IV. Mulan

It was late in the evening, well-past dusk. Philip was away from the camp they had made. Off elsewhere among the now-Cursed Lands. Aurora had gone for a walk.

He was sitting more often than lying now. Leaning against his back taboo at present, the new cut there to extract the bullet several days old, but healing. Itching in the process.

He would live.

He looked over and again examined the warrior girl, Mulan, when he was able to be fairly certain she would not notice. He could not guess what her age might be. To the eye she was young, but she carried herself with such command and composure it made her seem older.

He found himself wondering how she fit into the seeming sister-wives configuration of the trio who had found him.

Okay, so thinking of her and Aurora as 'sister-wives' was a little flip, and a little unfair, but they couldn't deny the tension that seemed—to him—to be very apparent between these two women and lone Prince.

"So, how do you figure into this couple?" he asked her, not really thinking he would get the whole answer.

But her eyes were clear, untroubled by his curiosity or the challenging wording of his question. "I met Philip while Aurora was asleep," she told him. "Because I owed him, I joined in his quest to free her from the Sleeping Curse."

"Chewbacca, then," he mused, more to himself than to her. He nodded. "Okay."

"Who?"

"Wookie. Owes a blood debt to Han Solo. Story from 'long ago and far away'," he quipped to her, amusing himself far more in the sharing of it than her in the hearing of it. "You're pretty tough, you know that?" he went on, "Don't think I've seen you crack a smile since I landed here."

She turned toward him, wariness and circumspection flooding her demeanor. "And I'm not sure I've heard you tell the truth about much of anything in regard to yourself since you landed here."

She paused, and the air about him seemed to drop in temperature.

"I was in the army," she explained. "In that time I learned something of weighing a man's words." It was not spoken entirely like a threat.

Somewhere, knee-jerk, he managed to pull out his grifter's smile, a smile of tenuous confidence. "So you don't think I know Emma?"

"I don't think someone in your original condition would have cried out for her, and for Henry, as you did if you were only meaning to use it as a bluff." She considered, and added, "Insensate men on the cusp of dying are rarely so artful as to lie." Again she paused, and he knew she was self-editing before she spoke. "Aurora believes in you. Or should I say; Aurora believes in Emma's husband. So I will stay my own judgment. For now."

Having not officially been called out, he did not attempt to answer her near-accusation. Instead, "You were in the army?" he asked, in follow-up, running defense in their further conversation by routing the topic away from himself.

"Yes," she agreed. "I served my emperor."

"And were there many women in his army?"

"No," she confessed, her speech now guarded. "I served under the guise of being a man. A man, like the others."

"And so you don't consider that as a deception?" he asked, having gotten her to that point of confession. "About who you were? About yourself?"

But she was pragmatic, untroubled by his summation. "I did what I had to do to survive," she told him. "The path my life took made it necessary for me to become both: both my father's daughter, and the son who could take his place as a warrior." Again, those clear, untroubled eyes. "And so, I am both."

"Both, huh?"

She did not answer, but redirected their exchange. "Philip believes that you might have what it will take to help us save this Land."

"Philip?" he considered how to say it. "...is a very hopeful individual." He let his hands fall apart, and open. "I know a thing or two about survival. That's all," he told her, then tacked on in throwaway; "I'll help in what way I can."

"While you are here," she added, as though finishing his thought for him.

"Yeah, while I'm here," his voice turned lightly sarcastic, his brow furrowing. "Do you see me leaving? Know of any portals or enchanted ships leaving for other Lands?"

Her own face was open, untroubled. "I only meant to say that Emma will come for you."

"You think so?"

"Of course," she responded without urgency, clearly believing what she said. "Emma always finds people when she goes looking for them."

"She tell you that?"

"Yes."

"Figures," he replied. "Lemme tell you a secret, Mulan. Emma doesn't know I'm here. An enemy of ours threw a bean that opened a portal under our feet. With my injuries I fell through. To where, or in what condition, Emma could not possibly know. When we said our farewells on the edge of that portal it was the forever kind of goodbye. It was not the 'see you again, stay true to yourself in the meantime, peace-out' kind of goodbye."

But Mulan would not be deterred. With a determined single nod she announced, "Emma is honorable. She will come for you. Look," she offered as encouragement, "The Dancing Griffin is out tonight. Just there," she pointed up into the night sky, "nearby the Pinner Star. A good omen. My people believe it often foretells reunions."

He caught himself looking up before he could help it, but quickly chose to hold his tongue.

She was wrong, Mulan. About the constellation, which was in fact the Fiddle Sphinx, which his poppa had always warned him looked of the Dancing Griffin on certain nights during this season.

And she was wrong about Emma. As much as he wanted Mulan to be right-for Emma to search for and find him-he needed, desperately needed Emma to stay put, with Henry. He needed her not to take his refusal of her joining him lightly.

If he could find a way back to Emma and Henry, so be it. He would look whenever possible, search for a way back. But for Emma to leave Henry and take on the dangerous task of realm jumping multiple times to locate him?

Don't do it, Em, he thought. For Henry's sake, let me go, let me do this one thing to keep you safe for him.

"That medallion," Mulan asked later as they continued to gaze up at the stars, breaking a silence that had fallen between them. "The one you wear about your neck?" She referenced the swan keychain fob Emma had thrown at him across a bar back in Manhattan. "What is it? The Swan family seal?"

"Yeah, you could say that," he agreed with her simplified assessment of it, nodding, and rubbing it between his fingers. "It's sort of a talisman."

"And what does is signify?"

"Oh, you're gonna like this," he told her, rueful humor in his voice. "It's a reminder to me. To be trustworthy."

"Oh, I've seen that before!" Aurora had walked back into the camp and joined them, understanding what they were talking about without fully hearing their exchange. "That's Emma's necklace. I recognized it the moment we got your scarf off you and pulled you up off the beach."

Mulan flicked up one eyebrow, pointedly at him.

"You know," Aurora said, "I was thinking about you, about your being here. My aunties used to tell me the story of a soldier, who was in a decade-long war, and his death-defying journey back to his family…"

He cut her off. "You're talkin' about Odysseus,"

"Oh, so you know it, too!"

"Well," he back-pedaled, a creak of skepticism in his voice, "I mean, I know about a Cyclops, a conniving woman that beds and betrays him. And that when he does get home his kingdom is in chaos, his wife about to marry someone else, his son, what? Kidnapped?—"

"Well, yes, I think that's right," Aurora reluctantly agreed to his incomplete memories of The Odyssey. Her demeanor dampened. A pout began to bloom on her face.

"But he gets home," Mulan reminded them, seizing on the one good aspect. "He finds them again. Even after all that time they're reunited."

"Oh! Don't worry, Neal. It's just a story," Aurora tried to make it better, pleading, trying to hold back her own disappointment. "Only a tale. Nothing more."

"Yeah," he said, knowing all too well about such tales. "Nothing but a fairy tale. Right. Pretend. Make-believe."

Later he looked back up at the Fiddle Sphinx, read its position in the enchanted sky. His poppa would say the Fiddle Sphinx heralded change. Whether that change was progress or devolution depended upon which stars were nearest it. The Kronian Triad in its apex meant a win for good, for light magic. The Manticore's Claw, a move toward darkness.

But try as he might, without a telescope or star-gazing instrument of any kind he could not see the whole picture. Such was often the rub when mixing astronomy and astrology with divination, he seemed to recall.

Change, he wondered. Was the night sky only showing his arrival home? Or did it foretell something more personal; a change coming within him? A future reconciliation, or at least a détente, between his two halves?

He could not be sure.

Sir Neal of Swan, high councilor and chancellor to Prince Philip and the Princess Aurora, self-professed husband of Princess Emma and father to Henry of Storybrooke, separated from his family, incognito non-stranger in a familiar land, reminded himself of one thing: though the stars never lied, they could never tell the whole truth.

Each Realm had its own stars, its own path, its own future to foretell.

The best he could hope for was that the day would come when the plurality of the cosmos would align and he would find himself again among those he had loved enough to ensure that only he had passed through that portal. So that he alone would face his present uncertainty.

Until then, all he could do was wait, striving to conduct himself in a manner that would make his family, Emma and Henry, proud of him. So that when they arrived, ten days or ten thousand years hence, their connection to his name would give them nothing to fear, nothing to grieve. No reason to hide their identities and connections here.

He saw clearly that this was his chance to get it right. To prove his mettle. To take lessons learned at the hands of the Dark One, at the hands of a pirate, and of many other unsavory people in his journeying, and use them for good.

For the good of all left behind here in the once-Enchanted, now Cursed Lands.

To give them their best chance.

~The End~

Lyrics from:

The Lighthouse's Tale, Nickel Creek