Chapter 25
by Schammielynn
I can't say I remember arriving in the Enchanted Forest. All of a sudden, I was just there. There was an abundance of trees, the sky was a shade of periwinkle I'd never seen in Oz, and the atmosphere sang with magic.
But I was heartbroken.
All of my recent memories zipped through my mind; Oswin sending me away, the fact that I was the reason Dorothy, Sawyer, and Leo were all gone, and Terrence's prolonged army absence were all things that I wanted desperately to dump from my thoughts, but it blurred my every decision.
The trees seemed endless. If the Enchanted forest was its own world, so to speak, did that mean that it was all actually a forest? Did it ever really end? What good was it to be here when my home was being ripped apart?
Cringing at the realization, I spun the Emerald ring on my finger. It seemed to be the reason that world travel was possible. So I twirled it and yanked it around each and every finger until they were all raw and red. Tears ran down my face, turning into droplets of snow as they drifted towards the ground. Nothing would make up for the guilt I felt, for the tragedy that was my life and the reason for being sent here.
If there were villages around, I couldn't find them. People were far and few between, and the ones that I did find glared at me as if I was a wanted criminal. My pastime became wandering, and when I wasn't doing that, I was sleeping in a small hut made of ice, stealing food from vendors throughout the forest, and dwelling on the past. It became clear that I would never move on with my life if memories plagued me, so I looked into magic as a solution. Despite the absence of people on the trails that I wandered, peddlers selling odd sorts of potions and remedies did appear once in a while.I'd seen a witch once before, and I decided that the next time I saw one, I would inquire about memory altering potions.
"Rock trolls." She hissed at me in response when I stopped her traveling cart to ask for her advice. She was selling potions, too, and I figured that she must have some knowledge of what I could do to fix my problem. After thanking her, ice blew around the area in anxiousness as I started to leave, and I saw her flinch, stop her cart, and glare at me. "You have magic?"
I nodded in response.
"That won't go over well here, lass," she frowned as if assessing me. "Having real magic around here comes with a price. I should know… I lost mine!"
She laughed maniacally, and I wondered if her sanity had disappeared with her magic.
"Can the Rock Trolls take care of my magic?" I asked timidly. "At least get my powers under control?"
"I don't know! Just go that way and ask 'em!" she yelped and ran away, groaning at my presence and questions.
So, I walked in the direction that she pointed, and left a trail of ice in case I got lost, not that there was much of a fear of getting lost to begin with. I didn't really have a place to return to.
When I arrived at the rock trolls, I thought maybe my theory about the witch losing her sanity was true. These were just rocks with some moss on the backs of them. I called to them a few times, quietly though, and then finally let out a burst of ice in frustration. This was stupid. Why did I even believe her in the first place?
Shortly after, one rock came rolling towards me and I stepped out of the way, beginning to worry about my situation.
"Elsa of Oz, what a pleasure!" he bowed. I looked at him, confused as to how he knew my name and whether or not I was hallucinating. I figured it was some sort of other-wordly knowledge, and proceeded.
"That's not necessary…" I stammered out, beginning to mess with my hair. "I just wondered if you could do me a favor or two."
"It depends," he calculated, and maneuvered his short rock body around to wake up some of his friends.
"I was sent here from Oz, and I want to go back," I tried. It was a longshot, but one that I needed to take.
Almost as if he had an extra sense of foresight, he bellowed, "Oz is not where your fate lies."
Sighing, I continued, "Alright. So, if I can't go back, I can't possibly be here and be successful knowing what I have done in the past. Is there any way you can block my memories?"
"You can do that yourself, silly girl."
"What do you mean?"
"All it takes is willpower. Block your memories yourself. You know which ones to keep and to lock away. They may always resurface later, but your time here will be spared from the pain you experienced. However," he waddled to the other side of me. "Pain and suffering makes us who we are. If you make this choice, there will be a consequence."
"What kind of a consequence?"
"How should I know?" a playful smile appeared on his gray face. "But you have been warned."
"I'll take my chances," I stated determinedly. "One more thing; my powers. Will I ever have complete control?"
"Your emotions are linked to your powers. You try so hard to hold it all in, when it is the power inside of all of us to express what we feel."
"What's that's supposed to mean?"
As soon as the words left my mouth, he and his friends were back to normal rocks, and I questioned whether or not I had been dreaming all along.
From my position on the ground, I looked all around for a place I could go to focus, to think, and to try and get everything under control. Seeing some large mountains in the west, I realized how much I missed the height of the Ozian towers, and realized that, like my room back home, I could make a place to live completely out of ice.
Once I successfully made it into the mountain, it was time to truly test the ability of my powers and my mind.
I slammed my foot into ground and pillars and sheets of ice rose up into the air. Spirals of ice architecture manifested into walls and staircases and chandeliers. It was like my room back in Oz, but tenfold. Smirking at my accomplishments, I walked inside, created a chair for myself, and eased in.
Blocking my memories? That couldn't be too hard, right?
I imagined Sawyer and Leo dead on the ground and my ridiculous plan to have thought that I could escape, and Oswin sending me away.
My faults and the death of Sawyer and Leo tucked themselves away easily, much to my surprise. I nodded my head as if locking a door and then opened my eyes.
The rock troll was right. It worked. Suddenly I didn't feel quite so bogged down with awful, recent memories. In fact, I wasn't really sure what was so bad in Oz that Oswin had sent me away for, which was all the more reason to block that out as well. Although this was harder because of my love for Oswin, I managed to do the same.
I contemplated other memories to dispose of. Aly's death was painful, but I had long since forgiven and accepted, and deciding to forget something like that seemed too vain to go through with it.
So, I managed to organize my thoughts a little more, stretch, make myself a different, more comfortable dress, and went off to bed.
Despite being on top of a mountain, my ice castle was fairly close to the sea, as well as a town by the sea. It made for a nice view, and believe it or not, I lived what was bascially solitary confinement for about a year. When I needed food, I found a way to procure money, and bought what I needed from the nearest market. This wasn't often though, and I rarely kept in touch with the common knowledge of the town, unless it was to check for army sightings or evil witches. I figured the best way to find Terrence was to wait in a single spot. Besides, how could he miss a giant ice castle?
One day, however, I realized that this little town by the sea was iced over.
And who else could they blame but me?
As soon as I had realized what happened, guards infiltrated my palace, securing the outside, the inside, and me. I wasn't entirely prepared, as a growing collection of books occupied most of my time, and my attention to know who to watch out for and how to counter attack was on the backburner.
They stormed in closer and closer, and they were met with an army of ice spikes. I cried out in protest, "Leave me alone. I am not responsible for this."
"Who else could it be?! You're a sorceress in an ice palace. We've known you were going to cause trouble one day, and now we have just cause to arrest you."
"I didn't do it!" I pleaded, and as a mode of defense, sent the ice spikes closer and closer.
Threatened by my power, one of the guards aimed a crossbow at my giant masterpiece of a chandelier. I watched in awe as it drifted toward the ground in what seemed to be slow motion, and I did my best to thaw it as it came barreling towards me, but it was too late.
I woke up in what felt like an underground bunker. I was chained up with thick cuffs that covered my hands and ran up to my forearms. The metal dug painfully into my skin, and I looked at a plate of bread crusts that had been thrown down to try and keep me alive.
Containing, not killing. Good to know.
I did my best to ice and freeze my way out of the handcuffs, but it was met with no such luck and very sore wrists.
Hearing talking from above, I stopped my squirming.
"The ice and snow melted the second we put her away. We can't let her out again."
Other muffled things about my imprisonment continued but I just frowned and tried to rip myself free from my shackles, screaming angrily the more times I failed.
"IS THIS WHAT YOU MEANT BY PUNISHMENT?!" I cried, cursing myself for ever thinking that blocking my memories in risk of anything bad happening was a good idea. For me, something bad happening always meant the extreme. I was so willing to get rid of my memories that I could have let something seriously wrong occur. Now, I was stuck like this for goodness knows how long.
I wouldn't have ever believed if someone had told me that it would be almost 30 years. But it was.
One day finally occured when I felt I had control of myself again. I hadn't had a concept of time, or even a sense of what time was, but I figured this was something important. My cave-prison had been iced over for forever, and while it wasn't all that great for whoever else they would decide to throw down there, it made it comfortable for me. No matter how I tried, though, I couldn't ice, break, or loosen the shackles that held me.
After all this time, which hadn't really felt all that long if I was being honest, a woman came into the cave-prison.
"We survived," she declared.
"Survived what?" I sputtered out, glad to know I still had the ability to speak.
"The Dark Curse. It froze time."
As much as I wanted to doubt it, everything suddenly made sense; why I felt like so much time yet so little time had been spent in this hole, and why I had hardly had aged a bit.
"Who are you and what are you doing here? Were you imprisoned too?"
She laughed, "Of course not. Not yet, anyways. I'm here to free you."
"Free me? Why?"
"A long, long time ago, my daughter's first-born child was sent away to another land for the sake of royalty and riches. I'm not very good with regrets and apologies, but that baby was you. I thought, perhaps, that it might be you from the moment you were imprisoned here. With the curse and such, though, I was unable to do anything about it."
"You're my… grandma? But why are you here now?"
She nodded, and then stated, "No family member of mine as powerful and as useful as you are will be trapped up in here."
With a flick of her wrist, my handcuffs disappeared. I rubbed my wrists and spun the ring around, just to make sure it was still truly there. Her words finally sunk in.
Useful? How could my ice powers ever be useful? I thought. "What… what do you want from me?"
"Our family is destined for greatness. Great power and great suffering. Yet, it always seems to come with a price. Your mother, your real mother, had been misguided and misled, but it is true greatness that would exist if you both were reunited."
Somehow, I doubted this. If my birth mother and I were to be reunited, how would I ever explain to her how magnificently brilliant my life had been up until Zelena's interference? How would I ever tell her that Aly and Oswin were, in every sense of the word, my parents? How could I break my birth mother's heart and tell her that I probably wouldn't ever need her? I couldn't possibly tell that to this woman, my "grandmother", so I just sent a confused look her way.
"I'm setting you free, Elsa, to find your chance at happiness with your mother," She used her magic to display the face of a woman I had seen before…. before….
"AGH!" my head pounded immediately, and it felt like something was on the tip of my tongue, as if there was something I had to say but I just couldn't say it.
"Oswin sent me away!" I gasped, finally. The memory had resurfaced upon seeing Regina's face once more.
"Oswin sent me away," I whispered again in disbelief. The how and why weren't clear, but I knew couldn't be troubled. "Grandma" was standing in front of me with an unsympathetic, cold, hard, truly confused stare.
"It's nothing," I shook away the thought. "What now?"
She sighed irately, "I'm setting you free to find true happiness with your birth mother and your true love."
Terrence's face appeared and I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn't tried harder to look for him.
As quickly as Cora had appeared and surprised me, she vanished, and I felt emptier and more alone than I had before.
If ever I had to make a grand escape, that was it. Mustering all the strength I possibly could, I created an explosion of ice and snow, and it threw open the trap doors above. I leapt out, and looked around quickly before hurrying back into the woods.
Frantically checking over my shoulder and stumbling over trees, I knew what I needed to do. Curse or no curse, I was going to get to Terence.
I stepped carefully as I walked through the woods in this unfamiliar land, not sure where I was headed and just wanting to get away I had heard rumors that those who had been sent to the "land without magic" were back and I wanted to see for myself. It was almost noon and the sun was shining through the trees. I froze when I felt eyes watching me from behind. Spinning around, I hoped to see what was there but they were gone.
"Hello, is someone there?" I called out but heard nothing.
Letting out a sigh I started to walk again when a shadow flew above me. I looked up quickly to see a dark bird-like animal flying above me.
"Monkeys." I hissed under my breath.
Backing myself into a tree I tried to make myself less of an easy target. It swooped down, landing in front of me. I heard a rustling in the woods and my heart sank at the prospect of even more. The monkey moved towards me slowly, not taking his red beady eyes off me. A man in a cloak stepped out of the woods. Pulling out an arrow, he shot it in a mere few seconds. As I sunk to the ground, I let out a shaky breath.
"Don't think I've seen one act in such a way before. Targeting somebody like that." The man said reaching out a hand to help me up.
"Thank you," I said as he helped me up, dusting myself off I smiled at him kindly, as I watched a woman walked out from the woods.
"Did you kill it?" She asked looking at the dead monkey.
"Yes, one down. Who knows how many more are out there." The man said pulling his arrow from the body.
"She has a whole army of them at her command, some are in human form. Those are men she has kidnapped. Most of them wronged her in some way or just got on her bad side." I said without thinking.
"How do you know all this?" The woman asked.
"I grew up in OZ, I would know one of Zelena's slaves anywhere." I replied.
"I don't think I caught your name." The man said reaching out his hand. "I'm Robin."
I smiled politely and shook his hand.
"I'm Elsa, but everyone calls me Essie." I said glancing at the woman. "And you?"
"Regina, or as people like to refer to me as; The Evil Queen." I smiled at her but inside my heart was pounding. I knew then that my life was about to change even more than it already had.
Author's Note: Hey everybody! Sammy here. I know I've been kind of a passive flashback voice through all of this since Eva has been the one posting all of the chapters and basically doing all the public relations for the story, but I just wanted to thank you all for reading! I've always been obsessed and fascinated with the Wizard of Oz and with Once Upon a Time. This story, Essie's story, has given me a way to explore a ton of angles. Not only that, but I got to share the experience with my best friend and fangirl buddy as we wrote it. I couldn't be more proud of what we accomplished, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as well. I look forward to seeing what you all think of the ending, so please share your comments below! Be sure to share it around too, the more feedback, the better!
Again, thanks so much to everyone who has read this and to Eva for being the kick-ass present day voice of the story. Couldn't have done it without you, girl! :)
Lots of love,
Sammy
