Thirteen days wasn’t a long time in a town where time had been frozen for twenty-eight years, but it was long enough for the town to notice.
Storybrooke noticed things the way a small town always noticed things, which was to say slowly at first, and then all at once, and then in a way that couldn’t be un-noticed.
Mrs.
Hennessey had told Mrs.
Beasley about the rain.
Mrs.
Beasley had told Father Bell about the porch.
Father Bell had told no one, because Father Bell was a priest and priests kept secrets, but the telling-to-no-one was its own kind of telling, and the town was beginning to watch Daniel the way a town watches a new piece on the board.
The diner was warm and the coffee was still wrong and Daniel had learned to drink it anyway.
Mrs.
Hennessey was at her booth, her hip on its cushion, her tea at her elbow, her eyes on the door the way a woman’s eyes are on the door when she is waiting for someone specific.
She waved him over and he went, and she passed him a folded napkin across the table.
“Mrs.
Beasley,” she said.
“She wants to thank you.
She doesn’t know what for.
She knows it was you.” Daniel unfolded the napkin.
It had a word on it: Beasley.
Just the name.
The napkin was a voucher, a reference, the particular reference of a woman who had been vouched for and was now vouching for someone else.
He folded the napkin and put it in his coat pocket and the napkin joined the other napkins, the ones he had been collecting without meaning to, the paper trail of a dealer who had been dealing for free and was about to start dealing for real.
“She doesn’t need to thank me,” Daniel said.
“The porch did the work.” “The porch didn’t draw itself.” Mrs.
Hennessey looked at him over her tea.
“You’re doing something.
I don’t know what.
I don’t want to know.
I want you to know that I see you doing it.” Father Bell came in at eight.
He was a thin man with a thin collar and thin hands that had held a lot of rosaries, and he looked at Daniel, and Daniel looked back, and the priest tipped his hat.
A small gesture.
A tilt of the brim.
A thing that a priest did when he passed a parishioner.
Daniel was not a parishioner.
Daniel had never been in the parish.
The tip of the hat was the particular tip of a hat that was acknowledging something other than parish membership, and Daniel nodded back, and the nod was a contract, and the contract was: I see you seeing me.
The hum under his sternum was a steady note.
Not sharpening.
Not fading.
Holding.
The holding was new.
The hum had been reactive for two weeks, sharpening near Gold, stilling near the fairy, stirring at the word “deploy.” Now it was holding, a sustained note, the particular note of a counterparty that had done its initial assessment and decided that the investment was sound.
Mrs.
Hennessey turned the conversation to the news, which wasn’t news, which was the particular not-news of a small town where the only thing that ever changed was the weather and the weather was always wrong.
“They’re saying David Nolan woke up.
The coma patient.
Twenty-eight years in a bed and he just opened his eyes.
His wife found him sitting up.
His wife didn’t know he had a wife, but that’s the curse for you.” She said “the curse” the way a woman who had lived in Storybrooke for twenty-eight years said “the curse,” which was to say she didn’t mean it and she meant it exactly.
“His wife didn’t know he had a wife?” Daniel asked, and the question was a test.
He knew the answer.
He knew that David Nolan was Prince Charming and Kathryn was Princess Abigail and the marriage was a cursed arrangement that the real Prince Charming would never have chosen.
He knew all of this from the show.
He was asking because Dan-the-cannery would have asked, and Dan-the-cannery needed to keep asking the kinds of questions a cannery worker would ask.
“That’s what I said.
Kathryn Nolan.
She’s been visiting him every day for years and she didn’t know she was married to him until the curse decided she was.” Mrs.
Hennessey stirred her tea with the particular stir of a woman who had long ago stopped trying to make sense of Storybrooke.
“The curse gives and the curse takes and the curse doesn’t explain itself.
You learn to stop asking why things happen in this town.
You just learn to notice when they do.” “And when David woke up,” Daniel said carefully, “who was there?” “Mary Margaret.
She was reading to him.
Some book about a prince.” Mrs.
Hennessey’s eyes met his, and the meeting was the meeting of two people who both knew more than they were saying.
“Funny thing about Mary Margaret.
She’s been volunteering at the hospital for as long as I can remember.
Always reading to the coma patients.
Always bringing flowers.
Always believing that people can wake up if someone just keeps talking to them.
Not a lot of people in this town still believe in things like that.
She does.” The hum under his sternum was quiet, but the quiet was the particular quiet of a counterparty that was paying very close attention to the story of a woman reading a prince awake.
True Love magic.
The kiss was going to work.
The hum was cataloguing the information, filing it under a heading that Daniel could feel but couldn’t access.
The kit was building a map of the story, and the map was getting more detailed, and the detail was going to be useful later.
“She sounds like a good person,” Daniel said.
“She is,” Mrs.
Hennessey said.
“The good ones always get hurt the worst.
That’s not pessimism.
That’s statistics.” She finished her tea and set the cup down with a click.
“You should meet her properly some time.
Not just passing in the diner.
She teaches at the school.
Volunteers at the hospital.
Organizes the Miner’s Day parade.
She’s everywhere.
The way you’re starting to be everywhere.” “I’m not everywhere.” “You fixed Mrs.
Beasley’s porch.
You held the rain for my walk.
You talked Cal Penney out of a bad door last week — I heard about that from Father Bell who heard about it from Cal’s wife.
You’re not everywhere yet, but you’re getting there.” She looked at him with the particular look of an old woman who had been right about people her whole life and wasn’t going to stop now.
“You’re building something.
I don’t know what.
I don’t think you know what either.
But I’m watching, Dan.
We’re all watching.” Daniel’s coffee was cold.
He drank it anyway.
David Nolan.
Prince Charming.
Woken by Mary Margaret reading to him from a storybook, which was something that had happened in the show, which was something that was happening in the town, which was confirmation that the show’s timeline was the town’s timeline and the curse was going to break on schedule unless Daniel himself broke it early by accident.
True Love magic was operative.
The kiss was going to work.
The curse was going to end.
And Daniel was going to be standing in the middle of a town full of fairy-tale characters who had just remembered who they were, and he was the man who had been dealing price-magic under their noses for months without telling anyone what he was.
The hum held steady.
The hum didn’t care if the curse broke.
The hum was not part of the curse.
The hum was older than the curse, or younger, or adjacent, or something that didn’t fit into the timeline Daniel had memorized from a notebook in Brooklyn.
The hum was its own magic, and the hum was grooming him, and the grooming was going to continue whether the curse held or not.
He folded Mrs.
Hennessey’s napkin into quarters and put it in his coat pocket and the coat pocket was full of napkins now, a paper trail, the particular paper trail of a dealer who was being noticed by the town.
He walked home in the thin November light.
Father Bell passed him on the sidewalk and tipped his hat again, and Daniel tipped an imaginary hat back, and the priest smiled, and the smile was the smile of a man who was carrying something heavy and had just seen someone else carrying the same weight.