Chapter six
"The Author of what?" Henry asked.
Isaac smiled at the confused Truest Believer, mostly because there was excitement in his eyes in spite of his reticence.
"I am the Author of everything," Isaac replied and spread his arms out for effect, "I observe and write."
Henry grinned.
Author of everything was a job?!
He tempered his excitement though when he realised that he had absolutely no evidence beyond the rows of books.
"Is that how you knew my name?" Henry asked trying his hardest to sound sceptical.
"You are my only reader and instrumental to the most interesting story I have written in a long time, of course, I know your name," the man replied as if it should be obvious.
Henry's mind buzzed with a million questions and all thoughts of running away disappeared.
He was just too intrigued about the whole Author thing.
Isaac smiled as Henry pitched back and forth on the balls of his feet. This was exactly what he was hoping for, now he just needed to make sure that he shared his opinions as planned.
Henry apparently finally chose a question from his long mental list as he asked, "so, you just watch and write?"
"Yes," Isaac replied, "unfortunately I am unable to rewrite a story that has already been written with my quill."
"Already been written?" Henry repeated.
"Some stories were written longer ago than you could imagine. The story of Snow White and the Evil Queen for example," Isaac explained and watched Henry involuntarily react to the mention to the latter of the two. Was that proof that he cared?
But Henry shrugged and asked, "why would you need to change that story?"
"Because, according to my predecessor, the Evil Queen sought revenge against Snow White because she was prettier than her. You can't possibly believe that is the truth based upon what you know about Regina Mills?"
Henry shrugged again, though he did look at his feet. She definitely took pride in her appearance but she never seemed particularly jealous of his grandmother.
When the boy didn't say anything, Isaac continued, "it would make for an especially boring story considering how interesting of a character she is. This whole 'they lived happily ever after' business is just ridiculous. What does that really tell you about how the story ended?"
Henry looked up at the passion in the man's voice to find that his facial expression matched it.
"You can't just change the story," Henry argued, though he couldn't think of anything to say to counter the man's words.
Isaac sighed deeply. He looked genuinely upset or was it disappointment?
"Well, the story has already ended, right Henry? The Evil Queen is dead and now you can live happily ever after, right?" Isaac replied, managing not to sneer at the young boy. Even if he was perhaps the most stubborn person he had ever met the fact remained that he had recently lost his mother. If his plan went well, it would probably hit him soon. Henry processing his mother's death would be instrumental to him fixing the mistakes of his former master, so he just added, "what would be the harm in changing things now?"
Henry had officially lost track of the conversation.
Why did the Author care so much about Regina?
Plus, death kind of ruled out a happy ending so why was he arguing so passionately about Regina's?
"I'm disappointed, Henry," Isaac announced and reached down to pick up the leather-bound tome he had been reading when Henry walked in, "I had hoped that you would be the perfect apprentice."
Henry's eyes widened and looked to be physically vibrating as he asked, "you wanted me to be your apprentice?"
"I wanted the young man who believed so fiercely that the curse would break that he tracked down his birth mother and then succeeded in convincing her to become the saviour," Isaac replied.
"But…I am the one who did that," Henry shot back adamantly.
Isaac quirked an eyebrow before he stepped forward to hand the book he had been clutching so tightly.
Henry accepted the tome with no hesitation but furrowed his brow when he looked down to see that the cover was blank except for the gold trim, other than that, it could pass for his storybook.
"What is this?" he asked, but there was no reply. Probably because when he looked up he found that there was no one there.
He would have called out Isaac's name if he didn't hear a door slamming behind him.
This was followed by some indistinct mumbling from the other room. He was pretty sure that he knew who would be talking to themselves. Especially as of late.
His suspicions were confirmed when Emma called out, "Henry?"
He sighed but waited the couple seconds that it took the woman to cross into the next room and Emma visibly relaxed when she saw her son.
"Told you," Regina announced rather childishly and even if Emma now knew that she shouldn't have questioned the efficacy of a floating jumper she still shook her head.
Henry turned just in time to see the piece of clothing fall from mid-air into Emma's hand.
"What was that?" he asked.
"A locator spell…obviously," Emma replied, "you didn't give me a lot of choice when you left your phone."
When he didn't say anything, Emma said, "you came to a random mansion in the woods to read your storybook?"
Henry opened his mouth but closed it when he looked down and saw 'Once Upon A Time' embossed on the cover.
That definitely wasn't there before.
"I…just wanted some fresh air," he lied.
Of course, Emma knew he was lying, but she wasn't one to make someone talk about their feelings.
"You're in so much trouble," Emma announced, but hesitated because she had no idea how to reprimand her son.
Henry hugged the book closer to his body and watched the confusion on her face with a certain amount of curiosity.
"You should ground him," Regina supplied when Emma was silent for too long.
Emma glanced over to the spirit before she announced, "you're grounded."
Henry wanted to argue how unfair that was, but he was a little distracted by wondering what she was looking at. Plus he wanted to look at his new book, so his shoulders slumped and he asked, "for how long?"
"Err…" Emma looked back over to Regina.
The spirit rolled her eyes. It was becoming clearer why Henry preferred spending time with her.
"A week," Regina said.
"A week," Emma repeated.
Henry followed her eye line again but decided not to press the matter. He'd heard his grandparents mention 'sleep deprivation' so maybe that explained whatever this was?
Henry hugged the book closer to his chest and muttered, "whatever, can you take me home now?"
He didn't wait for a response so Emma took the opportunity to inspect Regina's unreadable expression.
She couldn't tell exactly what it meant but she knew that the former Evil Queen couldn't be happy right now.
Regina gestured for her to follow Henry and Emma nodded and did what she was told.
She now knew for sure that this wasn't a hallucination and if she would be spending a lot of time with Regina, then she would eventually get her to talk about her feelings.
S
Emma stared at the books laid out on the desk and tapped her fingers against the surface.
She went by process of elimination to figure out which books in the vault absolutely didn't have the relevant information so that she could grab a pile of promising volumes to bring to the station so that she could relieve her father and start her own shift.
In a few hours, she'd found nothing.
"You could help, you know?" Emma said with a scowl as she turned another page with a huff of frustration.
Regina looked up from her position sat across the desk, obviously surprised to actually hear something.
"I'm not exactly in any condition to perform research, Miss Swan," she replied and to prove her point, she reached forward so that Emma could see her hand moving through one of the piles of books.
"I could turn the pages for you," Emma shot back.
"That sounds very efficient," Regina deadpanned.
"It would be more efficient than this, I don't understand any of this crap, these books are written in Spanish…"
"Elvish," Regina corrected.
"Whatever," Emma replied, waving her hand over the tomes, "I still can't understand them."
Regina rolled her eyes and rose from the chair so that she could walk around the desk and glance at the book in front of the sheriff.
"What exactly have you been doing for the past hour if you couldn't read it?" Regina asked as her eyes moved over the page.
Emma was about to say that at least she was trying but the reply didn't leave her mouth when she turned and saw just how close Regina was to her.
She swallowed hard and looked down at the page because she realised that she couldn't smell spiced apples.
If she closed her eyes, none of her other senses would tell her that there was another person in the room, unless, of course, Regina asked her why she was closing her eyes.
"This book is about vampires," Regina announced, seemingly not noticing that Emma's mind was somewhere else.
"Vampires are a thing?"
"I have no idea, I never read this book, but this can be a topic for you own time, Miss Swan," Regina said.
"I don't exactly have my own time lately," Emma replied and gestured towards the former mayor.
"It was not my intention that you would be the only person who can see me, though you could be looking into that…why is it that I can't seem to be too far away from you…"
Emma tilted her head and asked the question she'd had on her mind, "have…you tried?"
Regina quirked an eyebrow.
Why did Emma sound so scared? Was she afraid of offending a ghost?
"When I first…woke up shall we say, I felt like I could go anywhere I wished to. However, since coming to the station, there seems to be…something keeping me in your proximity…" she admitted.
The thought that they may come to a situation where there wouldn't be enough space for Regina to wait outside while Emma used the facilities popped into the sheriff's head, but this was not the time for that line of thought.
"Which I believe is one of the things that you should be looking into," Regina continued as Emma blushed.
"And how am I supposed to do that?" Emma asked with a sigh.
"I suppose I'm going to have to teach your Elvish," Regina replied, before she pointed to the chair on the other side of the desk, "we can get started if you move that over here."
"Do ghosts get uncomfortable," Emma thought aloud but still stood to do as asked.
Regina rolled her eyes and replied, "perhaps, I don't wish to find out."
S
Henry finally convinced his grandmother to let him go and do some homework in privacy.
The woman had been watching him like a hawk for the past three hours since Emma brought him back.
Obviously Snow White thought he would run away again if she looked away for even a moment.
He'd just been reading the book Isaac gave him and as far as he was concerned, there was no differences between this and his book but he couldn't exactly compare them in front of his grandmother.
Now he finally plopped down onto the bed (Emma didn't really sleep on it enough for it to be considered his temporary bed at this point).
He pulled the two books up in front of him, expecting to start looking for differences that would serve as clues, but his eyebrows shot up instantly because the surface of the new book was now blank once again.
He snatched it up, completely forgetting about his original book and turned through the pages to find that they were now completely blank.
"It's a bit strange for a mother and son to share a bedroom."
Henry's eyes snapped up to the closed door which Isaac was leaning against as he surveyed the cramped space.
Henry was about to say that Emma was barely here and that most of his stuff was at the mansion. However, he forced himself to remember that he had other priorities right now and he held up the book and asked, "why did you give me this?"
"You said that you want to be my apprentice, that's your first lesson," Isaac replied.
"But…there's nothing in here…" Henry argued though he was inwardly excited again by the word 'apprentice'.
"That is because the part of the story that I want to show you hasn't been put to paper. My predecessor considered it to be 'unnecessary backstory'," Isaac explained.
Henry had a sinking feeling that he knew whose 'backstory' he was referring to, he was almost tempted to say that he didn't want to be his apprentice, but this had to be a test, right?
"What do you mean?" Henry asked, hoping that his suspicions were wrong.
"I am a firm believer that past is prologue, Henry. No one is without a reason for their actions, no matter how unjustifiable. It is foolish to claim to understand that person without knowing at least something of that reason, do you understand, Henry?"
Henry looked down to the blank pages and said, "a villain is a villain. There is no sob story to justify evil."
Isaac pushed himself from the door and pulled a quill from his pocket as he strode over to Henry.
As he moved, he said, "I had hoped that this wouldn't be necessary," before he placed the tip of the quill to the blank page.
Henry's eyes were forced closed by a sudden bright light.
When he opened them again, he found himself still sitting down, this time it was on a log underneath a tree at the top of a hill.
He blinked repeatedly as he looked at the open fields which appeared to lead down to a massive estate hundreds of acres away from where he currently sat. It was honestly surprising that he could even see it from here.
"The Enchanted Forest is quite beautiful, isn't it?"
"The…Enchanted Forest?" Henry repeated, finally moving his gaze to find Isaac sat next to him.
"The estate of Prince Henry Mills to be more specific," Isaac replied.
Henry was more confused than ever, but Isaac couldn't explain as a man called out:
"Regina, my dear, where are you?"
Henry held tightly onto the log as a man appeared over the hill and seemed to stare straight at him, but he moved passed the log a second later.
"I know you're here, Regina," he said with a laugh.
"I'm studying, father," came a reply after a moment and Henry pushed himself to his feet so that he could walk over and see where the sound had come from.
A little brunette girl popped her head out from the other side of the tree and she held up her book as if proving her point.
Henry let out a breath.
He knew exactly who this seven-year-old girl was and it was really throwing him just how happy she looked.
"Your mother is not here, why are you studying?" Prince Henry asked as he approached his daughter before he paused and added, "please don't tell her I said that."
Regina smiled brightly and snapped her book shut and stood to meet the man, "don't worry father, I won't," she said.
Henry Sr. put his arm around the girl's shoulder and started leading her towards the stables, "I brought you a present, my dear girl."
Henry was about to follow them but stopped when Isaac said, "she doesn't look very evil to me."
"She's like seven," Henry shot back though he was wondering whether a truly evil person would name their son after their father. He had to also wonder why she never told him he had a namesake.
What happened to the man?
"So you agree this isn't the 'Evil Queen'?" Isaac asked.
Henry tore his gaze away from the pair descending the hill and he shrugged as he replied, "I guess not…but she will be…"
Isaac shook his head and reluctantly said, "as much as I would love to continue this conversion, it would appear that you have a prior engagement."
"What do you mea…"
"Henry, it's time for dinner," Snow called.
Henry breathed deeply as his eyes darted around the room.
Everything was exactly as it was before but the book on his lap was now gone.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to find that 45 minutes had passed even though he was sure it had been minutes since he plopped onto his bed.
"Henry," Snow called again and this time her voice sounded a lot closer.
Henry closed his eyes for a second, he wanted to ask Isaac what his point was, but he pushed himself up, opened his eyes and called back, "I'm coming."