Chapter Sixteen
Severed
Killian lumbered to shore. He felt every ache and pain that used to bother him, before his transformation. His hook- was no longer just the image of a hook! It was really just a hook, his hand was really gone! His neck felt wet.
His old enemies Regina, Rumpelstiltskin and Arthur stared at him in horror- and then down, at the drops of blood on the ground. The mortal wound across the side of his neck had reopened- its bleeding meant he had indeed severed himself from immortality. Feeling the cut, he laughed, "It's over!" He fell to his knees abruptly. "If Merlin had done this when he had a chance… there would've been no Dark One at all…" He fell to his side, choking on his blood. The battle to change the worlds was over, and it was not his enemies that did it. This man's gasping last breaths from his sliced neck would change everything, and would even turn reality upside down.
The phone rang in the kitchen. Everyone in the abbey had been waiting, holding their breath, huddled together in the Sanctuary.
"Mother Superior... if I answer the phone will it lower our protection spells at all?" asked a nun, Astrid.
"No, though it may be some kind of trick of the... " Blue Fairy gulped down the words incarnated Dark Ones.
Guinevere sensed that it would be alright. Since she'd come to in Storybrooke, she had felt the familiar feeling of Dark magic growing and growing, up until now. That subtle suffocating feeling of impending doom that she knew from breaking into the Dark One Vault countless years ago, on a quest that Lancelot had braved with her... that very feeling of Dark One magic had followed her in Storybrooke and only now, in this moment, had it lifted. A weight was off her soul. She hurried to the pink-corded phone on the kitchen wall, assuring everyone it would be fine.
Robin Hoods voice! "We were all poofed to safety in town hall! The marks are gone!"
Cheering and clapping from the jubilant sanctuary full of people and fairies!
Robin went on, "We'll come for Roland and the other children as soon as we hear from Regina that it's safe. Uh... Regina stayed behind to fight the Dark One. And with her, Rumpelstiltskin..."
Mr. Gold felt a weight off his shoulders. He stood up straight. He walked with hardly any limp. He nearly wore out his cane and best polished leather shoes, slowly walking 'round the lake for hours. After Arthur took off to hide again, after Regina Mills called the morgue to have Hook's body taken away, he still couldn't believe what had happened. He peered into the lake, regretting that he couldn't swim, and couldn't risk going after the blade that had always bore the name of the Dark One.
Crickets chirped and clouds painted by sunset rolled across the sky. A peaceful, normal night. On this night, he spied a younger, more desperate man crouching up in the crook of a tree branch, a high hiding place where he too was watching the water. Mr. Gold turned away, started down the path to the parking lot, to see what the silhouette in the tree would do. He leaned over to squint at the reflection of what happened behind him, shown in his gleaming silver cane handle. Back at the lake, King Arthur was paging hastily through a book and holding his hand out over the surface of the water, expectantly. After a while, he stopped.
Gold noticed that a frog was hopping by -it actually landed on his shoe as he stood still, watching it. It was some kind of miracle! Animals usually avoided him.
A bobbing lantern approached him.
"Belle!" She was coming up the walking path, lantern swinging in her hurry to find him.
"Rumpel!" she called out, and ran to embrace him. "Why didn't you come back to Town Hall?"
He made an excuse about double checking for residual dangerous magic, and shared the small miracle with her: the frog that had just hopped away.
She smiled warmly. "That is amazing- maybe something has really changed in this world! Let's test your theory tomorrow!"
They resolved to visit the animal shelter the next day. Going home, they felt lighter than air. They collapsed on the daybed together, too tired to even make it upstairs to their bed.
Rumpel still had trouble sleeping, even in a cozy happy tangle with Belle. He carefully extricated himself and returned to Gentleman's lake.
Rumpelstiltskin wandered about in the dark, getting as close as he dared to the water, for he wasn't sure where the drop-off was. His arm was held out over its surface as Arthur had done.
A tremendous splash! An enormous form rose up from the middle of the little lake, lit by starlight! He saw the figure of a maiden as tall as a telephone pole, made of lake water, reaching towards him with the sword of the stone held high in her hand. This lady of the lake seemed to look right at him with shining shapes of eyes in her watery head.
She pointed the sword at the astounded old man and then raised it up again in triumph. The waterous arm heaved Excalibur forward, throwing it to him, and- despite knowing its sharp edges could end him- Rumpelstiltskin opened his outstretched hands and caught it! One hand caught the hilt, making him swing to the side and almost fall over. His heart beat faster than ever in his life. He wanted to say something to the lady in the water- but he was speechless. Awe and gratitude washed over Rumpelstiltskin as he was splashed by the great ripples of her form falling back into the lake.
He looked upon the still pool of stars a long while, feeling overcome. Rumpelstiltskin understood that he was the current hero of this sword, and its magic would be available to him when he needed it. It was the first time that anything had been given to him, since he was a small child! He had always had to earn, or trade or steal- but the spirit that had guarded this sword gave it freely!
He carried the sword easily back home, and placed it on the mantle in the den, where it would hide in plain sight. Touching it again, briefly, it reflected the soft lamp light as blue at its base, red towards its tip. A glimpse of a vision- he understood the vision was Merlin and Nimue meeting again, embracing as plain-clothed humans. Two souls together, at last, in the sword.
The sun came up slowly the next morning in a grey haze. Storybrooke looked out at the dim new day with trepidation, wondering if the threat was really over.
Mr. and Mrs. Gold strolled to the animal shelter and petted all the cats and walked all the dogs, and the young woman saw a genuine carefree smile on her older man's face, for the first time since their honeymoon. The Gold family gained a rescued young Rottweiler with a limping left leg and a weepy eye.
"I had really missed being a dog person!" Rumpel said. "I have a great name for him… an old friend of mine once told me his story about going to hell and back, and that well describes what we've just been through. I say we name him after that friend, Dante."
"Sure! As long as I get to name the next addition to our family!" Belle said, offering Dante a treat.
"What do you mean...?"
"Well. It's about- ah, you know, this is about the time I usually have… my time of the month…" she said shyly, as they walked the dog home.
Rumpel staggered and gasped.
"It's too early to tell, but honey! What if…?"
Cries of a newborn echoed off the thin plaster walls of a rickety farmhouse out by Storybrooke's fallow fields. Zelena's tangled, bright red hair fell in her face as she struggled to feed her blue-eyed baby a bottle of formula. Robin and Regina were visiting, holding hands and steadying themselves for an important discussion.
"Heat up the water again, the bottle's not warm enough!" Zelena ordered Robin. "I would do it myself, but you two have shackled me yet again!" she said bitterly. The brown cuff on her left wrist had been slapped on her in the few moments she'd been able to sleep. She was still too unpredictable, too disjointed a person, to be allowed to use her natural talents. Her weapons of choice had been taken away: the five-leafed clover of perfect disguise and the knobby wand of old, that the Sorcerer had given the Apprentice. She still had enemies in town, and no way to defend herself but with isolation. "I have to hand it to you, sis, you ended the bloody Dark One! But I can't expect you to protect Squeaker and me from everyone, everything, all the time, from afar… I need my own magic!"
"Our daughter doesn't need to grow up with dark magic surrounding her," Robin said, helping her with the bottle. "And to be absolutely sure of that… she's going to come live with us, and you can come visit her at our house."
"What? You can't do that, I-I've done everything you wanted! I stayed put in that little cell, I let you hold the baby after she was born, and I went along with your fool idea of letting her be raised by Fairies! Blanched, witless people who've never had children of their own."
"At least it didn't come to that," Robin said, soothing the swaddled baby at last with a warmer bottle and gentle pats on her head.
Regina pushed up her black sweater sleeves and got in Zelena's face. "We're doing this, alright, Zelena. I've spent... so many years... doing terrible, terrible things, beyond your imagination," she said threateningly. "But you know how I turned it around? Henry. It took… having a child, that unconditional love- it made me my best self. And I'm hoping that kind of love will do the same for you."
Zelena rolled her eyes. "So I'm just supposed to love little sweet pea… from a distance?" She looked down at the large eyes that were drifting closed.
Robin said, "Make no mistake Zelena, we are never going to be a family, the three of us. But Regina and I have agreed- you are her mother. Despite our best instinct, we still have hope for you. So you can visit with our child, as long as one of us are present."
Zelena paced and rocked her sleeping little girl. Tears of confusion, tears of loss, tears of joy mixed together. "There, there, my little green bean!" she whispered to her. There had to be some way around this newest obstacle to having her own family.
"If you want to earn more than that," her entitled younger sister said, "you will have to do something selfless."
Robin spoke from his heart. "Provide an example of heroism, or loyalty, friendship, helping the disadvantaged…"
"Oh please, that has nothing to do with being a parent!" Zelena protested. She stopped when she saw the perfectly put together favorite daughter, Regina, reach into her purse -and pull out a carved and painted artifact the size of a ruler. It glowed briefly in her hand.
"Ah… I see you're still not powerful enough to make that thing really shine," Zelena said, setting baby in her bassinet. She remembered the pulse of the Sorcerer's Apprentice's magic in her hand, when she had last made that wand emit its violet glow- his magic was ambivalent, neutral, accepting of dark and light, and particularly good at reaching between realms.
"So you had that wand… all this time. It wasn't lost in Camelot…" Zelena glared at the self-satisfied brunette who always had all the wealth, acclaim, and magic she wanted. "It could have been used to get us out of hot water yesterday, don't you think? When our lives were on the line! Still, you kept this from- everyone!"
Regina defensively shot back, "You didn't want to meet with me yesterday! But I'd consulted with Gold, and some other friends who have magic- we agreed that the magic of the Mark was older and stronger than this wand!"
"You could have let me TRY!" Zelena almost screamed.
"I couldn't trust you!"
"Ladies!" Robin interjected. "Zelena, Regina- that's the whole problem, isn't it?"
After turning away from each other for a moment, the two half-sisters came back to staring at the wand.
"What do you want me to do that's so selfless, now?" Zelena asked.
"That's up to you," Regina said. Her motive was hiding, behind her encouraging tone. She left the wand on the wooden table and vanished in a whirl of odorless smoke, taking Robin, baby and bassinet.
Snow White was lost in conflicted thoughts, standing at her daughter's tombstone. Charming was coming up the path, holding Neal's hands so he could take little steps. She and Charming had something special, true love- the kind of love that had been the genesis of all the Enchanted trees in the Enchanted Forest, according to fairy lore. Why hadn't that protected Emma, and led her to live a charmed life? What did this tell her about the life their son would lead?
"I can't figure out what kind of funeral to give Hook," she started, shaking her head. "Would you want him buried next to your spot, Emma? Would he want that? Or just a memorial service by the sea- and maybe we could scatter his ashes from the Jolly Roger? What do you think?"
Charming joined her and tried to read her pained facial expressions. "She made me so proud," he said. "She didn't mark anyone as part of Hook's twisted game. You know… We'll see her again. She wanted to be our guide in the afterlife, remember?"
"Emma's -ghost, I guess- was mad at us!" Snow said to the ground. "And she was happy with Hook!" She felt herself flush, needing to cry, but she was already out of tears. "So would she want us to forgive him?"
"I, uh… I can still only assume that… Hook took her place as Dark One… we know how that happens. So I can't forgive him," the reluctant prince said, as he held his son and hugged his princess.
"Maybe there were extenuating circumstances and that's why she still died -in love with him!" Snow pondered, taking shallow breaths and weeping again. "We need a way to talk to her, but- Emma might not want to-"
Regina's familiar, the raven, came and lighted on a nearby grave, cawing. Snow understood the message that a confused crowd was gathering at the town line. Trouble. The family of three was on their way.
Zelena of Oz paced the town line- just chalk drawn on the narrow road next to an odd-shaped willow tree that grew out of the middle of it. In a plain, long dress and roomy wool coat, she hoped to appear to the locals as they had known her in Camelot, as a harmless handmaiden, and gain their trust- then Regina and Robin's.
She had tricked a courtier from Camelot into removing her leather cuff, trading it for the lady's simple braided bracelets. Now, overpowering Regina and Robin, and leaving this all behind, with her baby, should be easy enough- but thanks to the Curse, there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Stuck here, her child would suffer, with the inescapable knowledge that mommy and sperm-donor were always fighting. So it all came back to trust.
Zelena twirled the Apprentice's wand between her fingers. Everything she tried- had no effect. She could activate the wand with her dark magic- it was supposedly mixed with the light magic that Regina had claimed she was capable of-but nothing removed the force field at the white chalked town line, or turned the tree back into a person.
"Are- are you a good witch?" asked a lady of the court of the Round Table.
"We'll just have to see, by what she does," commented Sir Morgan, a cross looking middle-aged knight.
A crowd had followed her here, expecting some miraculous magic trick like what must have happened the previous day. Queen Guinevere and her new beau showed up, focusing everyone's attention on their loud insistence on heroism and villainy.
"Stay back, everyone! This is the witch that betrayed the heroes of this land!" Guinevere proclaimed. "They have memories of- of this Zelena working with Arthur! And against Merlin!"
"Give her a chance," said a warm, strong voice beside Guinevere. "A chance… to do something different." The woman that Camelot knew as the Savior had showed up, to vouch for Zelena.
"Maybe, if I cannot lift the magical barrier… at this time…" Zelena said to herself, "Maybe I can at least get these people home." She gave the wand another whirl.
The wind picked up and the sky turned yellow-green, clouded by debris far away. A thin, winding cyclone came up the road through the woods, as summoned. Zelena directed it with the wand, like a conductor, twisting and bending it into an arch. The archway of wind at the side of the road, a terrifying cyclone stopped on its slow destructive path, transformed into a sort of door.
"Just jump in and think of where you want to go!" Zelena shouted above the wailing winds and shaking, creaking trees.
No one neared the door made of whirling dust and debris.
"Someone has to test this!" Lancelot yelled to the crowd. "This is my chance to be brave again!" he said to Guin, as their noses touched and her long silky hair blew all around their faces.
"No, it's dark magic!" Guin pleaded over the noise. She knew he would die for her, and he knew she would die for him- that had been true even when they were just friends! But she didn't want it to come to that!
"Remember what Blue Fairy said-" Lance said, rubbing her forehead with his, "- she said that the dark magic of the Vault sustains our land, so that no Curse can make it disappear! Our home is just beyond that door!"
After a parting kiss, Lancelot quickly rushed the wind door and transformed into a hovering gray-scaled serpent, growing out wings and whiskers, gills and blowholes and legs. He grew into a mid-sized dragon, determined to go out in his true form -if this was actually a trap of nothingness. His fellow knights nodded in acknowledgement of their old friend; the rest of the people gasped in horror.
The left side of his scaly head disappeared into the wind door; his eye on the right side looked back at Guin, and Snow and Charming, who had showed up to work crowd control. His dragon lips spread in a wide, gentle smile. Then the rest of his head and long body were gone.
Guinevere imagined him all alone with the untethered Darkness of the Dark Vault that waited back in their land. She reminded herself that if anyone could handle it, he could-especially in his dragon form! Lancelot, son of the Lady of the Lake, would be the perfect guardian to protect their new Camelot. Guinevere beckoned her people with a benevolent smile, and decisively stepped into the wind next. The members of the round table followed, as Zelena continued to wave her wand in the shape of the arch, keeping the portal open for them.
"It's the most elegant portal I've ever created!" Zelena laughed. She could really get used to this wand!
Robin's band of thieves drove up to the town line in a hurry. Word was spreading fast that a way home had opened up. Now was their chance- after quick goodbyes to Robin Hood and his children, they had rolled up their packs to head back to the land they knew. Storybrooke was so civil and tame with the Dark One gone - it was not for them. Little John in the lead, they each stepped into the archway, thinking of the Sherwood Forest.
The warrior in blue, Merida, came riding up with Angus. She had caught wind of all the hubbub, bid farewell to her friends, the Golds, with a wink and a word to Belle- "Hold tight to your fella!"- and galloped off. "Did Arthur go through?" she shouted to those watching the portal to the other world.
He hadn't. Merida's revenge was here- but her family was back on the Isle, back home, in the Enchanted Forest. Family- was more important. She and Angus hesitated as they stepped towards the archway that was a small screaming cyclone on one side, and - seemingly nothing on the other side! What were her chances? There was the wicked narrow-eyed witch, pointing her magical glow at the archway- the witch in black who she remembered from the missing weeks! She had been in league with Arthur!
Several from Storybrooke were leaving willingly through this doorway. Dwarves, fairies, a giant! People who missed home and were taking their chances on this portal.
"Did Sir Lancelot go through?" she yelled to the onlookers.
The people nodded, and that was enough for Merida. Her adventure in Storybrooke may as well be over—coming here, she had regained her memories of recent victories and had let go of recent quests. She knew, now, that she had already rescued her triplet brothers from the competing lords, and they were already waiting for her on the Isle of dun'Broch. She had already won the crown, already sat beside her mother in the throne room of their great hall, and already rallied the men to her side without the aid of magic. It would seem magic had not destroyed the world she left, after all, if people were crossing over to it now. Her kingdom was just a thought away. With a great breath, she led her tall horse through the portal, turning her back on her pursuit of revenge against Arthur.
Zelena looked around. "I think that's everyone!" she said. She encouraged Regina to enchant a compact mirror to check in on them- indeed, the Enchanted Forest existed, and all the newcomers, and then some, had returned! Their stories would now be severed from those of the Storybrookes in Maine. To them, Zelena was the generous savior of the Curse of East Storybrooke.
Another was watching, behind her. He had been waiting, hiding in the trees, unsure. As Zelena put the wand away to let the cyclone door die down and dissipate, the young man ran forward, figuring he had nothing to lose. He threw himself into its wind and tried his best to think of nothing- nothing at all.
"Will Scarlet?" Regina, Snow and Charming said in tandem, thrown off.
Will hoped to fling himself into the unknown that was between lands, between stories, this way. The strangest possible place to go on a romantic quest for a love spurned. He smiled knowingly at his modern day friends- his face was the last part of him to disappear into the whirling dust and sand, before the cyclone broke up and the winds went their own ways, off into the forest.
"That was… something," Regina said. She was unable to look for this last traveler in her magic mirror. "It was amazing, really. Come on, let's go tell Robin and the baby all about it!"
The sisters transported away to Regina's house, in clouds of their own unique colors, to tell of the selfless act that would be Zelena's bedtime story to her baby for many years to come.
The Charmings and their grandson Henry stayed behind, still pondering the town line. Snow and David gave Henry reassuring hugs, and they walked back to the line of cars parked along the emptying road. Few had chosen to stay behind, and now- they had their pick of vehicles to jump and drive.
"Hey Henry!" came a voice.
He stopped breathing for a moment. He was all flushed when he started again.
"Hey! I guess we'll be going to school together here, huh?" Violet asked, as she broke away from her father for a second on their long walk back to town.
"You're staying!" Henry could hardly believe the sight of the smiling, tall girl in a pink dress. "I didn't know if you'd left before I got here or-" He just couldn't talk anymore, & he couldn't assume he could hug her either.
"Yeah, my dad told me, just today! He said that he was actually from a place called Connect… Ecut… Connetectut. He was born somewhere not too far away, in this realm! And he never thought it important to tell me, he thought we'd live our whole lives in Camelot, where my mom was from," Violet explained. "Anyway, he originally got to Camelot by magic, by some mistake, but now that we're here… I guess he missed this land, and so we're staying!"
"That's great!" Henry and Violet caught up to Sir Hank Morgan, who was unhitching his horses.
"Young man! Violet said you might need riding lessons!" he called out to Henry gruffly. "Let's see how you do on Old Yankee!" he encouraged Henry to hop on his snorting quarter horse; together, Henry and Violet trotted the horses back home.