Chapter 11: Things from a tree.
"Jackson it's time to go to school!" His father called out.
It took a time before Jackson had arrived in the living room since he was in a wheelchair only because there was little chance that if he walked he would pop some stiches open and bleed very hard and he had already lost an amount of blood.
There wasn't really something spectacular about the wheelchair. It was just the average, black, metal kind of wheelchair you can rent in so many countries and even though the stitches were the reason he couldn't attend the dreadful exercise classes, they were also the reason he needed help from his dad to go upstairs to his own room and the wheelchair made sure that he couldn't play with Henry on the wooden play castle.
Mr. Overland pushed his son's wheelchair to the black car. He opened the left door to the passenger seats, lifted Jackson from his temporary wheelchair and put it in the cargo space of the car. Good thing his car had that.
Mr. Overland started the car after Jackson had the safety belt on and the door closed. After that he directly drove to the school. It was a good thing that you can't really have a traffic jam in a small city like Storybrooke, especially when no one from other places came to the city.
"Dad I was wondering, when will the stiches be gone?" Jackson asked while a soft melody came from the speakers of the radio in the car.
"A normal stitch would be gone in a week, but your wounds were pretty deep so it might take two or three weeks. Maybe even longer." Mr. Overland gave as an answer, but it was far from the answer Jackson had hoped for.
"Pleeeaassseee, tell me that you're joking. I can't be in this damned wheelchair for that long?" Jackson said, stretching the word please for a few seconds.
"Mind your language."
"Sorry, dad." Jackson quickly replied since he didn't want to anger his father, because he could get really creepy when he was.
After a conversation that was about girls, stitches, wheelchairs and Jackson asking for a new mobile phone once in a while, they finally arrived at the school just before the bus arrived.
Jackson opened the door and wanted to step out, but immediately stopped when Mr. Overland threatened, "If one of your stiches pops open, because you had been irresponsible, you'll be grounded for five weeks."
After Jackson had been placed back in his wheelchair by his dad, they told each other goodbye and not much later his father drove away in the car.
Jackson started to search for Henry, because according to his dad, he had spent most of the time with Henry and really wanted to know what he had done.
After a while he had heard a familiar voice calling his name and it didn't take long before he had figured out that it was Henry's voice.
He soon spotted Henry, who was walking towards him. He seemed to be really happy. That was probably because he had been worried about Jackson and Jackson was his only real, best friend so Henry must have been lonely.
"Is everything alright?" Henry asked, not knowing about Jackson's amnesia.
Jackson didn't really want to tell him. Maybe it would disappoint Henry. Maybe they had done something that meant so much for Henry that he would never forgive Jackson for forgetting it, but then again that didn't sound Henry-like. "Can you tell me what we had been doing since Emma got in town, because I can't remember anything about it."
Henry's eyes got wider. After a while he asked, "Had Mary Margaret found you near the border?"
"Yeah, why?" Jackson asked.
"Bad things always happen, when people try to leave Storybrooke." Henry replied and Jackson was one of the perfect examples for that.
"Henry, I don't think this has anything to do with Mr. Gold's curse."
"It's Regina's curse." Henry said. He was almost not able to believe that his friend, that also knew about the curse and wanted to help Emma too, couldn't remember a thing of what they already had done or of their littler adventure in the mines or their fused nightmare. Was everything gone? Had the curse done it on purpose?
"I think that we can better talk about this after school." Jackson told him and as if his words had been magical the school bel rang indicating that they had to go to their class room.
"Okay, see you then." Henry said while he walked into the school, pushing Jackson's wheelchair with him. At least he had the time to overthink his best friends' situation and maybe find a solution, but it had to be fast so it at least couldn't get replaced with fake memories.
The enchanted forest, close to the place where the Vikings lived.
No one had ever thought it would be possible, but still it happened. It was just as impossible as the sky falling down onto your head. Not many people know what exactly happened, but many people have their own stories about one Viking taming a dragon and not much longer every Viking started to fly on dragons and befriend them. Not that there were many Vikings.
Somewhere the new Viking leader was having a conversation with a pale lady. That lady wasn't just a lady, she was mother nature herself and the new Viking leader wasn't just a Viking leader, he was also one of the firsts Vikings to tame and befriend a dragon. His name was Hiccup, which is probably not a name that makes your enemies fear you. And their conversation was anything but pleasant.
"Where is our child?" Hiccup demanded, not that it would help him.
"She's safe form you and your idiotic, fat father." Emily Jane said angry and giving him the fault that his father wanted to drown her child only because she wasn't born out of true love or maybe because the child was Hiccup's child.
"She? We have a she?" Hiccup asked to be sure, since he wasn't their when Emily Jane gave birth, because she had done that when she was somewhere in the forest, going away from the Viking village.
"No, we don't, because she got adopted by someone who wouldn't want to drown her in the nearest river."
"My father didn't want to drown our child! He had only said that, because he was so angry for the.. naked part." Hiccup said, but he had whispered the 'naked part'.
"Well than it's all your fault." Emily Jane calmly responded.
"Why is this my fault! You gave her away!" Hiccup yelled, losing his temper.
"If you had told me this before I gave her away, I could have been the one to learn her how to walk and talk instead of watching how an old man teaches her all those things parents are supposed to do." Emily Jane said on a dark tone. She even pursed her lips so hard that they became white.
"It's not my fault that you made the decision to give her away. You could have gone to another village and raised her there, but no, you had to give her away. Maybe this is just the price you paid for using magic and thanks to you I've paid it too."
"It's light magic, not dark, besides it's magic of the nature and there's a reason they call me mother nature." Emily Jane said, not that it would stop their argument.
"Those are a bunch of lies and there are more fairies who use the same magic as you." Hiccup sneered.
"That's after they got mine permission, besides they work for me." Emily Jane said while she moved with her arm like she was pushing something out of her way and before Hiccup knew, a powerful blow of the wind threw him to the tree that stood 5 metres away from them.
A while later Hiccup slowly stood up while groaning, because of the aching pain in his back. He went with his left hand to sore spot, but directly regretted touching it. There was probably already a blue spot forming on that place. "That's going to hurt in the morning." He softly groaned before looking at Emily Jane. She looked a bit shocked. She probably felt sorry for throwing him against the tree.
Emily Jane did her hands next to her mouth so someone standing 5 metres away from her could clearly hear it too. She quickly yelled, "I'm sorry!"
Hiccup carefully walked to her, trying not to move his back. "Apology accepted." He said to her when he stood in front of her.
"I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to the tree. I'm never going to be sorry for blowing you away. I'm just sorry for blowing you against the tree, because now she misses one twig. One. And that one could have such a beautiful flower on it." Emily Jane said disappointed, because it would really be a beautiful flower. A flower that looks like it was made by the best artist on the planet and based on all the kind of perfections flowers can have.
"Why did you even have to blow me away for?" Hiccup demanded to know.
"Because you're an ass-hole." Emily Jane replied as if she was giving answer to a maths sum.
"And why am I that?"
"Because in those fourteen years, you never tried to find your own child or me." Emily Jane replied. One little tear rolling down her cheek. She really had loved him, but had hated his father and now he has a girlfriend.
"I did. I searched all over the world. I've searched over all the seas like ten times already." Hiccup said so soft that it was almost whispering.
"Lair!" She yelled at not much later dark clouds started to cover the sky and a roar of a lightning bolt could be heard. "You haven't because you were way too busy with flirting with a dumb, blond. The only person you would search for is that blond, you're toothless dragon and your mother, who never came back for you, because she doesn't truly love you."
"What do you know about love or being a mother! You gave our daughter away. My mother got kidnapped." He yelled right in her face.
"So you wanna know what I know! I know that when someone leaves you and never comes back, they don't love you. That's why I visit her every day without letting her now that I'm her mother." Emily Jane hissed.
"Wait. You didn't tell her that you're her mother. Why? She deserves to know. You know what. We are going to her and tell her that we're her parents." Hiccup told her while he hadn't really thought his plan through nor had he asked himself the question: How am I going to tell my daughter that's she's my daughter and only had only found out that she's a she after he talked to her mother, who he hadn't seen in fourteen years.
"No, you may tell her, because I won't. I don't want to tell her that I had given her away, because her grand-father had threatened to drown her in the nearest river. Did you know that she hates alcohol. So I also don't want to tell her that she only got born by an accident, because her mom and dad got drunk." Emily Jane said on a tone that was somewhere between yelling and talking loud.
Storybrooke.
Jackson was trying to listen to whatever the teacher had to tell, because.. well the only reason he could think of was because he was on school and they say that it might be useful for later. Which he of course didn't understand. How in the world could the expulsion of the Indians be useful for when he would be an adult if he even had the luck of becoming one instead of dying before that time.
Actually Jackson couldn't pay any attention to anything a teacher was saying, because he didn't remember learning the stuff from the previous chapter. Maybe he hadn't even learned it at all. That would explain his bad grades which weren't much so Henry must have convinced him to learn more or something had been terribly wrong with him.
Soon Jackson gave up on trying to understand what the Americans had done to the Indians. He looked through the window and as suspected almost no one was outside, except for a few persons who didn't work. It almost seemed like everyone in Storybrooke had a job and were way too busy to have some fun. How could they even live with so much boring stuff like working.
When Jackson looked at the blue sky with a few small grey clouds, he wished that it wasn't going to take long before the winter would come. He didn't know why he liked the winter so much. He didn't know why the ground covered in white snow could make him smile. He didn't know why he had much more fun in the winter then in the summer and he couldn't even begin to explain why he didn't hate the cold and he could easily just walk through the snow without a winter jacket. Sadly no one in Storybrooke really liked the winter as much as him. Henry did like it, but he was rather spending his time in his house with a cup of warm chocolate milk with cinnamon and marshmallows instead of being outside throwing snow balls and make angels in the snow.
Jackson almost jumped out of his wheelchair when his teacher suddenly hit the table were Jackson was sitting with an extremely long, yellow ruler.
Jackson looked up to see his teacher, whose name he had forgotten, standing right in front of him. Looking at him. His eyes seemed to be filled with hate and it was like his eyes were trying to burn two perfect holes in his head.
"Mister Overland, it would be very appreciated if you were paying attention to the lesson instead of the window." Mr. something-something said. Let's just call him Mr. Boring, because that would make things easier and it was true. He was boring. Not the kind of boring almost all the teachers are, but boring as a person. Mr. Boring didn't really have anything special about him. He had an average length, average clothes size, wore glasses, his voice always seemed to have the same monotonous tone. No wonder that he wasn't married.
Everyone in the classroom was looking at Jackson, wondering what was going to happen. At first Jackson wanted to say that he was sorry and that it would never, ever happen again, but then he felt a sudden urge to make him angry. "Mister Boring, it would be very appreciated if you just stopped being boring and let us go home."
"How did you call me?" Mr. Boring asked while red spots slowly appeared on his neck. Was it really that it easy to make him angry?
"I called you mister Boring or do you think that, that-boring-dude sounds better. I personally think that mister Boring has a nice ring to it." Jackson said smiling. He couldn't remember being so sure of himself as at that moment.
Mr. Boring took one deep breath before he pointed at the door and said, "That's it young man, you go out of the classroom and wait in the hall until the lesson is over and then I'm going to talk to you in private."
"But I only called you Mr. Boring. As a nickname you know." Jackson protested, but it didn't really help him out of the situation he got himself into.
"You go out of this classroom, right now or I'll call your father!" Mr. Boring yelled, because he had lost his temper and this wasn't the first time Jackson got send out of the classroom, but it had stopped when he had started to believe in Henry's fairy-tale theory, which he of course doesn't at least not anymore.
"But.."
"NOW!"
Jackson mumbled something that sounded a bit like okay and then he left the classroom in his wheelchair with his schoolbag. He stopped next to a table with a hard, wooden seat in front of it.
And there he waited and waited and waited, but it was going to take something like twenty-five minutes and three seconds. Two seconds. One second. Twenty-five minutes. It was really going to take a very long time for Jackson to wait on the bell without getting bored, which was going to be hard since he got bored easily.
Time seemed to move slower. Jackson was making a drawing of Mr. Boring as scared man in girl's clothing, trying to run away from a horse that seemed to be made out of shadows with yellow, orange glowing eyes. And Mr. Boring falls into an abyss with more of those glowing eyes in it.
When Jackson finally heard a door being opened, he immediately grabbed the drawing and put it in his back as fast as possible.
Soon he had found out that it was only a boy of his age that had to go to the bathroom. He only had to wait a few more minutes and then he would have to talk to his teacher which wasn't fun. Not that talking to any teacher in particular would be fun. Jackson didn't even wonder why he had drown a shadowy horse with those evil eyes.
Not much later the school bell finally made it's annoying sound indicating that the lessons for that day were over and that the students were free to go home.
Jackson waited until all the students were out of the classroom before he went to the open door of the room.
"Come in Jackson." He heard Mr. Boring say calmly. That could be a good thing.
Jackson entered the room. He saw Mr. Boring standing in front of his own desk. His arms were folded in front of his chest. That couldn't mean something good.
The enchanted forest.
Miraculously Emily Jane's and Hiccup's little argument had finally come to an end, but they still hated each other.
Hiccup had come to the idea that he should find their daughter on his own and at least tell her that he's her dad and that it's all her mother's fault that she was given to an orphanage. Especially since Emily Jane didn't want to tell him by who their daughter got adopted.
"Toothless! Come here buddy." Hiccup called out.
"That's not going to work." Emily Jane said dryly without even glancing at him.
"Of course he will come. He's a dragon and my best friend. Besides he's one of the fastest dragons on the world." Hiccup told her and then he noticed that she still wasn't looking at him.
"Plants can be stronger than a stupid, black dragon." She said without any emotion.
Hiccup looked at her with annoyance and asked, "Okay, what did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. The nature did." Emily Jane remarked finally looking at him. She seemed to be emotionless, but if you looked closely in her eyes, then there could be a burning hate seen in them.
"And what do you mean with that?"
Emily Jane walked to tree, leaned against it and closed her emerald green eyes. Not much later she pointed with her forefinger to the green leaves of the tree. A few twigs shrunk a little bit so that Hiccup could see a glimpse of black dragon skin.
"Let him go, right now." Hiccup demanded, giving her a furious look, but it didn't seem to work. Emily Jane was still the calmness itself.
"Or what? You hurt me with your sword on fire?" She asked totally not afraid of him.
"If I have to." Hiccup replied grabbing his sword and holding it between them, making sure that she had a good view on it.
But to Hiccup's disappointment, she was far from impressed.
Emily Jane signed and said, "Hiccup to be fair, I had thought you would be smarter than this. I mean, I'm obviously stronger than you and you know it. But still your showing me your pathetic, little sword to… what? I'm The mother nature, I can control all the elements and your sword can be put on fire, which is one of the easiest elements to control. Is it supposed to be a death wish, because I could kill you with it without even touching the sword. It's the same as asking water to not make you wet. It's the same as asking heath to not be warm. It's the same as.."
"Can you get back to the point please?" Hiccup asked annoyed.
"My point is, is that it's pointless."
"You've got five seconds to let Toothless go or I'll use this." Hiccup threatened.
Emily Jane mumbled something like, "You're really dumber than I thought." Then she opened her eyes, straightened her back and with one snap of her fingers Hiccup's sword literally disappeared into thin air.
Emily Jane almost enjoyed the moment where Hiccup looked at his hands in disbelief with his mouth wide open.
To her disappointment that moment didn't last long and soon Hiccup asked her, "Where is my sword?"
"Are you blind or something. I vaporised it."
Hiccup made a sarcastic laugh and said, "Very funny, but I need it. Now."
"I wasn't joking. Right now, the remains of your sword are somewhere in the air and can't be seen by the human eye." Emily Jane explained to him, not that it helped.
"Okay, but can you at least let Toothless go?" Hiccup asked.
A dark, green, strong bush started to grow in front of Emily Jane until it was the same height as her hips. Then she leaned on it with both her arms, her hands were clasped. A smile formed on her lips and she said, "Only if you say please?"
Hiccup sighed in annoyance and said in a deadpan tone, "Please."
"Oh common, is that all you can do?"
"No and even if I did you would come with another task just to tease me and it probably ends up in me, wearing a pink princess dress so that you can have a good laugh." Hiccup told her.
"I'm impressed. You really know me well and the best part is that you already have worn that dress once. I had even made a mosaic of it. Better yet, I still have it." Emily Jane said, thinking of the good memories, where one of her daily main goals were to embarrass Hiccup in front of all the Vikings. Back then it had been a surprise that they both had the same seize. But now Emily Jane was way taller than him and definitely much stronger.
"One word and you're friend will be free." Emily Jane said teasingly.
Hiccup didn't give an answer, instead he just looked at her. He was irritated and she knew it, but she didn't care. It stayed like that for a while, but then even the fun for Emily Jane had gone away and with one snap of her fingers, the twigs started to grow to the ground next to Hiccup and then shortened, dropping the black night fury in progress. Not much later the tree looked exactly the same as when they had started to argue.
Emily Jane slowly approached Toothless, crouching down besides his big, black head. She held her right hand in front of Toothless as he made a soft sound, she slowly touches his head and started to pat him gently. Then she asked, "Toothless, what do you think? Should Hiccup tell our daughter who we are and that she got born, because we were drunk and by the way, she really hates that. Or.. should we just let her be and grow up without that not so great knowledge?"
Toothless shook his head with his eyes closed, while making a disapproving sound. This made Emily Jane look up at Hiccup, who didn't seem to be so happy. Emily Jane opened her mouth and said on a serious tone, "See, even the dragon is smarter than you."
"I thought that you found him stupid." Hiccup remarked with his eyes closed.
Emily Jane stood up, walked to him and looked straight into his to intimidate him, which worked pretty well considering the fact that she was taller than him, controlled everything that had to do with the nature and that her green eyes almost seemed to glow.
"I only said that, because the average dragons aren't smarter than humans. It may sound weird if I say that I just measured his intelligence quotient, but it's way weirder that this dragon is smarter than the smartest nerd of all the Vikings. So that would mean that all the Vikings are just stupid and dumb or that the dragons intelligence could be considered as.. impossible. However his kind used to be known for their great brains, so the Vikings are probably just dumb." Emily Jane said like she was telling a child for the hundredths time how to count to five.
"Hey, they aren't dumb." Hiccup said, feeling insulted by her words.
Emily Jane just raised her eyebrows and asked, "Really?"
Stroybrooke.
Jackson had survived his conversation with his teacher, luckily the teacher had only asked him to pay more attention to the lesson instead of the window and shouldn't have such a big mouth. Of course Jackson had replied that he would pay more attention to the lesson and shut his big mouth and that it was probably all the fault of his amnesia and the teacher even believed it. Finally a good excuse for not paying attention to the lessons.
Jackson was finally out of the school when he had heard Henry calling out his name. He didn't really sounded happy, more sad. Had someone finally told him that fairy-tales weren't real or had that already happened?
He slowly turned his wheelchair, which took a while since it wasn't that easy. When he saw Henry's face, he didn't saw tears or any traces of it, but when he looked into his eyes, he could see the sadness.
"Henry, what's wrong?" He asked. He was really worrying now, even though he lost a few weeks of his memories, Henry was still his friend.
"My book. It's gone." Henry replied.
"Where did you see it the last time?" Jackson asked, thinking that Henry had lost it in his room.
"I had put it in a box and buried it the box at the wooden castle."
"You buried it." Jackson said in disbelief. "Of course you lose it when it's buried."
"I had marked it, so I knew where it would be, it just isn't there anymore." Henry said as an argument.
Then it stayed silent for a while, both were thinking what they were going to say next.
"So….. What are you planning to do?" Jackson asked his best friend.
"Searching for it." Henry replied, which was easier said than done.
"How? Storybrooke may not be a big city, but it will at least take a few days or maybe even a week before we could even possibly have searched through the whole city and then we would have to do it a few more times just to be sure." Jackson told him, because that would really happen and Henry may be his best friend, but he didn't want to search through the whole city in a wheelchair for one book.
Henry thought a few seconds of what Jackson had said. Not much later he said, "I have a better idea."
"Are we going to wait until mister Aster has fallen asleep and then make him look like a bunny?" Jackson asked hopefully.
"No." Henry replied a bit confused, not able to understand what was so funny about that. "I was thinking that we could go to Granny's and maybe eat some pie and drink chocolate milk with cinnamon."
Jackson lowered his eyebrows in disgust and said, "Ew! Do you drink your chocolate milk with cinnamon?"
"Tastes differ."
"The problem is that I don't really have any money, you're not a fan of pie and I'm not a fan of chocolate milk." Jackson pointed out.
"Oh, but that problem can be fixed." Henry said with a smile.
"So you mean that you pay a piece of pie for me and some chocolate milk for yourself."
"With cinnamon." Henry enhanced him.
And then both started to walk to Granny's… well Henry was the one to walk, while he pushed Jackson's wheelchair.
Enchanted forest.
Hiccup had finally tricked Toothless into taking him to the village where his daughter would be. He knew the address, he had used some magical powder on Emily Jane when she wasn't looking and right after she had spilled her little secret and now he even knew that her name was Katherine.
But what Hiccup didn't know, was that he was being followed by Mother Nature.
But that wasn't the only problem. It was raining outside, the wind was blowing hard, the lighting seemed to want to touch Hiccup all the time.. or Emily Jane just wanted him to get fried. Either way, she didn't want Hiccup to reach Katherine's home. Katherine's safe haven.
But in the end Hiccup had reached the house and Emily Jane immediately made the lighting stop before it hit the person who was dancing in the rain, who happened to be Katherine.
Toothless landed behind the house and not much later Hiccup ran to front of the house, but before he even could come close to his daughter, he was stopped by Emily Jane.
She pointed to the door that was opened and saw an old man with a long white beard and bushy eyebrows walking to Katherine. The man wore a robe and a hat. He used his staff to support him with walking.
Katherine's face lit up in enjoyment as she ran to the old man calling him Ombric. Both hugged each other tightly and then Katherine stopped and started dancing in the rain and yelling, "Come on! Dance with me Ombric!"
Not much later they both danced slowly using the sound of the rain as their music.
When he saw the happiness on Katherine's face, he didn't want to tell it anymore. It might have ruined her happiness and sometimes things are better left alone.
"Do you understand now?" Emily jane asked.
Hiccup slowly nodded.
Then the rest of the day they had spent on watching Katherine play and dance with Ombric. Maybe they had both imagined how it would be like if one of them had kept Katherine. Of course they had help of their partner, but both didn't pick each other as the partner, but the person they had a relationship with.
Eventually the rain stopped and so did the dance of Katherine. At that moment Emily Jane and Hiccup left. Not saying a word to each other. Just one look in each other's eyes, wishing that they were the lucky ones to be with their daughter, but they simply weren't and both regretted it.
Hiccup went to his house and carved a wooden dragon out of a piece of wood. The dragon almost looked like Toothless.
And Emily Jane made a basket out of twigs with a green blanket in it. Not much later she also put fruit in it, because vitamins are important and they're delicious.
The next day, both were surprised to see each other before sunset I front of Katherine's house. Again they only looked at each other and then both put their gifts in front of the door. The wooden dragon was put in a wooden box which had the name Katherine carved in it and on the blanket stood the name Katherine in golden letters.
Then both left and a few hours later Katherine came out of the house. When she had found the presents, she had ran into the house and called Ombric to come and have a look at what lay down in front of the door. It was a mystery to them and they could only guess who would made such gifts for one girl, one orphan who was left by her mother at the orphanage.
Storybrooke.
Jackson and Henry were sitting next to each other. Jackson was eating a piece of chocolate pie, while Henry was drinking his hot chocolate milk with cinnamon.
"What are you going to do about your book?" Jackson asked with some chocolate pie in his mouth.
"I'm going to write the stories down on paper, before I forget it." Henry answered while searching in his back for some paper and a pencil.
Jackson almost spit out the soggy remains of his pie. Luckily that didn't happen, because that wouldn't be appreciated. "You're kidding right?" Jackson asked, because that book was thick. Not just thick, but very thick. It was the kind of thick a dictionary had. But when he saw Henry already starting to write and concentrate on whatever story was in his mind, Jackson already knew what the answer was going to be, if Henry was even going to talk.
