You are young and so is she, just not as much, because there is something about power that makes little girls into giants. It's not something you really notice until one day you wake up with a headache and a gut feeling that something is missing when you look at her but -
Try as you might to deny it, there is something dangerous about those green eyes when they flick over you, absently, like you're insignificant, like you're not even there. It's the same sort of power your daddy has when they bring the criminals in for sentencing – prison or execution, they ask and you look away as he choses the latter.
(Daddy never was for wasting money on beggars.)
When you tell mummy your head hurts that morning, she tells you there was an earthquake last night and you must've hit your head against the wall. You try not to notice the fearful glance she throws at your sister.
She likes counting rocks, you notice.
It's not that you're spying on her, so much as you can't help but watch her because she is captivating in the way that budding giants are, a fragile compulsion that says she will be great. And they're so mundane, her little games, but you can't help yourself.
There's a tree she'll sit under, on the castle grounds, and there will always be a little pile of rocks in front of her. None of the rocks are ever the same, different sizes and edges and points that she'll trace her fingers over as if caressing them. She examines them like a doctor does his patient, smiling. Then she'll move them to a second pile that never seems to grow any larger and she'll start on the next rock.
She does it for hours, but she never runs out of rocks.
Daddy tries to stop her going outside one day when the snow on the ground is almost as tall as she is, but she looks at him with those green eyes and a moment passes between them that seems to last forever.
Daddy sighs and Elsa is gone.
She is older now, and so are you but she is still a giant and you are still a little girl next to her. You do not see her much except for meal times and formal occasions – though there have been few of those since the night where there was an earthquake – because she is always outside. You think she must be constantly helping the gardener since the gardens are flourishing at almost unprecedented levels for Arendelle.
It is surprising, therefore, when you come down to dinner one summer afternoon and are told dinner will be delayed due to an unexpected incident. There is a sense of foreboding fluttering within your stomach as you follow the cook's directions to the parlour.
No one is there but a white cloth covers something that is vaguely human shaped and sized. You are curious, as is your nature – you lift the cloth.
You scream.
It is the gardener's mutilated corpse.
Your parents do not hire another gardener, but the garden continues to flourish. If you notice any blood beneath her favourite tree, you do not mention it.
The first time you hear the rumours, you dismiss them. The maid is a notorious gossip and even you know that; but something in the whispered but what if she did kill him? stays with you, deep in your mind.
You hear it only a few days after they remove the body under the sheet from the parlour – and you try not to throw up or think of the pasty too-pale skin or the blue lips or the tree growing through his chest – and you cannot connect your sister, only three years your senior, to that heinous act.
But the thought festers like a cancer in your head. But what if she did kill him? the maid whispers, scared. And you feel those eyes on you, looking past you, dangerous poison ivy, and you fleetingly wonder.
Sometimes when she's mad, the very earth shifts beneath her feet like a cat stirring, disturbed from its slumber – and dear god, this is your sister, but you shiver in fear all the same.