Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

PART II

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THE CURSING WAY

"Ah, good! You're all here! Disrobe and put these on!" said the sturdy Native American man gesturing to amulets hung a tree beside a large pine-bow covered hut with steam coming out the top.

"Hold on, we have to get naked?" squeaked Emma.

"Yeeeeaaaaah, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that," said David with an uneasy glance at a horrified Emma.

"I am SO not comfortable with any of this!" wailed Henry.

"Why didn't you say we had to take our clothes off!?" Emma accused Hook who didn't even attempt to look guilty.

"What? These folk," he gestured to the Shaman, "have always got their wenches walking around topless. It goes without saying, luv."

"It does not go without saying and there's a difference between topless and naked, neither of which you are going to see, you sicko!"

"It is in the standard disclosure agreement that Dr. Whale had you sign," interjected the Shaman while checking something on his i-Phone. "Did none of you read it?"

All eyes turned to Regina who rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, you all expected me to be the only one to read it? What, because I was the mayor?"

"No, because you're anal retentive and hate people intruding on your personable business," Emma corrected.

"Well, excuse me, but I was too busy cleaning up the administrative clusterfuck 'Mary Margaret' left before and after cracking her head open," Regina argued, then gave the Shaman a suspicious look.

"Aren't you a mental patient?"

"Aren't you the former evil witch who decided I should be locked up there for objecting to you occupying my people's land after which you massacred them for treason?"

While Regina looked uncomfortable, Emma frowned at her and demanded, "How many groups of people have you massacred, Regina?"

"Personally? I killed a few people here and there, but it's not like I carried out massacres myself," scoffed Regina.

"Yes, let's put you on a twenty dollar bill, Your Majesty," snarked the Shaman.

"You really ordered the genocide of people, Mom?" asked Henry, wide-eyed.

"Of course not! I never killed anyone for racist reasons, just for not thinking I was pretty or good," Regina stated, as if that made her better... which maybe it did slightly.

Emma cut in with a warning look at Henry, "You'd better not pull the 'You're not a villain, you're my mommy and you can do no wrong and I love you shit, Kid, because ordering mass murder is some serious crap, Regina," she glared at her son's other mother, "that you had better realize can't be absolved by your selfish love for the fraudulently adopted kid you only got because you fucked up my life and some twist of magic didn't want him raised by Pan into a psychopath who would have mass murdered us all."

"I didn't realize this was a group therapy session as well," Regina grumbled. "Perhaps you'd like to rehash all of the villainous things you did that other timeline for which this person," she jabbed a thumb toward Neal, "thinks you're too vile to re-shack up with."

"Stop calling me 'this person'!" Neal growled. "Are you seriously just trying to be a bitch or what, Regina?"

"Names have power," stated the Shaman, "and she is afraid to use your name and give you power in the complicated relationship with the child you share as in our world biological ties are everything and adoptions are all secret and fraudulent because no child without a blood relation can inherit anything due to arcane beliefs in divine rights of rulership passed down in semen which are, of course," he rolled his eyes, "tiny little people who are implanted in the otherwise useless vessels that are women. You make her useless."

"I am not useless!" Regina snapped at the Shaman while conjuring a fireball.

"No magic, mom!" Henry exclaimed. "And you're not useless, just... Emma's kind of right that you need to take responsibility for all of your murdering instead of blaming my grandmothers and believing Robin's twenty-nine-years-without-sex-meeting-you-in-a-low-cut-corset inspired monologue that you're not that homicidal personal anymore and champion of puppies and kittens and rainbows."

Regina harumphed. "Yes, well, pixie dust."

0"Yes, well, you got dosed by Tinkerbell long before I doubled it, Mom!" Henry pointed out.

"And I should be commended for not jumping Robin like a rabbit in heat then. My grief of lost love was enough to keep my legs crossed, which is more than I can say for Emma who stuck her tongue down Guyliner's throat five minutes after your father kicked it."

"Thanks so much for that reminder, Regina," grumbled Neal while throwing a glowering look at Emma who threw a 'stop trying to ruin this for me' look at Regina who threw a 'you ruined things with Robin first' look at her.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" interjected a dubious David.

"One hundred percent satisfaction or your money back," the Shaman stated.

Shrugging, Hook added, "Smee said he and my former crew did it last month and it was better than something called a 'cleanse'."

"That's rich people talk for an enema," said Neal.

Hook's eyes widened and he started to back away. "Oh, no, you are not violating my arse, Chief!"

"It's a cleansing of the soul, not the colon, you idiot! And stop using my Curse name!"

"It is kinda racist," agreed Neal. "I mean, I get the Cuckoo's Nest reference, but still-"

"Yeah, it's pretty racist," nodded Emma with a look toward Regina.

"I didn't design the Curse! It was Satan and that racist sorcerer working for but really against Merlin!"

"Yes, so I understand," said Not-Cheif. "It's a pity that fairy blew up his house or I would have collected his scalp."

"Isn't that perpetuating an outdated stereotype?" asked David.

"No, I collect the scalps of dead magical people and use their hair to create potions to combat male pattern baldness, a tragic affliction to which my people became immune long ago because of our magical scalp processing and cannibalism."

"You accuse me of villainy yet you ate wizards?" Regina shuddered.

"You can cure my balding!?" squeed Hook and started pulling off his clothes as quickly as possible.

"Good Christ your ass is blindingly white!" guffawed David.

"Shut up! At least I have one!"

"More than you should after all that ice cream," sniggered Neal.

"Please tell me you have gender segregated sweat lodges?" pleaded Regina.

"No, just the one," said Not-Chief. "And as you are all magically bound together by the same dispersion of pixie dust, effects of which were amplified and the bonds reinforced by your emotional turmoil in Neverland, this must be a group cleansing!"

"This is all your fault!" Regina directed at Henry. "I love you, but damn it, you are so gullible sometimes, Henry!"

"I was eleven! And no one told me that Peter Pan was evil!" he said, glaring at Neal.

"Yeah, okay, my bad..."

"I can't unsee that," moaned Emma as Hook began doing stretches while adjusting his amulet.

"You already saw that," Neal reminded.

"Not with twenty extra pounds of butter fat and in broad daylight and knowing we're related! God, I'd almost managed to forget how even more unattractive uncircumcised penises are than circumcised ones. And his particular style of... manscaping."

"Yeah, it's weird," said Henry, "that he's so in love with his head hair and chest hair but he goes full Brazilian down there..."

"It's not weird! I wore leather pants in the tropics for three hundred years. It got very hot and sweaty around my bits!"

"I suppose I can see that," grumbled Regina. "A week in that jungle in a polyester suit and I had the worst yeast infection of my life."

"THERAPY!" Henry cried and grabbed a talisman before running into the hut fully clothed.

"DON'T YOU RUN AWAY FROM ME, HENRY DANIEL MILLS! YOU WILL TELL ME HOW YOU KNOW WHAT A 'FULL BRAZILIAN' IS!" demanded Regina, following.

"Yeah, that's... a weird thing for a twelve year old to know," said David, looking around rather shiftily and hurrying after the pair.

"I didn't need to know that my father knows what that is," groaned Emma. "And I am not going to ask why it came up in some capacity that involved Henry or I will definitely need therapy after walking in on my parents."

"Taco Tuesday?" sniggered Neal.

"How do you even-"

"Henry told me. On account of him not knowing what sex is and being traumatized after the fact by the realization that he took naps in Snow White's bed."

"Yeah, I had the same post-Curse-breaking trauma realization," sighed Emma and looked at the hut. "Shall we?"

Thirty minutes later, Hook was happily lounging in the sauna while the others were scowling miserably in sweat-soaked clothes, what with having dressed for the cold weather and thus having very little other than coats, sweaters, and socks that could be removed without being down to their underwear.

"It's funny," Hook was saying, "that we were always going around searching for treasure, and we never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories we were creating."

"Oh. My. God. Shut up about your pirate days!" Neal growled and threw the water bucket ladle at him.

"You wouldn't be so grumpy if you took off your hobo clothes, Nealfire."

"I do not wear 'hobo clothes'."

Regina considered, "He's right. Robin wears hobo clothes. His are more like thrift store dollar rack clothes."

"They are not from the dollar rack," Neal harumphed.

"Seriously, Neal," Emma groaned while trying to tie her wet ponytail into a bun, "you need to buy some new clothes. You didn't actually wear thrift store stuff to your job interview, did you?"

Neal frowned. "No. I had a sweet three piece suit from Sacks Fifth Avenue. That Robin threw in the garbage!"

"Why the hell would that idiot throw away an expensive suit that could have gotten him a real job!?" huffed Regina.

"Or, you know, that I could have been buried in if anyone had given a damn about that. Thanks for waiting two months to clear out my apartment, and a month after the squatter you gave my keys to threw out half the stuff that, you know, maybe my son would have liked to get to know me."

"Yeah, moms," scoffed Henry.

"Well, it's not like your father gave a crap," shrugged Regina.

"You know," Neal glared, "I almost wish you were my half-sister. Then you'd fall under the 'no hitting girls' rule exception."

"Oh, actual emotion from Nealfire! The magic soul cleanse must be working!" chirped Hook.

"Like anything could cleanse your soul," snorted Regina.

"Please, I never mass-murdered people!"

"No, you just stood by drinking rum while my mother did and then hid under the bodies - which someone here found extremely sexy, apparently!" she threw at Emma.

"I had a very troubled childhood that messed up my concept of love!" Emma defended.

"Which is why you believed a bullshit dream that I was at peace and rooting for you to fuck my asshole step dad!?"

"How many times do I have to say 'I'm sorry' for that!" Emma moaned. "I'm sorry that I wanted to believe you were at peace because I wanted to bang your step dad that I didn't know was your sttep dad."

"But still didn't care when you did!"

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" David cried as green stuff started dripping out of his nose... then everyone else's noses.

"The cleansing has begun!" declared Not-Chief who had been sitting naked in the back of the hut texting on his i-Phone the whole time. "Make use of the tissue boxes behind you. I apologize that they are not two-ply, but the Night Train is becoming very stingy."

"Okay, we're really going to have to investigate this mysterious supply train someday," huffed Emma as she grabbed tissues. "I mean, seriously, who the hell is bringing us stuff? And from where? And how is it getting paid for?"

"It's really not important," insisted Regina.

"Yes, never mind that," said Not-Cheif. "Focus on blowing the mind-altering evil flower pollen out of your nasal passages. It sometimes helps to block one side and blow really hard, then repeat on the other side."

"How are you not sweating!?" Regina snapped at him.

"A secret magic of my ancestors that makes white people look bad when they come to our sweat lodges on bullshit vision quests."

"I'm only half white, you know."

"Yes, on your mother's side. Magically, it's like being Jewish," said Not-Chief. "And the peoples of the region of Valencia and Hortencia are far more white than not. Don't let the accent and spicy food fool you."

"Where are 'your people' even from in the Enchanted Forest anyway?" asked Emma. "I never met one indigenous person. Or did Regina massacre all of them?"

"Oh, no, just our band that attempted to regain our ancestral lands. We had been sent to the Enchanted Reservation of Dumarlone past the Dragonfields of Zorn many generations ago. It is an inhospitable wasteland where our people were sent when the White Man kingdoms allied together to wipe us out using the Ogres. I believe they were inspired by the Duke of the Frontlands who was extremely anti-Semitic."

"Yeah, he was like Enchanted Forest Hitler," sighed Neal.

"But it has excellent pizzas," amended Not-Chief.

"Seriously!?" asked Henry.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I meant piazzas," Not-Chief corrected. "The stench of your white people sweat must be getting to me. Let me guess, you have been eating Granny's meatloaf."

"Yeaaaaaaaaah," they all sighed regrettably.

Not-Cheif nodded and gestured to David, "You know, you bear a striking resemblance to Enchanted Forest Custer."

"Enchanted Forest Custer?" asked Henry.

"His name was Sir... something-or-other. White man names confused my people, so I don't know. But he hated my people and killed many. He hunted us like dogs.

"The Scalp Spirits tell me that you once had a mullet just like his," Not-Chief told David.

"You had a mullet!?" laughed Emma.

"There are Scalp Spirits? asked Henry.

"How the hell do you know that?" sputtered David.

"Mate, don't question his mystical hair-related powers!" sussed Hook.

Not-Chief explained, "Enchanted Forest Custer's scalp had great restorative powers. The remains were kept in a sacred spot by my people. My grandfather even touched it once and said he had a vision of two men with the same enchanted mullet, one a despicable prince who would be killed by a dimwitted foe and the other a foolish shepherd who would have his heart crushed by his own wife. Both would lose their kingdoms because they were stupid white men who cut off their powerful hair, losing its great ancestral magic."

"See! See!" Hook exclaimed. "Hair is power!"

"If it was such powerful hair, then how the hell did 'Enchanted Forest Custer' lose his scalp and exile you all to some wasteland?" scoffed Regina.

"A deal with the Dark One, of course," sighed Not-Chief. "And because of that, my people have never received recompense for the crimes perpetrated against us."

"Yeah, that and because the Enchanted Forest is full of racists," said Neal.

"Yes, well, obviously. That goes without saying."

"I think I'm going to throw up," moaned Henry as his nose kept gushing.

"Use one of the buckets behind you," said Not-Chief. "And try not to vomit on your amulet."

0"Why does it say 'Made in China' on the back?" asked David.

"Because your ancestor destroyed all of our sacred talisman and then your step-mother-in-law cursed us all to a world where our meager magical possessions that we had managed to retain went to the Dark One who has been either on field trips, held hostage, comatose, or just very grumpy and thus has not returned our things. But I imbued what magic I could in those cheap reproductions."

"How'd you do that?" asked Regina.

"I had a werewolf urinate on them, of course."

"AHHHHHH! UGHHHH! GROSS!" they collectively cried (save Hook) and pulled off their amulets before running out of the sweat lodge.

"Quitters," huffed Hook and he demanded, "You will cure my hair problem, right?"

"That depends," said Not-Chief. "I will have to read your scalp."

At the pirate's unnerved look, he rolled his eyes and expounded, "While still firmly attached to your skull."

"Oh, well, in that case, read away, mate!"

Not-Chief looked mildly disgusted by the offer, but scalp reading money was scalp reading money, so he dug his mop-callused fingers into Hook's sweaty, thinning mop.

"Hmm... the Scalp Spirits tell me that you were raised by your father and had an older brother who took over your guardianship after he left. While your father had fine hair, your brother was not blessed follicles as alluring to women as yours."

"That's true!" Hook nodded. "Liam was kind of fat too! Papa always said he took after Mama in looks. She died when I was a baby, hit by a runaway ox cart. Tragic, really, though our world's not one for children being blessed with two surviving well-adjusted parents. Not that my father was well-adjusted, I suppose."

"Nor your brother," said Not-Chief. "The Scalp Spirits tell me that he was a bully, and young women are foolish and like 'bad boys, and so with his sailor's commission, even if his hair was on the curly side, he got much ass while you, though young and handsome with fine locks, were insecure and a virgin due to your abandonment complex on the high seas which made choosing a life as a sailor rather masochistic and thus not especially healthy where the development of your sexuality was concerned, particularly with the large number of prostitutes."

"Also true," grumbled Hook.

"The Scalp Spirits also say," Not-Chief continued, "that your brother paid your naval shipmates to take you to one of these port brothels to remedy your virginal condition before setting sail as it was considered bad form and unlucky to have a virgin on the crew."

"It's true, it was and they did," sighed Hook and he smiled a little at the memory. "Embarrassed as I was, and much as I sometimes hated Liam, that was a magical night. It was awkward at first, but quite wonderful in the end. That whore was older than me but there's something to be said of experience. I learned quite a few tricks that night which came in handy once I'd embraced a pirate's life. The way she ran those fingers through my hair..."

"Hmm," hummed Not-Chief. "The Scalp Spirits tell me that your brother was not doing you a solid. And that your mother was not killed by an ox cart, but left your alcoholic father, the son whose existence forced her to marry him, and the baby she regretted having. Sadly, single and spoiled women in our world have few choices, and so took up the art the prostitution, the only kind of MILF that was acceptable in the Enchanted Forest."

"Wait... what?" Hook sputtered.

Not-Chief removed his fingers and told the pirate somberly, "The Scalp Spirits say they are very sorry to tell you that your brother tricked you into losing your virginity to your own mother."

"WHAT!?"

"That will be fifty-nine ninety-five. I take cash or credit but no checks."

"YOU'RE SAYING I SHAGGED MY OWN MUM!?"

"It is not me, it is the Scalp Spirits," corrected Not-Chief. "Also, you have enough follicular resonance that it may be possible to stimulate new hair growth. Five sessions of a hundred and twenty dollars each usually, but I will give you twenty percent off on account of the trauma of copulating with your own mother having unbalanced your mojo."

Hook made use of one of the barf buckets before running naked out of the hut screaming.

Not-Chief doused the fire and exited the sweat lodge where he found Pocahantas cleaning talisman. She rolled her eyes at him and snorted, "Let me guess, the Scalp Spirits said he fucked his whore mother?"

"White men are incestuous and gullible and often sluts," shrugged Not-Chief.

"Got that right," huffed the princess. "If John Smith shows his manwhore ass in this town..."

Not-Chief snorted and concluded, "You know, I wouldn't be surprised if that dumb pirate got syphilis from his mother and his deadbeat MILF."

"White people are strange," said Pocahontas.

She shook off the thought, then asked, "Are you still giving the used tissues to that ex-fairy?"

"As a huxter capitalizing on the corruption of my own people's traditions to swindle people out of money and leave them psychologically traumatized, who am I to deprive an addict?"

AN: The title in an homage to that The X-Files episode "The Blessing Way". Hook's line about pirate memories is from Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy, an old SNL digital short. Valencia and Hortencia are kingdoms in Galavant.

Next up: A chat in the woods.