Idunn stood in a circular courtyard, her horse a few feet away, the haggard face of a lady prophet as she prepared to give the queen bad news.
"Your daughter is in danger of dying before she is born, madam."
"No," Idunn said. "I cannot bear it."
"There isn't much you can do to save her."
"Surely there must be something."
"Well…" the prophetess said. "You could take her to the snow sorceress. She can place a healing salve in your womb which will keep your unborn daughter alive when she emerges."
"Snow sorceress?"
"I think she prefers to be called an angel. Or a star. Yes, a star."
"She'll make sure my daughter lives?"
"That is what I said. And so it shall be."
"Then I must go see her."
The woman held up a finger. "I must caution you against telling your husband about this. It might give him false hope, which is better off avoided."
"Won't the sorceress help me?"
"Only if she sees a good reason to do so."
"But this girl is meant to be my pride and joy! And one day she'll inherit the throne. A long, long time from now, of course."
"She must live in order to do all of those things."
"Then I shall go find the snow sorceress, plead my case, and she will help me!"
"Be forever strong, Idunn," the woman said, as the younger female mounted her horse.
No Good Deed
Astrid stood atop a cliff, staring at the Aurora Borealis.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" she asked the middle-aged woman standing next to her.
"No one is sure of anything save their own destiny and the path before them that will lead to it."
"Thanks for that," Astrid said, her blond hair being whipped about by the wind. "Well, only way to find out, is there?"
She started to leap off, but the middle aged woman laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't show anyone your powers. They won't understand."
"Not like they do in the present-day either," Astrid muttered.
"Look, Astrid. Having powers of ice and snow is nice and all, but people being what they are, will only be more likely to fear such things as time passes. I just want you to be careful, okay?"
"I will be," Astrid said. "Especially after what happened to Stormfly…"
Her dragon had come in for a landing one day, with her arms full of apricots. A plethora of bats flew over Astrid's head just as Stormfly was descending. Astrid raised her hand to wave the bats away, when a shot of ice came out, enveloping not only the bats, but also Stormfly in a block of ice that would not melt, no matter how heated a substance was brought near it.
"I miss her," Astrid said, a single tear dripping down her cheek. But she shook herself before she could cry outright. "However, she wouldn't want me to fall apart. And I'll find something in the future which will restore her."
"Good luck on your mission," said the middle-aged woman. "I wish you all the best, Astrid."
"Thank you, Kerna," Astrid said. Then she leapt off the cliff straight down toward the rocks below. She was getting ready to regret doing this, afraid she'd merely be smashed on the jagged edges of the indigenous, when her neck pendant started to glow. It turned from orange to pink to the green that reflected the Aurora Borealis lights.
And then she saw the stones shift away, noticed the landscape change as she flew over a ways, for the pendant she wore was a time-space transfusion, and if she went seven hundred years in the future, she would also be transported seven hundred leagues from Berk.
She saw a virgin forest, and tradesmen, and people grow from young to old very, very rapidly. She heard some of their folk tales, a traveler from Germany who told about a long haired young woman who grew up isolated in a tower and finally escaped.
"Is that a true story?" asked his listener.
"It is now that I've told it," he said.
The listener was a woman with black hair. Astrid was beckoned to follow her by the pull of the pendant. The woman didn't seem to notice when Astrid made a stifled moan, it was as if she couldn't see or hear Astrid. Why this was so, Astrid did not know.
The woman was told about a flower that would heal her when she went to speak to a medic. He warned her though that it was a tale his grandmother had told him about and he had no reason to believe the flower actually existed.
Flower? Astrid thought. Who ever heard of a healing flower? Though I think Kerna's hint about what would restore Stormfly sounded something like a flower. 'Petals shall glow, ice shall melt, hearts shall gleam, all harm be forgotten.'
The woman kept searching for years and years and years. She finally found the flower when her hair had turned white, and she was on her deathbed. She began singing a song. And then, a miracle happened. Her wrinkles smoothed out. Her white hair became black again. She looked no older than thirty-nine, whereas before she had looked like what Astrid would've expected a seven-hundred year old person to look like, if people could live that long.
The years went on and the woman kept coming back to this flower weekly.
One time, though, after the woman regained her youth—which was a spectacle Astrid never tried of watching—she was startled by a noise and ran off, leaving her flower disposed, having knocked over the faux bush covering she had used to conceal it.
A horde of soldiers picked the flower and took it to a nearby kingdom. It was fed to the queen in her soup, while the black-haired woman watched through the window with envious eyes.
A baby was born, and the kingdom celebrated.
But one night, the black-haired woman got it, and attempted to cut off some of the infant's hair, for when the woman sang to the hair it restored her youth as it had meant to, for at that time her body looked fifty-four, and her dark hair had a tinge of gray running through it.
She cut off a strand of hair thinking that would be the best solution, but it turned brown and dead after a moment.
So the dark-haired woman did the only thing she could think of. She scooped the baby up and made off with her.
Astrid then watched, in nearly the blink of an eye, as this woman, Gothel, did to Rapunzel exactly what the man at an inn had told her was in an old folk tale from his native country.
Astrid wondered what happened to the girl, for she was then whisked away to another place. After a few more minutes, she fell down in a forested area, hearing trumpets in the distance. She didn't know where she was, but that didn't matter, for now the earth stood still.
She had come to her destination at last.