AN: Thank you for the lovely reviews!
For the Frozen-derived part, well, you'll see it (not very soon, but it's already mostly written) - I definitely keep the main ones, including the badguys. Still not sure if I will manage to work Oaken into the story somehow ;)

Life is a highway

The main luggage had been packed and repacked, removing unnecessary garments and appliances, adding a few survival items and replacing chosen gear with smaller, more compact versions.

They emptied the apartment of all personal items and left information with the building manager that they would be coming back in four months. They signed an agreement for the apartment to be leased for a short term to someone else, with the proviso that that person would clear the place in sixteen weeks.

Emma's aim was to be done with the whole curse-breaking before it interfered with Henry's schooling, or to know in a definite way that they were unable to deal with the problem and to remove themselves from the area. There weren't that many other options.

Even the curse-breaking thing seemed more like a wish than a plan.

"Everyone is leaving. All the parents are taking their kids out for early vacation" the building manager said, filing the documents. "Some are coming back in fall, but I've heard rumours that there are a lot of families just moving out, not planning to return. My granddaughter is in seventh grade and her class lost five kids this last month. Their younger siblings got sick and parents just packed up the whole house and moved - anywhere, but outside Boston. It's as if this part of town became toxic to the small ones"

"Well, that's why we're taking Henry away for the summer" Elsa smiled and signed another page of the contract. "He got rather ill during that heatwave and doctor suggested he needs a change of climate."

"But you'll be coming back?"

She shrugged.

"It depends on Henry. And what kind of a place we manage to find out there."

"So you don't know where you're going?"

Elena handed him her part of the papers.

"In general, we know. A friend suggested a tiny town where his father lives - it's supposedly in the middle of nowhere, so we can hope it's more likely to be a clean area."

The managed nodded.

"We're sending the grandkids away next week. Big, small - they will all go to my sister's place, in the country. Parents are signing them out of the school early, even the ones with poorer grades. My daughter will be taking the van and driving the whole bunch there next weekend. I think it's better to be healthy than to have best grades. They can always study with their aunt, but they won't get any better from staying here."

"Absolutely" Emma smiled at him tiredly. "That's what we decided for Henry. He's not going to school anyway, so what difference does it make?"

The car was packed so high, Elena heartily blessed the proximity alarm they had installed on the back bumper. Otherwise she had no idea how she would have managed to get out of their tight parking space - she couldn't see anything through the back of the car.

There were all the planned bags and boxes in the trunk and on the seats, plus some definitely unplanned items. Henry somehow managed to smuggle his soccer ball into the car, which they only found two hours after leaving Boston. Emma crammed two more programming textbooks into her "hand luggage" and was holding them uncomfortably in front of her, trying to behave as if they weren't poking her in the stomach. Elsa was sitting in the back with Henry, so Elena couldn't really see what was going on there, but she was quite sure there was some contraband stashed in her backpack, too.

That was because her own bag, placed between Elsa and Henry, had a few silicon moulds discreetly stuffed into internal pockets.

They stopped in front of a motorway diner for a technical break and Henry's second breakfast. He chewed his apple and looked around.

"Where are we going? Tammy and Tessa said their parents were taking them somewhere to the seaside to get better. Are we going to the seaside, too?"

Emma sat next to him on a bench.

"We are actually going to… There is a little town, far away from everything, that we want to find. August told us there is a chance our family might live there, you see. So we kind of used the fact that the doctor told us to get you out of the city and we're going for a longer trip. We need to find it, because apparently someone forgot to put it on any map, so it may be a bit of driving… There may be some forest and there may be seaside, we're not sure yet."

"Ah" he sat in silence for a moment, working on the apple. "What's the name of that town?"

"August says it's called Storybrooke."

"Sounds funny."

"We'll have to find a place for the night. We've driven that stretch of the road like five times today already and I'm feeling like someone is making fun of me. Henry is asleep and it's not healthy for him to sleep sitting up for too long" Emma gripped the steering wheel more tightly.

Elsa tapped her phone a few times and looked around.

"The road on the navigation looks a bit different, but I think we should be about a mile from a motel I see marked here. We could spend the night, eat hot breakfast and continue tomorrow. And the kid needs to sleep on something flat, definitely. Or his spine will grow all crooked."

Emma rolled her eyes and sped up a bit, looking for a sign to the motel.

Beds were. There was not much more that could have been said about them, but they were. Emma transferred sleeping Henry from the car to the room - luckily, on ground floor - and stripped his clothes off as much as she had to, before rolling him under a blanket. She tucked his travelling teddy bear into the crook of his arm and added another blanket on top, just in case there was a draft.

Elsa lugged her and Emma's backpacks into the room and looked around.

"Cosy. I hope there are no bugs."

"That would be a bit more than cosy" Elena commented, hauling her own bag and Henry's. "Nah, looks tolerably clean. Emma, you go take a shower and we'll get something to eat ready. You'll need to be up first anyway - Henry's been asleep for more than three hours, so I'm betting he'll be up with the sunrise, and he will start asking questions the moment he opens his eyes."

They managed to put together a decent imitation of a dinner, including some hot tea thanks to the electric kettle and some ice tea thanks to the trunk fridge, so finally, an hour or so after booking in, they were stretched on their beds and staring idly at the ceiling.

"I'm not sure what to do tomorrow" Emma sighed finally. "We go to the same piece of the road and what, try believing in fairies, very strongly? Or maybe we should clap?"

"We go there and we drive slowly, looking for clues" Elena yawned. "Maybe there is some mark where the normal world ends and the magical one starts. I'm wondering how it's done. Is it a wormhole that goes through the whole city, so we drive in at one end and pop out on the other side? Or is it somehow shielded and we actually drive straight through the town, not seeing it? Can we run over someone? Have an accident with an unseen car?"

Elsa groaned.

"Now I'll be thinking about imaginary dogs dying under our wheels all the time I'm driving. Thanks, Lena. That's helpful."

"Hey, I'm just thinking aloud."

"It sounds more like notthinking. Really, we don't need any additional stress now. We need to find a town that doesn't exist on a map, in an area that looks like no town had ever been there, without a guide or any real knowledge or even without being reasonably sure it is there. Are you sure it is here? I'm not, not really. So please, let's not add more levels of discomfort to the whole thing, because it won't make the whole thing any quicker."

There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

"Eh. Sorry."

"Yeah. Me too."

Emma snored.

Let me know what you think :) I love comments. They are like cookies for my soul.
By the way, I'm baking cookies tonight. If they turn out ok, I'll make Elena bake them in some later chapter. Yay/Nay? :)