Prologue: Snedronningen
'Snow Queen'
"…as bees have a queen, so does the snow…"
That's what old Nan used to say.
She often wondered what would have happened if they had been more careful. If they took the old story to be a warning.
"…the snowflakes follow their Queen, and she is seen where they cluster the most."
And they did find her.
But winter found them all.
But all of the land is now winter. Everything is of snow and ice and everyone now sleeping frozen under the cold, never to awaken. Anna stood in the middle of the frozen wasteland, simply staring at the white emptiness she once called her home.
Even the crackling of the fire a few yards behind her nor the relatively cheerful voices of the women succeeded in tugging her out of her thoughts.
There would be no summertime now.
How long has it been since she'd seen sunshine?
She did not know what to feel. Distraught that she failed to save Kristoff or sad to have found out that the Snow Queen was once her sister.
No matter, nothing can be changed now.
"What are you thinking?" came a small voice.
"Nothing," Anna replied, looking over her shoulder to see the young girl who called herself Snow come up to her, all covered in fur to keep the cold away.
"Oh, it's never nothing," Snow replied.
Anna watched Snow's face carefully. How old was she? Fourteen? Obviously a handful of years younger than her. And yet that roundish face framed with the bobbed black hair held a certain age in them. Something that echoed a long history concealed by her flushed translucent skin and her clear brown eyes.
"You used to be cheerful, didn't you?" Snow asked without looking to Anna, her gaze scanning the frozen wasteland stuck in eternal winter.
The skies were grey, bright enough to see all yet too dark to make sense of the light. The heavens were a mottled grey, something to sap the soul out of people. Like the constant cold nipping at any bare skin.
"How would you know that?" Anna said, her butterscotch-hued braid falling over her shoulders as she shifted.
"I've had experience," Snow replied, nodding back to her companions around the bonfire a small distance behind them, the flames they stoked casting dark silhouettes upon the frosted trees that surrounded them.
"Friends?" Anna wondered.
"If anything," the girl shrugged.
"Your name's Snow, wasn't it?"
"Snow White, yes."
"And how much snow have you seen in your life, Snow?" Anna asked, finding the name unfitting for someone who must have enjoyed long summers.
"Not a lot," she said, looking about, "No winter as bad as this,"
Now, the girl looked to her, those brown eyes digging into her soul.
Anna had to turn away, finding her piercing gaze unsettling.
"Aren't your feet cold?" Snow simply asked.
"No," Anna shook her head, glancing down at her toes, "The cold…never really bothered me, anyways…"
"And what of your sister?"
Anna did not say anything, "She didn't want the cold. But winter wanted her, I suppose."
"She caused all this, the Snow Queen?"
Anna looked to her, brows furrowed, "…you know her?"
"I do," Snow White said, "We all do."
"You said you were travellers."
"That we are."
"Then how…?"
"We've read about you." Snow simply replied, "Your sister Elsa. Your friend Kai…"
"Kristoff," Anna corrected, but Snow continued.
"The pages aren't all written right, I suppose…" she shrugged. Anna was puzzled. What was this young girl talking about? Pages, names. They had come across her only a few hours ago.
It seemed impossible, really.
Eleven of them.
There were eleven. All of them women.
Why would travellers go through a land ravaged by winter for so many years?
The thought made Anna fall quiet. Years. Yes, it's been years since the last sunshine. And yet only a few days ago (or so it seemed, but it could have been longer) that `winter was locked into the land. Along with everything and everyone she knew. She had fallen asleep in the snow. And yet she woke up without so much as a frostbite, stirred into waking by the sounds of the travellers crossing the snow.
"…and of course, you. Gerda."
"Anna," she snapped, "My name's Anna."
"A rose by any other name would prick as annoyingly," Snow sighed, not looking to her, "One way or another, you're the one we're looking for, aren't you?"
"I…I don't understand."
"You didn't think that we'd go through Arendelle in this situation just for a stroll, did you?"
"No…" Anna said, her voice trailing.
Snow White pulled something from under her winter-cloak. A patched up old book bound in leather, the thick pages crackling as she turned it in the cold. Full of scribbles and diagrams in various languages, as it seemed.
"We found you in Spitsbergen, where the Snow Queen held her castle," she said, reading down the lines of a page with a foreign writing. Anna peered at it in puzzlement.
"…born in summer, lost in winter," Snow White continued, "You have a very long tale full of hope and despair, Anna. Unknowingly in the end, the winter was brought about by one you once knew."
Anna let out a breath that fogged in front of her, "…I thought I could save them."
"Only in fairy tales," Snow White replied, "In the end…happy endings are just stories that haven't ended yet."
"Who are you, really?" Anna asked quietly, now truly intrigued, "And why do you know all of this?"
"Because it's all here, in this very book," Snow replied as she slammed it shut and hid it away under her cloak once more, "Yours, mine…" she glance over her shoulder to her companion, "Theirs."
"Everyone?" Anna asked, looking to the others.
They were all girls. Some older, other still younger, but nearly all of them looked toughened and world-weary despite the cheer they showed around the fire. But obviously, Snow was the youngest. And yet of all them, her looks were most grim.
"Why?" Snow smirked, knowing the questions that stirred in Anna's mind, "We haven't a clue, ourselves."
"Why would you find me?"
"Because, practically, we are all connected by an unseen thread," Snow told her as snowflakes began to flutter down once more, about to thicken the snow underfoot. Perhaps endlessly until there's nothing left but winter.
"…we once lived ordinary lives, such as you. Then horrible things happened to each and every one."
Anna watched them as Snow did.
"…it didn't matter what we did, who or where we were," Snow huffed, "It all came for us in different forms."
Anna's bare feet shifted in the snow. They all looked different, each of them, though nearly identical because of the furs they donned to keep warm. Each face was different. Each pair of eyes mirrored a story.
"…Aurora, Cinderella, Ariel and the rest," Snow explained, "We're trying to find out what this is all supposed to mean. Your winter, and all the horrors scattered amongst us. And why, why of all people are we written in this book as if we were tragedies to be collected and displayed."
There was a bitterness in Snow's voice, Anna knew as much. But her face kept everything veiled. She pieced together what she was saying.
"…and I'm one of those tragedies?"
"Look around you, everything's dead," Snow said bluntly, "You were sleeping under the snow and still woke up unharmed. You saw everything succumb to the cold your sister created, and still you woke as if it were spring. Does that answer your question?"
Anna glared ate Snow for being so outright. It was true, but still…she refused to be a tragedy.
"Snow!" someone called.
The tallest of them, one of the eldest it seemed, dressed lightly in skintoned wraps all over approached them from the treeline. It was hard for Anna to believe she could withstand the cold with only such. Her russet-brown skin contrasted in the pale snow as with her long black hair that moved about the winter wind with ease.
"Yes, Pocahontas?" Snow asked, looking up to her. She was only as tall as the woman's shoulder.
"The wind howls, we must move before winter stirs again," she explained.
"Jus' when I was gettin' warm!" sighed one of them by the fire, her Scottish accent as striking as her wild bounces of red hair.
"Let's move," said another who stood up, beckoning the others.
"Are you coming or not?" Snow White said sternly without a sidewards glance to Anna as she joined the other who gathered their belongings for the move.
"Kind of rude…" Anna huffed, crossing her arms.
"She's just cross because of the cold," Pocahontas explained, setting a gentle hand on Anna's shoulder and ushered her gently towards the others who had already put out the fire.
"I really don't know what's going on," Anna said, trudging across the snow, "And what's with that book…?"
They began to move along the labyrinth of frozen trees, Pocahontas staying by her side as the others walked ahead.
"It's a very long story," Pocahontas smiled.
Anna said nothing, looking about the dead trees, petrified in the ice. They felt the same as them, never to be cheerful again.
As they crossed Arendelle, Anna tried to make things slip past her mind. Trying to ignore the winter that took hold of everything. Trying to get away.
She thought about what Snow said. About happy endings being inconclusive. Perhaps somewhere out there, Anna's own story was being told in another way. Perhaps happier. Where everyone was safe in the end. And perhaps where the Snow Queen had been someone who didn't lose her hear to the ice.
Then maybe, just maybe, there would be roses and summer again.
But that was not to be her story.
Everything was plunged in snow.
And so she followed the band of travellers that mirrored her own story. Hoping that perhaps with their help, she could get out of the pages of her unhappy tale. Yet still, in her heart, she thought of her family and of Kristoff buried under the snow. Wishing that she could be sleeping beside them under the skies of endless snowfall.