[Author's Note]: This fanfic technically also crosses over with Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", as her character and elements of aforementioned story are interwoven into this AU fic. If you haven't read, or are other unfamiliar with, "The Snow Queen", I highly recommend you find even a good summary, if not the actual story, of this fairytale. I have a little backlog of completed chapters, which will be put up about once each week or so. There will be a week where I won't put up anything, as I will be away in Australia for about eight days in May.
Disclaimer: I do not own Frozen, Wizard of Oz, or The Snow Queen and all related characters.
Chapter One
Once upon a time in the mid-1930s, there was a simple home in a simple suburb with a simple family. The family had a mother, father, and two precious little girls—no sons—, the elder of whom possessed breath-taking magical snow powers. The sisters were three years apart in age, the elder—Elsa—twelve, and the younger—Anna—nine. In all this quiet little suburb, one could not find a pair of sisters as close as Anna and Elsa. Wherever one went, the other would go. They did everything and went everywhere together. They shared their deepest secrets and promised to always be together even when they were a thousand years old. They played make-believe, climbed tall trees, picked flowers from the garden when their parents weren't looking, and spent as much time as possible enjoying each other's company and love. It would be a Herculean challenge indeed to find a pair of sisters who were even nearer and dearer to each other than Anna and Elsa.
Anna loved her sister very much, especially her magnificent wintry magic. Her beautiful older sister could cover the garden in snow in the middle of summer and cause snowflakes to drift from the ceiling indoors in any season she chose. She could do snowball fights and build snowmen in the height of a mucky mid-summer's afternoon if she so wished.
Many nights, at the strike of midnight, the two sisters would sneak up to the empty, dusty attic and enjoy hours of wintry fun. When the moon was full and hanging in the sky at the perfect angle, little shafts of light would gleam through miniscule cracks between the wooden frames of the walls. The attic's window was always dirty, with old cobwebs sticking to the glass panes, long ago abandoned by the spiders that had built them. At the end of these thrilling nights, Elsa always made sure to tuck Anna back in bed well before their parents arose at the crack of dawn. Anna never woke before dawn even if she didn't have a night of frivolity, for she was not what a person would describe as a "morning person". Elsa, meanwhile, didn't need much sleep, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even after three or four hours' slumber.
For all Elsa's twelve years and Anna's nine, neither stopped to wonder if magic existed anywhere else in the world. Only Elsa was known to have such powers, except for a possible great-aunt on her mother's side rumoured to have had possessed magic of her own, perhaps just like Elsa's snow and frost. Little they knew of magic that existed in a fantastical world that only one other little girl and her dog had visited. Elsa and Anna had never met Dorothy and her dog Toto, and little chance existed for them to do so, for they lived very far away from the two sisters.
Our adventure begins on one pleasantly quiet Sunday afternoon. The family had just finished a scrumptious midday meal, and the parents had retreated to their bedroom to sleep off their lunch. Elsa and Anna stayed outside, playing in the modest garden at the back of the house. At this time of day, warm sunbeams layered the smooth, swept wooden floor of the veranda. The flowers sitting in flower-pots on the veranda nodded in the gentle breeze that was neither too hot nor cold. Nevertheless, a strange chill began edging its way into the otherwise pleasant afternoon weather. The girls, too involved in their leisure time, did not notice the swirling dark clouds creeping over the blue sky, a freak storm on an otherwise beautiful day.
After a time of play, Anna, who wore a green short-sleeved dress with a simple white bow on its collar, shivered a little in the dropping temperatures. Elsa was never fooled by Anna's attempts to hide her shivers. Shading her eyes with a hand, Elsa tilted her head back, spotting the billowing clouds swallowing the sky. Drops of rain plopped on the grass and splattered in dark spots on the veranda. Petals fluttered under the weight of fat raindrops that began to fall even harder with each passing second until it nearly torrential. Elsa took Anna's hand, tugging her toward the veranda's shelter.
"Let's get you inside and warm, Anna," Elsa coaxed as she took in Anna's now soaked dress. When the sisters reached the closed door, Elsa gripped the knob with a free hand, trying to pull it open even as she still talked to Anna. "Mother would be unhappy if you caught a cold out here."
Just as Elsa managed to get the door open, an unexpected, powerful gust of wind yanked it out of her fingers. The deafening slam startled a flock of birds into the sky, crying and flapping against the driving downpour. Clinging to her sister with one hand, Anna reached an arm forward to help Elsa open the door again. Their hair came loose from once neatly plaited hair, whipping across their faces and obscuring their vision as they fought with the stubborn door.
"Anna, pull harder!"
Anna pulled, grimacing as she leaned back, feeling the door giving a mere few millimetres under her one hand and Elsa's two. They only managed to pry it open a few inches before the wind shoved a heavy hand against the door, slamming it shut again. Their old cat, Tom, shot out from under some bushes, spooked by the door's slam and the terrible weather.
Now rain turned into sleet that stuck in their hair, and turned the summer wind into a strong winter's blizzard that pierced Anna's very bones. Already, her fingers were numb from the cold, her eyes shut tight against the howling blizzard. Her hands were so cold that she could neither feel the knob under one palm nor Elsa's clothing as she clung on to her big sister.
"Nearly there!" Elsa shouted above the raging storm, "Go in!"
Finally the door gaped open, inch by inch until it was wide enough for a little girl to squeeze through. Elsa reached back and grabbed her sister's arm, pulling the shivering girl forward.
"Get inside!" Elsa insisted, pushing Anna forward into the doorway, "And get mama to get you warm!"
On the threshold, Anna, clinging on to the doorway, reached to take Elsa's hand. The older girl let go of the handle, stretching blindly toward Anna's hand. Little fingers gripped Elsa's wrist, the little girl straining with a grunt of effort to pull Elsa inside, out of the howling blizzard so thick with sleet that Elsa appeared like nothing more than a ghost. Anna tugged hard, locking her foot against the inside of the doorframe. She shut her eyes tight against the whipping blizzard, her hair smacking into her damp face as the wind snatched at the girls.
Then, with a small yelp, Elsa lost her footing, nearly taking Anna down with her as she slipped forward, shoes scrabbling on wet wood. Her fingers clamped down on Anna's, but, being slick with sleet and water, she began to lose her grip. Anna's grip wasn't as strong or as big as Elsa's, and the younger sister's fingers began sliding away.
"Elsa!"
"No!" Elsa yelled over the howling blizzard threatening to yank her away, "Go inside!"
Anna shook her head defiantly. She pulled on Elsa's fingers with both hands, leaning right back, bracing herself against the doorframe.
"Hold on!"
And then the wind screamed as though furious that it couldn't tug Elsa away from her beloved sister. With one final ear-splitting shriek, it grabbed Elsa's legs and yanked them from the ground, pulling upward as though to steal her away. The force of this final yank was enough to make Elsa's fingers slip all the way through Anna's, and suddenly she was flying away in the icy storm cloud.
"Anna!" she shouted as the wind carried her away, "Anna stay home!"
"Elsa!" Anna screamed up into the blizzard, tearing herself away from the doorframe, "Elsa!"
"No!"
Elsa watched with a mix of horror and dismay as Anna tore from the veranda and into the heart of the storm. Of course she would throw herself into danger, and oh dear Lord in Heaven, what if now their parents found two missing daughters?
"Anna!"
"I'm not letting you get lost!"
"Stay where you are!" Elsa got a mouthful of sleet for her troubles. Spitting out the sleet, she tried in vain to look for Anna, even as she tumbled head over heels in the whirling storm.
Please be home, please be home, please be home!
Of course Anna would not stay home if it meant trying to help her sister. Of course she wouldn't stay behind if it meant still being there with her sister no matter what happened. Elsa tried to squint and strain her eyes into the white mess of sleet and frozen rain buffeting her in every direction. She no longer knew what was up and what was down, nor did she know where earth and sky were relative to her position. For all she knew, the sky was below and the earth above.
Where are you, Anna?
Did she catch a glimpse of red pigtails flailing in the blizzard? Was that a catch of cloth with yellow sunflowers whipping in the wind? Did she really see a little hand trying in vain to reach for her?
"Anna?"
Nothing.
"Anna!"
Maybe she's stayed home like I told her.
But then out of the maelstrom came a shaky voice.
"Elsa?"
"Anna!" Elsa cried out, her hands grabbing in every direction. "Where are you?"
Oh dear Lord in Heaven, she should have stayed home!
"I'm in the storm!" Anna shouted back, "I'm looking for you!"
"You should have stayed home!" Elsa chided.
Anna didn't listen, her voice shouting as loud as possible above the blizzard.
"I'm coming!"
Elsa still searched blindly in the blizzard for her sister.
"Anna, where are you?"
A little hand stuck out of the whirling storm inches from her nose. At once, Elsa grabbed it, clinging on as tight as she could. She would not lose her little sister in this horrid blizzard. She focussed on the hand, the little fingers gripping on to Elsa's. Elsa's hair flapped over her head, into her mouth, over her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut, hanging on to Anna's hand for dear life. For her sister's dear life.
"I've got you!" Elsa shouted above the swirling gale, "Don't let go."
The wind shrieked again with renewed rage and strength. With malice in the storm's screech of rage, the blizzard grabbed the sisters' hands and tore them apart, flinging them far from each other before they could even react. When they realised what happened a second later, both—though they could not see the other—attempted to find each other again, Anna and Elsa tumbling head over heels in the maelstrom. Anna fought her way to Elsa, though she could not tell if up was down or left was right anymore. Elsa could be above or below her.
But even as the sisters desperately clawed their way toward each other, the gale-force winds pressed invisible hands on their chests, pinning them down like a cat does to a caught mouse. The sisters shouted, screamed to each other, trying to hear their voices, grab for their hands blindly. They might as well have been countries and oceans apart from each other from all the good their flailing hands did. In truth, both the girls were now flying and tumbling miles above a new land that none from our world but a little girl with silver slippers and a little dog had ever visited before.