Not My Homeland Anymore

Chapter 3: My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore

There was something strange about the fairy tale book Mr. Cassidy had showed him, but Henry couldn't figure out what. He'd hoped that holding onto it longer might give him time to figure out why he was so drawn to the stories in it, but the more times he read through it, the more confused he got.

First of all, the way it was written was weird. It was a collection of classic fairy tales, but they were clearly different from the original stories. (Once he started working at the library, he borrowed a regular book of children's fairy tales to compare it to- Mom had never really read them to him as a kid, so he wasn't all that familiar with most of them.)

That wasn't so strange in and of itself. (Henry understood the concept of "retellings.") But some of them were connected to others, and some were completely independent of the others, as though the author wasn't sure whether or not he (or she) was writing one larger story or a bunch of shorter, unrelated ones.

And then there was so much time spent on Snow White and Prince Charming- only to end with the prince being mortally wounded, the princess being cursed, and their baby sent who-knew-where. Which was kind of a depressing way for a book of fairy tales to end, especially after so many stories emphasizing themes about hope and good winning over evil. (Sure, there was that open ending, that idea that maybe their baby would come and find them when she grew up, but it didn't seem all that likely. After all, they were going to a Land Without Magic (whatever that was) and she was sent… actually, the story wasn't actually all that clear about where the wardrobe sent the baby.)

And that thing Rumplestiltskin had told Snow and Charming about what kind of curse it was, about being imprisoned by time… what did that even mean?

All in all, it was just a very strange sort of storybook.

But there was something else about the book and its characters, something almost… familiar. Which made absolutely no sense, because he'd never even read the original fairy tales before a few days ago! Why did seeing and reading about Snow White and Red and Granny and the dwarves (and even the Evil Queen!) make him feel like he already knew them, like he'd always known them?

He didn't know, but he was determined to figure this all out.

"Hey, Mr. Cassidy," Henry said one afternoon, passing another book up to Neal, "what do you think being trapped in 'a prison of time' means?"

"A prison of time?" Neal looked down from the ladder he was standing on, not understanding the question. Had the kid misheard some conversation at school or something? "Where'd you you get that from?"

"It's in the book," explained Henry, handing him the next volume in the stack. He didn't bother to mention which book- by now, Neal knew that when Henry said 'the book,' it could only refer to one thing. "There's this curse coming, and Snow White and Prince Charming are trying to find out what kind of curse it is, so they go to this guy who can see the future, and he tells them that it's going to trap them in a prison of time, where time will stop and they'll suffer for all eternity."

"That's kind of dark," Neal said, shelving another book. "But it sounds pretty straightforward to me. What part of that did you need help understanding?"

"If they're frozen, how can they also be suffering? They wouldn't feel anything, right?" Henry seemed really confused by this concept. "And what does time have to do with it? Does that just mean they'll never be unfrozen? But he told them curse would be broken some day!"

Neal blinked a few times, trying to untangle what Henry was saying.

"I don't think it means they'll literally be frozen," he said, finally getting where the confusion was. "It probably means that they won't age."

He heard the sound of something loud hitting the ground. Turning back down, he saw Henry bending down to pick a book off of the ground. He must have dropped it.

"A-age?" Henry asked, his voice sounding slightly unsteady, as he handed the book up to Neal. "You mean, like on their birthdays?"

"And every other day," Neal said, smiling a bit. "You know that you don't just go from being nine to being ten overnight, right? We're all getting a little older every day, and those days add up. And when you've had a full year of them, you're a year older." Kids have some weird ideas about how time works.

"All of us?" Henry sounded more confused than ever. "But Mr. Cassidy, you don't have a birthday, right?"

"Of course I do," said Neal, trying to hold back his laugh. "It's in February." He remembered being that age, where you just assumed that people like teachers and librarians didn't have lives outside of their work. (He was pretty sure he'd once been convinced that his teachers lived in the school. Not that he had room to talk these days, considering that he really did live at his workplace.)

"And how old are you?" Henry said, handing him the next book.

"Twenty," Neal said, glancing down. I think that must be the last one. Climbing down the ladder, he continued, "I know that probably sounds ancient to you, but it just means that ten years ago, I was right around your age."

"You mean, when I was born, you were ten years old?" Henry asked as Neal folded the ladder. "And you were in fifth grade, like I am now? Was Miss Blanchard your teacher, too?"

"Yes, I guess I must have been in fifth grade when your mom adopted you," said Neal. Something about that sounded… off, but he wasn't sure what. "I can't remember what my teacher's name was, but it certainly wasn't Miss Blanchard- she's not that old, you know."

"Wait, you mean Miss Blanchard also has a birthday?" Henry said following Neal into the back room where the ladder was normally kept.

"Oh, Henry," Neal said, putting down the ladder, turning back to look at the kid, and patting a hand on his shoulder. "Everyone has a birthday."

Regina was sitting at the dinner table, passing her son the potatoes, when he asked her something strange.

"Mom, do you have a birthday?" Henry said.

What kind of question is that?

"Yes, of course," she said, taking some chicken. "It's the first of February." The calendar in this world was different from the old one, so she'd never really considered it hers, but she'd had to fill out enough paperwork over the years that she'd memorized it.

"Mr. Cassidy's birthday is also in February," Henry said, not even looking at his plate. "What are the odds of that?"

"One out of twelve," she replied, not sure what this was about, but wanting to make sure he was keeping up with his schoolwork.

"Mom, is it true that everyone has a birthday?" Henry tilted his head, looking curiously at her.

"Of course it is, Henry," said Regina. What are they teaching him in that school of his? "Yes, everyone has a date that they were born on."

Maybe she needed to talk to Archie about this.

Over the next week, Henry asked every single person he met if they had a birthday. Nearly all of them acted as though he was asking something fundamentally obvious, like if they ate or slept.

Every single one of them, from Mr. Cassidy to Archie to Ruby at the diner to all of his classmates, told him that they did have a birthday, and exactly when it was.

Henry didn't understand.

He'd always known that other people didn't get older the way he did. He was the only kid he knew who moved up a grade at the beginning of the year, the only one who ever got older or taller.

But he'd never thought it was that weird. Plenty of characters in the cartoons he'd watched or comics he read didn't get older, either.

He'd just always assumed it had to do with whether or not you had a birthday. After all, people in books and movies sometimes changed their ages, but usually it was after a birthday, wasn't it?

The whole thing felt really stupid now. Because of course he knew that everyone was born. He'd just… never really thought past that.

But if everyone was born, and had birthdays, and got older… then… there was something he was missing here, obviously.

And he just kept coming back to the book, flipping through the pages, trying to make sense of it all.

He was in his castle, a week after the conversation with Mr. Cassidy about birthdays, when he finally noticed it. That picture, the one of the Evil Queen, where you could really see her whole face… that looked almost like… almost like…

Almost like Mom.

He spent another few days going through the book, trying to see if any of the other people in town matched up with characters in the book. Ruby and Granny were obviously Red and her grandmother, Miss Blanchard was clearly Snow White, and Archie… Archie… Archie must be… Jiminy Cricket? (Then again, according to the book, Jiminy had started out as a regular old human boy, so it did make some sense.)

Am I really overthinking this? It seemed like a bit of a stretch to go from "apparently people other than me are supposed to age but aren't" to "this is obviously a cursed town where everyone is actually a fairy tale character."

Besides, if there really was a curse, people wouldn't be able to leave. And Mr. Cassidy had mentioned a trip across the country a few times.

But when was it?

"Hey, Mr. Cassidy?" Neal looked over from the books he was organizing to see Henry standing next to him with a now-empty cart.

"Yeah, Henry?" At this point, he'd given up trying to get the kid to call him by his first name. Hopefully once he gets a little older.

"You've been out of town before, right?" Henry picked up one of the stacks Neal had already sorted and moved it onto the cart.

"Yes," Neal said, smiling fondly at the memory. "After I finished high school, I decided I just needed to get away from everything for a little while."

"And how old were you, eighteen?" Henry wasn't looking at him, his eyes firmly fixed on the shelf he was putting the books onto, but there was something in his voice that was just a bit too innocent.

"Yes, I was," said Neal, watching him carefully. "Why, are you thinking of going somewhere?"

"Not exactly," said Henry, sliding another book onto the shelf. "How long were you gone?"

"I don't know, a couple of years, maybe?" Neal's memories of that time were a bit fuzzy, but he remembered some things. The Bug, the urn, the dreamcatcher…

"And then when you came back, you took the job at the library?" Henry turned to the next shelf, so Neal still couldn't quite make out his facial expression.

"Actually, your mom arranged that one for me," said Neal. "She knew I couldn't afford to buy a place and I didn't like the idea of- nevermind. Anyway, she said the place could use a new librarian and offered me the job. I've been here ever since."

"And how long has that been?" Henry was now facing in Neal's direction, and he could see that the boy was clearly thinking hard about something.

Starting to think about what he wants to do when he's older, maybe?

"Ummmm…" Now that he thought about, how long had he been working here? "A few years, I guess?"

Henry's eyes widened slightly.

"Oh," he said, as though he'd just figured something out. "So that's how it works."

"How what works, Henry?" Neal asked, blinking slightly. When had the kid gotten all the way over there? "I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?"

"Nothing, Mr. Cassidy," Henry said, his face a mask of innocence. "Nothing important at all."

After his talk with Mr. Cassidy, Henry was sure of it.

Storybrooke must be where Mo-the Evil Queen sent everybody. The librarian's trip couldn't have really happened, not if he had really been gone for a few years. He'd have come back barely a few months ago, not years. And anyway, Henry had been coming to the library for as long as he could remember, and the librarian had always been Mr. Cassidy.

(Which character is he, anyway? He'd flipped through the book a few times, but he couldn't find any character who really reminded him of the polite, friendly librarian. Henry wasn't sure if that meant he just hadn't looked hard enough, or if whoever Mr. Cassidy really was just hadn't been important enough to come up in the book.

Surely not everyone in the Enchanted Forest was a princess or a hero. Or a villain, now that he thought about it. But Mr. Cassidy was way too nice to be any kind of criminal, anyway.)

Now that Henry had discovered the curse, he just needed to figure out how to break it.

Rumplestiltskin said the baby- 'Emma,' Snow told him her name was- would come on her twenty-eighth birthday. But when would that be?

Henry knew it had to have been at least ten or eleven years since Mo- since the Evil Queen had cast the curse, because it had to have been before she adopted him.

Other than that, he had no way of knowing just how long everyone had been there.

He stared down at the notebook in his hand, where he'd written everything he knew about the curse. (He'd destroy this sheet later- didn't want the Evil Queen to find it and figure out that he knew.)

Looking at his hand, he realized that the lead of his pencil had snapped, and he didn't have a sharpener with him.

Maybe I have another one, or a pen, in my bag? He opened the front pocket and felt around, but no pen. Just something smooth, flat, and rectangular. What's this?

Pulling it out, he realized it was the credit card he'd stolen borrowed from Miss Blanchard's wallet a few days before he'd started working at the library.

I should probably return this before she notices that it's missing. He'd used it to pay on that website that said it would help him find his birth mother, but in the excitement of the past few weeks, he'd forgotten about the whole thing. I wonder if they found anything.

After he got home and put away his shoes, he signed into his computer and opened his email. He hadn't checked it for a few weeks.

And there it was, a message from 'whosyourmomma': You have one new notification.

Logging onto the site, he opened the notifications.

They found her!

The first thing he saw was her name. Emma Swan. That's pretty- wait, 'Emma'?

Hadn't that been the name of Snow and Charming's baby?

It can't be that easy. How could the Evil Queen adopt Snow White's grandchild? Would that make Miss Blanchard my grandma?

He knew he was getting carried away. After all, Emma must be a really common name.

Then he saw her birthdate.

Does that say-? He did some quick math. It has to be her.

According to the site, his birth mother's birthday was in less than a week. Her twenty-eighth birthday.