Padlocks
"The cold never bothered me anyway." You say –
and oh darling, you're nearly choking on your lies.
You are seven and ice is bubbling beneath your skin.
It doesn't always stay beneath your skin. It bubbles over, through your pores and out into the air like a badly kept secret. You are a volcano, you think, with eruptions of snow and ice – sometimes voluntary, sometimes not.
Either way you produce beauty. Ice may be cold but it is dazzling and it is beautiful and it is yours.
The fact that ice can hurt never occurs to you. In some roundabout way, you are ice and ice is you. Interchangeable. You are so young (and naïve) and of course you don't want to hurt anybody.
But you forget that you are an ice volcano – sometimes voluntary, sometimes not. Hands reaching out, shards thrumming from beneath your skin in an effort to save your sister but it's an uncontrolled, untamed fractal that finally surges through the air. And it doesn't save your sister.
It hurts her.
She slumps to the floor, a broken ragdoll, and something inside you shatters.
(You must learn to control it. Fear will be your enemy.)
"Conceal it, don't feel it, don't let it show."
Your father nods in approval.
You are eleven and your heart is clamped in frosty chains.
That is what your life has come to, it seems. A series of chains and cages designed to protect – close the gate, shut the door, lock your heart up tight – but really all they do is cause pain.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?"
Inside its cold, cold chains, your heart squeezes because oh yes, you'd like to build a snowman. You'd love to rip of the dainty gloves your father has given you, as if silk can tame the cruel majesty that is ice, and weave a winter wonderland throughout the castle. How easy it would be to open the door, to reveal the ice thrumming through your veins to the one person who cannot know, to shred the shriveled remains of your heart.
No. You cannot build a snowman today. Or ever.
"Go away, Anna."
conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/conceal it don't feel it don't let it show
You are fifteen and a blizzard surges through your veins.
Sometimes you can almost feel it, the tiny fragments of ice dancing beneath your skin. It builds up within your blood, forming a cascade of glaciers that sluggishly pulse with every beat of your poor, muted heart. When this happens, you feel your limbs growing heavy and your body becoming tense with sporadic pains.
It is easy enough to relieve yourself of this problem. The ice is a sentient thing; it wants to exist, to live. You are no longer interchangeable with ice and nor is it interchangeable with you. You have, you realise dumbly, become a conductor for the force that resides inside you.
The pain and sensations are reminders of the ice's impatience. You are very much aware that the ice is the one controlling you.
A telegram tells you of your parents' death. You pass it to the maid and command her to inform Anna, quickly. Already you feel ice thrumming beneath your veins, straining against your fragile control.
The maid scurries out of your chambers and the ice explodes.
You do not attend the funeral.
You are eighteen and you are going to be a queen.
Your parents are dead. Your sister has not spoken to you in many years. And you are far too volatile to become a queen.
However, there is no choice within tradition, no escape from the monarchy. This is not a happy story and you are okay with that. You will open the gates for a day and then you will shut them tight once more, deadbolt them thrice before you do the same to your heart.
Your too pale hands are far too bony as they reach for the golden scepter and globus cruciger. The gloves lie, discarded, on the cushion. Your fingers shake with a fear that is almost crippling as they reach out.
The gold is cold against your skin but you are far colder.
conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/conceal it don't feel it don't let it show
You are a queen and your kingdom is a fragile thing.
You cannot help but think this as you watch your people laugh and dance within your ballroom. The torches on the walls throw the room into a cheery light - the waves of ball-gown fabric rustle and shimmer magnificently beneath it as they dance and you see the people's skin flush with delight. Arendelle is thriving tonight.
But you are, as you always have been, a spectator to Arendelle's doings. Your throne is an adequate pedestal to watch from and it is a pedestal that demands respect. Well-wishers stop within a certain radius as if they can feel your icy prowess creating a barrier in the air and tell themselves that they are just in awe of their hidden queen. You allow them their illusions. They protect you as much as they.
You sigh.
The gloves are back on your hands. Your hands rest on the arms of your throne but wouldn't it be so easy to reach out your arm and allow the ice to be free – to pierce flesh and sever limbs and freeze bodies? This night, this moment, is fragile; you can destroy them all in a moment.
It's all on a precipice determined by your control. And how uncontrollable you are still, even after all these years. All you have taught yourself amidst your cages is how pathetic you are.
"Elsa!" Your sister has never reacted with the cold fear that everyone else has and so she approaches, headstrong, dragging a well-dressed man with her. She curtsies, mumbling. "I mean, Queen. Me again." As if there is a chance that you will forget the one who you care so deeply for, who you have all but exiled yourself from for all these years.
You watch her, bemused, as she becomes animated once more.
"Um, may I present Prince Hans of the Southern Isles," Anna drags the man to her side. You had forgotten her buoyancy.
Prince Hans of the Southern Isles bows. "Your majesty," he says.
The ice inside you stirs, curious.
conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/conceal it don't feel it don't let it show
"The party is over. Close the gates."
You have been waiting to say this the whole day but now that you are saying it, you are not filled with happiness. A horrible sense of heartache fills you, even though your heart is a withered, decaying thing beneath your self-imposed chains. You are going to lose Anna.
But did you ever really have the right to call her yours in the first place?
"What? Elsa no! No, wait…" She rushes up to you, grabs at you, pulls off your glove. The storm in your veins leers in triumph; you gasp.
"Give me my glove!" There is panic in your voice and panic in the blind reach you make to get the glove. It is your last feeble protection; it is your last chance at normalcy. Already you feel your fingers tingling – no, you think.
"Elsa please, please – I can't live like this anymore!"
You know that ice is sharp but words have their own sharpness.
You have already lost her. Tears well, ice starts to scream through your veins and you heave a gut-wrenching breath.
"Then leave."
conceal it don't feel it don't let it show/CONCEAL IT DON'T FEEL IT DON'T LET IT SHOW/CONCEALITDON'TFEELITDON'TLETITSHOW -
It's roaring through your ears now, pulsing through your blood. You are an ice volcano - sometimes voluntary, sometimes not – and you are about to erupt. You must leave and you turn away because that broken expression on Anna's face is something you cannot forgive yourself for and the ice consumes the self-loathing, consumes everything –
"What did I ever do to you?"
-and deep inside the chained husk that is your body, your heart breaks. You hate the ice more than anything in that moment because it has robbed you both poor of love. It is the reason you sat hidden behind your door whilst Anna sat and pleaded through it. It is the reason why your parents had to lock one child away to save the other. It is the reason why your beloved sister thinks she is to blame for your exile.
But still you must adhere to it.
"Enough Anna." Your voice hitches.
However, your sister is everything you are not: defiant and angry and ignorant.
"No!" she screeches. "Why? Why do you shut me out? Why do you shut the world out? What are you so afraid of?"
You turn around just steps shy of the door. She knows nothing. They all know nothing with their gaping mouths and widened eyes and untainted bodies. And why should you be the one to suffer? You've done so much, fought so hard, lost far too much to allow them to lord over you when you hide yourself for their protection. You could destroy them all with a wave of your hand, your fragile little kingdom. Oh, how you're seething at her ignorance -
"I said enough!"
And the ice explodes from you.
-…oh.
You notice a blizzard forming above the mountains and you are drawn to it like a moth to flame. You can no longer live in Arendelle, spectator or otherwise, and you feel a sort of irrational sense of freedom at your secret being exposed. Each step you make from the gates that are openopenopen is a weight off your shoulders. The further away you get, the lighter you feel.
The ice within you is settling heavily in your belly like a calmed, sated dog. It senses change and you think: yes. It will be just you and the ice from now on but that's ok, it's always been just you and the ice, really, hasn't it?
You pull off your other glove. It flutters away in the wind. The last cage of Arendelle is gone.
The ice rejoices.
(But when you close your eyes, all you can see is Anna's face - "What did I ever do to you?" - and righteous anger does nothing to heal to gaping wound that is your heart and the pain is a physical thing then, ripping and tearing worse than the ice ever could.)
"The cold never bothered me anyway," You say –
and oh darling, you're choking on your lies.