Work Text:
WANTED
Regina, The Evil Queen, DEAD or ALIVE, for the abduction and enchantment by means of magic of the newly coronated Queen Emma.
Last seen escaping the Kingdom boundaries with Her Majesty. Reward in a chosen weight of gold ONLY if returned with the Queen, granted by Prince Henry.
Ezzie tosses the poster with a disinterested sigh and returns to tending to the pot of beans before her. The crops have fared poorly this year, and it shows especially at Ezzie’s thinning waistline where baby fat should still be. In her thirteen years time, her village has been left alone by the kingdom--perhaps because, the last time they pledged loyalty to a king of that particular bloodline, he bought (read: seized) their land, and pushed them outward beyond their protection.
So, like many other things that get passed on by royal messengers, these will have to be better used as tinder.
When her mother and sister come through the door in sour moods--something about that dirty old cheat of a merchant trying to swindle them five pieces of silver for rotten fruit--they are too preoccupied to even glance at the posters. “It takes rotten fruit to bear it,” her mother huffs, chops their halfway rotting chard into slivers of green to accompany Ezzie’s beans, and wears a frown for the duration of dinner. They would feel hunger again soon after.
They weren’t always like this. Her family is good at wearing optimism like skin, a skill they had learned when their father became collateral damage for a dark magic scare six years ago. But their patience wore thin, sometimes. Especially when they were starving.
Ezzie creeps out with a spear when the black of night is fresh, seeking to hunt at the river. The fish and land animals had been depleted recently, as if they were there and thriving one day and then rapidly declining the next. It makes Ezzie feel like maybe the world isn’t real, that she’s stuck in someone else’s incomplete dream - but there is still hope left in her, and it’s better than the guaranteed nothing brought by lack of effort.
When she approaches the river, still some way ahead, she spots two outlines, shapes of people that she doesn’t recognize, even when they move or walk. The village is small, and she knows everybody by name and line and image - and these two are not one of them; and tradesmen have no business here, especially at this hour. She moves her path into the dirt road where the rustling of shrubbery and grass keeps her silent. Finding a tree with a close enough proximity to the strangers, she settles behind it and waits.
“Red? Really? We’re on the run and you want to dye your hair red? ” She hears one of them say. She is small in frame but intense in posture, with short hair and a coat that makes her think of a duke or lord or prince, whatever --
The woman next to her, covered in a soft cape over a long dress, flicks her hand towards her head like she’s trying to spark a flame, and responds in equal irritation. “You may like wearing other people’s likenesses when you need a disguise, but I for sure don’t. It’s fucking creepy.”
Ezzie catches sight of faint gold sliver along the wrist of the woman with a smart mouth before her glove is hastily tugged further down to conceal it. She recognizes the shine--she’d seen it on her mother and the other widows before their husbands had passed.
The woman gives it one more flick, and her hair goes from a pale yellow to a deep red.
“Too much?” she asks.
“You’re always too much.” It is said fondly, and with the turn of her head, the silhouette of her profile comes to view against the moonlight, and something uncomfortable rumbles in Ezzie’s stomach, something dreadful, something frightening, and until she realizes -- something like hunger.
Oh, nuts.
The two women dart their heads to the direction of the tree. “Who’s there?” The one with new hair calls.
Ezzie is bold and best and foolish at worst, so she steps out of the protection of the tree and brandishes her spear.
“State your name and business!” she bellows authoritatively, despite having a child’s voice. She’d been fantasizing about that one for a while.
A condescending quirk forms on the lips on Prince Coat’s face. Then it falls. The two women look at each other with a knowing look, something that Ezzie can’t read but somehow knows for certain isn’t dangerous.
“Hey, kid,” New Hair says softly, holds up a basket of bread, cold meats, and fruits conjured thinly from air. “Put that dumb thing down and let’s talk.”
***
There is nothing but chatter of the village’s strange and rather otherworldly newcomers for the next three days. They say one is a princess from a faraway kingdom currently ravaged by war from a tyrannous lord. The woman accompanying her, whom they have they have not seen smile once, is a wanderer who has allied herself to the lost princess.
“That princess,” Justine begins, scrubbing old dresses on a rock at the river with the other widows. “I never heard of or seen her before, not even in the papers. She must be from a kingdom very far away indeed. You don’t see such red hair around here.”
“Elvia and the girls think it isn’t naturally red,” Old Clementina notes.
“Must be one of the more modern trends. That other one with her looks a little more local, though. What did they say she was again?”
“Wanderer, witch, warrior,” Linda chimes in. “Something of that kind. All three perhaps. I forget her name. Something strange.”
“Dame something, is what I heard,” Justine replies.
“A wandering dame?”
“Peculiar, I know.”
Linda tuts. “We’ve had stranger visitors. My concern is where all the food will be going now. Her highness better be used to rubbish beans two meals a day.”
(“You said it.” “Mmhmm.” “I’d love to see that .”)
In another part of town, the two are spotted in the market with Ezzie, the youngest daughter of Bella and the late Ernesto, known to either be hostile with strangers or over eager to know them. Booth attendants and shopkeepers with their windows open eye them from the periphery of their vision.
When they had first arrived with Ezzie, the princess had worn her dress and a cloak, whereas now she donned trousers, boots, and the coat that the dame had come in, with her long red hair braided neatly over her shoulder. The dame herself opted for something that better aligned with what she said she was -- short hair tied out of the way and a sword slung over her back, and the rouge cleaned from her lips. She seems inattentive, somehow, preoccupied with the flags that hang above the roofs.
“Is it me or do they seem kind of suspicious?,” a shoe merchant whispers from behind his booth to his companion. “Like I’m not trying to be an intolerant or anything, I’ve got nothing against red hair, but it just feels off, you know?”
“Honestly. What kind of names are Leia and Han Solo, anyway?”
“Wait, a minute, remember those posters circulating a couple days ago? From Prince Henry’s messengers?”
“Yeah, those kept my fires going for a while.”
The merchant pulls out the folded piece he had kept in his pocket and forgotten about, and invites his companion to look over at it with him.
“No way. It’s not...”
When they look up again at the two, something bright from below each of their left sleeves catch their eye: a gold sliver around the wrist, imprinted on the skin. As the princess’s sleeve rides up, she quickly pulls it down, all with appearing not to think about it, just as the dame looks in her direction. The dame does the same, when the princess is about to look, like a bizarre dance of stealth.
“Ohhhhhhh.”
“What are you two looking at?” the merchant’s sister walks to them, a reprimand in her mouth, until she looks at their line of sight, then at the poster, and “enchantment.”. It takes a good moment for her to process what they’ve put together -- there’s so much to take in in just five seconds time -- but when it clicks, it delights her.
“Nobody say anything to anyone,” she says.
***
As per their word, the widows dine in Bella’s cottage, where the princess and the dame are hosted. They expect to find two women in disgust or discomfort with a will to leave town by the end of night, and instead they find this: Han Solo taking over cutting the carrots when Bella’s arthritis acts up in her wrist, and Princess Leia emulating a street urchin in her table manners, peppering her slurps and mouthfuls with “sorry”s.
“You’d think with thirty years of false memory she’d have learned to act the part,” Han mumbles as she stabs a carrot with her fork, and is startled to see that others had heard her speak when she looks up at their faces. Princess Leia merely laughs.
“What an advanced sense of humor,” Clementina says to Linda behind her hand.
“So, tell me, your highness,” Justine begins pleasantly.
“Please, just call me Em--” Leia coughs, brings the back of her wrist (wrapped in old looking shoe string, the women observe) to her mouth, then starts over. “Call me Leia.”
“Leia,” Justine accepts. “Have you no.... prince, or a betrothed, searching for you?”
Bella kicks Justine under the table, and Leia (and Han, suspiciously) redden. It is then that Leia eyes all of their wrists, darkened imprints of skin where their soulmate marks used to be, and visibly realizes that she is not showing her own.
“No,” Leia replies abruptly. “Anyhow, I think it’s time for desserts.” The widows give her a stare, unsure of whether to laugh or be outraged at the idea of desserts in their state of economy.
But Han and Ezzie rise and head to the kitchen, where they come back out of bringing out trays of yogurts and fresh fruit.
Justine, in particular, gapes. “These didn’t come from our parts of town.”
“No, we had them already,” Han says. “Think of it as a thank you for having us when we had nowhere to go.”
Clementina inspects the grapes, presses them softly to find them plump and firm. “You’d have to had harvest these today. It’s like you conjured them from thin air.”
Han, Leia, and Ezzie look at each other from across the room nervously, but the tension dissipates when Clementina shrugs, pops one in her mouth, and hums in satisfaction.
***
“Please forgive Justine,” Bella beseeches as Leia tends to her flared wrist with a topical. “She loves hearing about other people’s business.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I guess it’s weird that I don’t have one yet.”
“You don’t have one?”
“Well,” Leia amends, pausing for a time that she can’t take back. Bella waits patiently as she fishes for the words. “I just don’t know who it’s for.”
“Ah.”
Leia traces softly the imprinted skin of Bella’s soulmate mark. “When did yours appear?”
Bella’s eyes soften as her entire body relaxes into her chair. “I was a young girl. My Ernesto was the son of a tradesman. We hated each other at first. Every time he came into town we were always at each other’s throats. When his mother died, I found him crying at the river. My mother died when I was young, too, so I sat with him. And then there it was. Both our marks, just like that. That’s pretty rare, you know. Much more often they materialize at different times. It keeps things interesting, though, I guess.”
Leia smiles at the gentleness of Bella’s memory, feels the sadness there mixed in with the love. Her mark has faded, after all. Leia must see that Bella had known the exact moment he had passed.
“How come you don’t know who your mark belongs to?” Bella shifts, wiping away the stray tear that had fallen across her dark cheek.
“Um,” Leia begins, searching for words, now just absent-mindedly touching Bella’s patterned mark. “It appeared when... there were others present. This guy I was--am--seeing, he, uh. He doesn’t have his.”
“He doesn’t know about your mark?”
Leia shakes her head, her words tentative, like she shouldn’t be telling Bella any of this. “No one does. So I haven’t...checked.”
Bella remembers the first time she and Ernesto had it confirmed--when she lay her marked hand over his heart, and light had shone under his skin.
“Only your soulmate can light up your heart, as they say.”
A moment of silence passes between them, until Bella sighs quietly. In the lines of the princess’s face she can see a history of things she has done to try and make her man’s mark appear.
“It seems you have been doing a lot of hiding,” Bella says. Leia casts her eyes downward. “Untie that string, then. Let me see it.”
Leia obeys just as if she were Bella’s daughter. She huffs a quiet, nervous laugh as she unravels the lace. “This is from one of my friends. I used to wear it to remember him, but then...”
The golden glow of ringlets and dots circle around her wrist brightly where from a distance it was only a faint strip of light, invisible under fabric. Bella runs a finger along the swirls.
“You’ve been through a lot, you and your soulmate.” After a moment of silence, Bella opens her mouth, unsure of the question she is about to ask. But before she can verbalize what’s on her mind, Han knocks on the door frame to signal her presence. Leia jolts, and Bella gracefully holds her wrist like she had meant to be doing that all along, concealing the mark. She notices then, too, that Han keeps both her wrists covered in leather bands. Everyone had overlooked them before, since Han had said to be a warrior of some kind.
Han eyes Bella and Leia with an unreadable expression. “Good evening, Bella,” she says cordially. “Could I have a word with the princess?”
“Um,” Leia says, looking down and furrowing her brow. “Yeah. Give us a minute.”
Han raises her eyebrows, but leaves the room without further question.
Bella gives a pointed look to Leia. “Maybe, do you think...?”
The suggestion startles her, and Leia stammers and reddens, shaking her head in denial. “No. No, she’s my best friend. It can’t be like that. She doesn’t even have hers. Anyways.... Thank you, I gotta go see what Han wants.”
Leia quickly re-wounds the string as she walks up and away. A long sigh escapes Bella’s mouth. “Ah.”
***
At the same night hour that Ezzie had found them at the river, she brings them out again to sneak them into the farmlands of their village.
“The coast is clear,” Ezzie says as they enter the field, enjoying the opportunity for stealth a little too much. Leia and Han follow them with quiet footfalls.
“This is it?” Han asks as she scans the rotting plot of land. Fruitless trees and drooping plants surround them hopelessly. “This is where your food comes from?”
“Some of it. Trade has been bad because of our bad crop. The neighboring land out east gives us meats and sheepskin, but we haven’t been able to meet their demand.” Ezzie rubs her hands together excitably. “We won’t get to Luthor’s bean garden, but you can start here with the fruit trees.”
Han smiles, a fire in her eyes as she brings her gloved hands together to create a glow. Leia stands beside Ezzie, rolling her eyes.
“She just loves to show off.”
The light gathered in Han’s palms is released into the rows of trees, bubbles of energy seeping into the roots and trunks until slowly, bulbous fruit blooms from the branches. She admires her work as if it were a sculpture of her doing, and snaps a single apple down to bite.
“Snapdragon. Impressive.”
A candle against a window is lit in the farmer’s house.
“We have to get going now,” Ezzie says, pulling them by the hands. Han rolls her eyes, swings up her arms as a discreet (at least in the night) cloud scoops them up and brings them down to materialize at the river.
Ezzie laughs and laughs and laughs. She can’t imagine how full she feels, how full she will feel when Han and Leia revive their barren fields, how her mother and sister will never have to skip dinner to feed her again. Han materializes a bag of persimmons, and after eating them to the leaf, Ezzie falls asleep on the grass with her fingers still sticky.
She is half awake when Han and Leia materialize her back into her room onto her bed, with Han wiping away Ezzie’s fingers with a damp cloth.
“They’re so real.” Leia whispers. “I thought you said nothing here was real.”
Han is quiet. Then she says, “She looks like she’s Henry’s age, doesn’t she?”
Silence passes, and Han discards the cloth. Ezzie falls back into deep sleep.
***
A week into their stay, the princess and the wanderer decide that it is time to move on.
Han is the most reluctant to leave, to which Leia has shown clear displeasure. In a tavern, someone recollects that they heard them bickering behind a shop.
“It’s storming out lately; what an unreasonable time to leave.”
“That’s what Han said, I think.”
“They said something about a son they need to get back to. ‘We need to get back to him’, ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Something to that effect.”
“A son? Whose?”
“Not clear. Perhaps that Han’s? She does seem rather soft around the kids at the square.”
“No, no--didn’t we hear an ‘our’ in there?”
“A son belonging to both of them?”
“I bet you there is no ravaged kingdom after all. I bet you they ran away together! Isn’t a search party belonging to Prince Henry coming soon?”
“Ugh, I’d hate to deal with all of that. It’s best they leave before they harass us.”
“Oh, be quiet you nosy brats,” a disgruntled voice breaks up the chatter. “Don’t you have fathers that need your help on the farm?”
“Sorry, Luthor, but no amount of help can save your crop.” The youth laugh.
***
Luthor’s livelihood is the beans, and the beans have been terrible.
He and his sons have labored since mid-spring, long since the passing of frost danger, for the only crop they can seem to grow, only for this harvest to result in brittle little tubes of dry and halfway inedible green beans despite the heavy rains of the past few days. The family one field over, Darryl and his lot, have had similar luck with their carrots. With nothing for themselves and nothing to trade with the neighboring towns, they find themselves in rather deep shit.
He has half a mind to tear down the trellises and burn the garden down. Instead he takes his basket and takes down every vaguely salvageable pod he can find.
After some movement of the sun, Luthor hears footfalls behind one of the poles, which only annoys him. He knows from the corner of his eye, as all of them see to do, who it is.
“There’s nothing here for you to steal,” he says to the odd warrior--Dame Han Solo? A wandering dame? Uf--when he rounds the row and sees her investigating the pods. Rumor was that she and the princess had been around the apple trees some days ago, burglarizing, perhaps.
“Don’t be foolish,” she says, and he is surprised to hear that her voice is so deep and crisp. A particularly fragile pod crumbles at her touch. “I have eyes.”
He scratches the graying stubble of his dark face in annoyance. “Well, then get out and leave me to do my job. I caught word that you were supposed to leave today, anyway.”
She stands there still scrutinizing the pole beans with a critical eye. “Ezzie tells me your the head farmer.”
“I’m sorry, are you a crop inspector or something? Come to pick on a poor village and report its worth to your king?”
Han makes eye contact with him, quirking a single brow and tugging her lips into a wicked smile. “I killed the king I last served.”
Luthor squints in suspicion, half threatened, half astounded about the ridiculousness he’s found himself in. “What do you want, then?”
“I have something to offer you before we go.”
She removes a bag the size of her fist hanging from her belt and hands it to him. He pulls back the drawstring and bursts out into laughter.
“A tiny sack of dirt? Is this a joke?”
She shrugs, picks up a dried pod and lets it rest in the palm of her hand. It begins to glow. He leans over, distrusting his eyes and watching closely, as in a matter of moments, the dull color of the plant is replenished into a natural green, and the pod itself plump. She opens it and removes a perfect broad bean.
“That soil has the capability to do what I just did. It only requires a few sprinkles around
“You’re a witch.”
“Does it matter?”
Luthor crosses his arms and roots his feet into the ground. Han--what a foolish name, Luthor thinks-- looks at him with a vulnerable defiance, like she’s realized her misstep.
“They say Prince Henry’s search party is heading this way soon. Is it a coincidence that you and the princess decide to flee now? Huh, Your Majesty?”
A lump forms in her throat, but she stands in her place, guilt etched onto her face in the quake of her muscles.
“You know your war with the Queen and King devastated even our village, though everyone wants to forget about it. I should bring you to the Prince himself--”
“Your village crest,” she projects firmly.
Luthor tenses his jaw. “Yes?”
“I’ve seen it before, when I was young. I believe,” she says with a clear voice, a glint in her eye and her fists balled tightly. “That all of you are descendants of my grandfather’s fallen kingdom.”
A quiet moment passes as Luthor remains tight-lipped. He studies her face, her deep set eyes, her skin, her dark curling hair, and for a second entertains the claim. Generationally, it was not so long ago.
“No one knows what our flag symbolizes. Not even our children.”
“Except those who were alive when the fall happened,” she clarifies. “Where I come from, there are no known survivors.”
Questions stir inside Luthor’s mind, and he opens his mouth to ask them.
“Luthor! Han Solo!” Elvia and one of his sons call, interrupting the revelation, running from behind his house to reach them.
“What is it?” Han asks with concern as they catch their breath.
“It’s Clementina’s grandson. He followed a rabbit to the mountains and now he’s beneath a cliff. Leia sent us to get you.”
Luthor, old in his age, follows behind Han and the children as they rush east of the village toward the marshes. When they arrive, Leia is already there, along with Clementina, the shoe merchant, his sister, and other villagers. Leia hastily loops rope into a saddle reworked into a human harness and prepares to be sent down to fetch the boy, where he hangs from a tree growing on the steep slope. Below them is a deadly fall into pine forest.
“You hold on to this tight,” Leia instructs Elvia, Ezzie, and the boys with them. As they wound the rope around a thick tree to act as pulley, Han runs to to Leia and abruptly grabs her arm to stop her.
“Let me do it,” she says firmly.
Leia looks at her as if she is out of her mind. “What? No.”
“You’re honestly going to plunge over a five-hundred foot fall with a makeshift bungee cord? Just follow my lead and he’ll be safe. My way will be quicker.”
“I said, no!”
“Why?”
“It’ll get you executed!”
Heads turn and stare at the two of them, and only to Luthor, Ezzie, and the shoe merchants who had made the connection long ago does the princess’s exclamation have any meaning.
“Oh, stop trying to be the hero!” Han scolds, some hurt in her eyes. “I thought we were supposed to do this together!”
In a moment, Leia seems to forget that anyone else besides Han is there. Her shoulders relax, and she steps back from her anger and steps toward Han to put a hand on her arm. The villagers watch in a range of confusion, amusement, and awe. Leia smiles, gently.
“I guess I can’t tell you to let me do this because you’ve been sitting behind a desk for ten years.”
Han breaks her frown into a huffed laugh. “No, you can’t.”
Leia grips her arm tightly in assurance. “Whatever goes wrong, do what you have to do. But you’re being dramatic if you think I’m not going to be alright. We’re still doing this together.”
Han shakes away her frustration, placated. “Fine. Go.” She takes the rope and stations herself in front of Elvia, and watches Leia slowly disappear off the edge of the cliff.
Clementina stands by, distraught, as they pass the rope along. “His parents died last year,” she says, tearfully. “He’s all I have left of my family.” Then in desperation, she calls: “Be careful, Princess. Please, bring him back to me!”
Han purses her lips as Leia throws a thumbs up over the edge before descending completely. It almost seems like they’ve done this before, many times, and that despite that, it doesn’t get any easier. To herself, she says one of those odd things again in a voice that cracks. “For a fabricated world, all of you are just a little too real.”
The gray skies signal rain, and wet rock will be harder to climb if the ropes aren’t enough. Ezzie positions herself on the edge of the cliff, lying with her body faced down as she keeps watch of Emma and the boy. They all wait anxiously, hands without gloves burning from gripping the rope. It’s an anxious eternity until Ezzie lifts her upper body to wave at them.
“She’s got him!”
“Pull!” Han commands, and together they pull and pass the rope, slowly feeling the weight of Leia and the boy in counter. The friction of the bark makes each heave harder, but they persevere as Leia’s fingertips land on the edge of the cliff.
They focus so strongly that no one hears the galloping of horses as five men from the search party mark their way up the mountain and to the cliffs. By the time Ezzie catches sight of them approaching behind the line, one of the men has a bow out. Behind him on his horse, is the shoe merchant’s companion.
“That’s her,” he points towards Han.
“Stop!” he commands as the crew skid to a halt in between Leia and the line.
“What are you doing?” the shoe merchant asks of his friend, shocked at the betrayal.
“What is the meaning of this, can’t you see we’re busy?” Clementina barks with frustration.
“Step away from the Evil Queen, ma’am.”
“What are you talking--” Clementina follows their eyes, and gapes at Han. Han freezes, sweat beading on her brow and arms.
“Keep pulling!” Ezzie shouts from the edge. “She’s almost there!”
The guard raises his bow at Han and reiterates his command. “Everyone step back from the Evil Queen!”
Han throws the guard a seething look, with a light in her eyes that told him he had a deathwish. Ezzie stands still as she takes it in, a fear bubbling inside that she had never felt with Han before. She would kill him, and she meant it.
But instead of heeding her warning, he releases the arrow, and snaps the rope between Leia and Han. Clementina screams as the others gasp.
“ Emma !” Han shouts, tumbling forward but is caught in a rough hold by the other guards.
“Where is Queen Emma?” they demand. “Answer or it is your life right now.”
“You absolute fuckheads,” Elvia shouts. “You just killed Leia and a kid!”
Then, at the edge, they hear grunts of effort. They turn to see Ezzie dragging Leia over the cliff’s edge with the boy on Leia’s back.
“Well,” Leia huffs. “They almost fucking did.”
“Grandma!” the boy calls as he tumbles and runs towards Clementina, and is welcomed warmly into her arms. Ezzie has a comforting hand patting Leia’s back.
“Your Majesty!”
The guards immediately get on their knees in salutation, dragging Han down with them.
“Um...” Leia blanks, rising to her feet and approaching them. The past few minutes had happened a little too quickly for any comprehension to follow, and between the guards, the villagers, and their two strangers, nobody knows how to proceed.
Until Luthor steps in, of course. “How dare you!” he accuses with raised arms. “You come into our village and arrest the first person you see! Unhand my daughter!”
“What?” Leia, Han, and Ezzie say in unison.
“Th-this is the Evil Queen, sir,” the guard stammers, holding her arms behind in restraint. “Look at her. And look at the-the--” one of the other guards fumble around to fetch a piece of paper, which Luthor grabs and tosses as soon as he spots it.
“Fools! She’s lived here all her life. And if she were the evil queen, I believe you’d all be dead! Isn’t that right?”
The villagers murmur in agreement, except for the merchant’s friend.
“No no no,” he begins. “That’s her, that’s definitely her--”
The merchant and his sister grab him by the arms and cover his mouth. “He’s been sick with fever, sirs, don’t mind him.”
“Yeah!” Elvia exclaims. “She’s my cousin! She’s cool!”
The guards reluctantly let Han go, and before she can turn to them with a scathing glare, Luthor puts his arm around her shoulders.
“But is that not Queen Emma?” the guard points to Leia.
Han curses under her breath, as everyone remembers the name she had shouted for when she thought she had fallen down the cliff.
Leia shrugs, a slow and uncertain raise of her hands in the air. “I don’t know about you guys, but... I always thought the Queen was like.... blonde.”
Moments of astounded silence pass, and the guard is hit over the head by the other. “She’s right! Oh, you idiot. How do you not even know what our Queen looks like?”
And just like that, they mount their horses, and leave the mountains, and exit the village.
“Wait,” Luthor’s son says. “I’m confused. Was it them or not?”
“It was, dumby!” Elvia replies, smacking him on the arm.
“Queen Emma and the Regina,” Clementina shakes her head. “Who’d have thought.”
“You should’ve seen it when my mother asked for their names,” Ezzie deadpans. “‘Princess... Leia,’” she mocks in falsetto, “‘and this is my.....Dame....Han Solo.’ Embarrassing.”
“See?” Emma says to Regina as she walks to her in a confident swagger, ignoring Ezzie’s fond ridicule. “I told you going red was a very good idea.”
“I suppose it was,” Regina says with a smirk, and without thinking, grabs Emma’s hand.
Emma freezes, and as Regina pulls back as though stung by her reaction, she glances down at Emma’s wrist. The sentimental string is gone, untied and fallen during the whole cliff debacle.
The golden etchings along her wrist shimmers, brighter than usual, and the light collects in Regina’s eyes like the tears that are rising, unbidden.
“Regina...”
Regina doesn’t speak, just blinks hard and shakes her head as she uncuffs the leather bands from her left wrist: and there it is. A matching pattern, the same grooves and arrangement of dots. Regina lifts the hand over Emma’s heart, and where she touches, it glows a brilliant light. The others watch silently as Emma blinks away surprised tears, wrapping her hand around Regina’s wrist.
And then Regina meets her eye, and pushes Emma stumbling backward, turns, and walks down toward the village. The light is put out just as quickly.
They stand in silence. It begins to rain.
“Damn,” Elvia says. “That was rough.”
***
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Linda huffs, dunking the sheets furiously into the river. “Bella said they had fought for hours! And she heard every word!”
“I can’t get the story straight,” Justine says. “Snow White’s daughter and the old Evil Queen were soulmates all along? But that can’t be.”
“We all saw it with our own eyes,” Steven the merchant says, hauling scrubbed clothes into a wagon.
“Steven, my son, what are you doing here? You have a booth to attend to.”
“Lost a bet to my sister, dear Clementina. I wagered all cleaning duties that those two would be caught by the Prince before they figured their mess out. Turns out I didn’t really want to win in the end, though. They’re nice, if not like those odd sheep at Cackley’s farms east.”
“The ones that just stand there next to each other?”
“Exactly.”
Linda murmurs. “Well, one could argue their mess is still not figured out.”
“So what was it? What did Bella say?” Justine urges.
“A lot of arguing about a couple of men, one which died but is alive again or something, another who was um, what’s the word? Obliterated, that’s the word Bella said.”
“Obliterated, uf.”
“There was a mix-up the whole time, they thought their soulmates were another person. Their marks appeared when those other bozos were around. I don’t know. It’s unclear.”
“Oh, I remember when that happened to me and Jerry. Oh, Linda, I thought he was your soulmate!”
“Well, Justine, I take it you were very glad when you met dear Denise.”
“Gods rest her beautiful soul.”
“Back to the point, ladies,” Steven urges, wagging a wet washcloth around. “Then what?”
“Oh, it was so dramatic. ‘So you don’t love me?’ ‘Of course I do, you dense, thickheaded--’” Linda pauses scandalously.
“No!”
“Mhm. Bella took the girls out to the market right away.”
“Well, anyway, I take it they’ll return to their son, soon?”
“Wait, wait, wait -- a son? When did a son come into the picture?”
“Ay, Linda, you’re supposed to be on top of this!”
***
Luthor takes the sack of dirt after all.
Regina and Ezzie stand together, watching him and Emma sprinkle the soil onto his garden. The beans revive as quickly as Regina would have it done. But there’s a kind of sadness in her smile, too.
“How will you get home?” Ezzie asks.
Regina sticks her hands in her pockets. She doesn’t need to pretend anymore, so she has the coat back on. “Emma and I tried to use a magic bean to get back to where we’re from. But the Prince’s guards got us too soon. It took us a while to get out, and Emma got coronated along the way.”
Emma, blonde again, takes a few beans from a fresh pod and tosses them into the air to catch in her mouth. She misses completely, and Regina and Ezzie smile when Luthor scolds her about wasting his produce.
“I heard you and Le--you and Emma,” Ezzie corrects herself. “Talking when we came back that night. She said that we weren’t real?”
Regina inhales sharply, her shoulders rising nervously. Then she looks at Ezzie’s young eyes that have not actually existed for as long as she thinks.
“Ignore it,” she says. “It’s not important to you.”
“Okay.” After some silence, “So are you and Emma together now?”
Regina blushes. “I don’t know. Why?”
Ezzie shrugs, waits before her next question. “Is it like being told what to do? Getting your mark.”
A soft laugh leaves Regina’s lips. She looks at Emma with warmth. “It’s more like... permission.”
Ezzie frowns. “Why do you need permission?”
Regina lays a warm hand on Ezzie’s shoulder. “It’s a long story.”
“Regina,” Luthor calls from behind a row of trellises. “I need you to look at this.”
They make their way to Luthor and Emma. Emma’s jaw slackens at the sight of what is in Luthor’s hands.
It’s nothing like Ezzie had ever seen before. Against Luthor’s dark palm is a couple of big, glass-like beans.
“Will this kill us or something?” Luthor asks Regina with suspicion.
“No,” she says, out of breath. She looks at Emma, and Emma smiles big.
“But it'll bring us home.”
***
Once the crops are restored, the village’s strange newcomers make their goodbyes.
They travel far from the direction they came, and arrive at Lake Knossos, no longer useful but now just a symbol. They drop the bean, the earth shakes and shivers and opens wide, wide, wide. Regina and Emma take each other’s hands.
“Ready?” Emma says. It’s a question that’s not just about the jump.
Regina whispers, “Ready.”
end