In Storybrooke, Mr. Gold strives to be the man Bae used to love--until Belle is kidnapped to Neverland. If he resumes his Dark One powers to save her, can he control them? In the Enchanted Forest, Emma battles ogres, zombies and her ex to get back h...
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Evil Queen (Regina): Did she put up a fight? (The Queen of Hearts)
At least Henry is sleeping. As David rounded the corner to Main Street, he peered into his rearview mirror at his grandson slumped sideways on the backseat. And at least he's not having nightmares. In the state Regina had been, he hadn't risked leaving his grandson at her house. With the Evil Queen stumbling around, too drunk to remember her pledge to give up magic, who knew what dangers Henry could face—rooms choked by thorny vines, cockroaches the size of elephants, another belch.
David shook his head. No, the kid was safer with him. If he found the red truck, he'd slap a wheel clamp on it and worry about Mr. Smee in the morning. It wasn't like that ridiculous pirate would skip town. Losing all memory of his life before the curse would be a worse punishment than any jail time he'd serve for joy riding.
* * * * *
Archie checked the elaborate cuckoo clock Geppetto had created especially for him. Twenty minutes ago, the brightly painted bird had swooped out and chirped once for one in the morning, but he still wasn't sleepy—not when he could cuddle with Vincent—although right now, his one-and-only was more focused on his cell phone than on his lover's adoring gaze.
"Sorry, Arch. I just want to check my route to Orono—make sure I get to my talk on time without missing one more minute with you than I have to." As Vincent continued tapping the screen, his expression grew increasingly baffled. "I know I used the map app to get here. The voice guided me each step of the way. But I can't figure out how I set the destination." Turning his head, he met Archie's eyes. "Right now, the app isn't even acknowledging Storybrooke exists."
Archie swallowed. "I—I'm not very good—good with tech—technology." Nor understanding how it interacts with the magic in Storybrooke. Throughout the twenty-nine years of the curse, he and the rest of the jinxed inhabitants had existed in a loop—stuck at the same age, stuck in the same dreary problems, stuck with the same dismal outcomes. Yet every now and then, the gadgets they used had updated. When time started again, his home had held a computer that couldn't have been there twenty-nine years earlier. Many of his neighbors had big screen TVs. Everyone had a cell phone.
And all those years, the traffic passing through must have been real. Ruby swore a long-distance trucker or two had bought burgers at Granny's. A mail truck must have delivered Princess Abigail's application to Boston College Law School. And hadn't a Greyhound taken Henry to Boston in search of his birth mother, Emma? Where could he have caught it except in town?
But obviously the curse had kept outsiders' perceptions of Storybrooke foggy. No traveler had ever thought, Hey, what a cute neck-of-the-woods. Maybe I'll stay awhile. No one, that is, except Emma and Pinocchio, but they had been returning to their kin.
Beside him, Vincent was still concentrating on his phone, trying one app after another. "Your Internet—it seems to fade in and out."
"Yes. That's—that's the explanation." Vis-à-vis Earth, Storybrooke faded in and out. Sometimes its presence was stable enough for a bus to roll down Main Street. More often, the connection was as tenuous as a dream.
