just how murky and muddled a gift future-sight could be. If this realm's writers and compilers of 'fairy tales' (a misnomer if ever there was one; fairies certainly weren't present all of these tales. In fact, Rumple wouldn't have been surprised to learn that they were in the minority!) were learning the details through an unpolished talent for divination, it would explain the distortions.
Those were the theories he'd hypothesized while still in Storybrooke, before the First Curse had broken. But now, a new idea struck him.
When Zelena had disclosed her plan to him, he'd dismissed it at once.
Time travel spells have been written since the dawn of the dark arts, he'd informed her, but never cast. It's against the fundamental laws of magic.
He'd believed those words then, but time and a witch's determination had shown him that perhaps those fundamental laws weren't as restrictive as he'd thought. And perhaps, while no time travel spell had been cast successfully, those earlier attempts might have some effect after all. Zelena had wanted to visit the past. It wasn't impossible that some previous spell-caster had been trying to reach the future. And perhaps, while time travel hadn't been physically possible, something less tangible, like a story, had been able to cross over.
It did no good to tell himself that the reasons didn't matter. Perhaps they didn't but he still wanted to know them. Then again, he reminded himself, he was a villain. Getting what he wanted wasn't generally in the cards for him. One couldn't generally bargain with Fate, but he was still going to try. Let Bae be safe, he implored fervently. I'll be content to live out my remaining days with this curiosity unsatisfied, if you'll grant me this one thing.
It was a hard deal, but one he was more than willing to make. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing whether Fate had agreed to accept it.
Regina listened carefully, as Whale explained the situation, and though her composure barely faltered, one hand gripped the edge of her desk and didn't release it. Her voice was calm, though, when she replied, "Thank you for letting me know, Doctor. Of course you'll have my full support. Might I ask what prompted this realization?"
Whale steepled his hands, leaned back in the padded armchair, and took a breath. "Rumpelstiltskin," he said slowly.
"He alerted you?" Regina asked, concealing her surprise not nearly as well as she had her alarm at his first revelation.
"No," Whale corrected her. "Last night, at home, I was just thinking about how far this realm has come along scientifically in just a bit over a century. How in 1905, tuberculosis was a death sentence and today, it's a six-month course of antibiotics. And about how true that was of so many other illnesses; many we can treat, most we have vaccines for." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "And that was when it occurred to me that during the curse, the only person I ever vaccinated was your son Henry. Since its breaking, I've had occasion to do a number of the infants and the children who've started school this year. But the older children, the adults… I have the records in their files; I guess the curse included them, just like it did birth certificates, driver's licenses, and all the other documentation we'd be expected to have. However, regardless of what the files say, the only people in this town I've ever vaccinated have been your son and the other children I just mentioned. And if I never administered any other shots, and if they weren't done before the curse or by the curse—and Rumpelstiltskin confirmed for me that the curse wouldn't have done it—then…"
Regina nodded, a slight widening of her eyes the only indication that she'd grasped the enormity of the matter as she asked, still calmly, "How long do you imagine you'll need to rectify the problem?"
"Well," Whale said, "giving the inoculations is something anyone can be trained to do, and most of the hospital staff has been. I think we could probably do the town in about five days, if we have three clinics operating twelve hours a day—say, eight am to eight pm." He pressed his lips together firmly for a moment before continuing. "The thing is, it's not safe to give all the vaccines at once; the body needs time to adjust. I'd say it'll take two, maybe three rounds, spaced one to two weeks apart."
Something must have shown on the mayor's face, because he added, "If we could be guaranteed that this town would be sealed off from the rest of the world permanently, I wouldn't be as fussed. Unfortunately, I don't believe we can be. Even before the curse broke, Henry was able to leave here for Boston. Now, he was vaccinated, but the thing you need to realize is that vaccination doesn't always confer total immunity. It can and usually does. Still, it's possible that Henry could have been exposed to, say, chicken pox out there and, vaccination notwithstanding, returned home with a mild case of it. Now, that would have given him a miserable week, but afterwards, he would have been fine. However, once he'd been infected, vaccinated or not, Henry could have still passed the illness onto others he'd come in contact with, and that would have been another story." His expression was dead serious as he went on, "Had that happened, he could have inadvertently infected the entire town. But now that the curse has broken…"
Whale let his voice trail off meaningfully, waiting for Regina's nod. When he got it, he took another breath. "Actually, we're fortunate that Rumpelstiltskin 'only' came back with tuberculosis. It's serious, yes, but it's also relatively hard to spread and fairly easy to treat. If it had been smallpox," he said quietly, "vaccination is a preventative, but there's no treatment beyond bed-rest, time, and hope. And in about forty percent of cases," he continued, "those hopes aren't realized." He waited to let that sink in, too. "Also," he continued, "I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this place has had a number of visitors coming from other realms. So far, we've been fortunate that none of those… guests were carrying measles or diphtheria or…" He shook his head. "We just can't expect to be that lucky forever. I've got no doubt that you, Emma—and once he's fully recovered—Rumpelstiltskin will be able to recognize and handle most magical threats. As far as the medical ones, I want to move ahead with the vaccinations as soon as possible. As the old cliché has it, an ounce of prevention…"
"…is worth a pound of cure," Regina nodded. "I quite agree. There's a town council meeting scheduled for tomorrow night. I'll put you on the agenda. Draw up a detailed plan, including any budgetary requirements you might have. My endorsement should suffice for its approval."
Whale slapped a manila folder onto her desk with a tight smile. "One step ahead of you on this, madam mayor," he said.
"Excellent."
There was nobody in the room with him, but Rumple still felt ever-so-slightly self-conscious, as he logged onto Facebook for the first time. In the past, he'd eschewed such social media. He could see the advantages to advertising his business, but the town knew the shop's location and the merchandise in which he dealt. He'd never felt the need to create a page for it. And, while information was its own currency, he'd always felt that he had better things to do than scroll past cat videos, selfies, and quizzes purporting to disclose which fairytale character he was—as though there could be any doubt!
However, when he'd mentioned to Emma the games to which Henry had introduced him and, admittedly with some embarrassment, asked whether there were others she recommended, she'd directed him here. "Uh, you can 'friend' people, too," she'd added. "A lot of the games here, well, it's social media, so you sort of… reach out to your friends list and ask them to send you extra lives or…"
Rumple shook his head. That sort of thing had the potential to become a nuisance fairly quickly and there weren't many people in this town he'd call friend at the moment, anyway. In fact, he was speaking with one of the few on that very short list. "Do you play any?" he demanded.
"Uh… not regularly," Emma admitted. "And a lot of the ones I used to have shut down. Hey, but if you don't want to spam your friends list, I think there's one that's still out there."
Now, Rumple typed two words into the search bar at the top of the page. A faint smile came to his face, when the game icon came up. He clicked the bar to indicate that he did, in fact, wish to play 'now'. A pop-up appeared on his screen, asking whether he wished to invite an opponent or have the computer select one. He hesitated for a moment before making his choice. A new box immediately replaced the previous. Here too, he was faced with two choices:
Play as Rumpel Stiltskin
Create new user profile.
This time, he hesitated quite a bit longer, before making his choice. While he did believe he could rely on his grandson's discretion, it wouldn't do if other eyes were to see his name on Henry's screen! And that was assuming that Henry would even be interested in the game!
Well, Rumple reflected, if he was to play this game under an alias, then should Henry accept his invitation, it would only be because his grandson was interested in—or at least curious about—the game, and not out of some sense of obligation. Or worse, pity. He typed a new name into the text box. If this went well, he'd let Henry know fairly quickly. And if it didn't, then best to keep this venture a secret anyway.
At recess, Henry checked his email on his phone. He was half-hoping for a message from one of his mothers offering to drive him by the hospital after school.
Instead, there was a notification from a Facebook game he'd heard of but not yet played.
Gilbert Trout has invited you to play Diagramless Challenge.
Henry frowned. From what he'd heard, the game was basically a Scrabble knockoff. He was good at creating words, but not great at finding the best place to put them. Still, he didn't get invitations that often. He wondered how he'd got this one; he didn't know any 'Gilbert Trout'. At least, he didn't believe he did. Come to think of it, the name was familiar, but he couldn't think from where. There was, pardon the pun, something fishy about this. He shook his head. Maybe it was one of those things where, when you asked the computer for a random opponent, it sent an invite to a Facebook user who wasn't yet playing. Maybe it was some kid from his school in New York, but a grade above or below, or someone in his old apartment building, so he'd heard the name but couldn't put a face to it. It would come to him.
He still had almost ten minutes before the bell would send him back to class. He hesitated just a moment before pressing his fingertip to the 'Accept' button.
If the game turned out to be a dud, he could always delete it.
It was only a bit past nine when Bae came home; it might have been sooner, but he'd walked the distance from the Darling's house. Papa was sleeping, but he'd left the oil lamp burning, so Bae could see his way around the room.
The youth shook his head. He'd wanted to discuss the art lesson and, more to the point, the Slade School. He hadn't really cared about not scoring high enough on the scholarship examination, but Papa had been disappointed. Truth be told, Bae hadn't wanted to spend hours poring over schoolbooks and papers every day and, though he'd put forth his best effort on the exam, he'd been more than a little relieved to know that he'd been in no danger of having to abandon his job at the bank. The idea of a school for drawing—painting and sculpture, too, Mr. Carstone had told him, but drawing!—for adults to attend was something that had never crossed his mind. Back home, he'd always drawn when he had a stick and some soft earth, or a bit of charcoal and something to rub it on, but he'd never heard of schools for it or thought about how really good artists—the kind nobles paid to paint their likenesses—learned their craft. If pressed, he supposed he might have guessed that there was a guild for such things, and that one apprenticed to a master painter or draughtsman. There had been no such guild in Pen Marmor, but one might have assumed that a larger town like Longbourne might have boasted one. Bae had heard that in Longbourne, spinners, weavers, dyers, and fullers each had their own guild—in its own building—instead of being lumped together into 'wool-workers', as they had been in the village. Perhaps there would have also been guilds for artists, musicians, astronomers, and other professions that weren't often found in small, impoverished, border hamlets.
And now, here was opportunity falling into his lap! Nothing was free, of course. Whether back in Pen Marmor or here, everything had its price. But the cost of lessons, at least at the rate Mr. Carstone had specified, was actually workable. It would mean putting off another trip to Spitalfields for a new suit and hoping the shabbiness of his current one wouldn't invite comments at the bank. It helped that the post room wasn't a place where one had to face the public, though he had a feeling that Mr. Lorry would still take him to task for threadbare elbows and patched knees! Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that for a bit. His suit might be old, but it was good cloth and well-made. Bae imagined he could probably get another year or so's use out of it before it needed replacing. At least, unless he kept growing. He checked the inner sleeve of his jacket, noting that there was, perhaps, another inch-to-inch-and-a-half of hem that might be let down. He imagined that the trousers were much the same. His wrists already stuck about two inches out of his shirtsleeves, but the jacket hid that much, thankfully.
Well, he would make do.
Walking by the table, he spied a note on the two stacked volumes.
Bae,
If you aren't too tired when you come in, read "Snowdrop" in The Red Fairy Book. We'll talk about that one next.
Bae rubbed at his eyes. He knew he really ought to do as Papa was asking, but he was tired. And he didn't want to oversleep, not when he was walking to work in the morning. And if he meant to save up enough for Mr. Carstone's instruction, then he was definitely walking to work in the morning.
He quickly changed into his nightshirt, left his suit folded neatly on the chair, and turned out the gas lamp before getting into bed.
New York, over a year ago
Henry was dimly aware that Emma and Mr. Gold were trailing behind, but he ignored them. He was still trying to wrap his head around everything. Mr. Gold—Rumpelstiltskin—was his grandfather. Baelfire was his dad. His mother had lied to him, been lying to him practically since he'd found her. Yes, about his father, but was that the only thing, or just the only thing he'd caught her at? It hadn't been the only thing he'd caught her at it, he realized. Right before he'd bitten into that turnover, she'd let on that she'd just been playing along with Operation Cobra and didn't really believe anything he'd been telling her all this time. So, twice that he knew about and both times, about really important stuff. No, he didn't really want to talk to Emma right now.
Instead, he smiled up at the man he'd just met a couple of hours ago, the man who'd been just as floored as Henry had been to find out that they were connected, but was trying, however awkwardly, to get to know him. Baelfire—no, Neal, he'd insisted his name was Neal now—had asked him a few halting questions, what grade he was in at school, what his favorite subject was, whether he'd seen any movies recently, that kind of thing, but so far, none of the important stuff. But Henry had a few questions of his own. And maybe they could wait, but he didn't want to.
"So," he began, "was it scary? Coming here all by yourself, I mean?"
Neal smiled down at him. "I didn't," he said. "Papa came with me."
Wait… what? "Huh?" Henry gaped at him. "No, he created the curse to find you."
"I know," Neal said. "Because he hasn't come with me, yet."
"I…" Henry frowned. "I don't understand."
Neal sighed. "I know that the last thing you probably want to hear right now is that it's complicated," he said, "but it is. All I know is that at some point, he's going to make it back home to try to fix some of what went wrong. I don't know how well it works, but he always told me the one thing he did manage to get right the second time was going through the portal with me."
Henry tilted his head to one side. "Wait. Do you mean that there's another Mr. Gold o-or Rumpelstiltskin here? Where is he? You've just got a one-bedroom apartment; does he live close by?"
"Not here," Neal said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. Seeing how far behind the other two were, he relaxed. "The bean brought us to London in 1905. We lived there for a couple of years. And then, well," he hesitated. "You know, you should really make up with your mother. If I'm right, she was trying to protect you, not hurt you."
"By lying?"
"More like by keeping the truth to herself, for just a little bit longer than she should have. Then you found out about it at the wrong time," he paused for a moment and added under his breath, "Not that there was ever going to be a right one."
Henry frowned. "I don't want to talk about that right now," he said flatly. "What happened in London?"
Neal looked like he was debating whether to keep pushing, and Henry was relieved when he decided instead to let the matter drop. "Well," he said, "we found jobs. I was a messenger in a bank; this was way before email and I think there was only one telephone in the building—it wasn't like today, where every office has an extension. So my job was to run messages between different departments and sometimes different people in the same department, if their desks were at opposite ends of the room. I got promoted to the post room after a year. And Papa copied out documents."
Henry raised an eyebrow. "Y-you mean," he looked back at his grandfather briefly, then jerked his head back before he could make eye contact with either of the adults trailing them, "he made photocopies?"
"No," Neal said, grinning. "There were no photocopy machines back then, at least none I ever saw. If you needed something copied, you had someone sit down and write the whole thing out by hand."
Henry's mouth dropped open. "B-but what if you needed fifty copies? You mean, someone had to write it out fifty times?"
Neal's grin widened. "I mean, there were printing presses for books and newspapers. And typewriters were starting to catch on; they'd been around for a while before that, I think the first one was patented in the 1880s or 1860s or something, but that didn't mean that every business had one. Papa knew it was just a matter of time though," he added. "So, he took a night class to learn how to type so he'd be ready when the bank upgraded."
Now he had even more to wrap his head around. "Was that when you started using Neal, instead of Baelfire?" he asked shrewdly. To his surprise, his father shook his head.
Henry's mouth dropped open. "B-but what if you needed fifty copies? You mean, someone had to write it out fifty times?"
Neal's grin widened. "I mean, there were printing presses for books and newspapers. And typewriters were starting to catch on; they'd been around for a while before that, I think the first one was patented in the 1880s or 1860s or something, but that didn't mean that every business had one. Papa knew it was just a matter of time though," he added. "So, he took a night class to learn how to type so he'd be ready when the bank upgraded."
Now he had even more to wrap his head around. "Was that when you started using Neal, instead of Baelfire?" he asked shrewdly. To his surprise, his father shook his head.
"No, I added Cassidy to it; back in the Enchanted Forest, we didn't have last names; you'd give the name of your father—or mother if she was widowed—when you had to. I was Baelfire Rumpelstiltskin's," he added, his voice softening a little at the memory. Then he told Henry how he'd gotten the job and how he'd hit on a surname from a newspaper headline on his interviewer's desk.
"It was different with Papa," Neal continued. "He already knew he'd have a hard time with his first name, so he picked another one. He'd been using 'Gilitrutt' in the Enchanted Forest, and since I'd already told them at the bank my last name was 'Cassidy', he used that one too, and called himself…"
Rumpelstiltskin smiled, as he set down his next word. His concentration was a bit off, but while his grandson was a competent player, his skill was still developing. Right now, Rumple judged, they were fairly equally matched.
Perhaps, in a week or so, he'd reveal himself to Henry, but for now, he rather enjoyed the anon—
A chat box opened up on the right-hand side of the screen next to the game board. And Rumple's jaw dropped, when he read the one-word message.
Grandpa?!