CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: FIRE IN THE HOLE
(In which Henry and Baelfire share a sobering fucked-up-family moment.)
Once his ears stopped ringing and some of the dust cleared, Henry remembered Gretel pulling down Dopey's axe... and then the ground heaving and the ceiling falling in - just like the last time he got stuck down here.
"Henry, are you okay?"
He gingerly sat up and found Baelfire's face dancing in the beam of his helmet's lamp. The generator's lights had gone out.
"I think so. You?"
"Yeah."
"GUYS!?" a voice called from the other side of some rubble. It was Hansel.
"WE'RE OKAY!" Henry called back as he stood up. "BUT WE CAN'T GET THROUGH!"
"STAY THERE! WE'LL GET HELP!"
The muffled sound of feet crunching rocks followed, fading into the dark distance.
"Well, this sucks," sighed Henry. "Second time I've been trapped down here!"
"Really?" Bae asked, surprised.
Henry nodded. "I was ten. I was trying to prove that the Curse existed to my mom - Em-"
The ground trembled again and the two boys stumbled away from the caved-in section as another beam tumbled down right where Henry had been laying a minute ago.
"We can't stay here," Bae deduced. "This section is unstable."
As they continued backing away, Henry remarked, "We might be able to get to the Library. There's an elevator there."
"Why would the library have an elevator to the mine tunnels?"
"Well, my mom - Regina, kept a sorceress in dragon form down there. Maybe she lowered down goats for Maleficent to eat or something? I'm not really sure."
Henry never did ask her what the point of a two-person-operated-lift was when a dragon couldn't fit in it and she was the only one other than Jefferson who had their memories. It just seemed like a convenient plot device. Thankfully, someone had it upgraded between then and when his mom and Hook went looking for the Ring Pop of Doom so it could be controlled from the car.
"Your family is certainly odd, Henry."
Giving Baelfire a rueful look, Henry declared, "My family is 'odd'? Your father was the Dark One and your grandfather was Peter Pan."
Bae shrugged. "Yes, but I wasn't adopted by the woman who tried to kill my mother as a baby - who then married a man whose wife she killed that actually turned out to be her half sister in disguise who re-killed her and was saved by your birth mother after she imprisoned your father in the Dark One's vault for the purpose of rewriting history to be raised by your psychotic grandmother-slash-step-great-great grandmother so that neither of your mothers would exist after which she was killed by your birth mother who became the Dark One and is now back from the dead and expecting the child of your adoptive mother's husband whom she raped."
"Yeah," Henry conceded, "but Cora slept with your dad."
Bae startled at that news then shook his head. "Touché."
AN: Another chapter title quiz! What's it from, people? Hint: "We mined coal together."
Next up: Why exactly are the Dwarfs Snow White's guards when they always seem so fucking useless?