Chapter 1
Elsa was running. Hard and fast, her lungs aching, she raced through the streets, her own ice merely adding to the ice already grasping the Earth. No one was out; it was too cold and late. Even the sky slept soundly, unaware of the world below it. She knew she shouldn't have asked to see the poster. Except she hadn't asked. She'd ordered. Unable to refuse her, the guard-Argus, his name was, Argus- had already begun to babble as he handed it to her.
"It's been so cold, and harsh, a real winter, so the people don't know what to do, they can't, um, just take- they're only…" He drifted off, seeming to search for the right words. "Fearful. Only fearful, your majesty."
Elsa was mortified. 'Fear will be your enemy.'
The image in front of her was to be expected in a winter such as this: a brutal representation of herself. But instead of her normal circlet crown was a series of sword-like icicles, and she was laughing as she sent ice and snow to cover Arendelle. The title above the picture read 'EVIL ICY TYRANT FREEZES US AGAIN'.
Of course it wasn't the middle of summer this time. But the dead of winter brought the public's fear of their queen bubbling to the forefront of their minds. As she watched, the sheet of paper turned to ice in her grasp, shattering to the ground. She took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third. "I will return in three days' time. Tell no one but those in the castle I have gone. Remove no more posters. I ask you not to follow."
The man didn't immediately respond until she glanced his way. Then he gave a hurried, clattering bow- he must be new- scurrying backwards over the shards of ice. "Anna and Kristoff are in charge." Elsa told him.
And she turned and ran.
Racing through the cobbled city now, she wished she was wearing her ice dress, but she wasn't. It made her feel impenetrable, mostly, but it did her emotions no good where it hung in her armoire in her room. So, to keep her panic from spouting from her chest, she pushed her legs harder, flying across the snow to the north.
Would it be there?
`*'
Anna was very warm, and not sure as to why she was awake. With Kristoff holding her close to his comfortable and oh-so-warm chest, she was quite sure it had been a terrible idea to wake up at all, and decided she ought to retreat back to her dreams. She was about to do just that when she heard the small smack on her door again.
"Ah, children," she murmured, "What to do?" She pried the mountain man's arms from her (no easy feat, but she had mastered it) and slid over to the wooden door, pulling it open slowly. Large, doe eyes peered up from underneath red bangs.
"Ma." The tiny girl was wrapped in her favorite blanket, which looked and smelled of dewy moss, as it had been a congratulatory gift from Kristoff's family, the trolls.
"Amalie, dear, come on then." Scooping the toddler into her arms, Anna closed the door softly with her foot. "Want to talk about it?"
"No. Just a dream. Won't hurt me."
"Especially with your big ol' dad to protect you." Kristoff had woken, and his voice was warm with the embers of sleep. "Come." He lifted the covers to his child and wife.
Anna placed Amalie onto the bed, climbing in behind her. By the time she was properly situated to fall back to sleep, both her husband and daughter were fast asleep, with soft sighs that matched each other in a surprising fashion. With a sigh of her own, Anna too slept, but not before catching sight of a small frost flower blooming on her window. Too tired to realize there was no frost anywhere else on the glass, she drifted into dreams.
`*'
He wasn't using his staff for this pattern. His fingers traced lightly across the glass, slowly blurring the image of the sleeping family with in. He realized this was a royal family, very different from the ones he had known before. It still hurt, not knowing where he'd come from. Decades had passed, and though he wasn't sure how many, it still hurt.
Done with the last bit of frost for the night, Jack stood and stretched, waiting to see if the wind had a direction for him. Surprisingly, he felt no tug, and so he decided to fly on his own. He leapt from his precarious window sill perch, gliding northward, his preferred direction. He would've flown fast, high, and far away, if it hadn't been for moonlight that reflected sharply back at him from the ground. His ice never blinded like that. Too jagged.
Swooping lower, he discovered he was looking at a trail of very controlled, contained, and unwelcome ice. He sped up, raising his eyes from the ground to study what lay ahead of him. He found himself at the edge of a suddenly solid fjord. He had left it merely bordered with ice, since he wouldn't have been able to make it thick enough to be safe. But this ice was thicker than he'd ever bothered to make. 70 feet maybe, a depth rivaled only by Artic ice. Curious, as always, he continued forward, glancing around for the icy trail on the earth edging the other side of the bay.
He found it, and saw that it had barely stopped expanding outwards. He was close to whatever-or whoever- was making it. Kicking up the speed again, he flew just above the ground. Whatever was making this ice was moving fast, faster than he could fly. He figured they must have been riding the ice somehow. He'd done that once, in the Antarctic, but the penguin had still won.
Jack suddenly slowed. Did he really want to know what was making all this ice? Yeah. Ok, but did he want to know what it was right now, when the creator was clearly not in control? …maybe not. Touching down to the ground, he decided a little exploration was in order. Turning slightly more to the West, he decided he would pick up the trail a tad later, informing himself that he was not at all frightened of this new force of winter. Why should he be? He was Jack Frost, the King of Winter!
He padded quietly through the woods until he came across an open swatch of grass. Turning, he followed it, covering separate blades with fresh gloves of frost. In front of him he heard a hiss of steam, and looking up, discovered he had come across a wealth of hot springs from deep beneath the Earth. Wandering further into the moss covered clearing, he discovered he was standing in a semi-circle of stone.
"Weird formation," he muttered, perching on a small boulder to closer examine the wall of earth around him. To his surprise the stone beneath him squealed and tumbled away from him. An ominous clattering began, and rocks and boulders all around him began to shake and roll. Standing up, he was about to start freezing things when the rocks began to unroll.
"Gurth!" A distinctly female voice called from the back of a sudden crowd of living rocks. Shouldering her way forward, Jack quickly saw who she was. She matched the group around her, small, round, with a glowing set of crystals at her neck. "Is that anyway to greet a guest? And a handsome one at that!" She rolled over to him, and jumped onto a pile of others to look him in the eye.
"But his feet were so cold and-"
"Hush up," she ordered. "Now, who are you?"
It took Jack a moment to gather his wits enough to answer. "Uh, I'm Jack. Jack Frost? What- I mean, uh, who- are you?"
"Why, we're trolls, dear! Haven't you ever heard of us?" Sticking her face very close to his, she examined him. "You are a tad cold."
"Bulda, leave the poor boy alone. He was just exploring the territory. I'm sure he had no clue that magic other than his own resided here."
This boulder- troll, he was a troll- appeared much older, and by extent wiser, than the others. "You're right, boulder, I've seen- or heard of-anything like you all." He paused for a moment, and the strangeness of the entire situation struck him. "Wait, hold up, you all can see me?!"
"Pabbie. Call me Pabbie. And we can indeed see you; we are not humans. We are not so easily fooled." The elder nodded to him. "Though I sense you had a purpose coming this way? Not many bother to cross the fjord on a whim."
"Well, actually, I was done frosting things up for the night, so I thought I'd go look at those great mountains over there" he pointed, and was suddenly so glad that they followed the direction of his finger. They could see it! "But I got side tracked by some ice. Not my ice. Something else was making it. But then I reasoned it might be ought of control, so I thought I'd go see it later. I like ice and all, but the ice I was seeing wasn't exactly friendly, if you get my drift."
Pabbie frowned, sighing. "Oh, poor Queen Elsa. Her people must be restless again."
"Those silly humans, biting the hand that feeds them!" Bulda was not pleased. "Why, if they saw half of the winters in that ice age a couple hundred years back, they wouldn't be complaining at all!"
Jack remained silent. He was to blame for that particular ice age.
"They are fearful. It's in their nature." Pabbie sighed once more. "Dear boy, I feel that you too, have powers of ice?"
"You mean this girl has ice stuff going on?"
"I wouldn't call her a girl, nor her magic 'ice stuff', but yes, I suppose so."
"Man, I've gotta see that!" Jack jumped up into the sky without realizing that this girl was a human, unlike the trolls.
"Head for those mountains, boy!" called Bulda, "You'll see something you won't soon forget!"
The trolls watched as he lifted up into the night, a silhouette against the stars. He hesitated for a moment, looking down at the first beings to have seen him for centuries. "Thank you!" He shot off to the north.
"Two fire crystals says she freezes him on sight."
"Three say that they fall in love."
"You're on!"