Part 5 of Vengeance

Regina looked around at the market stalls, wrinkling her nose as she deciphered smells and identified some of the rarer items it seemed people had available for sale. Crystals and rune sticks, and bits of tanned hide bags obviously containing powders for blessings and rituals, hung from one cart's spokes. Not wanting to look too obvious, Regina meandered their way, skimming past carts with cakes, sweetmeats, jerky, and fruits, glancing at the items before moving on, waving off the interest of the vendor. She turned at a gasp and saw Emma in the process of placing a cake that looked a lot like her favored bearclaws in her mouth.

"Emma!" she hissed.

"A piece for that," demanded the vendor.

"A piece of what?" Emma asked, chewing.

Regina glanced around and caught sight of someone passing coinage to a vendor. Quickly she closed her eyes, put her hand in her pocket and stuffed the hard metal coin she found into the vendor's hand and pulled Emma away from the cart. "What did you think you were doing?"

Nearby a startled vendor looked down at his empty hand when the young woman pulled her hand away from his. An argument ensued as she walked away. "You didn't pay me!"

Answering Regina, Emma looked down at the sugared cake bit left in her hand. "I'm hungry."

"This is a market."

Emma hurriedly chewed and swallowed. "You paid him. What's the problem?"

"I had to magic it from someone else," Regina pointed out under her breath.

The woman and vendor were in the process of a moderately loud argument now, drawing the attention of others in the market. Eventually though the woman and man agreed she must have dropped the coin and the two got down on their hands and knees to look for it, without coming to blows.

"Oh." Emma pursed her lips and grimaced. "Sorry."

"I'll figure out something," Regina said. "But I need to see some things first."

She finally stopped them, Emma thankfully keeping her hands to herself this time, in front of the crystals and powders cart. She looked around, not seeing the vendor. Perhaps he had been drawn away by the commotion, she thought. She looked at the markings on the bags and a few of the vials, examining the crystals and determined she had been here to this realm at some point; many of the products were familiar to her. But the time period still seemed a bit early. The markings on the coinage she had used to pay for Emma's purloined pastry had been unfamiliar.

"Seeing something useful to get us home?" Emma asked.

"No, but I'm beginning to get an idea of where we are, if not when."

"When?" Emma groaned. "Is this the Enchanted Forest? Am I going to yet again screw up my own history?"

"I thought you put everything to rights," Regina reminded her.

"You know what I mean," Emma groused.

"Yes, dear, I know what you meant." Regina put down a bag of powdered burdock and dusted her hands on her pants. "Let's move over to the shade."

She pointed Emma to a long log set out in front of a building. Inside could be heard some laughter, even a little singing. Emma leaned back, hands cupping the remains of her pastry.

"Hey," Emma said as Regina settled. "You want a bite?"

"The sugar will just make us hungrier," Regina said.

"Oh." Emma started to lift her arm to throw it away.

Regina caught her hand. "No. Go ahead and eat it. I bought it for you."

Emma pushed the rest of the pastry quickly in her mouth, chewing quickly, obviously before Regina might change her mind. Regina sighed, rolled her eyes and smirked at Emma. "You eat like a child."

"You've said that before. It doesn't really faze me," Emma said. "I appreciate food."

"That you do," Regina said. "You often eat three or four slices of my lasagna when you're over with Henry for dinner. He doesn't even eat that much."

Regina fell silent at her own mention of Henry.

Emma's hand, grubby now with sugar residue, settled over Regina's. "Let's get back on track to getting home."

Looking up into Emma's tremulous smile and earnest green eyes, Regina nodded, pushing aside the pang of missing their son. Slapping her hands against her own thighs, she stood. "You're right."

Emma stood. "So what are we looking for?"

"We need to find someone who knows the lore of this land," Regina said.

"How about the bookseller?"

"A book seller? There aren't books in this time period, just parchments."

Emma, however, was pointing and already moving. "No, there's a bookseller."

Regina saw what Emma saw: a cart rambling on rickety wheels, the bed filled with books - actual leather-bound tomes, just as it rocked and rattled out of sight.

"Come on," Emma said and grabbed Regina's hand. They started to run.

When they rounded the corner of the building, the road stretched out before them. And there was no cart anywhere in sight. Emma put her hands on her hips, fisting them and grumbled. Regina looked to where the road disappeared over a rise. Emma crouched to the ground, studying the ruts. "The damn thing was on its last legs, wheels, whatever. Where could it have gone?"

Regina's gaze caught a tiny dust mote kicking up, then another, then another. And they were appearing further and further down the road beyond the hill.

"It's right there!" Regina said. "Come on."

"Where?" Emma spun around, following Regina's pointing finger and squinted. "There's nothing there, Regina. It vanished."

"It's invisible." Regina closed her eyes and pulled a small crystal from beneath her cloak. "Look." She held the crystal out.

Concave and convex faces on the crystal still somehow made images visible on the other side, Emma realized, squinting into it, resting her head next to Regina's outstretched arm. She could see the trees and the road cutting through them. She grabbed it when she spotted something she thought was moving. "Hold it steady." And suddenly, yes, there it was, the cart, laden with books, getting further and further away with every roll of its wheels. The driver, hunched over so all she could see was his back in a brown tunic, adjusted his seating, and lifted his right hand. In it was a gnarled wood piece. A wand? No. She squinted again. "It's a pen!"

Regina pulled down the crystal and grabbed Emma's arm. She made a full gesture with her other hand, encompassing both their bodies. Emma and Regina were engulfed in a red cloud; Emma closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Regina was already shouting, "Stop!" beside her. They stood on the road and the donkey-pulled cart was rapidly coming toward them.

The hunched driver's face could now be seen. Despite the hunch, which Emma realized now was affected and not a malady of age, the driver was young, probably in his young twenties. He had a beard and mustache, gray colored, that covered his face, but the youth Emma found was in his eyes, which had snapped up at Regina's commanding tone.

Then there was fear darting in those eyes between Emma and Regina. Was he recognizing them, simply afraid for something else he had done and feared they were authority figures? Emma couldn't decide. But there was a way to find out. She stepped back as the cart neared and yelled for Regina to move aside.

Then she watched the front edge of the cart, raised her arms as if she was going to fall backward. But instead, she grabbed for the cart side as it passed her, just behind the driver's slat seat and hauled herself into the wagon. She crouched behind him, getting her bearings and just as he turned, realizing she was in the cart with him, she sprang up, grabbed him bodily around the shoulders and flung them both off the cart, rolling over and under him, holding on as they tumbled into the ditch alongside the road.

Regina ran toward them. Emma was struggling to hold the young man in place - for she now felt the ungainly lankiness of him underneath the cloak to confirm her suspicions. She dragged on him as she gained her footing. Regina came to a stop a few feet away. The cart, the donkey scared and out of control, tumbled into the ditch a few dozen yards further on. The donkey squealed and cried caught in the traces, and the wheels creaked and spun noisily in the air. The books that had been loaded in the back of the wagon were scattered across the road.

"What on earth!?" Regina yelled. "You could have been killed!"

"Got your bookseller for you," Emma said. She pulled down the cowl on the cloak and in the process dislodged his fake beard and mustache, revealing a black-haired young man.

"Who are you?" Regina and the young man shouted at the same time.

"Let's start with who's in charge here," Emma interrupted. "She gets to ask the questions."

Regina stared at him. He was older, but curiously he looked a lot like Henry. It was there in the tilt of his jaw, the shape of his cheeks, the point of his chin. "I'll ask you again. Who are you?"

"My name is Taliesin."

"Explain how you make your cart invisible."

"Invisible?"

"Can anyone else see you? No one else reacted to your passage through that town."

Taliesin shrugged. "You're the first people to even talk to me. I drive, and I ride, and I write down what I see and hear."

"You're the author?" Emma asked.

"My name's not Arthur. I told you, my name's Taliesin."

Emma narrowed her gaze, scrutinizing his face. Then she pushed off from her grip on him. "He's telling the truth."

Regina held out her hand. "May I see your pen?" He gave her a confused look. "The stick you write with."

He looked down at his pants then back up. "I'm not supposed to let anyone else use it."

"I don't want to write with it, I just want to see it."

He swallowed, lifting the implement out of the pouch tied securely to his waist. He kept hold of it as he lifted it up to where they could see.

Emma picked up a book from the ground. It was a rougher bound version of the blank books in the Author's house, of the Once Upon A Time book that had guided Henry to bring her to Storybrooke. She opened to a blank page. "Write something," she said.

"About what?"

"What was happening in the town back there. A market day," Regina said.

"I don't write about those."

"What do you write?"

"Battles and kings, and new people." He brightened suddenly. "I could write about you."

"We'd rather you didn't," Emma said quickly.

"Why not? You're interesting. Everything else is just the same, everywhere. Where do you come from? Is it far? How many days did you travel? You say you could see me. But I've never been seen or unseen. How is it possible? Are you druids, priestesses, users of magic?"

Emma shook her head at all that until he reached the last word. She shook her head vigorously. "What do you know about magic?"

"It's unusual."

Regina nodded. "That it is. Do you possess magic?"

"No, but I write about people who do."

"Who? Who do you write about?" Regina looked at another book as she picked it up from the ground. This one had writing in it. She scanned for names, recognizing the scribed language as pre-form Gaelic, one of the languages she had learned in tutelage with Maleficent.

"That story's about Amadis. He ruled here before Uther."

"How'd you meet him?"

"I didn't. I met a bard who told stories of him. Amadis was before my lifetime."

"So you can write about people after their death?" Emma asked, running her fingers through her hair in agitation as she tried to both think quickly and process what she was hearing. None of the names rang any bells with her.

"And before they're born, too. If I find a seer." He sounded proud of that. Emma thought about the fact that her role as Savior had been written in a book before she was born, too, and she frowned.

"But you said that these people don't see you."

"I listen," Taliesin said. "I'm very good at that."

"How long have you been writing, Taliesin," Regina said. "You're not very old. Who taught you to write?"

Here he frowned. "I have no idea."

"No idea how old you are, or no idea who taught you to write?"

"Neither? Both, I guess?"

Regina grabbed Emma's hand from running through her hair again. "Taliesin, please don't run away. We still need your help."

"But I'm supposed to be in the next town by nightfall."

"You have a schedule?"

"I have to be there."

"What's going to happen?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "I'm just supposed to write it down."

Regina asked suddenly, "Could we ride with you?" Emma looked at her like she was crazy. The brunette shook her head. "We can help you right your cart, calm your donkey."

Taliesin looked over at his cart. Emma saw the broken wheel. "We'll help you fix your wheel," she added.

Emma looked at Regina, then wiggled her fingers. Regina rolled her eyes at the childish communication, but she wiggled her fingers. In a trice the cart was upright, the donkey off the traces, standing on the roadside cropping at the grass, the books were stacked neatly in the cart bed, and the broken wheel had been replaced by an unbroken one.

Taliesin exclaimed, "You have magic, what do you need me for?"

"We're going to need more than magic to get home," Emma said. "If you're who we think you are, you're our key."

"I get to be in the story?" Taliesin asked. "Hop in."

Emma and Regina exchanged looks, but clambered into the back of the cart, making seats for themselves among the book stacks. Taliesin patted the donkey, fed it a carrot from inside his cloak and led it back to the traces with a pat to its withers. Regina studied the animal, which seemed quite ordinary, brown and gray with a short patch of white in the middle of its chest. Before Taliesin turned it, it cocked its head and seemed to meet her gaze, showing its broad flat teeth.

"Damn donkey likes you," Emma said against her ear.

"What?" Regina startled. "Oh."

Emma pulled Regina down into the cart as Taliesin climbed aboard his driving plank and whickered. With a lurch, the tiny party was off.

Regina jostled into Emma's shoulder, and the blonde bounced against her. They tried to separate, only to have the cart's motion throw them together again. Finally, Emma just sat back, spread her knees, and motioned between them. "Come on, sit here. I'll make sure the books don't fall on us."

Biting her lip, Regina moved between Emma's knees, feeling the woman's thighs under her hands, and soon the woman's chest against her back. Arms wrapped around her arms and chest. She stiffened, found that only made her back hurt, and so relaxed reluctantly deeper into the soft body behind her.

"Do you think he's really the Author?"

"All this certainly suggests he's one of the Authors," Regina whispered back. "But he's not as knowledgeable about the job as Isaac was."

"Maybe that grows with time," Emma suggested. "Taliesin's kinda young."

"Maybe Isaac broke the rules and learned too much, took on too much power."

"So we probably shouldn't get Taliesin to write us a way home, huh?"

Regina frowned. "I don't know."

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