Winter's Touch, an once upon a time fanfic

The Fairy Tale: The Snow Woman

Once, long ago, a woodcutter and his apprentice took shelter in a small hut during a terrible blizzard. During the night, the apprentice woke and saw that a woman, very pale and all dressed in white, had entered the hut, though they had barred the door. She was standing over the woodcutter and breathing on him. Her breath was like white mist. When she arose, the woodcutter was dead, frozen to death. She then came to the apprentice. But, she stopped.

"I intended to treat you like the other man," she said. "But I cannot help feeling some pity for you,—because you are so young. You are a handsome youth, and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody—even your own mother—about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you. Remember what I say!"

Not long after this, the young woodcutter met a young woman who was going to the city to find work as a servant. He offered to let her stay with him and his mother that night. Before long, the woodcutter found himself head over heels in love with her, and his mother found her a charming and gracious woman. In the end, she never finished her journey but stayed in the village and married the young woodcutter.

They had many children and were very happy. But, one night, after the children had gone to bed, he watched his wife as she worked on her sewing, her head bent over her work, and he thought how much she looked like the snow woman as she had bent over his master. He told her the story of what had happened all those years ago.

No sooner was he done, than his wife threw down her sewing and jumped to her feet. Turning on him in fury, she said, "It was I! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one word about it! But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this instant! And now you had better take good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!"

Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of wind;—then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hold. Never again was she seen.

The Story

Elsa's stomach sank when she saw what Ingrid had done. Instead of just the little ice cave she had made for her lair, now, it was surrounded by something close to a glacier, a fortress of ice and snow. If only Emma understood her powers better, Elsa thought, maybe she could melt this place down.

Although, if Elsa understood her powers better, maybe she could do something with this snow, too. Blow it away? Turn solid ice into snowflakes that would dance away on their own? Or transform it into snowmen who really would dance away?

Elsa tried to reach out with her magic. No snowmen, dancing or otherwise, appeared. The fortress didn't do anything. The strands of her magic couldn't get a grip on it. But, at the same time, she felt something. It reminded her of when her mother's pianoforte needed to be retuned. The man who came to do it—one of the rare strangers allowed into the castle—had had a tuning fork. When the middle C was perfectly tuned, if the man struck it, the tuning fork would vibrate along with the note. That was what Elsa felt like. She had struck Ingrid's castle, and something in it had reached back into her, shaking her down to her shoes.

"I can lead us through here," Elsa told Emma.

"What? How?"

"I reached out with a spell. I can't change what she did but I felt it, all of it. All hallways and rooms, it's as if I saw them."

Emma picked at the yellow ribbon stuck to her wrist, the one Ingrid had magically fastened there, the same as the one she had fastened to Elsa. "Think it's a trap?"

Elsa curled her hand into a fist, not noticing what she was doing till she felt the tightened muscles pressing against the yellow silk wrapped around it. "I don't think so. I think she believes she's already got us. She just needs to get rid of our distractions." Distracations. That's how Ingrid thought of Elsa's sister, Anna, who had the double misfortune of being Ingrid's niece but having no magic—and being able to see through Ingrid's lies for who she really was.

That was also how Ingrid saw Emma's son, Henry, and everyone else who lived in the town of Storybrooke. She'd decided on one, simple solution to that distraction: get rid of all of them.

If anyone was going to live, Elsa and Emma had to find a way to stop her. Somehow.

"Lead on," Emma said. "But, be ready for anything. Just in case your wrong."

Elsa led to Emma to the entryway. Unlike the castle Elsa had once spun for herself out of ice, this one didn't have any guardians by the door. That struck her as odd. But, then, Ingrid wasn't trying to keep them out, was she? Entering cautiously, Elsa found herself in a long hallway with a curved ceiling. The ceiling and walls were covered with odd shaped lumps of ice. Instead of icicles, these were little clumps of frozen crystal. They were like angular flowers, Elsa thought. Behind them were lacy patterns of frost. There was something familiar about it all. . . .

The rose arbor in the castle gardens, Elsa thought. This arbor wasn't a simple arch leading into the garden or even a larger, shady spot to enjoy the view on a warm day. Instead, it had stretched over a small bridge that went across the lily pond, pink and red roses dotting a lacework of white slats, narrow and far enough spaced to allow a clear view of the water beyond. Elsa's mother had told her how her grandfather had made it for her grandmother. Elsa had never known her grandmother—she had died when her mother was born—but she had loved the arbor as a child, back when it was still safe for her to walk in the garden without fear of her accidentally killing the flowers with frost. The snow white arbor covered with green life and warm colored flowers, providing a frame for looking out on the world beyond. Being there had given her a kind of hope back then.

Warmth and ice living together, sustaining each other. Elsa doubted that was what Ingrid saw when she looked at that arbor. But, Ingrid had been the oldest of the three daughters her grandmother had born. Unlike Elsa's mother, Gerda, Ingrid would have memories of her mother walking there, perhaps with Ingrid walking alongside her.

It still seemed strange like a strange thing for Ingrid to make.

"This isn't like Ingrid's other stuff," Emma said, echoing Elsa's own thoughts.

Hearing Emma say it made her uncomfortable. She remembered when Anna had been little enough to believe any strange noise in the night might be a monster under her bed. Elsa, of course, had been too big to believe in such nonsense—until Anna came in and told her all about the monsters she was sure were there. "What do you mean?" Elsa said. "It's the same kind of thing I've done, ice and snow. What's different about it?"

"It's pretty," Emma said, as if "pretty" were a bad word.

Elsa looked down at the dress she had conjured with magic, ice blue with accents of snowy white. She'd thought it was pretty when she'd made it. She supposed Ingrid had conjured up the white dress she wore in the same way. It was white and covered with shards of ice that glittered like diamonds. "You think Ingrid's dress is ugly?"

"It doesn't have to be ugly just because it's not pretty. Ingrid doesn't do pretty. She does see-I'm-a-queen-and-worship me. She does killer snowmen and curses that wipe out entire towns."

"I did a killer snowman, once," Elsa said.

Emma rolled her eyes. "Did it kill anyone?"

"No, but not for lack of trying."

"Yeah, right. I've seen what Ingrid does. Believe me, trying wouldn't have been a problem, not if you'd meant it."

"So, what do you think it is?"

"I don't know, but—Hey, do you hear that?"

There was the sound of wind moving through the tunnels. Elsa remembered how, as girls, she and Anna used to play with their crystal goblets at dinner, wetting their fingers and running them along the rim to hear the notes they made, despite Mother and Father's disapproval. Once, she and Anna had even gotten out all of the good crystal in the formal dining room and filled the glasses up with different amounts of water, figuring out how to play different songs on them.

This sound was like that. It wasn't just the wind blowing against ice. "Music," Elsa said. "She's making music."

"Think she knows we're coming and this is her idea of a welcoming song?"

"It sounds eerie," Elsa said. "And sad. I don't think it's what Ingrid would play to welcome guests. Maybe. I don't really know her."

"She was good at playing normal," Emma said, even though, like Elsa, she had forgotten knowing Ingrid before coming to Storybrooke. "She had to be. Nobody goes to a mass murderer's ice cream store if she acts like a mass murderer. Maybe she's just practicing scales. Or something."

They went further into the tunnels. The rose arbor came to an end, opening up on a much larger hallway. The style was just like the long galleries in the castle only, instead of paintings hanging along the wall, there were snowy arches framing large, blank sheets of ice. The only pictures in them were the shadowy reflections she and Emma cast.

Except. . . .

Elsa paused, studying one of the sheets of ice. There was something odd about some of the shadows in it and the way they moved. "Emma, do you see that? It looks like our shadow, but—"

"But, it's moving," Emma said. "We're not." Emma's fingers spread, as if she were trying to hold a large sphere. Elsa recognized it as what she did when she was trying to conjure fire. But, either Emma's erratic talent wasn't cooperating with her again or she was just thinking twice about melting arches that might be holding up the roof.

"It doesn't look like people," Elsa said. "Not anymore. It's more like—" She peered close, then jumped back, gasping.

"What?" Emma asked.

"My parents' ship," Elsa said. "It's the ship they were in when they were lost at sea."

Cold wind blew through Ingrid's hall.

It wasn't possible. She had shaped the ice carefully. No breeze or passing draft had troubled the air till she scattered the shards of her mirror. There was no place here for wind.

Yet, the air blew cold around her. Elsa, she thought. Her foolish niece, who still fought the inevitable, was the only one who could have breached her defenses in just this way. Oh, Emma might yet manage to conjure a fire or some other spell, but that wouldn't be this, this touch of winter wind.

So she paced the room, hunting the source till she found it. Oh, she could almost appreciate the humor of what the girl had done. There was a mirror of ice just out of sight behind a pillar of snow. Or that's what it appeared to be. Ingrid felt the breeze coming through and, when she put out her hand, she felt the surface of it part. It was a gathering of frigid air, not quite an illusion, not quite real. Ice, like deserts, could make mirages, though it was strange that Elsa had found the way to do this. She hadn't thought her talent had progressed so far. This must be something she and Emma had done working together.

Foolish, rebellious child. Soon, though, she would understand. She would accept the truth, that she and Emma were Ingrid's true sisters. They didn't belong to the fools Ingrid was, even now, sweeping out of her new kingdom. Once they understood that, things would change. Her heart lifted at the thought. If this was what two untrained children who had spent most of their lives trying to deny the magic that was the heart of them, imagine what the three of them could do guided by Ingrid's knowledge and wisdom.

But, first, she would have to put a stop to whatever foolishness the pair was up to. If necessary—but only if necessary—she would punish them. The girls needed to give up this ridiculous rebellion and understand everything Ingrid was doing was for their own good.

She went out into the long hallway behind the mirror. The hall was surprisingly well made. She had to give Elsa that. Ingrid could destroy it, of course. There was no way a child like Elsa could create something Ingrid couldn't tear down. But, there would be some effort involved. Perhaps, for now, it was better to let the children believe they had the better of her. Yes, that was it. If the two were watching, scrying from a distance, Ingrid would let them think she was walking right into their trap.

Then, she heard the music. She heard a strange, ghostly voice singing—and she saw the images, the shadows telling their story on the ice.

The ship. Elsa watched the ship as it sailed through a storm, shadows above it shaping into black clouds, reflecting the dark seas beneath them, while the ship, as tiny against the waves as a boat in a bottle, struggled to hold its course till a black wave rose up and swallowed it.

"Elsa?" Emma was looking at her, her brow creased with worry. "Are you all right?"

"The ship in that image, it looks like my parents'. It doesn't mean anything," she added quickly. "Just Ingrid's sick idea of a joke."

Emma didn't look convinced. But, Emma didn't think this place was Ingrid's. Because Ingrid didn't do pretty.

Emma wasn't used to magic. She hadn't even known there was such a thing a couple years ago, from what she'd told Elsa. What would she know about what kind of magic Ingrid could or couldn't do?

Elsa turned aside and kept walking, fiddling with Ingrid's ribbon as she went. The know was as stubborn as ever. It doesn't matter, Elsa thought. I will never be you sister, Ingrid, never.

She had resolutely kept her eyes on the path in front of her. The ghostly music, whatever was making it, was becoming clearer. Likely, they would find Ingrid up ahead. Elsa needed to focus, to not think of the distractions Elsa had put in her way.

"Elsa," Emma said. "I think you need to look at this one."

"No, I don't," she grated. Whatever Ingrid is up to, I don't need to play her game."

"I don't think she's playing one," Emma said. "I think whoever made this had a message for you."

Reluctantly, Elsa looked. The shadows flitted, indistinct at first, then clearer. Again, she saw her parents' ship. It was further away this time, sailing against a night sky. Close to the front along the side of the picture, as if it was posed and watching the scene unfold, was the same urn Elsa had been trapped in, like Ingrid before her. A strange mix of darkness and light seemed to stand behind it. For a moment, it looked like a man. Then, it looked like a jumble of light and shadow again.

Whatever it was, it seemed to draw something out of the urn. Like the thing that had drawn this out, it seemed indistinct. At first, Elsa thought saw moonlight reflecting off a mass of windblown snowflakes. Then, she saw a shape in it, a woman's.

Ingrid.

Just as quickly, the shape broke apart, becoming nothing more than a whirl of snow in shadow. But, it was what moved the storm. The black clouds, as they moved in from beyond the horizon, came towards that mix of darkness and light. The waves, rising up from the sea, circled and fell to its direction.

Two figures stood on the deck, a man and a woman holding each other tight as they looked out into the darkness. The sparkling play of light and dark summoned out of the urn took on a human form one more time. Ingrid stood there, her face triumphant as waves crashed over the ship, dragging it down into the sea.

Elsa still heard the crystal-and-water music playing. Now, she heard a voice, just as ghostly, singing along with it.

There lived a king in the north country

Hey, ho, everybody go

And he had daughters one, two, three

The swans, they swim so bonny-o

The daughters, they walked by the river's brim

Hey, ho, everybody go

The eldest pushed the younger in

The swans, they swim so bonny-o

Ingrid felt the anger building up at her as she walked past the ice window and its false pictures. Oh, she had destroyed Gerda and that prince of hers. Of course, she had. What else could she do? Gerda had betrayed her, calling her a murderer, imprisoning her. If Ingrid had ever broken free, she knew her little sister would do the same all over again.

Worse, she would turn her daughters against Ingrid. At the time, Ingrid had cared what would happen if Anna inherited her mother's irrational hatred of her. She had seen images of them both. Elsa could have been Ingrid herself at that age, and it had pained her to see how the poor girl was being broken under her parents' terrible demands that she give up the very thing that made her special. Anna, on the other hand, was the very image of her mother. But, Ingrid was shown images of Anna's kind heart and gentleness, how she continued to love her sister even as their parents did everything they could to drive them apart. Anna would be everything Gerda should have been, Ingrid thought, the true, loyal sister she had once thought Gerda was before she had turned on her older sister.

In time, she had learned Anna was her mother's true daughter. She had suspected Ingrid from the first and turned on her as soon as she found out some of the "truths" about Ingrid's past. Ingrid had known then no stupid, magicless, ungifted soul could ever replace what she had lost.

She looked at the image standing behind the urn. The sorcerer. . . . Had whoever made these images known him? Ingrid had never set eyes on him, though he had reached into the urn and spoken to her, teaching her the many ways to use her gift. He was the one who had given her the chance to free her nieces from Gerda's influence.

You have learned everything I have to teach you, he'd told her. Let me give you a gift to mark the end of you apprenticeship, a chance to use your powers to protect those you love. . . .

It was the sorcerer who had shown her the images of her nieces, who had given her the opportunity to save them. In return for all he had done for her, he had only asked one thing. When the time comes, you must pass your knowledge on to the presumptuous imp who thought he could be a better teacher for you than me. You need not give it to him, however. Let him beg you for it, if you will. Force him to admit you are his better in all ways, if it pleases you.

She had done nothing wrong. All her actions had been to protect her family, the people like her, and to pay the debt she owed to the master who had shown her the way. These images that showed her acting out of hatred and anger, they were lies. She had only been doing what she had to.

Ingrid turned down the corridor, determined to track down whoever had made these and see that they paid.

They laid her on the bank to dry
Hey, ho, everybody go

There came a harper passing by
The swans, they swim so bonny-o

He made harp pins of her fingers fair
Hey, ho, everybody go

He made harp strings of her golden hair
The swans, they swim so bonny-o

He made a harp of her breast bone
Hey, ho, everybody go

And straight it began to play alone
The swans, they swim so bonny-o

The hallway opened up on a winter garden.

There were bushes that had been caught by hoarfrost, trapped beneath a lacy layer of white that made them seem almost like giant snowflakes. Others were wrapped in clear ice. Elsa saw a green bush with red berries that had been transformed into glittering jewels by the clear, frozen sheet of water covering them. Icicles hung from branches, like accents of cut crystal. Soft mounds of snow gently blanketed the grounds.

It's pretty, Elsa thought, remembering Emma's words. More than that, it's beautiful.

She followed the singing. At the far end of the garden, a swing hung on silk ropes from snow covered tree. The ropes were twined around with glossy ribbons. It was like things Elsa remembered from long ago when her parents had held great gatherings on the castle grounds, ribbons and garlands decorating everything.

The seat of the swing looked like it was cut from ivory. Most ivory, so Elsa had read in her schoolbooks, came from bizarre, gigantic beasts that lived far to the south and east. But, strange monsters had once wandered the far north of Arendelle. Among those who wandered the high mountains were people who hunted out the bones and tusks of behemoths who had lived there long ago. Elsa remembered being told that her mother's mother had come from a family who had become rich searching for such treasures. The ivory carvings in the castle had come from the dowry her grandmother had brought with her when she married the king.

Elsa didn't even want to imagine the size of the creature that could produce a tusk wide enough for that swing. If it was ivory. It was hard to be certain, since a young woman was sitting on it.

She was like no one Ingrid had ever seen. She was pale—paler than Elsa herself, which was saying something. Her hair was the moonlit color of spun glass. Her skin was like milk, if milk could have that translucent quality. Elsa could make out faint lines of blue at her temples and in the curve of her throat where the veins showed through. She had a hand on each silk rope on the swing, looking like she was too weary to stay on otherwise. Her head was bent towards one of the ropes, her forehead almost brushing against her hand. Her eyelids were closed, but the skin was so delicate, Elsa could glimpse the ice blue of her eyes beneath them. The silk dress she wore was a long and shapeless silver-white with tints of the same blue as her eyes. She woire a surcoat over it with a pattern of white and silver gray triangles running down the front. A little like icicles. Elsa thought again about what Emma had said. This woman had magic like Elsa's and she made it into something beautiful.

It didn't stop Elsa from being afraid of her as she listened to the woman singing in her soft, not-quite alive voice.

He laid the harp upon a stone

Hey, ho, everybody go

And straight it began to play alone

The swans, they swim so bonny-o

There doth sit my father the king

Hey, ho, everybody go

And yonder sits my mother the queen

The swans, they swim so bonny-o

And there doth sit my false sister-kin

Hey, ho, everybody go

Who drownèd me to hide her sin

The swans, they swim so bonny-o

"Is that true?" Elsa asked. "Did Ingrid kill my mother? How is that even possible? She was trapped in the urn when my mother drowned."

The woman paused, tilting her head as if she were listening to something no one else could hear. "You're a child of winter," the woman said. "By blood but not by rearing. You don't understand that world, do you? Not really.

"It's all right. Few do, even those who know nothing else. Winter lives. It has a soul, a name, a face it wears in the eye of the storm. . . . I do not know if it has a heart."

And how is that an answer? Elsa wanted to ask.

The woman went on softly. "There once was a young prince who went riding up on the mountain with the royal hunt. A storm came up suddenly and he and his companion were separated from the others. His companion's horse stumbled in the snow and threw him, injuring him badly. The prince sought shelter by the face of a stone cliff and tried to build a fire, but the wood was wet and would not kindle. As the cold crept into his bones, he thought he saw a face shaped in the swirling snow and looking down on him. Unable to fight it any longer, even though he knew it meant his death, he slipped into sleep." The woman's voice was a slow, sleepy sing-song, as if she were telling a bedtime story, not a tale of life or death.

But, Elsa knew this story. Her mother had told it to her as a child. She knew what was coming next. "As he slept, he dreamt two ice-bears came lumbering out of the storm and lay close against him and his companion, keeping them warm through the night.

"When morning came, he woke, surprised to see he was still living and to hear his father's hunt calling out for him. He cried out in reply. When they found him, he and his companion were surrounded by paw prints left by the giant bears. . . ." She gave a soft sigh, like a woman on the verge of waking. "He came often to the mountain after that. He said he felt as if it were watching over him."

This was her grandfather's story. Elsa remembered when her mother had told it to her for the first time. It was just days after Anna had been made to forget about her powers and Elsa had begun to realize how things had changed between them forever. Her mother had found her crying and held her why Elsa demanded to know why she was cursed with such useless, terrible magic. Her mother had told her the story of her grandfather and his love for the ice covered peaks that protected their land. "The mountains, they say, give strange gifts," her mother had said. "The bones of ancient beasts, cold winds, and the trees that build our homes and protect us from the winds the mountains send. This is just another of the things the mountains send us."

But, the woman's story went beyond the one her mother had told. She went on, "When the young prince fell in love with the daughter of one of his father's nobles, it was to the mountain he took her. As he waited for the perfect moment to ask her to marry him, a path opened up, leading to a strange, winter garden, more beautiful than anything he had ever seen before, except her. Or so he said." The woman smiled faintly. "He asked her to be his bride, and they had many happy years together. But, no children were born to them. In all those years, they never found the ice garden again—never till the princess, now a queen, was dying. They went riding on the mountain one last time. The path opened up to their garden. They rested there, the king holding his love in his arms, till she had breathed her last. . . ."

Elsa's grandfather had married twice. The first had been a proper alliance to a noble house. But, year after year had passed and no heirs came. Then, the queen died, and Elsa's grandfather married a second time, this time to a commoner—a very wealthy commoner with no family to upset the balance of alliances at court. This was nothing Elsa hadn't heard before, but the story frightened her all the same, as if she could see some terrible ending coming.

The woman rose wearily, her eyes still closed. She moved slowly across the cave, her fingers brushing against the ice wall, shadows rising at her touch. Elsa saw the outline of a castle high in a mountain range she had never seen but one she recognized from tales: the castle of the Dark One.

"The Soul of Winter rode the cold winds down to the high mountains of the south, to the lands of Misthaven and the Trickster's hall. . . ."

Misthaven. The homeland of Emma and nearly all the people in Storybrooke, the Enchanted Forest. The Trickster, that had to mean the Dark One, didn't it? The master of the castle the woman had just conjured.

Emma seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "You mean Rumplestiltskin, right?"

"Rumplestiltskin. . . ." the woman murmured (if she was a woman, a human woman. But, what else could Elsa call her?). "Perhaps he called himself that. Does it matter?" She gave a tired shrug. Whether or not it mattered to Emma, it didn't matter to her.

The woman went on. "She told him how men and women, beasts and birds had walked her lands through the ages, and she had watched them, touched them. Some lived, some died. She hadn't cared. It was the way of things. If she began to learn of them, to study them, it wasn't enough to change what she felt. Or didn't feel.

"Till, one day, when she had watched a young boy trying mightily to keep back the killing winds from him and his companion with nothing but a small knife and a piece of flint.

"It seemed so strange that he should struggle so. Watching him, she had been moved by something in her heart, something that made her spare him. Not kindness. So she said. She was curious, nothing more. But, even that . . . it was what spring felt like, when seeds begin to stretch out in the dark earth and grow. Springtime—true springtime and its burning sun—routed her like an army fleeing for its life. She fled to her northern peaks each year as summer hunted her, holding fast to places beyond its power. But, now, this strange, sunlit thing was growing inside her. There was nowhere left to run.

"She had sent the beasts of her mountain to watch over him, the ice bears who were her servants. She dared not do more. Weak as he already was, the touch of her breath would have driven the spark of life clear out of him. Yet, afterwards, he came often into the lands where she ruled, and she had continued to watch over him. When he brought the woman he loved, she had begun to understand him well enough to offer him a gift, the garden where he pledged his love to her. And, when his love was dying, she had given him that gift again."

Her drowsy, half-sleeping voice became even softer. "She bargained with the Dark One," the woman said. "He offered her seven years, seven years to walk as a human woman, to have a touch that warmed instead of killed. More than that was beyond even his power. In return, she gave him three things: hair from her head, breath from her lungs, and the promise of a favor when its time had come. . . ."

This wasn't true. What this woman—or whatever she was—suggested wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

Could it?

"And, when the seven years were over?" Elsa asked. "What happened then?"

The woman shrugged. "What happens when all things' time has come? One life ends, another begins. She would be again what she had always been.

"The king went riding in the mountains. There, he met a woman who said her name was Nevia. She lived there alone in her cold tower, surrounded by her garden of ice. The king loved her from the moment he saw her. They were married and had three daughters. . . ."

No, Ingrid thought. No, she's lying.

Even before the woman said her name, Ingrid had known she was lying. These were the stories her mother had told her as a child. She remembered curling up against her mother as she spun the normal, everyday happenings of Arendelle into magic, stories of how her father had been lost on the mountain as a boy and how he had met his queen there.

There had been nothing magical about Ingrid's mother, no matter what some people said. She had been the daughter of an ice hunter, as people called the hermit-like prospectors who searched the mountain for its hidden wealth. Her hall had been full of the secret treasures of the peaks, a king's ransom. The counselors who might have objected to the king marrying so far beneath him had been mollified when they saw the dowry she brought with her.

Convincing them to approve of the wedding had been as close to magic as Queen Nevia got. Ingrid's mother had been human. Her hair had been nearly white but it was tinted with gold. Her skin might have been pale, but it was still pink and flush with life. As for her voice, when she sang, it wasn't this soft, half-dead whisper. It had been warm and alive.

This woman—this creature might resemble her, a younger version of her mother drained of vibrancy and color, but she was not her. Her mother would never have sung this false, accusing song. She had cared for Ingrid and loved her, spending all the time she could with her daughters, knowing how little time she had. It was a sickness, not magic.

Above all else, Ingrid was certain her mother would understand what she had done. She would never twist things like this, making it sound as though Ingrid were in the wrong, as if everything that happened had been her fault, not Gerda's—as though what happened were nothing but revenge on Ingrid's, as if Gerda hadn't deserved all of it. Nothing she said was true.

"I don't believe you," Elsa said.

The woman smiled sadly. She had come very close as she told her tale. Now, she reached out, cupping Elsa's face in her hands. For the first time in her life, Elsa felt cold or something like it, a gentle coolness. "You can feel the chill in my hands, can't you?" she asked. "But, it doesn't harm you. Who else but a child of mine could do this? Not even your friend here has magic enough to protect her from me. Didn't she almost die in the cold you conjured?" She still did not open her eyes, but Elsa saw the pale blue flicker, as if she were searching every line of Elsa's face.

"You're lying."

Elsa turned. She'd almost forgotten about Ingrid—a terrible mistake under the circumstances, forgetting the woman who was trying to kill the town. Ingrid stalked into the hall, shaking with fury. Elsa had never seen her like this, burning with fury. She was always so calm and poise, ice-cold even when she killed.

The woman let her hands drop away. She turned towards Ingrid, still with that sad smile. "It's truth," she whispered. "I paid a great price for the time I was given. I never realized how short it would seem."

"She died," Ingrid said. "My mother died. You're saying that was a lie? You just chose to walk away and never come back? And my father, you lied to him? Did he ever know what you were?"

"There are some secrets that can't be kept," the woman said softly. "He knew."

"Then, he lied to us to. Is that what you want me to believe?"

"Did he lie?" the woman asked curiously. "He promised me when my time was drawing to an end that he would watch and wait. If any of you showed the gifts of my blood, he would send you to me on the mountain. I feared to have any of you near me otherwise. Strong men die at the touch of my breath. What would I do to you? When your sister, Gerda, was born, I had only hours left. I held her till my time had come, knowing I might never touch her again. I could only wait and hope, but none of you ever came. . . ."

Elsa looked at Ingrid. "You hid it, didn't you? You said your sisters knew, but you hid it from your father, the same way I hid it from Anna."

"If he didn't know, it's because he didn't want to know," Ingrid said. "How could he not see what was going on in his own home? He saw how I avoided people, how I hid in my room or only went out with Helga and Gerda." She glared at the woman. "If he knew what you were, how could he not tell?"

The woman bowed her head. "Because he was old and human and I had hurt him far more than I ever knew I could when I made my deal. While you and your sisters journeyed to Misthaven, he came to the mountain one last time. We met there, in my garden, and he told me his hopes and dreams for each of you. He had watched for signs that you might have my gifts, but it was useless. All he could see whenever he looked at any of you was that you were your mother's daughters. Then, when he felt the pain in his heart and said it would make no difference to the time he had left, he begged me to hold him one last time. . . ."

Ingrid shook her head, denying it. Oh, her father had ridden up into the mountains before he died. What did that prove? Father had always loved the mountains, so people said, even if he stayed away from them once Mother died.

She was not her mother.

The woman went on. "I left my garden, then. I rode the north wind and came to the Dark Castle before you, though I did not know you journeyed there. I went to the Trickster a final time and asked him to help you if ever you needed it. I made a new bargain with him. In return, he promised me that, if ever one of you came to him for aid, he would offer it. If one of you had my magic, he would offer to teach you to use it. If you were uncertain of your path, he would give you such wisdom as he had—though he warned me, all these were chancy things. The nature of his magic does not lend itself to benevolence.

"I asked him, if all else failed, not to let my daughters be a curse to their father's people. He showed me, then, what he had made, the gloves he had woven from my hair, the urn he had frozen with my breath. His gift let him glimpse the future, and he thought there might be a use for such things."

"You did that," Ingrid said. This, at last, she could believe. "Gerda trapped me in that urn. For nothing. Because I tried to save Helga."

"You tried to save her," the woman said. "Instead, you killed her. Because, when you were offered the chance to learn to use your power, you refused it. When you were told to hold fast to your bond as sisters, you gave it up. But, when another offered to teach you, you accepted, didn't you?"

Ingrid stepped back. She had told no one this, not even Rumplestiltskin—though he hadn't been surprised at the new knowledge and skill she had. The Dark One could see the future, though (as the Sorcerer had told her) that power functioned poorly in this world. Could he have somehow learned the truth and told this woman? The Sorcerer had taught her the secrets of the hat he'd made, a final gift after he had helped her deal with Gerda. "If you ever meet the Dark One again, it will give you something to trade," he'd said. Had Rumplestiltskin found out where her knowledge came from?

"You accepted him as your master, despite the cost, because you hated Gerda," the woman said. "You cursed your homeland, everything your father loved, because one of her daughters wouldn't trust you and because she looked too much like her mother."

Anna, Ingrid had been furious with Anna, so like Gerda and just as quick to judge and condemn. Of course, she'd cursed them, that kingdom of fools. Why shouldn't she? "It's not—"

"Ingrid," the woman said, overriding her. "I am sorry. Sorry I left you. Sorry I wasn't there for you. Sorry I did not teach you to use your gift. But, all magic has a price. To have you at all meant losing you. I thought it was a price worth paying. I never meant to hurt you so. But, your father would not want this, the things you've done, the evil you've unleashed."

"Evil?" Ingrid said. "Evil? What have I done that's evil?"

The woman paused, tilting her head slightly, as though she were listening to music only she could hear. "When the waves swept over the ship, your sister and her husband were carried off into the deep, still in each other's embrace. The north sea recognized her as mine and carried her to where great bergs, larger even than my mountains, dot the waters. I found them there." She brushed her hand again against the ice walls. Ingrid saw the icebergs, white and glowing with sunlight filtered from above. Silent, blue waters surrounded them. There, floating through the twilight, like ghosts in as old tale, she saw Gerda and her prince. A white, misty creature, almost like a woman, moved towards them. She reached out to Gerda, cradling her face in her hands the same way she had held Elsa's moments before.

Gerda's eyes were closed, Ingrid saw. She looked like she was only asleep. Her still, peaceful face was the same as the woman telling her the story.

"I never thought to touch my daughter again when I put her down," she whispered. "Especially not in death. For her sake, for your father's sake, I must stop you."

Ingrid's anger turned into something colder. That's what they always said, the Gerda's, the Anna's. They would stop her, as if she were the danger, not them. This woman, whatever she was, whatever she claimed she was, was just like them. Well, no matter she said, she didn't have Ingrid's power. According to her, she'd never done more than scatter a little snow on some mountains. She ran away from spring. She'd never frozen an entire kingdom or hidden among a world of stupid, magicless fools—then hidden again in the heart of the Evil Queen's own curse. No matter what this woman thought she could do, Ingrid would destroy her.

"Even if you are my mother, do you think I need you?" Ingrid said. "I have my new sisters, now, better than the ones you gave me. You're pathetic and weak, hiding out in your mountains, begging the Dark One for favors. Do you know what I can do?" She held up the last of the shards of her curse and blew them into the woman's face.

Still with her sad smile, the woman reached out. The shards gathered into her hand. She closed her fingers around them, bowing her head as if she were looking down at what she'd caught. "Poor child, is this how you see the world? Everything poisoned and ruined." She lifted her face. "I am sorry, Ingrid. If I were human, I might see a better way. I might be able to save you. But, I'm not."

She opened her eyes.

They were dark inside, darker than the coldest winter night, than the urn that had held Ingrid prisoner, darker than the storm that had killed Gerda. Ingrid looked into that darkness and felt herself drowning in it.

"I love you, my daughter," the woman said. "And I am sorry."

Light vanished. All Ingrid could see was the woman reaching out to her, as she had reached out for Gerda and Elsa. As she cupped Ingrid's face, Ingrid recognized the touch of her mother's hands. It was true, everything the woman had told her was true.

For the first time in her life, Ingrid felt cold.

Confession

There are so many things I learned too late among humans, price of loving them, the pain of leaving them, the cost of loving one child best.

I had not expected a child. My nature is cold snows and frozen earth. I am the destroyer of all things young and green. Life has never been my gift. How could I not be entranced by this wonder I had created? Six years was too short a time with her. I remember watching her take her first, stumbling steps in this world as she learned the lessons of being human only a little behind me.

With Helga, I had only three years and was beginning to realize how deep her loss would hurt me. She was the most loving of my children, the most human, with an open and giving heart. Even as a small child, she saw the sadness of others and tried to wipe it away. She saw mine in those last days, when I knew I must leave her, and would put her arms comfortingly around me. But, I had begun to understand by then what giving her up would cost me. I held something back I had never held back from her sister.

And Gerda. I had only hours with her, nothing more. I loved her dearly. But, I never saw her first steps, I never heard her first words. What I felt for her was not the same as what I felt for her sisters.

But, Ingrid. How I treasured every moment we had. If death—my own death—were within my power, I would have died to save her.

Her father might have found a different way. Helga, I think, with her open heart, would have seen a different answer. Even Gerda, who sacrificed so much to try and protect her own daughter, might have done better, despite her fears. If she had understood more, if I had had time to teach her, to teach all of them, what might have been? It is a gift of being human to see infinite possibilities.

I saw only one.

Human flesh turned to ice beneath my touch. For a moment, my daughter became truly like me.

And, then, that ice shattered into a thousand pieces, carried away by the wind to melt in the sun.

To see infinite possibilities, what-might-have-been, also means having infinite regrets. I asked my children's father once how he could endure it. He said being human sometimes means doing your best and living with it when even your best turns out to be the wrong thing.

If so, the Trickster was wrong when he said his spell would break. I am human still—and will be till the end of time.