Chapter 1: Invisibility
Not a person in Arendelle doesn't know about the ice, cold and impartial as it settles over the kingdom in a stifling cloak. Unpredictable, they say, yet it isn't, for though they can't know what will happen, they know that it will happen and that's enough. All felt its harshness: the harvesters, tense on the ice as they chose between slow, careful work and getting down the mountain before the next storm; the villagers, huddled around their fireplaces and watching with sorrowful eyes and grumbling bellies as the rations grew smaller; even the royal family, as though they rarely experienced the cold themselves, they certainly saw how its effects pervaded the land and shaped its people.
They all lived it because they had no choice.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when Arendelle awoke one freezing night to the sounds of destruction, the situation managed to be contained far easier than it should have been. When the crown's finest investigated and declared it a tragedy, as an unfortunate incident of nature's violent wrath descending on the town, Arendelle eagerly accepted the announcement. Winter was, after all, unpredictably predictable, and every family had their own tales of icy fury that stretched back over the generations, so waking up the next day to another scene of rubble and splintered wood littering the streets was no stranger to them. Those who had seen the ruins unfold, the ones who should have known the most, seemed to know the least, perhaps blinded by their grief or silenced by generous compensation from the crown.
Thus whether by faith or by fraud, normalcy reigned. They cleared away the debris and reopened the gates and like a stone swallowed up by the sea, it was gone, traceless but for a few faint ripples that grew smaller with every passing second, those who had witnessed it the only proof that anything had ever happened.
Then the years passed and news became history. The truth withered away, now held only by a few men, mad with age or drink, mumbling to each other in hushed voices about that night when it strode out of the fjord, when the water itself seemed to take life and walk the land. When the king was lost on that tragic voyage and the kingdom plunged into melancholy, they alone whispered how the sea was out for revenge and came to claim its oppressor. When the new queen took the throne and the summer bliss transformed overnight into that same inhospitable wasteland they knew all too well, they alone blamed that fateful night that had cursed Arendelle forever.
And they were all wrong.
But every legend has that small starting kernel of truth that snowballed over time, growing more embellished with each retelling until it reaches that point where no longer can the fact be separated from the fiction.
Elsa opened her eyes and let out a disgusted sigh at the stack of documents that had served as last night's pillow. "It's morning already," she mumbled to herself, half hoping that it wasn't true as she lifted her head off the desk and squinted in the light. The incessant ticking of the clock echoed throughout the study, though her bleary eyes couldn't make out the time. Then again, she decided, maybe it was for the best to not know how much sleep she got. She swore that she would never do this again, just as she had done the morning before, and wished she had three hands to rub her sore neck and her eyes that wouldn't stay open. Maybe a fourth one as well, so she could actually make some headway with her duties. With another sigh, she picked up her pen and leafed through the pile of parchment. Accidentally freeze the kingdom once and then weeks of scouring over reparations, safety procedures and if she saw one more report about ice she was going to scream.
The study doors flung open and the pen slipped out of her hand, clattering against the desk and denying her the chance.
"Good morning!" Elsa yawned in response, countering her sister's energy in a rare reversal of early morning roles. "I brought breakfast!" The morning light reflected off the gleaming silver tray, shining into Elsa's eyes and making her regret ever opening them.
"You weren't in bed and weren't in the dining hall," Anna explained. "And I know you haven't eaten yet."
It was all true, of course, though she hated seeing her sister worry about her so early in the morning. Everyone knew Anna always slept late.
"So I thought we could share breakfast together. What do you say?" She slid her chair closer. "Keep in mind, I won't accept 'no' as an answer."
Elsa measured out some food and poured herself a cup of tea. She knew she wouldn't get anything done with her sister here, so she decided to make the best of it. Still, Anna's delivery was becoming a daily routine, and while she enjoyed the chance to spend time with her sister, she hated levying her burden on Anna. She had made this mess and it was hers alone to fix. Lifting her drink to her lips, she let the teacup absorb her frown. The gates and doors may have been opened, but she still hadn't.
"You're the sweetest, Anna." She hoped it sounded sincere and not like the empty pleasantries they had exchanged far too often in the past. "Thank you."
They finished the meal in comfortable silence, the food disappearing at a rapid pace (mostly into her sister), and when they finished, Anna pushed all the remaining chocolates over to her, piling them up before her like an offering to a wrathful god. Please, take my chocolate but spare my life. Elsa's eyes never left the plate, the tribute to the Witch-Queen of Arendelle, high empress alone in her stony tower who cannot be reasoned with, only placated.
Anna gave her a nudge and a smile. "Let's go see the gardens together. They're in bloom, and it looks amazing."
Or maybe it was just a bribe.
"Maybe later," she said, still staring into her plate. "I have a lot to do." An instinctual, canned response, the kind that slips out unthinkingly to those oft-heard questions.
And one she immediately regretted.
Anna's smile flickered and then returned, so quick that someone who didn't know her as well as Elsa did wouldn't have noticed. Someone who wasn't as controlled as Elsa might have had a tell, too, and though the official word was that her self-control benefited her position, she knew all too well the price of mastery.
"I'll see you later, then," Anna replied.
But she wouldn't. Neither of them would and they both knew it but only Elsa knew why. Though she told herself that one day she'll have to tell Anna, on this day, like so many before, she said nothing as her sister gathered up the dishes and walked to the door with only her footsteps to break the silence.
The doors shut behind her and Elsa sat alone in her study, each tick of the clock punctuating the emptiness. She took a small key and unlocked a compartment in her desk, the one with the documents that aren't meant for others, and withdrew a simple folded parchment marked up with counts of her cowardice.
Elsa carefully added one more stroke, a mark of shame shining bold with fresh ink.
In some ways, she realised now, those thirteen years of rejection were easier. Sure, the beginning was rough, but she had survived and over the years it became deadened and routine. She would knock and receive no response, and by the time she finally lost all hope of one, there was comfort in the cold certainty that it would never get better and she couldn't be hurt again. Her sister slowly became less human, a silent ghost that roamed the halls unaware or uncaring of her suffering.
When she had questioned Elsa at her sister's coronation, she had expected a response, perhaps an overblown grievance from yesteryear or some half-hearted apology, that would have justified her anger. It wasn't supposed to have made sense in its own twisted way. It wasn't supposed to have torn away all that scarred armour she had accumulated over the years that rendered her invulnerable, revealing her fragile and malleable soul inside. It wasn't supposed to transform that cruel, callous ghost back into that caring sister who would do anything for her.
But it did.
And she definitely wasn't supposed to fall in love, but she did that too.
When an axe fells a tree, the tree is forever changed. The axe too is altered, marked forever by the impact even when the scratches all blur together and no one can distinguish their history. In freeing her sister, Anna had taken up her chains, bound by something willed to her emotions just as Elsa had been, not with frost, but with something far more uncontrollable: her tongue. One argument, one remark too brazen and it would spill forth like a horde of rats, biting and clawing and ruining everything it touched. While she could forgive being struck by her sister's ice, she had her doubts if Elsa would say the same.
Now, stripped of her protection, Elsa's dismissals hurt just as much as they did all those years ago when she first knocked on her big sister's door. She scooped up the breakfast platter without a word because she didn't trust herself to find the right ones. This was one of Elsa's tricks, as she'd learned, to wait and say what needs to be said instead of what wants to be said. These words were slippery on her tongue and slid far too quickly towards her lips, and they stung like acid as she swallowed them all. Instead nothing came out as she strode to the door, never looking back, her sister's face heavy on her mind.
She told herself that maybe this time it really was that important. Perhaps she had been a little too forward and Elsa caught on and was reacting with the disgust she had feared. Still, no matter how much she had hurt Elsa, she wouldn't subject her sister to that awkward childhood avoidance and pretend that everything is fine because it wasn't. Living that once was enough, she would get Elsa back in her life and how wasn't important. Standing atop the stairs, Anna checked over her shoulder out of habit before sliding down the handrail. She knew she couldn't beat Elsa at her own game, one of solitude and attrition. No, if she wanted to overcome her sister's defences, she had to do it the Anna way and strike first before Elsa ever had the chance to flee.
She found herself in the kitchen, her feet apparently the only thing able to keep up with her thoughts. After dumping the dinnerware onto a rather surprised maid, she scurried back out into the halls. She knew it would work. It couldn't fail. While even the thickest ice melts in time, as for her... Anna never yields.
If Elsa couldn't make it out to the gardens, she'd bring the gardens to her.
Anna leaned back on the bench, shaded by a massive tree that had been there as long as she could remember. Encircled by the sprawling plots of vibrant flowers, she could have easily spent all day here, basking in the sun and the beauty. The summer breeze tickled against her face as the heat and the quiet threatened to soothe her to sleep, and in that semi-awake clarity she could only think of Elsa, her image haunting her, as it so often did, with thoughts of what she could never have. Trying her hardest to leave her daydreams behind, she forced herself up and ambled down the serpentine paths throughout the garden. Which kind of flowers did Elsa like? Honestly, she had no idea. She stopped in front of an expanse of crocuses, a waving field of purple that called to her, tugging at her mind as if they somehow knew they were the right choice. "The national symbol," she mumbled to herself, "she must like them. Or at least put up with them."
Leaning down, she peered into the arrangement with a scrutinizing eye, examining the details of every petal and every fibre. This one was too small. This one was too dry. This one wasn't purple enough. Elsa deserved better. Before she knew it, she'd been through half of the flowers before finally finding one that met her standards, one that she had previously overlooked. It was a brilliant mauve, shining forth like an amethyst amongst the rocky ground, the pinnacle of botanical perfection and as regal as her sister. Anna's fingers wrapped carefully around the stem, apprehensive against the fragile plant as she worked it free from the soil.
Perhaps if Elsa were here, with that magic in her soul that thrummed in unison with other acts of sorcery, she would have noticed that something went very wrong. That the barricade that had resided here for decades was punctured, crumbling and collapsing in on itself at an unstoppable pace. She might have felt the tremors in the soil or heard the deafening roar as it all tumbled down around Anna, who stood oblivious to the sounds she couldn't hear and the wreckage she couldn't see. The Anna who hummed to herself as she picked more flowers, unaware as myths became history became reality. And how could she have known? The truth surrounding what happened in the gardens years ago was kept hidden from even the heirs, locked away in minds that tried their hardest to forget, lingering on only in those drunken bar tales from washed up soldiers reliving their glory days. The king's orders were clear: "They don't need to know this. No one does. Let the past die with it." And maybe, with a few more years, the rest of the witnesses would die and all that would have remained of this would be another crazy fireside story, shelved beside the ones about those trolls that live up on the mountain. Yet by secrecy they had doomed themselves, as all their carefully wrought efforts toppled unceremoniously before the happy ignorance of two girls that just wanted to love. By all accounts, the past did die that day. But the present? That was very much alive.
Anna had been the scourge of the castle's breakables as a child, shattering their dreams of a proper princess along with the glassware, and she had taken the liberty to stash away some replacements in her closet "just in case". Now they were yet again getting her out of trouble, as she sifted through the mess and blew the dust coating off a pilfered vase, watching as the ancient flowers within mercifully crumbled in the soft breeze. Love, Anna now dangled off the side in her neat script, part attribution, part suggestion and, if she dared to admit it, part command. She peeked out the door and glanced up and down the hallway for any wandering staff, as even though she didn't need their approval, she didn't want to invite any curious looks and she certainly didn't want any help dragging this bookcase down the halls. The thick, solid oak remained expressionless as Anna grumbled under her breath about its weight and if her sister didn't like it outside her door, well, Elsa was going to participate in moving this thing back. It slid into place next to her sister's study with the heavy drone of wood-against-wood and Anna ducked behind it, hoping Elsa didn't come out to investigate the racket.
Then she waited.
Anna concluded the floorboards had remarkable texture and quality, all three hundred twelve of them.
And waited.
The North Mountain crumbled to dust under a pitch black sky, the sun having long since been extinguished.
Aeons later, the door cracked open and she held her breath as Elsa took off down the hall. She turned the vase around in her hands, feeling the surface for any unseen cracks and wiping away the smudges that weren't there, making sure that every aspect of it was flawless. It had to be perfect, because Elsa was.
Her fingers ran across the petals, that long-forgotten kernel of truth now soft and pliable in Anna's hand.