Antonio stood at the edge of Long Wharf in the dark and listened to the buoys clanging in the tide. He had just finished wrapping his legs in chains that ended in lead weights. It was apropos, really. He had been so tied down by life that it was only seemed proper for him to manifest his burdens physically. Maybe this time, he could finally escape this hell. He'd been cursed with the inability to age, but at least death could still reach him. All he needed to do was jump.

He hesitated. He clenched his eyes shut and thought of HER. Her hair, her smile, her laughter. Their last day together, with promises made and unfulfilled. He wanted her to be his last thought before the end. He raised his foot above the water and shifted his weight forward.

"Daaa, daaa, daaa, DUM."

Antonio's eyes shot open in shock at the sound of a gong. He turned his head toward the new Custom House Clock Tower. He heard a bell that never rung, for a clock that never worked.

And yet the clock read the correct time: 8:15pm. He stared at if for a few seconds, comprehending its meaning. And then he worked as fast as he could to free himself.

The city residents rejoiced as he pushed past them — finally those fat cats in the federal government had done something right with taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. But Antonio knew that something was wrong.

The clock tower bell was an alarm for someone coming through the portal.

He climbed 24 flights as if they were 24 steps, and paced anxiously at the top of the tower he had helped build, waiting anxiously to see who would come through. Could it be HER? No, it was too much to hope for. But still…

A flash of green light above him caused Antonio's eyes to widen and his pupils to dilate. He rushed underneath the portal and extended his arms, ready to catch HER. Instead, a boy fell through. The green light flashed once more and the portal disappeared.

Antonio looked at the boy in his arms in shock. The boy looked back at him with the same expression.

"Who are you?" Antonio asked, slightly disturbed and enormously disappointed.

"Who are you?" Baelfire queried.

"I asked you first," Antonio grimaced.

Baelfire cowered in this strange man's arms. "I'm Baelfire."

"And I'm Antonio," the strange man answered as he let Baelfire slide from his arms. Antonio's hand ran down his face. "A boy? A BOY?!" he asked incredulously. "And one that hasn't even been magicked!" He sniffed Baelfire's head. "Although you are no stranger to it. I can smell it on you." Baelfire noticed the intensity in this strange man's gaze in reaction to his smell, and he stumbled backwards.

Antonio sneered in response and clenched his fists, angry for his moment of weakness longing for magic. "You must have used a bean to come through the portal," he noted. "Where did you get it?"

Baelfire could not speak. Antonio repeated himself, but when Baelfire still did not answer, Antonio took an ominous step forward.

"That bean was not meant for you! I am NOT used to having to repeat myself. Now, for the last time, tell me: Where did you get it?"

Baelfire shuddered. "I … I… got it from Ruel Ghorm."

Antonio looked at Baelfire askance. "Ruel Ghorm? Who the hell is Ruel Ghorm?"

"The … the Blue Fairy. She also goes by the name the Blue Star."

Antonio looked bewildered. "Another fairy? And how did SHE get the bean? Killed a relative for it maybe?"

Baelfire shook his head and took a step back. "No, she said she was there when the beans spilled and that only one survived…"

"The BLUE fairy?" Antonio interrupted. "You don't mean Ruel Buidhe — the YELLOW Star? The YELLOW fairy? She was the only fairy there when the beans spilled."

Baelfire was overwhelmed. He looked at his surroundings in trepidation.

"I … I don't know," his voice wavered. His back bumped into the wall. "How … how do you know about the beans?"

Antonio's back straightened with pride. "Because I invented them. I was a wizard when I lived in your world."

"And … and what do you do now?" Baelfire asked.

Antonio grinned. "I STILL create beans. Baked beans, steamed in my own secret recipe of molasses." His face fell. "But I lost the business earlier this week gambling."

"I'm sorry," Baelfire whispered sadly.

Antonio shrugged. "It is what it is. I'll still work with the company as a 'consultant'." Antonio used his fingers to place quotes in the air around the word. "They wouldn't know how to run the business without me," he added, but without his usual bravado.

He lowered himself to floor and sighed, his train of thought turning to a different, less recent loss. "She wasn't the Blue Fairy then, you know. She was the Yellow Fairy then: Ruel Buidhe. Used to call her the Booty Star. She … didn't like that much." He smiled and looked wistful.

Baelfire relaxed slightly and gingerly sat beside him. "Something happened to make her blue, I suppose," he mused.

Antonio's lips quivered with emotion and his fists clenched again. "Well, I suppose it was inevitable because if she dared to show her face around me, she'd be black AND blue."

Something in Antonio's sad eyes, however, gave Baelfire the impression that he didn't quite mean what he was saying.

Antonio stood and dusted off his pants. He wiped his eyes, pretending that the dust he was wiping away had gotten into them. "I suppose that's it then. The bitch used the last bean to send a boy through who didn't need help. I have my answer from her. I should have jumped into the harbor when I had the chance."

Baelfire looked up at him. "But I did need help! My father is a spinner-turned-wizard whose soul became corrupted with power."

Antonio's eyes twinkled. "Ah, so THAT'S why I smell magic."

Baelfire's face hardened to stave off another approach. "How do I get back?" he asked.

"You don't," Antonio answered. "It's a one-way portal. Mostly because I never thought anyone would want to go back when I created it." He grimaced. "Wish I'd reconsidered."

Baelfire looked bewildered. "A portal? You created this one? Why? And what are you doing here?"

"I'd gotten cursed," Antonio impatiently rolled his eyes, as if these answers were things everyone from the Land of Magic should know. "And the only way to reverse that magic was to come here, where the curse wouldn't work."

"What curse?"

"Why, the ogre curse, of course! That's what I invented the beans for. To get the men who had been turned into ogres into a world where they could live normal lives."

"Ogres are men?!"

"Yes, cursed men," Antonio explained. "Until I could find a way to lift the curse, I could at least send them to a world where the curse wouldn't work. For years I worked on a cure — until I was cursed as well and became one of them. As my brawn increased, my brain capacity decreased, and I could no longer produce the beans. I had been too proud to write the formula down; I didn't want anyone else producing it except me. And why would I ever forget it?" He rolled his eyes. "And so the formula died with the wizard."

"But how does one get the curse?"

Antonio looked sadly in the distance. His jaw clenched. "By betraying one's true love."

Baelfire gasped. "You betrayed your true love?"

Antonio nodded and delicately tried to explain. "In the eyes of a witch who had been betrayed, I was abetting the enemy by sending ogres to this land and letting them escape punishment. And if a witch is dedicated and artful enough in the ways of disguise, she can make you betray your true love without your knowledge. That's what happened to me."

Baelfire gasped. "But if you were tricked, that's not fair!"

Antonio shrugged. "The curse is equal opportunity. It doesn't care if you were tricked or not. It doesn't care about your intentions — or if you were a dumb schlub so in love and wanting to believe that everything she was saying to you was true." He looked into the distance sadly. Then he looked at his feet and shook his head.

"An ogre and a fairy?" he continued. "A wizard and a fairy might work, but an ogre and a fairy is even worse than a dwarf and a fairy — and just as unlikely. We were doomed. I should never have even considered…" His voice trailed off.

Baelfire sighed. Adult relationships were far too complicated. And he thought dealing with Morraine was hard enough.

Morraine. He gulped, trying to combat the lump that arose in his throat. He couldn't think about her now — or ever again. They didn't leave on good terms. He had to forget her.

He tried to banish her from his mind by changing the subject. "But I thought true love was the most powerful magic in the land! That it brings about the forces of good!"

"And that is the biggest fallacy in all the realms that people swallow hook, line and sinker: that True Love is on the side of GOOD." Antonio shook his head and chuckled. "True Love is sinister. Once it weaves its way into your life, you can never be rid of it, much like the ogre curse I was trying to combat. It stays with you forever, its thorns embedding themselves deeper, unsatisfied until it's permeated every fiber of your being and torn you apart. It fools you into thinking you have strength while it secretly makes you weak. It's the most powerful drug in all of the realms, completely distorting your mind and whisking you away from reality. And somehow everyone considers this a GOOD thing."

Baelfire was speechless.

Antonio's shoulders slumped in defeat. "Sorry to scare you, kid. It's just … it's just been a very rough day." He scratched the back of his head. "Come on, come with me. I'm the self-appointed welcoming committee for people who arrive through the portal."

Baelfire rose and dusted himself off indignantly. "I hope you don't greet them the way you greeted me!"

Antonio laughed. "I like you, kid. You have spunk. I haven't had to greet anyone in awhile, so you'll forgive me for being a little bit rusty. I wasn't exactly expecting this."

He escorted Baelfire down the 24 flights of the stairwell. As they exited, people in the lobby approached Antonio with their complaints.

"Dammit, the clock has stopped working again!" one shouted.

"A pity, a great pity," Antonio lamented as he strolled past them. "They'll figure that clock out soon enough." He pushed Baelfire out the door with him to avoid being accosted.

Baelfire stopped in his tracks on the sidewalk as he viewed his surroundings in wonder. People were walking past in funny clothes that he would later learn were in the Edwardian style, and carts were moving without horses!

"Antonio, I don't understand. You said this place had no magic! And yet I see it all around me!"

Antonio laughed. "My boy, that's not magic. That's science. That's engineering. That's good old fashioned ingenuity and sweat equity."

Baelfire's eyes sparkled, following a new 1914 Model T as it drove by. "Do you mean that I can learn to create something like that?"

"Absolutely," Antonio nodded emphatically. "And you don't have to sell your soul in the process like you do with magic. Science is a lot less fickle of a bitch than her magical sister." He paused. "And a lot less fun too. But," he paused for effect, "a hell of a lot more reliable — and that's what matters most."

Baelfire twirled around and looked up at the building he had just exited as it rose into the dark sky.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"That is a clock tower, my boy. Custom House Tower. I helped build it."

"Why would you build something so tall?" Baelfire asked.

"Well, we couldn't have a giant beanstalk growing in the middle of Beantown, could we? Local government wouldn't have that. So we had to create something to reach the portal that the beanstalk grew up to — and once we did, we could destroy the beanstalk."

Baelfire was having trouble following. "Beanstalk? Beantown?"

Antonio extended his arms. "Welcome to Beantown, kid. At least that's what we Magicked folk once called it. Today the locals call it 'Boston'." He stuck out his tongue at such a distasteful name.

"Now come on," Antonio instructed, "let's get you a job and a room at my boarding house. Today is the first day of the rest of your life … in the Land of Science."