A/N: Thank you all for waiting. This one is a bit static, but I hope you'll like it. I have two more chapters to write before I get to a part already done. That's the downside to the way my brain works with the stories - first I write lots of little pieces and then I have to bridge between them.

Henry sees more than his mother and aunts simply because he's a kid. Well, not only that, but mostly.

I hope I still have some surprises for you. Let me know what you think. Feedback is like cookies, just with less calories :)

A whole new world

"You were four when they moved me to that country house. Apparently if a kid almost coughs out his lungs, there are people in the social care system that pay attention and only after four years of observation they decided that either the pollution or something local is getting to me and so I was transferred out. Anyway, it didn't help. It all happened only after my second bout of pneumonia, so I'm kind of blaming this, not any actual allergen in the group home. Anyway, I spend eight years stuck in a country house with a bunch of other sick kids and that was probably for the best, considering the foster homes everyone had stories about."

Elsa leaned back, Henry fast asleep in her arms. Emma had covered them with a blanket and Elena provided two fat cushions to surround and support her. As Emma prepared tea, they sat in silence, both sisters watching August and August watching Henry with perplexity. Then, visibly having forced himself to relax, he started talking, telling them of the life in the "home" as he remembered it from their early childhood.

"The lady who runs the place entered you in the computers as triplets. She explained to me that some men from the system - probably her higher ups in social services - would be quite ready to get Elsa adopted and separated from you and so she had someone fix up the records and make it look as if you were sisters. Elsa is like a month older than you two, they said. You two were newborns, so they counted the day I 'found' you as your birthday - correctly, even though our calendar doesn't match the one here at all - but Elsa was harder to pinpoint - when a kid is a month old, it's impossible to be specific about a day. So they first wrote exactly a month earlier, and then corrected to the same as yours."

Emma slipped into the empty space beside Elsa and caught her hands. "You will still have birthday with us."

"Or she can have two" Elena provided. "She could grab some gifts for the first go and then get a second round with us. I'm sure Henry would love two cakes and we could have a chocolate one for Elsa's day and the lemon tarte for the shared one."

Elsa smirked weakly at Elena's suggestion, but only silently hugged Henry closer to herself.

"Can you tell us about that whole curse? Why is this crap even happening? I mean, didn't the wicked stepmother get properly killed in the story?"

"Ah" August sipped his tea "That's the part where the cartoons and our actual world are a bit different. The cartoons - and the stories, and the legends - tell you the perfect story. They have a moral, evil gets punished, good gets rewarded, prince gets a princess as a prize and then they live happily ever after. We rarely see a princess' mother or any other details. In our actual world, well. Let's say that not every villain gets their due - or, rather, most of them don't. Just remember, I was only a kid when they dumped me here with you - even if I'd been a kid for a long time by then - so all I remember is what Father and Blue Fairy managed to cram in my head just days before the whole thing went down."

Emma nodded and poured some more tea into his mug.

"The way I remember this…" he pursed his lips in thought "It all started sometime when Snow White was a kid. She did something - no idea what, I'm afraid - that made Regina very angry at her. Regina then became her stepmother, by marrying the old King. Then the King died and so Regina became the actual Queen of our land, which made everyone scared, because she was a strong dark magician. Then Snow White turned out to be a bandit - there were posters with a price for her head everywhere. Somehow, she managed to get herself a man - that would be prince James, from next kingdom over - and a veritable army of creatures despised by Regina. And they managed to win the war. Don't ask me for details, I was stuck at 6 years of age and Father didn't share a lot with me. He himself was more into building stuff than politics. So then Snow and James were getting married - beautiful wedding, that much I remember - and Regina showed up, even though she was banned from the kingdom. She just crashed the actual wedding, cursed everyone and promised them doom, and left. Disappeared in smoke, just as your father threw a sword at her."

"Threw a sword?" Elsa asked dazedly. "What kind of a world do you guys come from?"

August shrugged.

"Comparing to the works of contemporary literature - hard fantasy. Dragons, swords, lots of logical magic, lots of swordfighting, lots of death. Crappy healthcare, unless you are a noble. Maybe closer to Norton's "Witchworld" than Pratchett's "Discworld", if you get my meaning. Small towns, lots of villages in the middle of nowhere. And lots of forest. And lots of magic-born creatures" he pointed at his own chest. "Continuing. The wedding done, all peaceful, Rumpelstiltskin in a cell, everyone as happy as can be. Your mother gets pregnant. Everyone is even happier. And then it turns out - and I have no idea why, remember, six years old - that the kid will be able to save everyone in the kingdom from the curse, but only if they manage to get her out before the curse hits. So my Father built that fabulous wardrobe out of a very magical tree. And it was supposed to transport two people out - so they thought they could put Snow and James in it and make sure the little one gets all care she needs. But my father negotiated for more magic, as a payment for his help, and the fairies made that three, so that I could get out, too. He was afraid I would die the moment the curse came, because I would have turned into wood then. So once the wardrobe was finished, he pushed me in and then they were supposed to get queen Snow, but…" he sighed. "Something must have gone wrong. I'm guessing she was already in labour and then it turned out there are two of you! So, I'm guessing, they put both into the prepared basket and so used up all the magic to transport both of you out. And then... You were here. And, i suppose, the curse hit the kingdom and took everyone here, too. But under Regina's control"

They drank tea silently for a moment.

"So... what are we supposed to do - or what is Emma supposed to do?" Elena leaned forward and looked at him intently. "We don't know a thing about magic, and even if you feel these two have been using it, I'm betting my salary they can't say what it was they did and how they did it. So, how do we break the curse?"

August shrugged helplessly.

"That they didn't tell me. The Queen and King were supposed to be here, with you! They just told me to be there in case something happened. And that something obviously happened. But they didn't teach me whole history of the kingdom, or anything even near it" he raked his hair with both hands. "I only know that magic is, well, a bit sentient, and if you show up at the right place, at the right time, it may actually lead you where you need to go."

Elsa finally sat up and looked a bit more focused.

"You say right place, but I still don't know how we're supposed to find that place. You've never been there, right? You have no idea where they ended up?"

"No. Although I've been making some research, and with my stupid leg serving as a compass I can give you the general direction. As I said, it itches like hell when someone uses magic, and that place is apparently running on magic, or Regina is using it, a lot. Either way, it's in Maine."

Elena snorted.

"Maine is a big place, you know. We can't just ride down each country road and try finding a magicked place."

August squirmed in his seat.

"I've had someone scry for more details" he finally admitted. "There are magicians in this world, just like in ours, they are simply a bit more subtle than Regina or Rumpelstiltskin. They said the name of the town I'm looking for is Storybrooke and the only way to find it is to already know where it is. But they do know it's at least twenty miles from anything else, which makes it a bit easier to eliminate some areas."

"Very amusing" Elena rolled her eyes and leaned back on the couch. "So we can't get there until we know it's there…?"

August shrugged and looked down.

"I know it's not much. But, as I said, I learned enough about magic to know it has its own mind and will most probably try to lead you there. Things will happen to get you on the right track. Do you know how I managed to find you? Not through the orphanage, no. My leg hurt so I was trying to buy some painkillers - they dull it a bit, but not much - and in the clinic there was a lady telling someone that she'd seen three identical women talking to each other in a cafe and she had a problem understanding who was who because they all had names starting with E. I followed her a bit, discreetly, and identified the cafe. On the day I went inside because of a freak rain, you all showed up, too."

Elsa frowned.

"That was a week ago" she said slowly. "Why are you here only now?"

"I couldn't just approach you there" he explained honestly "And I really didn't want to be arrested for stalking you, so it took me a week to track you back home. Sorry."

Emma just shook her head and yawned.

"I'm very sorry, August" she smiled weakly. "It's a bit much to take in. Can we… Can we just have some time to discuss this? I can't promise anything until we're all in agreement."

He rose stiffly.

"Sure. This is my cell number" he handed Emma the card. "If you think you need something else and if it's something I understood properly, I'll be glad to talk. Please, do consider finding that place. If not for the sake of the whole kingdom, just for your own - and mine. Our parents are stuck there. Also…" he turned to Elsa "there are probably some magicians there who could help to trace your origins. And there are many ways to travel between worlds, not only magical cupboards. So you could, probably, find your family too."

Elsa's lips were pressed into a thin line, but she nodded.

"I will leave you, ladies. I'm staying in Boston for the foreseeable future, so we'll meet again, I suppose."

Only when the door closed and Henry was safely transported to his bed, Emma's brain caught up with the fact that August had mentioned many names he never explained. One of them stuck in her mind and she was mulling over it as she fished out the laptop from her bag and sat down to googling fairy tales.