Carver Lawson, Special Projects Manager
Everyone has heard of the ice queen. There are countless tales of a woman with a sharp tongue and an icy heart, but the village where she grew up knew her as Cassidy. It was a small place where everyone knew each other to the finest detail. A community is exactly what Cassidy needed, but her and her family were the outcasts of the village.
Her father had left years ago when Cassidy was only 5 and her brother was just born. This would have been fine for her but her dad was a con artist. When her parents met and settled down, her dad promised to find a real job. With his reputation, the only job he was able to get was occasionally helping out on the nearby farms. Over the 5 years he gained the farmers' trust and used it to steal from each of them before leaving for good. To compensate, her mother, Joanna, picked up humble jobs of cleaning houses, babysitting, and being a substitute for the town’s school. Since her husband was dead to the townspeople, she became a sort of unofficial widow in their eyes. Cassidy had to become the new caretaker of their house, due to her mom’s newfound occupation. This responsibility left Cassidy unable to attend school until her brother turned 5 and was able to come with her. To make up for her disadvantages, Cassidy stopped in at the library whenever she had a moment of free time. She was there so often the librarians knew her personally and let her check out without the usual restrictions. In her years of independent education she stumbled upon a book about the occult. The pages were filled with herbal remedies, healing prayers, and rituals all relating to archaic medicine. The book reminded Cassidy of her mother.
As the town widow Joanna had become a wife and mother to all of the townspeople. Through her obligations, she became more than a babysitter and cleaner and was now a midwife and nurse. She had become a nurturing force in the town and was a revered healer. When Cassidy could finally attend school she felt she was too far behind. The forgotten mystical books hidden around the library caught her attention more than any of the historical or scientific ones ever did. Soon it became clear to her that the only path for her to follow was her mother’s path. She stopped attending school and began joining her mom on her outings. They would go from house to house and she would watch as her mom tended to each person with the utmost care. Joanna had all types of patients and her experience gave her the wisdom to alleviate their pains.
Cassidy tried to learn as quickly as she could to keep up. She studied the symptoms of each sickness and their corresponding cures. She had memorized multiple herbal remedies and decided to test them on her mother’s patients. The first she tried was a sedative tea meant for a woman claiming to be troubled by wicked spirits not letting her sleep. Cassidy made the woman a tea with herbs used for protection and relaxation and handed it to her. After checking in the next day Cassidy found that her mixture was a success and the woman was very pleased with her. The victory left Cassidy ecstatic and pushed her to experiment with her knowledge of the occult more. She started chanting healing prayers in her head while delivering a baby or preparing teas for the ill. She would bless someone’s house upon entering by dropping cinnamon behind her as she walked through the door. Cassidy even began to attempt lucid dreaming so she could pass into other’s dreams and soothe their nightmares while granting them deeper sleep. This ambition was the very thing that brought her heart alive with a fiery passion, yet it would be her very undoing.
As time went on, her unique style of healing brought her out of the shadow of her mother. She was no longer seen as an apprentice but as a skilled healer like Joanna. Her growing recognition allowed her mother to retire, but Joanna occasionally helped out. By the time Cassidy was fully rooted in her position, she had mastered her craft. The people claimed she had healing hands and that you could feel the heat radiate from her. She was happy with the reputation she had grown, but the pedestal she was placed on attracted the wrong attention.
During her training with her mother she had met a boy who grew fond of her, but she didn’t return his affections. The man had now married another girl and had his own family but he never forgot Cassidy’s rejection. His son was ill and so Cassidy went to heal him and give him the medicine she knew, but the boy remained sick. She told her former admirer that it was in God’s hands and not hers, she was powerless. Cassidy’s justification was not enough for the man and soon, he spread rumors. She heard that he claimed her hands were icy cold and didn’t radiate heat like they famously did. According to him, Cassidy chose to deny the little boy her gifts, as if she was scheming with death himself.
Cassidy was unphased by the awful lie and carried on with her practice. She felt confident in the reputation she had built and she knew she worked for her spot among the townspeople. What she had done for others did not matter to those that remembered her as the outcast with a deadbeat dad. Somehow, all the effort she put in was outweighed by where she happened to come from and circumstances out of her control. One of her critics was a girl she grew up with, who lived two houses down from her. When they were young, she and the girl would play for hours outside until they had to return home. The two experienced distance though when Cassidy’s dad left town, and Cassidy’s busy life left little time for reconnection.
Despite the childhood connection this woman was now claiming that Cassidy was coming for her husband. She claimed Cassidy placed a love spell upon the man after Cassidy had come to help alleviate a cold he caught. The truth of it was that the couple was simply having marital problems and the husband had become unfaithful to his wife. She had caught wind of this and saw her husband eyeing Cassidy one day and so she decided to make Cassidy her scapegoat. Cassidy’s successful yet unorthodox healing methods brought her the reputation and fame she desired, but it also brought jealousy. The people admired her gifts but also feared them. They couldn’t forget Cassidy’s roots and felt uneasy that a conman’s daughter had control over the town’s health. This unspoken tension between the town and her family always existed, but it became heightened by the rumors that grew as Cassidy’s reputation did. She had grown used to the consistent skepticism, but the town began to question her mother and brother about her abilities.
Cassidy still lived with her mother and took great care of her but Cassidy was rarely at home in the daytime. So it was late when she had come back from her duties to find her door wide open. She slowly entered and saw her mother in their kitchen sitting and she was surrounded by 3 men. They were aggressively questioning Joanna about what she taught Cassidy and if she knew the “secret” of Cassidy’s gifts. Cassidy cleared her throat to let her presence be known and the men turned with guilt ridden looks on their faces. She could see it in their eyes. They knew it was wicked to question a helpless old woman like this. She let an icy glare come over her eyes and in seconds they were gone. The men may envy and despise Cassidy but above all, they were scared of her and her knowledge. She quickly bent down and threw her arms over her mother asking if she was ok. Joanna told her daughter she was fine but looked up at her with a sad smile. Joanna opened her mouth and took a long pause before telling Cassidy that the men visited her brother as well. She demanded to hear the whole story from her mom. Her brother had attended all his years of highschool and landed a successful job as a blacksmith and was raising a happy family. He attempted to remove himself from his familial ties to better fit in with the townspeople. Despite his efforts the men still came for him asking the same questions they had asked Joanna about Cassidy. He rarely caught up with his sister or mother and knew less about their lives than the men seemed to know. He was shocked and felt violated. He knew his family’s beginnings were known by the townspeople, but he had underestimated how much they reminisced on it. When the men left, he went straight to his old home to tell his mother.
Joanna wasn’t phased by the news. She was old enough to have a clearer memory of when her husband fled town. Her children were too young to realize but for weeks after the townspeople tried to exile their family. They left rotted meat at their doorstep and smeared awful messages along her door, but she was always quick enough to hide it from the kids. After Joanna finished explaining the story she saw the heartbreak in her daughter’s eyes. At the time Joanna didn’t have the heart to tell Cassidy that the townspeople wouldn’t stop there. Cassidy eventually came to realize the people’s persistence on her own. For the next five days the men came relentlessly questioning her and her family. She simply couldn’t take it anymore. Her hands were ice cold when she went to heal others or brew an herbal remedy. The love and care she put into her craft wasn’t there anymore. How could she heal the town when it didn’t want to be healed by her?
She started to isolate herself more in an attempt to reclaim the fire she had before but she felt too numb. She would go into the market and hear whispers of her name and see fingers pointed her way. One day she overheard someone saying her family must be acquainted with the devil and dark arts. The audacity of the lie caused her to whip her head around and glare at the person. As she stared she noticed ice was slowly forming over his lips freezing them shut. She stopped herself immediately and secluded herself to her home. The last thing she wanted to do was give the people a valid reason to see her as a threat. As her days of solitude proceeded she realized she no longer had a place among the people. She could no longer be their healer with the way they froze her heart, and her gifts could only be used for harm with a hardened heart.
The idea of leaving her whole life behind was not easy and she began to sob thinking about it. She couldn’t bear to leave her mother to take care of herself and knew her brother wouldn’t take over the responsibility. She also wished to continue their legacy of being healers and loved the reputation she had grown. A reputation she worked years to build and was now destroyed by a week of rumors and critiques to her craft. She couldn’t stand lingering on those thoughts so she focused on her breath. As she inhaled and exhaled her breathing got colder. She let go of her family, her ambitions, and her passion and let herself slip into a numbing feeling. She focused on the freedom she would feel when she left the village for good. Taking her final exhale she let out a chilling breath that she could see clear as day. She proceeded to get up, pack a bag, and leave the house without saying her goodbyes. As she walked into the wilderness she left a trail of frostbitten flora. She accepted that the villagers had their ways and she had hers, but to them she would forever be “The Ice Queen”.