Chapter 3

Emma had been walking along the road for hours now. Her thighs were beginning to burn and her feet would probably hurt less if she just cut them off. The farm land that surrounded Leopold's land had started to shift from fields of flatness to shrubbery and hills. The longer she had walked the more dense the shrubs became until they turned into trees and the hills in the background became mountains. The road that which she walked upon stayed true though the gravel began to shift from a white rock to a brown dirt highway. The very same highway that travels used when going between lands. By the time the sun had reached midday, the trees had grown tall enough that Emma couldn't see anything in the background except more trees on both sides of the road.

She stopped in the middle of the road to gather her bearings. On all sides of her were trees. The only thing that convinced her that she hadn't just stumbled into the Enchanted Forest was that highways wide dirt road continuing on into the distance. There were no signs out here, no markers, and no other travelers. Just her and the trees and the road. She could keep walked and hope that soon she'd break from the forest back into flat stretches of land but she didn't know if she could do it before night hit.

Her stomach gurgled loud enough to startle her. She looked down at her flat belly and tried to remember the last time she ate. When her stomach gurgled again, louder this time, she decided it didn't matter because she was hungry now. Glancing over her shoulder just to check for any other travelers or riders out of habit, Emma stepped off the road into the forest. She walked a few paces before she found a nice flat area to sit and have lunch.

She untied the leather straps around her neck and slid Red's cloak of her shoulders. She was careful not to let it drag across the forest floor when she reached up to hang it on a low branch of a pine tree. She slipped the pack and Belle's satchel off her shoulders and set them on the ground, propped against the tree. It was the first time since she left home that she had taken them off and suddenly she felt about 30 pounds lighter. Her shoulders stung and the muscles in the upper half of her back were in a bunch of tense knots. She raised her arms above her head to stretch her muscles out, letting out a pleased sigh.

She nodded to herself and plopped onto the ground, crossing her legs under herself. The pack had been filled neatly so that everything fit into it just right (most likely Belle's doing) and it made Emma smile. There was a loaf of hard travel bread wrapped up in cloth, Emma set it aside. A odd number of apples, one of which Emma put in her mouth like a hog. Some dried meats, the ones that David hung up in the smoke house and took with him when he had to travel long distances to market. Other things, like preserved jams, some day old biscuits, honey-seedcakes, and two canteens full of what Emma assumed to be water. When Emma dug around towards the bottom of the pack her fingers bumped a tin flask of liquor and the Dragon Heart Jar. She yanked her fingers back with a hiss.

She pulled the apple from her mouth to suck on her fingers, rolling her tongue across the burnt flesh. Her palm was still raw and tender from carrying the jar as long as she had before she had slipped it into her pack. For whatever reason, the thing remained hot as an ember and didn't show any signs of ever cooling down. Foolishly she had continued carrying it around until she thought it would but that had only led to the burn on her palm growing worst and worst. When she had put it away, for a brief moment she had been worried the jar would burn everything in her pack but nothing did. In fact everything within the pack was cool to the touch, even the objects that had been resting against the jar. Apparently, it only burnt her.

She leaned back against the tree behind her and munched on her apple while she looked at the forest canopy above her. Sunlight filtered through between the spaces left by leaves and branches, casting pretty shadows all along the ground below. Sounds of wildlife reached her ears though she couldn't spot any. Foxes barked at one another, birds chirped above her, and she could hear the faint sound of a deer grunting far off. Wind lightly blew through sporadically, knocking leaves off their branches and sending them fluttering through the air. She kept herself amused by watching them, counting in her head how many hit the ground below.

When she finished her light lunch she packed everything back up except the Dragon Heart Jar and the journal. She kept the spoon she had used for her jam between her lips as she stared at the two items resting on the forest floor in front of her. Right now would be the best time to try opening the journal with the light of the sun at its peak so she'd have light to read. Still she hesitated. Something about the journal was troubling her that she couldn't place. Since seeing it, she felt disoriented. She had a feeling like she should recognize the journal though the thought of that was illogical. Leopold's people had never even laid eyes on their new Queen once save for the ones that worked within the castle. For Emma to recognize the journal with not only memory but with her heart was ludicrous. Yet her heart did recognize it. Not the purple canvas or the weight of it but that little black heart lock. Something about it made Emma dizzy from the way it rocked her heart back and forth within her ribcage. She felt a pull like an invisible string between the black heart and her own. That thought too was ludicrous.

She had to open it if she wanted to find the Queen. So with great reluctance Emma pulled the spoon from her mouth and used it to break the wax seal on the Dragon Heart Jar. Wax fell away in crumbles around the jar onto the forest floor, leaving bits of black to mix in with the plush greens and browns. An acrid stench rose from the now open jar and brought tears to Emma's eyes, her stomach turning violently. She had to turn her head away for a moment to compose herself with her nose buried in the crook of her arm. That little siren should have warned her about the smell. After a moment for composer Emma turned back to the jar and dipped the spoon into the thick, blue liquid bubbling inside the jar. Shivers wracked her spine when the spoon tip pushed into something that was pliable and started to glow a dark blue. When she took the spoon off it, the glow died away as if it had never happened. She shook her head in amazement. She had never seen anything like this growing up on the farm back home. What would Pops say if she told him she had seen a real dragon heart up close and poked it with her jam spoon?

She carefully lifted the spoon from the boiling dragon blood and dripped it onto the black heart lock. Puffs of smoke rose from it accompanied by a loud sizzling sound as the dragon began eating right through the metal. She set her spoon aside to watch, fascinated, as the two different kinds of magic fought at one another until the magic in the lock gave way to the much more powerful magic of the blood. The book flipped itself open, pages flapping madly, until it came to a stop on what Emma suspected to be the last entry written within it. Emma didn't need to read a word to see that the Queen had the most beautiful hand writing she had ever seen. Swooping calligraphy done in shining gold ink painted the page in a slanted pattern, not a smudge or a mistake to be seen. Emma picked up the journal and laid it splayed open in her lap. She suddenly understand what her mother had meant when she told Emma that she would thank Snow later for forcing Emma to walk to and from town everyday as a child to take reading lessons.

She had never attempted to read such intricate writing before but if she went at it slowly, running her fingertip along the underside of each word, she managed.

I'm writing from a sad place today, my heart. I fear I can't take much more of this life. Playing dress up for the King so that he has something sweet for his eyes to feast upon. Being the ruthless woman my mother dreams me to be so that I may steal the throne from under my husband. A husband she so carefully made sure would fall into my lap and leave me with no other option than to accept his proposal. Oh my heart, how you hurt these days. I can feel you cracking within me and weeping blood between your fissures. How much longer can you go on like this? My heart, you crave love like I do. But my heart, you and I are a lonely breed born to live alone until we die. We'll never know happiness as long as we live here, beneath the King's thumb. His fake love is suffocating me as much as his presence is.

Tonight I'll flee. I've already made preparations, as you know. After he has taken his liberates from me, I'll slip from under him and fade into the night. I'll walk so that there will be no one involved for the King to hear of. And I'll walk until I find my first home, the home of my father and there I'll stay. Oh heart…how I long for someone to be waiting for me there. Someone with loving arms that would hold me and kiss away this constant pain. Do you remember that stable boy that use to look at me? Daniel. Sometimes I wonder what became of him after he left my family's estate to work elsewhere. I do believe he liked me. Perhaps back then, when I was still a child of heart and pure of body I could have found it within me to love him. But now I do not think that I could stomach the touch of another man without thinking of Leopold's. That is why I'll never love, heart. I'm sorry that I can't give you a companion. True Love isn't within the cards for me. Though, I'm reluctant to admit, the child within me will always long for it.

This is my last entry to you my heart. I'm going to leave this journal hidden beneath the boards in my personal chamber. I hope that if I do this, then the new queen Leopold chooses after I've gone will find this and know that I feel her pain and she isn't alone. Oh my heart….how I wish this journal could be for another person and not just something to keep myself from going mad with my own loneliness. But I have no one who understands me, who I can talk to without needing my walls to protect me. You understand me, my heart, because you are mine and you are broken just like me.

Goodnight my heart,

Regina

Tears swam in Emma's eyes though they didn't fall. Guilt chewed at her insides and, if she didn't get a grip on her rampant emotions, it would rip her to pieces. What she had just read was the writings of the saddest woman in this kingdom and Emma had made it her mission to drag that woman back to her torture for Emma's personal gain. Conflict raged on two halves of her heart. One side arguing that it had always wanted to be a knight and that was all that mattered. The second side wanted to let this woman be. Surely she had found her first home and was living in peace there without this agony she had wrote into each word.

The sound of twigs breaking under foot startled Emma from her thoughts. She turned her head towards where the sound had come from but saw nothing. Small hairs on her arms stood up when the chills that swept across her body left gooseflesh. Someone-something-was watching her. She snapped the journal shut and jammed it back into her pack without looking, her eyes scanning her surroundings frantically. He hand reached for the Dragon Heart Jar but paused midway, uncertainly giving her pause. She didn't need it any longer since it had done its job of breaking the black heart lock. Still she'd feel wrong just leaving it here in the middle of the forest for an animal to get into. For all she knew the stuff could be toxic and poison the area. She'd keep it. Just in case. Quickly she pulled a spare legging from her pack and tied it over the top. More cracking sounds, following by a low rumbling growl emanated from what seemed like all around her. Nerves set in and her body began to quake. She fumbled for a wax stick in her pack and a match which she stuck and dripped wax around the brim of the Dragon Heart Jar as a makeshift seal. The rumbling grew in intensity. She put everything back in her pack and shouldered it along with Belle's satchel. She yanked Red's cloak from the branch she had it hung it on and took off sprinting towards the road.

Except she had forgot which way the road was and ended up running deeper into the forest. Booming steps followed her every stride. The trees rattled from the force of whatever chased her. Her heart hammered inside her chest. Fear oozed from her every pore, fear like she had never felt before. She didn't know what it was, nothing like this lived within the woods near her home on the farm. Her Pops had never taught her anything about this. She was truly terrified. So she ran. She ran hard and faster, deeper and deeper into the woods. Until suddenly she wasn't running anymore. Something coiled around her ankle and pulled taught. Her entire world flipped upside down as she was pulled into the air by her ankle, both the back and satchel fell from her body and smashed into the ground below. A loud keening sound rang through the woods like a scream that chilled her to her very bones. She continued to go up and up and up until suddenly the thing around her ankle stopped but her body did not. The motion continued carrying her up. Pain exploded in her skull where it contacted hard with a thick branch and then she was falling down. Down, down until the thing around her leg pulled tight again and she hung, suspended in the air by it. Her body swung back and forth like a pendulum, her vision blurry from the head wound she was sure she had.

Not blurry enough to miss what was coming towards her through the trees however. A bulk of black scales and burning cobalt eyes with paws that were more talon than scaly flesh and bone. Through her double vision she couldn't tell what it was but she could see that it was formidable hunkered low in a predatory way and that it was big. As big as her parents cottage maybe.

Everything around her was fading out just like her consciousness was. Try as she might she couldn't keep her eyes open nor fight the ache inside her skull. Perhaps that was for the best so that when, whatever this was, came to eat her like the easy prey she was, she wouldn't have to feel it. She could die without the pain. That was nice to think about. Though her thoughts slipped from that to Regina, the Queen of Sorrow in the journal, and stuck there. Emma desperately wanted to find Regina but now she wasn't sure why. Something indiscernible in her wanted to find her so that Emma could be someone other than a journal that Regina could talk to. Fulfill the wishes of her lonely heart. Sadly, Emma would now never get that chance since she was about to be monster chow.

Hot, acrid breath washed over her face as it breathed on her or rather, breathing her in. Taking in her scent. The scales on its snout rubbed against her cheek. Scales that had to be harder than rock and as sharp as knifes because she could feel the flesh of her cheek giving and tearing under the many black scales. She cracked her eyes open just to see it one more time before she died. One, round blue eyes was staring at her and, strangely, Emma felt like she had seen that strange shade of blue somewhere before. Her head already hurt to much to try thinking about why.

To the left, a sudden sound of metal banging against metal rang through the clearing. The beast before her snapped its head towards the sound at an inhuman speed. The scales along its neck bristled and it let out a low warning growl. Emma had to fight just to turn her head to see what had shown up to make noise.

Standing there was a boy. A boy with brown hair sticking from under the fox fur hat her wore atop his head, the tail of the fox hanging over one of his shoulders and the ears of it still sticking up. The splash of freckles that ran along the tops of his round cheeks and across the bridge of his nose accented his flecked hazel eyes. His tunic was a little to big for him and his trousers were a little to short, the rope belt cinched around his middle was doing a good job of keeping his whole outfit together. The little guy didn't even have any shoes on. In his hand he held a cherry wood crossbow that wasn't loaded with a bolt but rather a smooth stone. On his other side he had strapped a kite shield the size of his entire torso to his forearm. His little nose scrunched up, his lips stuck out in a sort of defiant pout, as he continued to bang his crossbow against the shield.

The beast let out an earth shaking roar that didn't even make the boy flinch. It's massive talons kneaded at the ground below it as it moved from side to side like a cornered animal. The boy hollered at it and raised his crossbow to shoot the stone at it. It smacked the beast right between the eyes. Another loud roar rattled the forest as it backed away from the boy, one of its paws lifting to rub the backside it against the spot that the stone had hit. There was no way the rock had hurt it but it had made the beast wary enough to back away from the fox hat boy. The beast keened lowly and turned its head back to Emma who was still dangling there, dripping blood from her head onto the leaves and pine needles below. It growled viciously and snapped at her, teeth missing Emma's nose by a fraction of a centimeter, before it turned and bolted through the woods. A tail snapped around behind it as it fled. She continued to watch the spot it had vacated long after it was gone until a boy's face filled her entire vision, the bright orange of his fox hat making her head pound with an extra kick of pain.

"Woo! Man was that scary. Dunno what it was but man…I'm Henry! Who're you?" The boy rushed out in an excited babble, his teeth gleaming from his broad grin. Emma could barely keep up. Everything was fading out again. She opened her mouth to respond but instead felt her eyes roll into the back off her head and then nothing.

And cue Henry's big entrance! Two updates in one day. On a roll here. I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. I love hearing from you, don't be shy. Tell me what you thought.