Prologue

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again."

— C.S. Lewis

You think you've heard this story before, I'm sure - once upon a time, Kings and Queens, magic and fate, tales as old as time itself. You may even know that it involves a fairy godmother, maybe a talking animal or two, and a kiss as we fade to black with the promise of Happily Ever After.

The story you are about to hear is nothing like those tales you hold so dear. In this story, there is no such guarantee.

You see, Regina Mills, the magical little girl, did not develop the ability to talk to animals, or heal, or have impractically long hair. Her gift wasn't given to her by a fairy godmother or a wizard in disguise. It just was - a fact of her existence that she could no more change than she could turn back time.

And the facts were these: Regina had the ability to reverse death.

One touch, and she could bring back anyone, or anything that had died: rotten fruit regained their color and plumpness in her hand, the deceased sat up and talked after one touch from her finger.

Young Regina was ten years, six months, two days, and nineteen hours old when she first discovered her gift. Her beloved pet cat, Dinah, was found dead in the back garden one frosty January morning, the apparent victim of a badly-judged leap from tree to roof.

Being a practical child, and knowing that her mother would want as little to do with Dinah in death as she did in life, Regina set about taking care of the problem herself.

Regina was small for her age, and fetching the shovel from the gardener's toolshed and carving a large enough grave from the frozen earth took longer than she expected. Her hands kept slipping on the too-large handle, and her shaking arms could only break the soil in slow, agonizing chips. By the time she was ready to put Dinah in her final resting place, her face was sticky with dried tears, and her hands were red and aching from the cold. Her stiff fingers slipped on the bundling cloth as she shifted Dinah in her arms, and her hand brushed against fur as she fumbled to catch her again.

A shock went through her as she felt the form in her arms suddenly shift as Dinah picked her head up and leapt free from the cloth.

Shaking with cold and confusion, young Regina could only stare as Dinah purred up at her, showing no signs of being as cold and still as she had been in Regina's arms just a moment before. Dinah twined once, twice around Regina's pants-clad legs before disappearing up the tree again, brush with death evidently forgotten.

Neither she nor Regina noticed the bluebird fall, untouched, from the branches and onto the frozen ground below. For, you see, there was a price for young Regina's gift, as there are for all forms of magic.

Regina, as it would come to pass, learned them in the most unfortunate way.

The first she would learn that evening, after her mother came home to find Regina covered in dirt and staring blankly out at the now-purposeless hole she had dug in the garden. Muttering under her breath about disobedient children, and ignoring all of Regina's protestations otherwise, she had scrubbed and scrubbed at Regina's filthy hands under water that was much too hot, and sent her to bed without dinner.

Dinah, sensing as she always did when Regina was sad, leapt up into the bed with her, padding softly up the covers until she could curl up on Regina's chest. The soothing heat of her body warmed Regina even through the comforter between them. Stretching out, Dinah rubbed her forehead across the fabric of Regina's pajamas, kneading her paws insistently on the comforter. Regina reached up to scratch along the side of Dinah's chin where she liked it best, a smile threatening to crack through her sour mood.

But the moment Regina's hand touched fur, Dinah suddenly went as stiff and cold again as she had been that afternoon, falling back against Regina's chest, unmoving.

Regina sat up, horrified, and reached out a tentative hand to brush against Dinah's fur, but nothing happened. No spark, no sudden rush of warmth and life. She tried again, petting down Dinah's back and up her tail, sobs that she had held in all day rushing out of her in choking gasps as she frantically tried to will Dinah back to life again, tears dampening her cold fur as she held her close.

Her mother would find her there, that night, smooth her hair off her head with a touch gentler than Regina could ever remember, and whisper these fateful words: "Oh my dear," her voice weaving a spell over Regina as she lay there in the dark, "I have so much to teach you."

But of course, young Regina had already learned one of the most important rules about her powers - touch a dead thing once, life, but touch it twice, and it's dead again. Forever.

She would learn many more things over the years, about power and magic and restraint, and, most importantly, how to please and appease her mother.

But the second rule of her powers she would not learn until it was much, much too late.

However, that is a story for another day, because right now it is twenty eight years, two months, twelve days, and eighteen hours after that fateful night, and Regina Mills, the magical girl, has become Regina Mills, the baker, who is also Regina Mills, the mother of ten-year-old Henry Mills.

Henry was a boy who was not born into Regina's life, but chosen. Adopted to help soothe the aches of a life lived in isolation, he soon became the center of her world. And for ten years, that was enough. Life was warm kitchens and bedtime stories and flour dusting the tip of his nose.

But, as always, what is good cannot always last, and young Henry discovered something that was supposed to remain hidden. He learned too much, and understood too little.

This is where our story begins.