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When Bae came out of his room, sticky sweet and richly warm smells of baked good enveloped him like a blanket. He grinned to himself, turning off his light and closing his door, and he tiptoed across the carpeted hallway before venturing downstairs. He could see through the stained glass that it was already dark out, and he could hear the wind picking up outside. As he came to the bottom of the landing, he could hear the soft murmur of his parents’ voices, and, following that, and the delicious scents in the air, he walked into the kitchen.
“Careful now,” Mr. Gold murmured, sitting on a stool at the kitchen’s island counter. In his lap sat a small child who was dressed in an outrageously bright purple octopus costume, the tentacles sticking up cheerfully and making it more than a little awkward for Mr. Gold to see around, especially when the little baby squirmed in delight, clapping her sticky, caramel coated hands together where she and her father were dipping apples. Huffing, Mr. Gold frowned across the kitchen at his wife, sighing impatiently, “Belle was it really necessary to get such a ridiculous costume?”
“It matches with the theme,” Belle explained, grinning down at little Amelia in her father’s lap. Belle opened a large bag of chocolate candies, all prettily wrapped in green and orange tin foil and poured them into a shiny crystal bowl. His papa hadn’t given out candy in the years past, and when Henry had told Baelfire about the Halloween traditions, he’d quickly understood why. Legions of little children running about outside, rambunctious and wild, dressed as goblins and angels, witches and ghouls carrying pails and sacks to collect treats from their neighbors, Baelfire was shrewd enough to guess that his father probably hadn’t even have a single knock on his door, unless it was with an egg.
Which was just as well, as his father informed him that he had never even bought candy to begin with.
But everything changed when his papa had married his mama, and they’d found him again. Now they were trying to be a family, an actual family. It was hard; Baelfire knew that much. His papa was different than before, made of sterner stuff and had iron in him that Baelfire couldn’t remember, bitter and cold. And as a son who’d never had his own mother, none that he could remember, Bae had fallen in love with Belle nearly the first night he’d met her, and not even from the way she treated him (though it was nothing short of loving). It was the way she made the picture fit. He couldn’t have imagined living life as simply as this with how he had last seen his father, but now they were doing exactly that. It hadn’t been pleasant, that first week living together, not at all-too many things left unsaid or done, and Baelfire had never felt like such a child.
But after so many years of being on his own, he didn’t mind being a child so much now, especially when it was, well, fun. After meeting Henry, the savior’s son, he’d learned just how different this world was for a child. Henry had been his first and only friend in the beginning, when his parents had taken him to school for the first time, a tall imposing mass of brick and stone. But Henry had spotted him and latched onto him, a bright eyed quick witted boy with an efficacy for kindness that was contagious. He had helped him learn details of history, showed him how to diagram sentences, and practiced the concepts of their science class, where they were partners. That was Baelfire’s weakest subject, though he did above average when they’d had to dissect frogs together.
When the gold and ruby leaves had begun to fall in the crisp autumn nights, and the people of Storybrooke took to decorating with pumpkins and cobwebs, Baelfire had noticed a change in the air, how children sprung instead of walked, and adults became more silly in the month of October. And then, Henry had told him all about the privileges of Halloween, and made Bae promise that they would meet up with Hansel and Gretel that night to go trick-or-treating.
It sounded impossibly exciting.
“Aha!” Belle cried with a bright smile, seeing Baelfire in the kitchen door. “There he is!”
Mr. Gold snorted, smirking at his son. “An apt choice for a costume if there ever was one.”
“Leave him alone,” Belle tutted, leaning forward upon her elbows on the counter. Bae’s costume was simple red and white striped trousers, a white shirt, an eye patch and bandana with a skull and crossbones on the center, and a fake sword that hung on his hip. His papa had been sour for some unknown reason about the idea of Bae dressing up as a pirate, but when Bae had helpfully pointed out that the idea was to parody who you dressed up as, his father became instantly more accepting of the idea. When Belle had dressed little Amelia up as an octopus to match, he’d given in.
When Belle herself had bought a shiny turquoise dress with golden scales and soft blue frills at the bottom to impersonate a mermaid, Mr. Gold had shown actual enthusiasm. Her dark hair curled like seaweed down her back, and she’d fixed netting at the back to gather her hair up. Both Baelfire and his father had been surprised at Belle’s spirited approach in Halloween, in decorating and celebrating, but it had made sense. Belle was just as fascinated by the new world as Bae was, and wanted to experience all the oddities it presented. His papa didn’t even seem to mind. All he ever did was smile or shrug and say, “As you wish.”
“Taste this,” Belle said quickly and grabbed up a caramel coated apple on a stick, handing it to Bae as he walked up to join his family. He took it warily, eyeing it before taking a bite.
Mr. Gold smirked, bouncing the young babe on his knee. “Good?”
“Great,” Baelfire gargled around a mouthful of sticky apple. It was. The juiciness of the apple and the sweet caramel warmed in his mouth like nothing else he’d ever tasted. It was even better than chocolate.
“Amelia’s getting most of it on her face,” Mr. Gold complained, dodging the baby’s grubby little hands. “And everywhere else.”
“That just makes her kisses even sweeter,” Belle giggled, scooping up her daughter and relieving her husband to wash his hands. He removed his suit jacket and limped around the counter to the sink, a slender shadow in his all black suit. The fact it was the thirty-first of October was simply a coincidence, he’d assured them.
Belle lifted Amelia upon her hip, kissing her chubby face and not seeming to mind that the little girl smeared caramel on her cheeks. Sidling over to him, Belle doted and straightened Bae’s bandana, asking, “When is Henry coming over?”
Bae flipped his eyepatch up, smiling forlornly as he finished his apple. “He said seven.”
When the doorbell rang, sounding more ominous than it would any normal night, Mr. Gold chuckled from across the kitchen, turning the water off. “Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear, my dove.”
Belle stuck her tongue out before whirling out of the kitchen to answer the door, returning with a gauze wrapped Henry Mills. Mr. Gold laughed when he saw the boy, and Baelfire grinned. “Nice.”
Henry colored, shrugging. “My grandma taught us about ancient Egypt a couple times in class. I got interested. Did you know they used to bring out their mummified family members on Halloween to eat dinner with them?”
“Spooky,” Belle smiled, offering Henry an apple. He brightened visibly at seeing his gift being used, and took the treat with a polite thanks. Mr. Gold had wondered aloud whether or not the familiar honeycrisps had been acquired honestly when Henry had brought a basket for them, to which the boy had simply retorted by asking whether or not Mr. Gold had acquired Henry himself “honestly.”
The pawnbroker had promptly shut up, and Belle had given Henry an extra slice of cake that night after dinner.
“I tried. I kinda miss the scarier costumes for Halloween,” Henry said, sitting on the last remaining stool beside Baelfire. Mr. Gold sat down with them, taking over Belle’s abandoned task of sorting candy and icing gooey chocolate cupcakes with orange and black frosting. “You know, zombies and stuff.”
“I miss the older costumes,” Mr. Gold said sagely, glancing up at the boys, and he nodded to Henry’s costume. “The mummies and skeletons and, of course, witches.”
“Those aren’t scary though,” Bae said, wrinkling his nose. “They’re everywhere.”
“I only did this because it was easy,” Henry added, taking a bite of apple.
Mr. Gold blanched, then glanced at his wife who was cleaning their little one off with a wet paper towel. When she looked up, her eyes were twinkling, taking one of Amelia’s little hands and cleaning between her fingers. “Sounds to me like that school of yours isn’t teaching you the real Halloween.”
“What do you mean?” Bae asked, sitting up. He knew that look, when his mama was equal to the tricks of his papa. When they were both sharing the look, it meant all kinds of interesting things.
Mr. Gold and Belle exchanged a look before Belle waved her hand at her husband. With a smirk, Mr. Gold caught up his cane from its hanging perch on the edge of the counter and said, “Let’s go outside.”
Shrugging into his suit jacket, Mr. Gold walked with the boys down the hall, and before they reached the door, they could hear people out in the yard. Curiosities peaked, both boys rushed out the front door, closely followed by Mr. Gold and his wife. Belle held Amelia up on her hip and scuttled as fast as she could in her close fitted costume, resorting to shuffling instead of actually walking.
The entire street had come out to see the spectacle in Mr. Gold’s front yard, and what a spectacle it was. A monstrous tree that looked more dead than alive had grown on the front yard, almost taller than the house. It bore no leaves, but on the twisting, creaking branches fruited pumpkins, fat and massive, glowing orange and gold with a thousand different faces, each one different and more frightening than the last. Baelfire was almost positive that if he wasn’t looking at a certain pumpkin head on, he could see the other faces moving-blinking and sneering and leering.
Even with his father as the Dark One, Baelfire was still overwhelmed with the gravity of magic.
“Rumpelstiltskin,” Belle whispered, an attempt to admonish but mostly breathless in her wonder of the tree that had simply appeared out of nowhere, but the man in question simply leaned on his cane and wrapped his arm around his wife, winking mischievously.
“I know this story!” Henry exclaimed, pushing himself up to sit on the porch railing, his legs dangling over the side. He looked excitedly at Mr. Gold, who remained aloof.
“It’s a poem, actually,” Belle supplied helpfully, blinking up to look into dark faces of the jack-o-lanterns. Children had scurried into the yard of dead leaves, dancing under the pumpkins happily. “Mummies, skeletons, witches-they are all things that made Halloween what it is,” she explained with a smile. Both boys listened with rapt attention, and Belle winked, “And we can’t appreciate something fully without knowing the story behind it.”
Mr. Gold smiled at his wife, tucking a loose dark tress of her hair behind her ear, admiring her as she spoke.
“So, the pumpkins- why do they have faces on them?” Baelfire asked, pushing himself up beside his friend.
“It’s an old tale about a man who tricked the Devil,” Mr. Gold said, leaning back against the post of the porch and drawing his wife and daughter close under his arm. The family and Henry watched the little trick or treaters playing about in the dead leaves beneath the tree. “But you can’t do such things and get away with it, not forever-and he was cursed to roam and haunt the lands with only a coal to light his path.”
“And carved out a turnip, put the coal inside, and used it as a lantern,” Belle finished.
“A turnip?” Henry wrinkled his nose doubtfully. “Not a pumpkin?”
“Every tradition has a beginning and gets a little twisted on the way,” Belle teased, bouncing Amelia on her hip. The little octopus flailed with a handful of her mother’s hair, her little tentacles floating with her every move. “And you boys are born out of the idea of tradition. All the stories in Henry’s book-they happened, but people only think they know them.”
Baelfire shared a smile with Henry, feeling chills creep up the back of his spine. Perhaps Belle was right. If he came from Henry’s book of tales, if they all did, they had a legacy to uphold. He wasn’t good at being a kid-not yet, at least. With the idea of war and poverty fresh in his mind, of broken families and having harbored such anger and disappointment for so long, he would have to learn how to be a child again, how to be a son again, but the story of how he came to be, how they all came to be, was what made it possible for them to be a family.
“Consider this my contribution to the holiday,” Mr. Gold said lazily, winking at his boy. “And stay out of trouble.”
“Son of the Imp, and you want me to stay out of trouble?” Baelfire asked with a challenging smile. Belle giggled, fetching their cauldron pails from inside the door.
Mr. Gold set his son with a wizened look of approval, the barest hint of a smile playing on his lips. Leaning forward with both hands resting atop his cane, he whispered, “Then don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Stop that,” Belle swatted her husband on his arm, and he chuckled darkly. “If I hear anything less than praise from anyone of the neighbors about either of you, I’ll be highly upset,” Belle tutted, walking them down the steps.
Henry hopped along, some of his tattered wrappings getting caught along the railing of the porch. He grinned at Amelia resting on Belle’s hip, shaking her little hand when she gurgled at him happily. Mr. Gold dropped a few of the candies in their bags to get them started and saw them off.
“Where are we meeting Hansel and Gretel?” Baelfire asked as he and Henry set off down the walkway to the sidewalk, his heart pounding with new excitement. The cool autumn wind picked up, ruffling their hair as he flipped his eyepatch down.
“Near Sleepy Hollow, past your dad’s shop,” Henry said, skipping into a run.
Bae followed, waving at his parents as they watched him run off to join with the other children. Just as both boys took off, Bae caught the sight of the monstrous tree his father had grown with a wave of his hand, and saw each pumpkin spring to life with bright, dancing lights behind each grotesquely carved face.
Smiling, they followed him, watching him all the way down the street.