Chapter Text
Camelot, some time ago
The knight was snoring softly, still sunk in the deepest of sleeps.
Ardena couldn’t stop drinking in the sight of him. She’d been drawn to his bedchamber by curiosity more than by duty, hoping to catch a glimpse of the strange guest her husband had welcomed into their home, but now that she had laid her eyes on him she couldn’t quite tear herself away from the doorframe, as if entranced by the spectacle set before her. Young, he was, younger than she’d expected, closer to her age than that of the man she was wed to, and handsome too – he’d kicked away the blankets in his slumber, and was now laying sprawled over the bed like a starfish, all long limbs and tangled hair, the sleeves of his sleepshirt bunched up to reveal strong arms and finely wrought hands.
She knew that it was unseemly for her to act like this, to peer through a half-ajar door and intrude upon his rest. She was no giddy little girl hiding from her tutors – she was lady of the castle, a noblewoman born and bred, someone who ought to know the rules of hospitality and had no business scurrying around on her tiptoes to avoid being caught red-handed by the chambermaids. She should have sent a valet to wake him up and attend to him far earlier, and gone back to check on what was expected of her for the day.
She should have, but she had yet to bring herself to. She was bound by oath to do many things she misliked, and would need to do far worse now that the man was here, but she was breaking no rule in her hesitation, and that was as much pleasure as she could hope to draw from her current situation. She would take it all gladly, and not waste a single drop of it.
And perhaps, Ardena thought with a small, peevish smile, she might even have some fun with this mysterious knight errant while she was at it.
Swiftly, she stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her back as quietly as she could. Only when she was sure the servants wouldn’t come barging in did she close the distance between them, and then sat delicately on the bed, careful not to disturb its occupant just yet. She took a deep breath, allowing herself a minute more to steel her nerves, then brushed her fingers lightly over his outstretched hand, smiling softly when he startled awake, squinting dazedly up at what no doubt had to seem some sort of whimsical apparition in his foggy gaze.
“And I thought knights were never idle,” she said with a hint of a laughter in her voice, hoping the nervousness she felt wouldn’t seep into her words. “Wake up, ser. The sun is high already, and the lord of the house wants you to break your fast with him.”
Storybrooke, 25th December 2014
There was something going on with Emma’s parents.
Not that that realization could cause any kind of shock in her, if she was being honest with herself. In the near three years since her father had regained his memory, Emma had had to watch him and her mother worry about a long, long list of things, most of which she couldn’t even have fathomed in her past life. In fact, it had easily been the most chaotic three years of her entire existence, what with having to bring Regina to heel, sorting out an entire town’s worth of fairy tale land refugees and fighting off multiple villains who’d decided to claim Storybrooke as their home turf – it stood to reason that it would keep her parents on their toes, to be surrounded by so many issues that needed tending to.
She herself had been on the verge of losing her mind frequently enough, after all, and even taking into account the trifle matter of her being capable of magic, she hadn’t been reunited with any long lost love on top of everything else, nor had she been forced to navigate a sudden three-decade age difference with her spouse. She was willing to cut them some slack, all things considered.
Still, there was no threat hanging over their heads that she knew of, unless some old acquaintances had crossed the town line without her knowledge, and yet here the two of them were, skirting around each other like stray dogs sniffing at an intruder. They weren’t snapping or replying sharply when the other spoke, which was something of a relief – in fact, they were almost too civil to each other, making idle conversation as though they were choosing every word with exaggerated care, their smiles turning genuine only when they were addressing their daughter. They’d sat as far away as their dinner table allowed, too, and even with their house scrubbed clean for the occasion, there was no doubt that someone must have been spending their nights on the couch; David, most likely, considering her mother’s back problems and tendency for fitful sleep, and all those chivalric notions he’d no doubt learned in his homeland.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was going on, but she wasn’t really of a mind to find out, either, considering what kind of old resentments they tended to fight over when push came to shove. They were both adults, for God’s sake. They didn’t need a third person to play mediator. They most certainly didn’t need their daughter to fill the role, not with a townful of trusted friends, former enemies and at least one vaguely reliable therapist who basically lived at their beck and call.
It was, however, turning Christmas lunch into a rather awkward affair, and she’d have rather gone home without her belly churning and refusing to digest anything she’d eaten, if she could help it. Better to face the music now, before it took away her appetite for good.
“So how have you guys been doing?” She asked casually, pushing her slice of roast beef around the plate. At least the food was good, or at least it had been up until she’d grown too restless to taste it properly. “Any news?”
Her mother hesitated, then smiled at her, bright and wide and not reaching her eyes. “Oh, you know,” she said lightly, her fingers toying with the hem of her napkin. “Much the same as usual, I think. It seems we’re finally getting some peace, for once.”
David shot her an unreadable look, quick but hard to miss, and nodded vigorously in the face of Emma’s skeptical expression. “Yeah. It’s getting a bit boring, actually, but they say no news is good news, right?”
Emma glanced from him to his wife and back, and even opened her mouth to object, but then thought better of it. They were trying to fool her, and badly at that – she didn’t even need her superpower to pierce through their pretense, flimsy as it was – but if they were putting on a brave face to hide some marital problems from her, then pressing the matter would only serve to make things worse. Unless what they were concealing regarded long-forgotten family secrets, of course, in which case she’d have rather remained ignorant for the rest of her life, considering how well some of the previous revelations had gone.
She was about to come up with some sort of excuse to leave early, or at least remove herself to the bathroom to get away from the increasing stuffiness of that bloody dinner table, when she felt her phone buzz with an incoming message. She fished it out quickly, grateful for the temporary relief it granted her, and unlocked it to scroll through the latest notifications.
She’d expected another text full of holiday well-wishes, like the half-dozen she’d woken up to and the several more she’d received throughout the morning, but instead it was as terse as a written conversation could get, and coming from Regina, too. That caught Emma off-guard – she and the other woman had grown, if not lovingly fond, at least trusting of each other over the years, but that didn’t mean they were the kind to spend much time casually chatting, especially in the middle of a day as busy as Christmas.
The message simply read, Come to the Merry Men’s camp as soon as you can.
And then, before Emma could fully process what she’d just read, it was followed by a second, even shorter one: Bring your mother.
Her confusion must have shown clearly on her face, because next thing she knew her father was leaning closer to her, concern writ all over his features. “Everything okay?”
Wordlessly, she handed him the phone. He frowned as he read, and then turned back to her while he passed it to his wife so she could see for herself. “What do you think it means?”
“Trouble, no doubt,” her mother said, tersely. “Regina wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. I wonder why she texted, instead of calling. That’s not like her.”
Emma sighed, standing up and moving to retrieve her coat from the hanger. “Well, we can ask her when we get there. It seems that there is no Christmas break for this kind of stuff, and I want to get it over with before something blows up again.”
“You’re right. Better we see what’s going on for ourselves. David, can you-“
“I’m coming with,” he replied, quickly gathering the plates left on the table before getting up as well. “We’ll make it a family thing, since it looks like hot cocoa on the couch isn’t an option for this year. Who knows, might be you’ll need backup.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, alright?” Emma groaned, but she didn’t complain as the man followed them outside, bundling up for the cold as they moved.
She didn’t miss the way her mother’s lips pressed into a thin line for a brief moment when she looked at her husband, either, but now was not the time to wonder about it. It would have to wait until they’d sorted out whatever new mess Storybrooke had in store for them.
Emma couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t at least the tiniest bit thankful for it, not even to herself.
“Please tell me it’s not an emergency,” she said as soon as they’d reached the patch of woods where Regina was waiting for them.
The other woman scoffed, a grim look on her face. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have cut my holiday short like that if it weren’t. Not the biggest one we’ve ever gotten, though. It doesn’t look like we’ve got another dragon in our hands, at least.”
“Well, that’s a low bar to clear,” Emma muttered under her breath, before raising her voice again. “Anyway. What is it that you wanted us to see?”
Regina gestured towards the path that led deeper into the forest. “This way. I left Robin to stand guard, in case someone wanted to snoop around and muck up what traces we have left.”
Traces of what, exactly? Emma wondered, but before she could voice the question aloud her mother had stepped forward, leaning heavily against her husband as they reached the clearing. Despite their still nameless disagreement, David hadn’t hesitated to offer her his arm to navigate their way to the meeting point, nor had she balked at the idea of taking it – it had snowed plenty already, to the delight of the entire town population below the age of twelve, and the slush had made the ground grow muddy and decidedly harder to get through.
“I take it you were spending the day together, then?” Snow asked, a small smile dancing on her face.
Regina didn’t quite flush, and neither did she hesitate more than a couple seconds, but she pressed her lips together for a moment before nodding, to what Emma supposed would be no one’s surprise. It was common knowledge by now that she and Robin had become an item, after he’d been instrumental in deescalating her villainous habits, and though some people in town were still decidedly suspicious of both issues, it had already faded in the background of the local gossip trade, surpassed by more recent scandals.
“Yes. Some of his men were a bit skeptical about the way things are handled here, but Roland’s been wondering about Christmas in this land for a while now, so we thought to put up a small feast.”
“And where is he now?” David asked. “Roland? You didn’t bring him along, did you?”
The woman shot him a pointed look, arching a carefully maintained eyebrow. “Who do you take us for? Not a chance. No, some kids came from town and asked him to go play with them. Very convenient, if you ask me. And anyway, Robin told Little John to gather most of people and bring them to Granny’s as soon as he could, since we heard she would be hosting some kind of celebration later. This way the area will be clear for a while, and we won’t be disturbed by any passing drunkard.”
Emma hummed noncommittally, but in truth, she was grateful for the effort they’d made. At least there would be no stragglers around, even in case – perish the thought - there turned out to be some kind of actual danger. “Good. Granny’s ale will keep them busy for the rest of day, while you show us…Whatever it is that you wanted to show us?”
Regina nodded, starting out towards the woods and moving away from the still-bustling camp. “Follow me.”
They didn’t have to travel very far. After about a couple minutes of trudging through the snow, diving into the thicker patches of trees, they found Robin Hood squatting down beside a small snow mound, his bow in his hands and a quiver slung across his back. He rose to his feet when he saw them approaching, moving to stand closer to Regina, and nodded in greeting to the newcomers, though his face remained serious. “Sheriff.”
“Hey,” Emma replied. “I’d say Merry Christmas, but it looks like you haven’t been getting much of that, today.”
He gave her a rueful grin, shrugging distractedly. “Ah, yes. I’d hoped celebrations could be a little more peaceful in this land than they were in ours, actually.”
“A bit optimistic on your part, I’m afraid,” Snow remarked drily, before looking questioningly at Regina. “Why did you want us to come here? I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Did the Merry Men catch some weird animal while out hunting?”
“Not exactly. But they found something else, and you’re still one of the best trackers in town. If your eyesight hasn’t gotten any worse, that is.”
“I’d thank you to respect your elders, Regina.”
Emma turned her eyes skyward in a bid for patience, then shook her head, turning her attention to Robin. “What kind of tracks are we talking about?”
He pointed to the mound of snow to which he’d been devoting so much care before. “Come see for yourself.”
Emma drew closer, and then crouched low to give it a thorough once-over, only barely conscious of her parents following suit. What from a distance had looked like a smear of fresh, largely untouched snow, was in fact dotted with a series of pawprints, small but definite, the four-fingered marks making a stark contrast against the white landscape.
“A fox,” her mother said, after a moment. “Or a very small dog, but I doubt anyone would come this far to walk their chihuahua.”
“Is this what you were in such a hurry over, Regina?” David asked, frowning. “A fox? Aren’t foxes supposed to be part of the local wildlife or something?”
“Is that the only thing you noticed?” Regina replied, somewhat snappishly. “Seriously? After all the time you spent running around my woods?”
“Hold on.” Emma stood up, scanning the rest of the area. She could see the path drawn by the pawprints, now, a dark trail leading further north, but there was no explanation as to where a fox might have emerged from, no holes or hiding spots that could justify the tracks’ presence. “Why are they coming out of nowhere?”
The mayor threw her hands up in the air. “Finally, someone with an ounce of sense.”
“Still, that’s no reason why you should have called us here. For all we know, it could have fallen off a tree and run off in shame. Or the wind could have covered some of the tracks.”
“There’s more to it,” Robin interjected. “Look.”
They followed his lead, eyes glued to the tracks as they minded not to step over them. The trail took a winding path through the trees, halted by fallen logs and boulders but never fully vanishing, instead reappearing on the other side with equal clarity. On and on it went, and despite her puzzlement Emma soon found herself somewhat bored by the task, which had thus far proved rather uneventful. She’d dressed warmly for the day, but her day hadn’t been supposed to include an impromptu fool’s errand of a hike, and her feet were starting to demand her return to a more comfortable environment, preferably one equipped with centralized heating. Part of her almost wanted to call Regina out on her bluff and make her way back to town, or at least to where the Merry Men had no doubt set out a grand meal to celebrate the day, and the request was on the tip of her tongue when something caught her attention.
Wait.
“What the hell?” She murmured, bending down to brush over the tracks with her fingers, as if to ascertain they were really there.
Somewhere along the way, there had been a shift in the pattern, one that continued as far as her gaze went. The markings had become more and more frequent, and the distance between them increasingly larger, until it almost looked as if the fox had been proceeding on its hind legs only – but no, that would have been impossible. She’d seen plenty of surreal things, but for some reason her brain refused to conjure the image of a fox hopping around on its back paws like a miniature person, no matter how endearing it could seem at first glance.
Still, there was no denying the change happening before her – and the traces were changing too, in dimension if not in shape. In fact, they appeared to be slowly getting bigger, with no sign of returning to their prior appearance. Emma kept her eyes glued on them until they’d grown about the size of her hand before raising her gaze back to the others, who were looking as disconcerted as she felt.
Except, perhaps, for Regina, who had the hint of a sardonic grin on her face. “Not exactly your usual Maine fox, is it?” She commented archly.
“What kind of creature is that?” Snow murmured, seemingly transfixed by the sight before her.
Robin sighed, scratching at the back of his head with his free hand. “Well, we’d hoped you could tell us that. A couple of my men found the trail while checking on their traps for today’s meal, but they came to warn me right afterwards. They suspected magic had something to do with it.”
“Well, I can’t say they were wrong.”
“Oh, it gets worse,” Regina said darkly. “Keep going.”
Emma looked skeptically back at her. “How can it get worse than this?”
“I thought you’d learned not to ask questions like that by now, Sheriff.”
Regina’s assumption was proved correct not a couple minutes later. The trail took a turn, running up a slight slope and then through some bare-branched shrubs, and when it came out on the opposite side the tracks looked garbled somehow, as if they’d been muddied or stomped over. One could spot a familiar curve here and there, or the outline of a claw, but it would have been impossible to determine what animal they belonged to, if they hadn’t known already. And when they finally grew clearer again…
Emma stopped abruptly, almost causing her father to bump into her. “Are you kidding me?”
What followed was a long line of pristine human footprints – small, to be sure, no more than a size 6 or 7, but human nonetheless, five toes and all. They picked up right where the pawprints ended, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and continued their way into the forest without even the barest hint of hesitation.
If the walking fox had been unconceivable, the idea of a barefoot shapeshifter taking a stroll in the middle of a sub-zero Maine winter was far too absurd to even be spoken aloud, and yet it was the most likely option, to Emma’s dismay. “What is this? Are they- Should we call Ruby? Is there another werewolf we should worry about?”
“A werefox, more like,” her mother mused. “But no, I don’t think Ruby has anything to do with it. I watched her turn more than once, and it was not nearly as neat as this. There’s something odd with these tracks.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Regina rubbed her gloved hands together, then crossed her arms against her chest, as though attempting to ward off the cold. “That’s why we called you in. It might just be the usual lost newcomer, but it never hurts to be careful, especially when it looks like they could be using magic.”
“Did you see where they’re going?”
Robin shook his head. “We thought to wait for reinforcements before we went any further. Whatever creature these tracks belong to, it’s not as if it might vanish out of thin air. And if it can, well, we could hardly have stopped it.”
“Good call.” Emma stepped forward, putting herself at the head of the group. “Come on, then. Let’s see if they come in peace.”
By then they’d walked far enough that she had lost, if not her bearings, at least part of her sense of direction. There was something utterly eerie about having to follow a trail without knowing where it might lead, in a forest that was ripe with weird noises even where the snow should have, by rights, muffled every sound including that of their footsteps – she kept looking over her shoulder at every creaking branch and rustling of leaves, almost expecting for someone to be watching them, and came up with nothing every time, likely to the amusement of what few wild animals were minding their business around the area. It brought to mind the trials of Hansel and Gretel, the way she’d read them as a young girl in school, when fairy tales had seemed wonderfully distant and nothing she could set to rights on her own.
Still, she’d already sorted out the matter of Hansel and Gretel within the first two months of her stay in town, and she’d collected her badge and gun before leaving to join Regina as well, just in case. That ought to put her at an advantage against any hungry witch they might meet.
Finally, they came to a spot where the trees seemed to be thinning out some, and Emma raised a hand to stop the others before they could stumble on her again. “Hold on. What is that?”
Standing before them was an oddly misshapen structure, about eight or nine feet tall, placed right in the middle of a circle of bare trees. It vaguely resembled the mouth of a cave, made of roughly squared-off boulders streaked with moss, with a sloped roof that made it look like as though it were burrowing down into the ground – which it might very well be doing, for what Emma could see. The interior was pitch black and impossible to analyze from the outside, and though there was snow piling up at its sides and before the makeshift doorstep, only very little of it was dusting the outer walls, and the moss creeping over them was almost too vibrant a green, clashing intensely with the wintery landscape that surrounded it.
The footprints kept their merry pace right to the entrance, afterwards vanishing into the darkness without so much as a by-your-leave.
“Where does that thing lead?” David asked, his brow furrowed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in this part of the forest before. Robin?”
“Not a clue. And I thought we’d scoured through everything up to the town line.”
“You have,” Regina said, her voice tense. “Whatever that is, it’s not supposed to be here. I have never seen it in my life – and believe me, twenty-eight years stuck in the same loop will give you a lot of free time to spend combing through the woods.”
Snow scoffed. “You want us to believe it’s, I don’t know, sprouted out of the ground while you weren’t looking?”
“Well, do you have any better idea?”
“I do,” Emma cut in, taking a step forward. “I say we go check it out and see if we can get some answers. Then, we can discuss the rest.”
“Emma, are you sure?” Her father spoke up. “You don’t know what might be in there.”
“Listen, until there’s any proof of danger, we’ve got to work with the assumption that someone’s been running around shoeless in the middle of December, and that they found shelter in a hole. I’d rather get them out and back to town before worrying about anything else.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Robin admitted, fetching an arrow from his quiver and nocking it. “Go on, then. We’ll cover you in case something goes wrong.”
Emma nodded and pressed on, the rest of the group at her heels. She tried peering inside the building once she was close enough, but the darkness was so absolute that she could hardly notice the difference, so she sighed and pulled her phone out from her pocket, turning on the flashlight.
“Be careful,” she warned, leaning against the stony doorframe as she attempted to light up the interior. “We don’t know if the ground inside is-“
She couldn’t finish the sentence. As soon as her hand touched the boulders, she heard a low, threatening rumbling sound raise around her – for a moment, she thought it might come from inside the cave, some sort of feral animal howl that immediately had her raising her guard. Soon, though, it was clear that there was no creature screaming, and that the ground itself was causing that inarticulate noise, like the humming at the back of someone’s throat. It grew louder and louder, until it felt as if it were surrounding her, hounding her from all sides.
Then the ground was shaking underneath her feet, listing to the side as though she were standing on a wobbling platform, rather than on solid forest floor.
Emma’s eyes went wide with shock. She tried holding onto the cave walls to keep herself upright, but her feet kept sliding on the mud and slush, and from the startled gasps coming from all around her, it wasn’t hard to gather that the same might be happening to the others as well. She caught a glimpse of her father, making a desperate grab at her mother’s arm, but it was to no avail – down they both went, and Regina and Robin with them, with no chance to pull themselves out of whatever was clamping them down.
“What the hell’s happening?” She exclaimed, but the words were drowned by the deafening roar that was piercing her eardrums more strongly by the second, near enough to be unbearable.
She made a last-ditch effort of using magic to dig her way out, but her feeble spells seemed to clash against something much stronger than her, and all she could for feet and feet away was snow and trees and logs curling inwards towards her, as though they were teeth from a giant mouth trying to take a bite out of her. She shouted again when the ground swallowed her, taking the glare of the sun over the snow with it, but she got no response.
And then there was utter, complete silence.