4

The Trouble with T-Rexes

By the time the rest of the family had returned from eating breakfast, Rumple was feeling well enough to get up and sit at the small table in the kitchenette and drink his coffee along with another glass of water. He was now dressed in one of his more casual Saville Row gray trousers and crimson shirt, with a Ferragamo gold tie, his cufflinks glinting on his wrists. Belle had asked the kitchen staff to send up some food for Rumple, and Bae and Emma were going to go downstairs to eat with Regina, but the toddler wanted eat breakfast with Rumple instead, so they ordered chocolate chip pancakes and sausage for her with milk from room service and let the two newlyweds go down while the rest of them stayed in the suite.

"That breakfast was like awesome," Henry said to Rumple, sitting across from him while Gold ate his whole grain toast, some pieces of fruit, and a cup of Greek yogurt. "I had this waffle the size of that plate," he pointed to the plate of fruit. "And this lady put cinnamon sugar and whipped cream all over it with cinnamon syrup it was like the best thing ever!"

Rumple managed a smile at his grandson's enthusiasm. "I'm glad you're enjoying your vacation so far, Henry."

"Me too," Alina said, her brown eyes shining. "I had this omelet that was almost as good as Alice's, with something called pork roll and cheese and these yummy potatoes that crunched when you ate them. And French vanilla coffee too!" She eyed her father and then asked, "You're not sick anymore, are you, Papa? Was it something you ate on the plane?"

"Umm . . . yes . . ." Rumple said, feeling himself flush and thanking God his daughter was too young to know exactly why he was sick. "And I feel much better now, Alina."

Regina squealed in delight when she saw her pancakes. "Look! They gots smiley-faces on 'em!" she showed everyone at the table her child-sized pancakes, which did have smiley faces on them done in whipped cream. They also had cut up the sausage in pieces and added a banana as well at Snow's insistence. Her little container of milk had a curly straw in it.

"That's so cool!" Alina grinned at her small "cousin".

"Now you're going to sit here and eat them, right, Regina?" Snow said, coming up and tying a dishcloth around the toddler's neck so she wouldn't get syrup on her nightgown.

Regina looked up at her mom and asked, "Mommy, why don't my pancakes home have faces on them?"

"Umm . . . because these are New York pancakes," Snow said. "But I'm sure we can ask daddy to make some like this when we get home."

Regina turned and called out to Charming, "Daddy, when we get home you gotta make my pancakes with faces on 'em, okay?"

"Sure, princess. But you'd better sit down and eat those before they get cold," David said.

"I'll cut them for you," Snow said, and grabbed a knife and a fork off the breakfast tray and did so. Then she handed Regina the fork.

Regina began to eat. As she did so, she looked over at her uncle, who now seemed more like his usual self, and prattled, "Lookit, Unca Rumple! I just ate the smiley face's eye."

"Was it good, dearie?" Rumple asked, slowly nibbling on some fruit.

"Yum!" she said, then she stabbed another piece with her fork and said, "I share some. Here, eat it!"

"No, you eat it, dearie," Rumple said. He shuddered to think what havoc syrup would wreak on his system right then. "I'm good with my toast and fruit and yogurt."

"But it's yummy!"

"I'm sure it is. Now you have it. But thank you for sharing," he told her, knowing it was important to reinforce positive behavior in small children, which he'd done with Alina and Bae also.

Regina promptly offered some to Henry and Alina, both of whom told her thanks, but they were full. Then she called to Snow, "Mommy, you want some?"

So Snow ate a bite, then said, "Now you eat the rest, baby girl."

"Dontcha want more?" Regina asked.

"Not right now. It was so good, I'm all full," Snow said. "Now let me see what a big girl you are and eat four bites for me."

Sometimes Regina ate well and other times, like now, she wanted to play with her food.

"Okay. I count them," the toddler said, and did so as she ate. When she reached four she said, "I'm all done!"

"How about eating some of your sausage? It's lonely," Snow urged.

In this way she got the toddler to eat most of her breakfast and drink her milk.

By the time Bae and Emma returned, raving about some kind of crepes with peanut butter and Nutella, Regina was dressed in a cute pair of flowered pants and a long sleeved blue top with a rainbow on it and her light-up Reeboks.

"Emma! Henry says there's a game room with cool games in it!" the toddler yelled, grabbing her sister about the legs.

"There is, chatterbox!" Emma smirked, picking her up. "But . . . we can go to play at the arcade later. Don't you want to go to the museum first and see all the cool extinct animals, like the dinosaurs and the mastodons or whatever they're called?"

"Yeah! I wanna see the T-Rex, Emma!"

"We figured we could do the Museum of Natural History today," Bae said to the rest of them. "Papa, you up to doing it? We don't have to do it all in one day, but maybe just a few exhibits? They've got plenty of benches and stuff if you need to rest."

"I'll be fine, Bae," Rumple assured him.

"Okay, whenever you're ready, we'll hit the Museum," his son said. "You'll really like it, there's tons of exhibits to see and a whole gift shop with some neat things in it. Like antiques and stuff."

"Rrrowwr!" Regina growled and pretended to chomp Bae's arm. "I'm a T-rex and I'm gonna eat you up!"

Bae pretended to shrink from her, crying, "No! Emma, quick, shoot it before I'm dinosaur chow!"

Emma pulled out her "gun" and aimed her finger at her small sister. "Bam!"

Regina promptly flopped over on the carpet. "I died!" she shrilled. Then she bounced back to her feet and ran over to Snow and pretended to "eat" her.

Snow went and called Charming for help, who picked up his daughter and began to tickle her. "Mmm . . . I've got a squirmy wriggly girl here and I'm going to crunch her all up!" He pretended to nibble on her tummy, making her laugh hysterically.

"Help! Henry! Alina! Come and save me!" Regina giggled and tried to get away.

So Henry and Alina came to try and rescue her, shooting "fake" bolts of magic and throwing the small pillows off the couch at David.

"It's no use!" Henry cried to Alina. "The man-eating monster's too strong for us!"

"Oh, no!" she yelped, playing along. "Help! Help! We're dying! Who can save us?"

"I know! I know!" Regina crowed. "Unca Rumple!"

"Me?" Rumple cried, in mock-surprise.

"Yeah! Turn him into a slug!" the little girl yelled, squirming in David's grip.

"No! Anything but that!" Charming pretended to cower away from Rumple.

"Anybody who attacks my family deserves what he gets," Rumple mock-growled, and twitched his finger. "One slug sandwich coming up, dearie."

David released Regina and sank down onto the floor. "I'm done for," he groaned dramatically.

Regina jumped up and down. "Whoo hoo!"

"Don't look now, but you've been . . . transmogrified," Henry began.

"Terrified, and totally utterly—" Alina continued, then gestured to Regina.

"Stiltskinified!" Regina shouted. "Cause Unca Rumple kicks everybody's butt!"

"Got that right, dearie," chuckled her uncle.

David sat up and said, somewhat indignantly, "What is this? The Rumplestiltskin fan club?"

Rumple shrugged, and gave Charming a slightly smug smirk. "Hey, dearie, if you've got it, flaunt it."

Charming rolled his eyes. "Yeah, uh huh. Sure." He climbed to his feet.

"Don't pout, darling," Snow cooed, coming and putting her arms about her husband. "You're still my hero." Then she kissed him.

"Gran, get a room!" Henry groaned, rolling his eyes. "My virgin eyes!"

He turned around, only to see Belle kissing Rumple. "What is it with this family and PDA's?" he asked Alina.

"True love," she replied and then she started giggling at Henry's expression.

"Okay, let's head on out, guys," Emma said. "Before we get stuck on the subway."

"Cool! We get to go on the subway," her son cheered, forgetting about his romantic grandparents.

"Regina, go get your jacket, honey," Snow told her.

"Kay, Mom!" and the toddler raced back into the bedroom to pick it up.

Page~*~*~*~*~Break

The trip on the subway was short, only twelve minutes. Alina and Henry looked out the window the entire time, reading the signs as they went past. Snow and Belle were looking at the schedule, wondering what other places they could go to tomorrow, and marveling at how everything was so fast in Manhattan. Emma and Bae were arguing about the best place to go clubbing and Regina was bouncing up and down on Rumple's lap excitedly.

"Easy there, dearie," Rumple cautioned. "You don't want to wreck my other leg, now do you?"

"Aww, you can take it Gold," David snorted. "You're like an enchanted superhero."

"Yeah, that's my Unce Rumple!" Regina said, and threw her arms about Rumple's neck and kissed his cheek.

"Aww, how sweet!" an elderly lady sitting across from them cooed.

Charming rolled his eyes. "I swear to God, it's like a spell or something. Hey, how about me, Regina?"

She turned to look at him. "You're just Daddy. But you can have a kiss too!" she said generously, and jumped over to him and kissed him too.

"Boy, do I feel loved now," David muttered, hugging her.

"Oh, quit grousing, Nolan. I'm her hero for an hour, you're her papa, and her hero for life. Trust me on that. I know little girls," Rumple said softly, and indicated Alina.

David looked mollified by that sincere statement, and smiled down on his daughter as she relaxed against him.

All too soon, they had reached their stop and disembarked and walked about half a block to the museum.

The first thing they saw when they entered the museum lobby was the huge skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex standing on the platform before the circulation desk. As Emma went and handed in their tickets and got some brochures and discount coupons for the museum gift shop and lunch at the museum café, Regina, Henry, and Alina stared up at the ancient skeleton.

"Could you imagine what this guy looked like when it was alive?" Alina said.

"Yeah. Scary," her nephew replied. "I mean, it wasn't called the Tyrant King Lizard for nothing. Look at how big its jaws are. It could like eat your papa's Cadillac for a snack."

"Yup. And we'd be like appetizers," Alina agreed.

"How come it's just standing there?" Regina wanted to know.

"Well, because it's just bones now," Henry explained. "It's dead."

"Can it come to life?"

"No, thank goodness," Alina said. "Otherwise we'd all be in trouble."

"Like run for your lives trouble?" Regina queried.

"Oh, yeah," Henry said. "But don't worry about it, Regina. He's dead, and can't come to life."

The little girl looked disappointed. But then the life-sized wax statue of Teddy Roosevelt, the founder of the museum and the former president of the United States, mounted on his horse Little Texas, caught her eye.

She ran over to it, pointing. "Hey! Lookit this, Henry!"

As the kids went over to examine him, Snow spoke with one of the tour guides, and soon the Golds found themselves joining a group of twelve other people and being led through the famous Ancient Worlds Exhibits, which included ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome.

As they passed the many artifacts in the Egyptian era, including a black basalt statue of Bast with golden earrings in its ears, Regina scrambled out of Snow's arms and pointed to it. "Look! It's Nala!"

"Yeah , it does look like her, doesn't it?" Alina smiled.

"Is she home alone, Alina?" Regina asked, looking worried.

"No, dearie, she's with Archie and Pongo," Rumple reassured her.

"We'd never leave her home alone," Belle added. "Not while we're on vacation, anyway."

She was fascinated with the process of making paper using papyrus and the way the Egyptians used hieroglyphics to write down everything. Their tour guide showed them cartouches and explained how to read one, and told them how scribes were considered very important people in Egyptian society.

"Sounds like you'd fit right in there, Belle," Emma said.

Rumple was fascinated with how they made linen and cloth and also the process of embalming the dead.

Charming and Bae enjoyed hearing about the various weapons and hunting techniques used, including hunting with sight hounds and even cheetahs.

There was a model of an Egyptian boat which Emma found fascinating.

So did Regina, though when she tried to touch it, David gently restrained her. "Ah ah, no touching, Regina. It's not a toy."

"But Daddy, I wanna play with it!"

"You can't. But maybe we can find one like it for you to play with in the gift shop."

She considered this, then said, "When we goin' there?"

"Later. Now let's look at all the pretty jewelry over here," he indicated a glass case full of glittering golden jeweled collars that the pharaohs and their queens wore. "Look, isn't this beautiful? Wouldn't Mommy look pretty in this?"

"Yeah! We need to get her one, Daddy," Regina stated.

"Uh . . . well, maybe for Christmas . . ." Charming chuckled.

They walked through many other exhibits, looking at statues, pottery, clothes, models of houses and temples and other fascinating things.

The tour guide was excellent, encouraging the group to answer questions and participate in discussions, she was lively and animated and seemed particularly impressed by Belle, Alina, and Henry, who had read several books on ancient civilizations before coming to Manhattan.

"I should tell my boss to hire you three," she laughed. "Want a job?"

Belle chuckled. "Sorry, but I'm already employed. I run the town library."

"Oh! No wonder you know all these facts already," the tour guide, a young woman in her twenties with a pleasant face and medium length blond hair, said.

"Well, I've always been a bookworm," Belle admitted. "Actually, my whole family reads," she gestured to them.

"We've even got an aunt who's an author," Henry told her. "So it like runs in our family."

"How wonderful! It's great to see a family who emphasizes the importance of history and the written word nowadays. So many kids get caught up in all these electronic things, like video games and the Internet, and they spend all their time pushing buttons instead of turning pages."

"Not in our house," Alina remarked. "The only computer in it's my papa's," she indicated Gold. "And he only uses it for business. And I have a Nook, but I use it to read, mostly."

"Books are the cornerstone of civilization," Belle remarked.

"Then you're going to love our sixteenth century exhibit, with the first printing press and all," the tour guide, whose name was Julie, said. "This way, folks. Now we're going to go way back in time here, before humans were even on earth, to the time of the dinosaurs!"

Then she led them down some stairs and through a long hall to the Hall of the Dinosaurs.

Everyone was examining all the fossils and exhibits, exclaiming over the life-like settings and some of the realistic-looking models.

"Wow! Look at the size of that brontosaurus, Regina!" Snow exclaimed, pointing to the huge skeleton, which took up almost the entire room. "He's like bigger than three buses." She glanced down, surprised not to hear her daughter's eager voice asking questions. "Regina? David, did she come over by you?"

Charming looked up from reading a card about a pteranodon and shook his head. "No. Check with Henry and Alina. They're over there, looking at the velociraptors."

But when she glanced over at that exhibit, Snow didn't see Regina with them either. Or with Belle, who was reading about a stegosaurus.

Emma, Bae, and Gold were all clustered about the archaeopteryx exhibit, staring at the model of a type of winged lizard with bird feathers, sort of a cross between an avian and a reptile, the precursor to today's birds. No Regina there either.

Starting to grow nervous, Snow walked rapidly about the room and called softly, "Regina! Come here. You know you're not supposed to wander away like this."

She tried to see if the intrepid toddler were hiding behind an exhibit or something, knowing Regina's penchant for finding small spaces to hide in.

Not finding her child anywhere, she started to panic, imagining Regina wandering about lost and frightened. She ran up to where Rumple, Bae, and Emma were and whispered, "Have any of you seen Regina? Because I . . . can't find her all of a sudden."

"Okay, don't panic," Emma said. "We'll start looking."

She and Bae split up, going to look in opposite corners of the hall, while Gold limped about the main exhibits with Snow, who was trying very hard to keep herself together.

"Hey, don't worry, dearie. I went through this with Alina once in the supermarket," Gold soothed. "We'll find her, I'm sure of it."

"Where could she be?" Snow asked. "I mean, she was right by me, holding my hand just before we stopped to look at the brontosaurus."

Soon Charming, Henry, and Alina joined them.

"Maybe she went to find a bathroom?" Alina thought. "I can go check, there's one right outside in the hallway."

"I'll go with you," Belle said, not wanting another child to go missing.

While they checked the bathroom, Henry and David went out and up the hallway to see if anyone had seen a little girl wandering about.

"Regina!" David called. "Where are you?"

"Maybe she went back into the other room?" Henry suggested. "With the mummies and stuff? She really liked those."

"How? She couldn't reach the door and open it," David pointed out. "No, she had to have gone someplace that didn't require a door to be opened."

They continued up the ramp leading to the museum entrance, following the dinosaur prints of the T-Rex painted on the floor.

Back in the Hall of Dinosaurs, a frantic Snow had alerted Julie about her missing toddler, and Julie had called security on her walkie talkie, and started Code Adam procedures.

Gold gently drew Snow aside and whispered, "If they can't find her in about five minutes, I'll use my magic to locate her."

"Can . . . can you do that?" Snow gasped.

"Certainly. It'll only take about a minute."

"Then please, Rumple, do it now!" Snow cried. "She could be . . . kidnapped!"

Rumple went to bring his wrists together and rub his cufflinks when he stiffened.

"What's wrong?" Snow demanded.

"I . . . sense the presence of magic," he muttered.

"Here? In the museum?"

"Yes. It feels . . . almost like . . . someone's using . . . fairy dust," the sorcerer frowned.

"There are fairies here in New York?"

"I wouldn't think so, dearie, but . . ."

It was then that they heard the screams and yelling.

"What on earth?" Bae cried, looking around. "It sounds like there's a riot or something."

"It's coming from that way," Emma said, and raced out of the room.

Charming and Henry were soon joined by Belle and Alina and together they raced up the ramp to see what all the shouting was about.

When they reached the top of the ramp, and the entrance to the museum, they saw groups of people running to and fro, screaming hysterically, petrified, as the gigantic skeleton of Tyrannosaurus Rex was stalking people, snapping at anyone it could reach, and smashing things with its huge feet and tail.

Henry gaped at the scene before him. "Oh my God! It's come to life!"

People stampeded past them, and Charming grabbed his grandson and Belle pulled Alina over to a corner and they huddled there while screeching people raced past them, trying to avoid the dinosaur rampaging through the museum entrance.

Security guards were shouting and trying to hit it with their billy clubs to no avail and some museum workers were crouched under part of the circulation desk frantically dialing the cops on their cell phones.

"I'm telling you—this isn't a prank!" one worker screamed. "There's a damn T-Rex running loose over here stepping all over people! It's put a hole in the wall and knocked some guy right across the hall. No, I'm not drunk or on LSD!"

"How is this possible?" Charming cried. "It was dead! Bones can't come to life!"

"Uh . . . Gramps," Henry pulled Charming's jacket. "They can if you use magic."

"Who's using magic?" Belle asked, ducking as a piece of plaster flew past them and shattered against the wall.

"Uh . . . it's coming from over there," Alina said, also sensing it. She pointed to where the statue of Teddy Roosevelt was located.

"Teddy Roosevelt brought the T-Rex to life?" gasped Belle.

"No, Grammy. That would be Regina," Henry pointed out. "See? She's standing right under him . . . with . . . a wand."

Sure enough, Belle could now see the toddler, crouched beneath the horse, a glittering blue wand clutched in her fist, which was emitting glowing sparkles of fairy dust.

"Oh . . . my . . . God!" Charming groaned. "Regina, what have you done?"

"Looks like she's stolen a wand from one of the nuns, dearie," Rumple said, appearing next to them.

"Or your shop," David began accusingly.

"Not me. I keep all my magical wands locked up," Gold pointed out.

"Who cares?" Belle cried. "Just . . . do something, Rumple! Because otherwise we're about to become toast!"

Rumple looked up . . . only to see the T-Rex barreling towards them, mouth agape, searching for more prey to hunt down, its eye sockets glowing with a dreadful red light, like some hellish nightmare come to tear them to pieces.

And between it and them stood only one middle-aged (kind of) pawnbroker.

Until he clicked his cufflinks together and magic flowed from his fingertips, slamming into the T-Rex and knocking it flying across the room.

As it crashed into the wall in a clattering of bones and broken chunks of plaster, a little voice squeaked, "Go, Unca Rumple! Kick that T-Rex's butt!"

Gold scowled and pushed up the sleeves of his jacket, muttering, "You're in serious trouble, young lady. As soon as I deal with this reanimated carcass."

Then he moved further into the room, magic surging through him, as the T-Rex suddenly put itself back together and charged him, screaming a battle cry.