Your Prince Charming
She looked up, eyes alight. Hastily, she put the cork back in the vial. Tucking the note back into her pocket, she turned and started back down the path she’d arrived on.
She had to get to the castle before it was too late.
• • •
Mary Margaret was in the middle of the woods, and she didn’t care whether a storm was coming. She cared about one thing: a bird.
She was determined to get the dove back to its proper place in the world. The idea of a living creature—dove, person, deer, wolf, dog, bluebird, it didn’t matter—being forced into a position that wasn’t right, that went against the true nature of things… well, it was too much for her to bear. She wanted to do what she could.
David had called fifteen minutes earlier and she had refused to pick up, knowing it would inevitably be a mixed signal of some kind.
The rain began with a trickle. Mary Margaret was not far from the road, and she’d found an open pasture with a good view of the sky. From here she could see the flock coming by. She was hoping for a miracle, she knew that, but what else could she do? Her hope was that the flock would be stirred by the rains and would fly south, attempting to avoid the bad weather. If they did, she would catch them here.
She waited for twenty minutes as the rain became more intense. Finally, she heard thunder in the distance and knew that it wasn’t safe to be where she was, not anymore. Soaked and disheartened, she picked up the cage and began the trudge back toward the road. This is insane, she thought. This is desperate and weird and insane. What are you doing?
She didn’t have time to answer herself, however. Just then, lightning struck somewhere nearby, and a powerful clap of thunder made her jump. When she did, she stumbled backward and slipped in the mud. She felt the ground giving out beneath her feet and reached wildly for a thin tree, which she barely managed to grasp. Panicked, splayed out on her belly, she looked over her shoulder and slipped down the slope toward a ravine, her feet dangling below her torso. The rain was now a downpour, and she couldn’t see how deep the ravine went. She was in trouble. Real trouble.
Until she saw the hand reaching toward her.
“Mary Margaret!” yelled David, leaning toward her. “I found you, thank God! Take my hand!”
She did, and he pulled her up, and together (with the dove), they ran to a nearby cabin, which David had spotted through the woods. It was locked, and no one was there, so David kicked in the door, and they spilled inside, so glad to be out of the rain. They were both soaked and shivering.
“We need to get you dry,” David said. “Hold on.” He began looking around for blankets, towels, and any dry clothes.
“Whose cabin is this?” she asked. “Do you think it’s okay that we’re here?”
“Your roommate is the sheriff, I doubt she’ll care,” he said. He’d found a blanket, and he brought it to her, wrapped it around her shoulders. They were close. Very close.
And then Mary Margaret pulled away.
“Don’t,” she said. “Please.”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong,” he said.
“What’s wrong is that I still have feelings for you, David.”
David just looked back.
“Why do you think I’m at Granny’s every morning at the same time, right when you’re there? It’s just to see you. I don’t care about being punctual, it’s not a coincidence, I… I just want to see you. And I don’t. And I do. I can’t—I don’t know what to do.”
David, throughout this speech, could not help but conceal the faintest of smiles. He looked dazzled, a little confused.
“What?” Mary Margaret said.
“You come at seven-fifteen every morning to see me?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s embarrassing. Don’t gloat.”
He shook his head. “I’m not gloating.”
“What, then?”
“I come at seven-fifteen every morning to see you, Mary Margaret,” he said. “We’re doing the same thing.”
They both stepped forward then, and embraced. Wordlessly, they got closer and closer, until their lips nearly touched. David’s eyes were already closed when Mary Margaret suddenly pulled back. His eyes opened, a look of confusion on his face.
“How can you do this to Kathryn, David?” Mary Margaret whispered. She thought: How can I do this? This isn’t me.
“What do you mean?” he said. “I’ve told you, I don’t feel a—”
“Not that, David. I know. I know.”
“Know what?”
“I know that she’s pregnant.”
It did not produce the reaction Mary Margaret had expected. What had she assumed? Some denial, some kind of rationalization, which she was beginning to see David was very good at coming up with. Instead, though, he looked legitimately surprised.
“What did you say?” he asked.
He doesn’t know, she thought. He doesn’t know she’s pregnant.
• • •
Emma tried to track down the “stranger” all day. Someone—some man—had ridden into town on a motorcycle a few days ago, and he was making most of the townspeople nervous. He was also making Regina nervous—enough so that she’d come to Emma and asked her to investigate the man. He’d apparently approached Henry outside of Regina’s house and asked him a number of questions.
For once, Emma agreed with her nemesis. Strangers in town asking odd questions of little boys was not exactly okay. Regardless of the boy. In this case, it was even worse.
No one knew his name, and as of right now, he wasn’t even staying anywhere. He seemed to keep popping up down this street or that street, and on top of that, he had a very mysterious-looking box attached to the back of his motorcycle. She didn’t like the way he lurked.
So far, she had only what she’d started with: He was a lightly bearded man in his midthirties and he rode a motorcycle. He had a certain cockiness about him, but whenever she got close to him, he always seemed to be heading in the other direction. On three separate occasions she’d seen him in town, and each time, when she started moving toward him or called out, something would come up. Either she’d be called away or he would hop on his motorcycle and disappear.
Instead of her finding the stranger, though, the stranger found her. She was sitting at a booth in the diner, trying to think of who he might be, when he sat down across from her.
“You,” she said, looking up, coffee halfway to her lips.
“You’ve been following me around all day,” he said. “I assume you want to talk.”
“Why were you talking to Henry the other morning?” she said.
“You mean the little kid who came up to me and started asking me questions? Is that Henry?”
Emma said nothing.
“Does he usually ask that many questions? He seems quite… precocious,” the man said.
“What were you doing outside of his house?”
“My bike broke down.”
“That why you decided to go for a long walk with your mysterious box?”
He patted it. “Who said it’s mysterious?”
“Okay. Then what’s in it?”
“It’s frustrating not knowing, isn’t it?”
“Just tell me,” she said.
“Why?” he asked. “Is it illegal to carry around a box in these parts?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not.”
He smiled at her, but her lips didn’t even quiver.
“You really want to know what’s inside, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to wait,” he said. “You’re gonna have to wait a long time. And watch me carry it around for a little while. Your imagination will make up all sorts of stories about it. Is it a severed head? Is it a magic machine? A stack of secret documents? What could possibly be inside of this box?”
“Don’t get cute,” she said. “You’re very suspicious. I could get away with forcing you to show
me.”
“Or,” he said, “we could do it the easy way. You could let me buy you a drink sometime and I’ll tell you right now.”
She looked back at him, trying to gauge how serious he was. She decided to call his bluff and said, “Okay. A drink it is.”
“A drink?”
“Yup. One drink.”
“Okay,” he said. He reached over and opened the top and showed her what he had. A typewriter.
“Really?” she said.
“I’m a writer,” he said. “This place is inspiring to me. That’s why I’m here.”
• • •
Snow White hurried to the castle and got to its gates the night before the wedding, only hours before Abigail was set to arrive. She snuck inside in the garb of a florist and made her way toward where she guessed Charming’s quarters had to be, hiding from guards along the way. She came close, she truly did, before she stumbled in a dark corridor, and a young guard poked his head around the corner. His face tensed, and he lunged at her with surprising speed. He caught her easily and ignored her stories as he hauled her down to the dungeon, believing her to be a common thief.
The moment she was locked in her cell, she began looking for a way out. Could she pick the lock? Climb the wall? She didn’t know, but she had to get out. She had to stop the wedding.
“Easy there, sister,” came a voice. “You’re stuck until they decide otherwise.”
She looked over to the next cell, where a deep-voiced man lounged in the corner, his legs crossed.
He was bearded and bald. He smiled at her, gave a friendly wave hello.
“Good to meet you,” he said.
“I don’t need them to let me out of here,” she said. “I’ll find my own way out.”
“Okay, fine,” he said. “Have it your way. You’ll find your own way out.”
He watched her pace back and forth in her cell for some time, then said, “What’s your name?”
“Snow White,” she said. Did it really matter whether some common criminal knew?
“The Snow White?” he said, suddenly very interested. “As in Wanted-by-the-Queen Snow White?”
“One and the same,” she said.
“Well, I’m Grumpy,” he said, getting to his feet.
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“No, no,” he said, waving her off. “That’s my name.”
“Your name is Grumpy?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “What kind of name is that?”
He shrugged. “It’s a dwarf’s name,” he said. “What kind of name is Snow White?”
Snow White just smiled, and the two began to talk as she tried to find a weakness in the cell. An hour passed; they talked about many things as she grew more and more concerned that she was going to spend weeks down here, miss the wedding, miss her opportunity. Grumpy explained how he’d ended up in the cell, as did Snow White (vaguely, cautiously). They discussed love, and lost love, and regret.
Grumpy’s eyes lit up when he spoke of a woman he’d once loved, and how he regretted letting her slip through his fingers.
“But doesn’t love cause too much pain?” she said. “To be worth it?”
“It causes pain, indeed,” Grumpy said. “But it’s worth it. It’s a good pain.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Yes,” he said. “I guarantee that.”
“I could forget my love if I chose,” she said, and told him about the potion she’d gotten from Rumplestiltskin.
He seemed impressed by the idea, but after a moment, he shook his head. “No. It’s not right,” he said.
“Why not free yourself?”
“Because that wouldn’t be real,” he said. “Because it would always be deep down in you somewhere, eating at you. You can’t pretend that what is true is not true. Regardless of what you remember. Give me the pain, and what’s honest. I’ll take that any day.”
“Huh,” Snow White said, and resumed her attempts at finding a way out of the cell a bit more frantically.
That is, until Grumpy explained to her that she’d be wise to conserve her energy.
“If you really want to get out,” he said, “just relax. Give it ten minutes.”
“How would that help me?” Snow White asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. “I got good friends.”
She was exhausted, not only from her furtive search for an escape but from the days and days of travel… the deal with Rumplestiltskin, the flight to the castle… She allowed herself to sit down and close her eyes. She fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.
• • •
“Hey. sister!”
She woke to see Grumpy and another dwarf standing in her cell, both of them smiling at her.
“She’s pretty,” said the second dwarf. The one she didn’t know.
She rubbed her eyes, got to her feet.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Who’s this? How did you open the doors?”
“This is Stealthy, my friend,” Grumpy said, pointing at the other dwarf with his thumb. “He came to spring me and now we’re springin’ you. Come on.”
She looked over their heads and saw a guard lying on the ground, apparently unconscious.
“But why would you do that for me?” she asked, hurrying out of the cell behind the two dwarfs. She stepped nimbly past the guard, wondering how the two of them had managed it.
“Because I sympathize with your story of heartbreak, sister,” said Grumpy, not looking back. “We’ve all been there. God I hate love. But I love it.”
“Quiet, you two!” whispered Stealthy. He led them to a grate in the floor and pointed down at a ladder. “Come on. Down into the catacombs. Let’s go.”
She hurried down behind the two, wary of guards spotting them. Soon, though, they were below the castle, in the winding tunnels of the crypts, Stealthy out in front, guiding Snow and Grumpy with a torch.
They ran until Snow White could no longer breathe; she had no idea where they were going. But she trusted them, trusted Grumpy to come back for her. They could have left her there in the cell, sleeping, for all of eternity.
They reached an intersection, and Stealthy stopped. “You’re trying to find the Prince?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“Go that way,” he said, pointing down a long tunnel. “You’ll see a ladder at the end. Take it up. You’ll be at the tower you need.” He patted his companion on the shoulder. “We’re heading this way,” he said. “Out of the castle. Come on!”
Grumpy smiled at her.
“Good-bye, sister,” he said. “Good luck!”
The two dwarfs ran away, leaving her alone, in the dark.
“Good-bye,” she said, into the darkness.
She didn’t waste any more time.
• • •
The rain stopped in the awkward moment after Mary Margaret said that Kathryn was pregnant. David looked shocked. Mary Margaret regretted her indiscretion, but there was something good, at least, in that David hadn’t known, that he hadn’t continued pursuing her nevertheless. He was not very aware of himself, but he wasn’t a monster; she had to give him that. He was confused, too.
She picked up the birdcage. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get her back to her flock.”
They walked in silence back to the same field Mary Margaret had been in before she fell. She looked warily at the ravine and the muck and mud where she’d nearly gone over. He’d found her. He’d found her and saved her. There was that….
“Mary Margaret,” he said. “We have to—”
“Shh. Do you hear that?” she said. They both looked up at the same time. “The flock!” she cried. “They must have waited for the storm to end! They’re here!” Excited, she knelt in the wet grass and opened up the cage. She brought out the dove, stroked its head once more, and held it up so its beak was skyward.
It didn’t take anything beyond that, just showing the dove. It burst from her hands and gained altitude quickly, flapping hard (and with what seemed li
ke joy) as it rejoined its family.
Mary Margaret had a beaming smile on her face. She hadn’t felt this happy in a long time.
David, watching too, stepped close and tried to put his arm around her.
“David, no,” she said. “Don’t. Please.” She stepped away and hugged herself. “We can’t. It’s not right.”
“How can you say no after we both just admitted it? I don’t understand.”
“Because you chose her even so, David,” she said. “Why haven’t you left her if you love me so much?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Because I had a life with her, too. Because both paths seem right.”
“You don’t get to take both paths.”
“It feels like one is real and the other isn’t, whichever way I go.”
“No matter what, somebody is going to get hurt,” she said. “There’s no way you’re going to not hurt somebody, David. You’re not accepting that.”
He hung his head in thought, then looked up at the sky. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said flatly.
“I can’t stop thinking about you, either,” she said. “But we have to forget each other. We have to. There’s no other way.”
• • •
Snow White moved through the dark catacombs as quickly as she could, groping her way without a torch. In a matter of minutes she found the end of the corridor and the ladder, just as Stealthy had said she would, and was hauling herself up toward the light of another grate before she even bothered to test the rungs for rot. For all she knew the wedding was happening right now. There was no time for safety.
At the top of the ladder, she pushed aside a heavy wicker grate and climbed up into a courtyard. She bolted across the open area, intent on entering through a large door at the base of the tower she knew to hold the Prince’s chambers. Before she could, though, she heard some yelling far across the open area. She turned just in time to see something heartbreaking: three hundred yards away, Grumpy and Stealthy had apparently been cornered by the castle guards. As she looked on in horror, Stealthy made a break for the castle’s entrance.
He didn’t make it.
An arrow, shot from high atop a guard tower, sailed down and struck him in the chest. Grumpy’s scream was loud enough to give her chills, even where she was.