"But you're not scared of anything."
"I was today."
"You were?"
"Yes. I thought I might lose you."
"Oh. I guess even kings get scared, huh?"
-The Lion King
The night had all the trappings of beauty. Outside, a few brave green buds dared to defy the season that hadn't relinquished its grip. Thick, crusted snow, piled high, was reflecting and increasing the light of the night that shone through the windows, casting the room in streaks of glow that made any metal fixtures and vases it touched gleam and washed wood of its warm tones.
None of the chilled scene caught his eye, save for one thing.
Watching her was agony.
The Queen of Arendelle, who was so resplendent and poised while golden sunrays shone in the sky and her eyes were open, was now tossing in the bed she shared with her husband. Now the impish white streaks were lighting up her scrunched, pained face at random times as her head jerked from one side to the other.
He wanted to hold her, but he couldn't stand it whenever it served to startle her more. Resting forward on his hands, he spoke calmly, soothingly, to try to chase away whatever horror had decided to inflict itself on her tonight. "Id, it's all right. It's not real. The girls are fine. They're asleep in their rooms. Dear, listen to me. You're asleep too, please," his voice cracked, and still unconscious she gripped her sheets. The reaction to the change in pitch cut him even deeper, and he went silent, castigating himself.
Just because he had been losing some sleep and his shoulders were aching a bit was no excuse to falter at such a crucial moment
He took a breath, then resumed his gentle encouragements, and his wife relaxed, turning towards him on her side.
Good. It didn't look like she would wake this time. The other reason he had been hesitant to shake her was he wasn't sure if it better that way. Occasionally she seemed to get better quality sleep when she did. But when she didn't, sometimes she also didn't remember having the dreams, and he didn't want her to have to relive or dwell on them any more than he wanted her to have them in the first place.
He settled back down, and not long after darkness swirled at the edges of his mind like a reverse snowdrift.
Not really thinking, or maybe only thinking of the one thing, he put his arm across her shoulder.
He dozed off, but the next thing he knew she was up and out of the bed.
Instantly on alert again he sat up and rubbed his itchy eyes. A second was spared for a thought of a servant that had embarrassingly saw him rubbing his eyes the day before, and the next second he was trained on her figure. Why had he touched her? Failure increasing at every turn, it seemed.
His chest positively throbbed in indignation. He had to especially carefully model self control for Elsa, and he never quit just because she wasn't present.
He wished he could wax poetic about the way the light framed her mother's back as she looked out the window, but it was so twisted by the things she was going through that he was afraid he couldn't detangle any of it. That she was standing around at night was odd in itself.
This always flared up around the times Elsa was having trouble with her powers, which followed a predictable pattern. Maybe his wife's nighttime suffering would have taken hold just as fiercely under any circumstances. But-
Why in Heaven's name had that accursed talking rock found it necessary to play out every parent's deepest fear right out in front of them in vivid colors? With one child already just freshly out of danger?
The bright blue and red image ran through in his head, still almost as sharp and raw as the first time.
He knew he shouldn't ever feel this way, as the old shaman had saved his youngest. But it was inevitable. He stood, pinching off the inward anger at the strange being with a little effort. When he spoke his words were controlled, even, and clear of it.
"Idun? Dear?"
No response.
That was also unlike her.
He remembered the first time he had noticed that the light sapped the warm luster of her hair the same way it did the wood.
Uncertainty rose and rooted him in place. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to," -wake you. He barely prevented stumbling over his words, managing to end the sentence he had intended to continue as his face warmed. He could make thousands of people snap to attention at his command but here he felt utterly powerless. He couldn't protect his wife from this and he couldn't coax his daughter into coming out of her room any more often or letting them hug her. Even on her best days she'd consistently refuse to lift the self imposed prohibition, and he was painfully reminded of it every time Anna happily jumped into their arms.
Why did negative and positive things have any business mixing so much?
Rulers were supposed to keep order. That included their own thoughts.
Rulers kept their composure, his parents had always told him. As much as possible, they had to project a strong image not just for their family, but for entire kingdoms.
A couple more breaths of the cool air would steady his nerves.
Conceal, don't feel.
He had come up with those words to put to the idea himself. She had taken his little rhymes and composed them into no less than five different songs in order to make the sour pill easier to swallow for their baby girl.
One had a bouncy tempo, played with her fiddle. It even elicited from Elsa an elusive giggle once in a while.
"Good sir, ma-dame, and pass-er-by,
I'll look you square-ly in the eye,
With shoul-ders back and chin up high-!
You'll never see me cry!"
One of them was more introspective, while her mother accompanied herself on the harp.
"Don't let them in past instability.
Don't let them know your vulnerability."
Yes, picturing her voice coupled with the lulling instrument was always helpful.
He relaxed his upper body, then straightened. He focused on the present moment.
He got up, walked toward her, and she-
-she shied away from him.
Hurt, he creased his brow.
The descriptions she had shared before of what plagued her stormed his tired thoughts. A whirling snowflake, razor sharp, with red stains. A rumor leaked by a servant turning the city into a raging inferno of torches and pitchforks. A youthful outburst carried away and turned toward any of them. That fateful night recurring with a different outcome. One or the other child in her arms, still and pale as a night such as this. The worst times, both. What could possibly be pushing her past still newer breaking points?
A particularly bad spell had reigned one time when they had found two of the eldest's bedposts splintered apart and tossed clear across the room in an understandable fit of frustration, each sporting a spiky icy coating. They had met the timid and ashamed apologies presented by the quiet but agitated girl with promises that they didn't care about her any less, but the incident left an indelible impression of another sort. He wouldn't wish being afraid of your own beloved child on his most bitter military enemies.
He swallowed, quite at a loss of what to do. Usually her mother wanted to talk, usually she wanted him to reassure her, usually she . . .
Maybe there was no "usually" anymore. Usually the only reason they had disliked the oncoming of winter was the lean times, no closer to home peril. Usually the servants had been cheery instead of wary, resentful, and feeling expendable for no apparent reason like the many others that had been let go. Usually his daughters had played all the time, with their very mismatched heads bent together conspiring about future childhood romps. The memories were a by now familiar dull ache.
She had never been one to get up and pace. But she had already done the former and she shifted her weight to one hip as if considering the latter.
He felt not a small bit of relief at the modest twinge of desire. Surely some things couldn't be changed no matter how hard the world beat at your door.
At long last she turned halfway to him, but didn't meet his gaze. He wondered why he was startled to see the multiple tracks of tears glittering in the light. Was it because she had been so still and contained, not heaving or sniffing?
The sight sent a fresh wave of compassion coursing through him. "It's all right. Whatever it is, it didn't happen. It won't happen. You're back. You're back with us." He opened his hands welcomingly, feeling strange being able to offer nothing but words at a distance. But she took another step back and looked all the more miserable for the gesture.
Not just misery, but somethig else-
"I'm s-so sorry," she said brokenly.
-guilt?
"Sorry? For what?"
"For- for letting Anna-"
"No," he shook his head and talked over her when he realized what was wrong, "please don't keep doing this to yourself-"
"-instead of disciplining a little more- she wouldn't have been sneaking around at night- no supervision- she wouldn't have lost her sister- if I had just- just done things differently- and- oh- oh something must've done this to poor Elsa. I've angered one of the pagan gods, or- or-" she sobbed, sinking to her knees, and, restraint completely forgotten, he was next to her in a flash. "I-I did something wrong, I must have . . ."
"Shhhhhh," he soothed as he knelt. She threw up her arms and hugged him weakly around the waist, now letting out the crying for real. He finally got to cradle her, though he had to take it in a thoroughly bittersweet way. "You don't really think that, do you? No, no, my love. It's not your fault." He stroked her head slowly but spoke insistently. She had always expressed a fair amount of gratitude for his not being leery of his firstborn's strange looks when she had come into this world. He trusted his wife, so it had never been an issue. He couldn't believe she was still carrying all this doubt around with her. "You've done wonderfully, and I wouldn't trade my three ladies for anything."
"A-and now I'm k-keeping y-you up again," her distraught phrases tumbled, "I know you d-don't think anyone n-notices, and you stay in your s-study when you're in the worst shape, but I know what you look like when- when . . . I see the difference."
"I could say the same to you." He kissed her dark hair.
If it would ease her mind . . .
"Idun, it's not just you. I often can't sleep regardless," he confessed reluctantly. "Don't think you have even much of the blame."
"You're just saying that."
"No, truly I'm not." He hugged her tighter. He considered spending hours still and staring up at the ceiling a paltry burden compared to hers. Hardly worth mentioning or fretting over.
But when her embrace tightened too, it felt wrong. She was stiffening. "There . . . there is something I have done, though."
"Whatever it is, it doesn't matter."
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
"In my dream . . . I . . . saw Elsa being chased. She had . . ." She burrowed her face deeper into his chest. "She had k- " she couldn't even bear to say it- "hurt someone, more than one, maybe, and, and the people were demanding- and shouting all together and she was so little and scared and Anna was screaming and-" she stopped and he could almost sense her wanting to pull away from him. "I don't know . . . why I would," Her hands traveled up his back until she had reached his neck, then pulled herself up until her chin was slung all the way over his shoulder.
An absolutely icy pit was forming at the bottom of his stomach. He prayed this was not how Elsa felt when she was overcome with her powers.
When her voice came again it was more like a fragment of a voice. "They asked for justice. You executed her."
At the tiny, three word statement. a puff of outgoing air left as his chest contracted and failed him.
Somehow understanding shouldered past the lack of oxygen. Those scattered instances she had drawn away from him in the bed, instead of curling up close for comfort. She'd had this one before. He was sure, had he felt like eating anything substantial at dinner last night, he would be sick.
He recalled how he had found out about her powers. Her mother had completely fallen apart, just like this, begging something of him incoherently. By the time she had calmed down enough to explain what was going on he had gathered that she thought he would get rid of a witch child. He couldn't say whether or not the thought would have even crossed his mind on its own had he been the one to find out, but as it was he had vowed never to do anything unless it could be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that she harbored true malice. Some of his advisors protested stridently, but a king's decision was final. Servants were not informed, and if they found out, they were deported during the night and given comfortable living allowances in return for silence, and veiled threats as well. After a while all of his advisors settled into an ease. He and Idun were able to lie their way out of their finding out about Elsa injuring Anna, which they would have taken as evidence of her somehow growing into an evil being.
Sometimes he envied them, being only one of three people to keep a secret this massive.
On the other hand, he and his wife had conferred, come to the conclusion that they could still trust Elsa almost immediately, with little compunction, and it was nice not to have to deal with their objections all over again. Subsequent discussions, when not preoccupied with tightening security around the castle, and double checking and testing loyalties of those involved, had often consisted of how to present her powers to the servants and general populous in a controlled reveal. Elsa sometimes balked at rehearsing for it, completely overcome with anxiety.
He knew what the obvious response to her mother's worst case scenario was, even though those same advisors would despise it.
"Royals are above the law."
"I knew you'd say that." She sounded relieved and grieved at the same time.
For them, it was kin before country.
Ever since the discovery, they had always been on the same page.
"Maybe . . . maybe this was why we were entrusted with Elsa." She was just so good. He shuddered to think of the havoc some of his wilder, rougher younger cousins would have wreaked with her abilities when they were children. If there was any higher force guiding this, perhaps it knew what it was doing. "Very few people born would be able to stay inside for so long without arousing suspicion. And if anything ever went wrong, even fewer would have a king and queen to fall back on."
He felt her suck in a big breath, obviously very moved by his notion. "Stupid dream . . . I can't see why I would even think such a thing of you."
He smiled as much as the mood would allow him and pulled back to look in her eyes. "We're not responsible for the dreamworld, love." He had always pictured it as a real place, that sometimes interacted with your thoughts. Real but ethereal beings that couldn't hurt you in the daytime but stoked and fed from your fears was his fare from his father's lore.
"Maybe not. But, they are in our heads . . . my family had a great aunt who could control what happened in dreams . . ."
He had never heard of anything like that. Maybe an anecdote had gotten passed down and misinterpreted. Not wanting to challenge her on it when she was already upset, he opted to employ a neutral tactic. "Well, you're not her." In any case, he doubted their struggles with their daughter would come down to invoking sovereign immunity or forced asylum, though he was fully prepared if necessary. "Elsa may have trouble recognizing it, but she is getting better. Especially during the springtime. We're going to figure this out. To get through it."
She tilted her head up and nuzzled his chin. "Bit by bit. I think in a year or so we should have some well trusted friends over. To reacclimate her."
He nodded, dusting a flurry of kisses down her jawline. "We haven't entertained or visited anyone for so long, we might not have any friends left," he teased lightly.
She chuckled softly. "The deskfull of letters I have says otherwise." They had greatly restricted their own time out of the castle for Elsa's sake, but she had kept up close contacts. She had garnered much sympathy over her "sickly" eldest.
"Oh it does, does it?" Brushing back her hair he continued. For some reason, for the first time in a few years he was able to mostly shut out the room, its dratted wintertime light, and its accumulation of associations.
"Mmmhmm," the satisfied sound was more in response to his actions than his words.
He worked his way up to speak in her ear. "I do think you and I need to get away from this place for a while. Would you like to go on a sailing trip once the harbor thaws?"