I’ve been spending my free time trying to understand how things work
under the curse. I thought I knew everything before I enacted it back home, but
I was proven wrong once I found the book in my safe haven. There are too many
things that disagree with each other.
I know the curse provides us much. The market has fresh produce every
day. Where does it come from? Sure, some residents have vegetable gardens and
there’s plenty of land for farming, but there are some things we eat that we
don’t grow out here, like bananas. Where do the bananas come from? And we eat
meat, but the people aren’t the only creatures who don’t age here. If we did
eat the few cows, pigs and chickens that reside along the outskirts of the
town, there would be no baby animals to grow up and replace them. We would have
run out of meat in the first week. But the butcher always has meat to sell.
I was pondering this while I was at the butcher’s buying ground beef and
some fish. The shop was full of other people buying their meat for the week. I
asked the butcher when he gets his shipments. He boasted that they arrive first
thing every morning. I asked him who delivers them, but he laughed at me and
got someone else to help with my order.
“You won’t get a straight answer out of him.” A thin, short woman was
standing beside me, waiting to be helped. Her face looked older than her voice
sounded. Her hair was full, short, blunt and very blonde. She wore a black
dress and matching hat that looked old but expensive and very well taken care
of. To say she looked familiar wouldn’t be a surprise after being stuck here
for almost three years, but where I knew her from hadn’t come to me yet.
“I’m just curious.” I tried to ignore her as the man behind the counter
weighed my order on the scale and wrapped it in white paper. I looked at her
again out of the corner of my eye as she finally raised her ticket as her
number was called.
“Of course you are,” her order of two pounds of bacon was wrapped up and
paid for before I had a chance to pay for mine. Her parting words to me, “but
you don’t want to make him curious. Then he might actually think about it only
to realize he doesn’t know. You don’t want to have another issue like the
library on your hands, do you, your Highness?”
I knew who she was. She walked faster than I thought she would. I threw
the money on the counter and ran out of the butcher’s shop after her. She was
already down the block ready to cross the street. I called after her and she
was smart enough to stop.
“You were the librarian!” I may as well have accused her of murder.
“Vivian Boyd, your Highness. Or at least that’s my name here. I’m very
honored to meet you, formally.” She curtsied. I reached out, stood her up and
told her not to call me that out here. “Don’t be alarmed. Do you see anyone
looking at us? No. Why don’t you come to my house for breakfast? I have more
than enough bacon and I haven’t served royalty in a long time.”
My instinct told me this was a good idea. Would I be able to silence her
and make it look like an accident? She must have guessed what I was thinking.
“I’ve known for years, Majesty. I assure you, if I was a threat, I would
have done something long before now.”
So I went to her house for breakfast. The bungalow was old and small,
but very well taken care of. It was clean floor to ceiling. The furnishings
must have been decades old when I compared them in my mind to mine, but
everything was as fresh and clean as the era they were supposedly made. I
brushed my fingers on a porcelain doll in a blue silk dress.
“Isn’t that pretty?” Vivian walked past me and into the kitchen. “I’m
sure it’s supposed to have important value to the other Vivian. It doesn’t mean
anything to me.”
“Your name was Vivian back home?” I sat my meat on the counter, but she
put it in her refrigerator and then gestured to it to remind me where it was
before I left.
“Yes.” She put some grounds into her coffee maker and looked for my nod
before pushing the button. “The curse didn’t think I needed a different name, I
guess.”
Vivian moved around the kitchen, making bacon in a skillet and pouring
the coffee once it was ready. I sat down in a chair at a small table along the
wall, but I got up when she stood still at the stove a little longer than
seemed normal. She saw me stand and assured me I could sit back down.
“My body just makes me take breaks sometimes.” She turned the stove off
but the bacon continued to sizzle. “Let’s have more conversation, Majesty. I’m
sure you have questions.”
“So how long have you been yourself?”
“Probably since March of ‘84.” Vivian placed a mug of coffee and a very
full plate of bacon in front of me before grabbing some for herself. “Leroy
checked out that book from the fiction aisle and it forced me to go in there to
organize things. Once that happened, I just began reading. It wasn’t long
before I came across a book with my story in it and I was myself again.”
“I was worried something like that would happen.” I tried a piece of
bacon. It was crunchy and not too greasy. She knew what she was doing.
“It had everyone’s story from our home in it” Vivian sat across from me
and finished off a slice of bacon in three bites. “I learned a lot about you
and the ones you were fighting. Even your friends didn’t want you to do the
curse.”
“Do you agree that I was right to unleash the curse?”
“I don’t agree or disagree, your Majesty, but I understand it. I’ve wanted
revenge before, too.”
Vivian finished her bacon in no time. I’d only eaten three of my slices.
She looked at me, down at my plate and then back at me. I slid my plate across
the small table to her. Vivian giggled politely before chomping on a piece.
“I’ve been studying the curse for a while now.” She said in between
bites. “I’ve had more time since you shut down the library. Not that I needed
to work. I’m quite comfortable. It just kept my mind off things. But the curse
does that too. It’s a fascinating creature.”
“You talk about the curse as
though it was alive.”
“It is alive. It thinks and adapts. It’s smarter than all of us and is
loyal to no one.”
“It’s loyal to me.”
“Is it? Have you ever experienced your other self? Because when I think
back on Vivian Boyd’s memories, she knew of a Regina Mills who was insecure and
relied on her father’s money and influence to get her whatever she wanted. Have
you ever been that Regina?”
“No.”
“You lie.” She sipped her coffee. “I can tell when I’m being lied to. You
were allowed to remember who you are because you cast it, but the curse wants
to show you who is really in charge. The library shouldn’t have existed to
begin with. It was a flaw that you were wise to correct. But if you ask me, the
curse was showing you the flaw and asked you to correct it.”
The front door closed and a young woman walked in. Her blonde hair was
styled in a sloppy bun that only hard work can accomplish. Her jeans and oversized
tee shirt were worn and dirty and clearly weren’t meant to be worn when
spending time with friends. Cinderella stood still and stared at me.
“Ashley, have you met the mayor of Storybrooke?” Vivian reached her hand
to the girl to pull her over, but Ashley wouldn’t budge.
“Hi.” She knew who I was. I remembered the girl being with child back
home, but it wasn’t as obvious here. The clothes of this land made things like
that easier to conceal.
“Mayor Mills and I met at the butcher’s shop, so I invited her to
breakfast.”
This seemed to stir her. “You walked all the way to the butcher’s shop
and back? In your condition?”
“Ashley, I intend to keep moving and living my life as long as my body
allows me to. It’s me who should be worried about how hard you work, given
yours.”
Ashley gasped and ran out the back door. Vivian turned back to me.
“She gets emotional easily.” When I didn’t
respond, she shrugged and answered, “I have cancer.”
“You’re Cinderella’s mother?”
“Step-mother. Her father was a general for your father’s army. I knew
your mother. I had the honor of being one of her ladies in waiting when you were
very little.”
I hadn’t thought about my mother in a while. She liked to take the
hearts of everyone who served her. I had inherited her hearts once I’d sent her
to Wonderland. Was Vivian’s heart beating below my father’s crypt?
“Majesty, if I may?” She broke my chain of thought. “I’ve had a lot of
time to study the curse and how it works. I would never say I know more than
you, especially since you’re the one who cast it. But after this morning I
would guess that you don’t know everything. I may have learned some things that
you have yet to learn. May I share them with you?”
I leaned back in my chair, suspicious. “What do you want in return?”
“The company.” She shrugged. “How many people can you talk to who know
what’s really going on around here?”
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