Lamb
Part 1. – If only there were someone
Anna rushed into her large villa.
She had found Elsa but it seemed to already be too late. Her sister, who had ignored her almost all her life, was now boarding a train, and then a boat, and fleeing the country never to return.
The young woman ran up the steps. She passed the worried faces of her housekeepers who inquired where she had been, but she brushed off their concerns.
"I need to find Hans!" she cried running past them. "I need him!"
"Anna!" cried his familiar empathetic voice from a room upstairs. She called after him, desperately running faster toward his voice.
In the past days of complete uncertainty, she was thankful to hear his call and know her instinct about him was right. He'd never leave her and his door would always be open...
Hans closed the door behind him as Anna rushed in clutching his large arms, her eyes pleading a need words couldn't convey.
"I-I don't understand, Hans. She told me I can't follow her. She said I'd be safer here… with you."
He smirked wrapping an arm around her to calm her. "Thank the gods you are safe! You can't believe how worried I've been!"
"She's gone!" she cried inconsolable unaware of his soft words. "Hans, she's gone like mother and father! Please," she begged pulling at his collar bringing his face closer to hers. "Hans you have to kiss, I need to know."
He stopped his act of concern for a moment staring down to her with a cool casual smile.
"What do you need to know, lamb?"
"I need to know what love is. What real love is."
He laughed.
"Do you ever feel like you're heart has had a frost fall over it – like the tulips in the garden during fall?"
She had a begging urgency in her voice. Yet, in a soul crushing moment, she realized he didn't understand.
"You're sister always was quite clever," he stated curtly removing herself from him.
Anna laughed humorlessly and frowned as he walked away. "Hans. She ran away! She left me alone with this villa and all this money. I don't know what to do! I'm only… me!"
She had wandered to a small sofa and collapsed into it. He was across the room with his hands clutched behind his back and his sights on the fireplace.
"Well," he said kicking a log deeper into the fire with a tap of his sharp black boot, "it will be our money... soon enough."
Anna frowned confused. Who was this man before her? Was he the same handsome man who once asked her to dance at Elsa's coming of age ball?
Everything from his regal presence, his striking green eyes, the rumors of his great potential for leadership… and the immaculate uniform he wore. It was all so alluring to the young woman who had hardly ever spoken to a man.
But then, once her sister had vanished leaving only a note… Anna was thrown into an adventure that changed her views on the world.
Whispers became screams. A dream was drowned in horrors. The fantasy she believed, it was torn apart, and turned out to never exist at all.
And that man she had met…
His name was Kristoff, the proud young man who worked for the ice company. He wasn't clean like Hans. He wore a tattered newsboy hat and an old brown coat.
And, that eye catching red, white, and black band Hans always adorned around his bicep was replaced with a dirty, yellow, Star of David sewn onto the breast of an old coat.
The men were from different worlds.
And somehow she couldn't get Kristoff out of her head or what he had told her. How he said people like Hans send people like him away. And those who are whisked away in the night were never seen or heard from again.
Hans leaned over Anna and she snapped back to the present.
He smirked to her, "I've been impatiently awaiting you return, mein libeling."
And all along Anna thought the thick frost that had encrusted her heart by years of isolation could be melted with a single kiss…
She looked up to him nervously.
Hans eyed her carefully. He knew something was not right.
Of course, he figured the easy part was going to be getting the teenage woman drunk and promising her a new world. Dancing with her in the garden. Getting her alone and showing a glimpse of a passion she had yet to encounter.
The less enjoyable part of his plan, however, was keeping up the romantic rouse. An act he was growing sicker of by the moment.
"Is there something the matter, Anna?"
She could hardly believe he was asking her that.
"I just," she blinked choosing her words carefully, "I just never knew what was going on beyond these walls. And now I do! Those people are miserable and scared. And the ones… the ones who wear the stars—"
"Don't!" Hans spat in a tone that made Anna's heart leap. He composed himself and smiled to her. "Don't speak of them. Anna… you must learn that there are some, eh, groups of people, who are lower than the dirt beneath your boot."
She grimaced to him wrapping her cape tighter around shoulders.
"Tell me," she began quietly with a quivering voice, "that you're not like the others."
Hans laughed pompously, "I am a German! As we all will be!"
"No," she said shaking her head, "I am Austrian. My parents—"
For a split moment, she happened to catch a glance of his reflection in the window behind him. He held a small gleaming gun behind his back.
"You're parents are dead," he said carelessly, raising his head a bit higher.
She audibly gulped trying to refrain from screaming. She knew no one would hear her in the secluded study.
"Why…?" she asked just above a whisper. "Why are you being so cruel?"
"Your parents were traitors to the Führer. They had what was coming."
She backed away from him walking towards the door.
"People who love each other don't do this!"
He followed close by, an intense look corrupting his eyes as he pinned her against the door.
She struggled to turn the handle, but it had somehow been locked from the outside.
"Oh Anna…" he sighed breathily, leaning slowly in as if to kiss her. Once his lips were within in inch from her's, he laughed dryly and reached toward her, softly caressing her cheek through his gloved hand. She tried to turn her face away, but was immobilized by fear.
"If only there was someone out there who loved you," he whispered as if the words that escaped his lips were a mist of cold ice.
He then produced the gun from behind his back.
Kristoff stood on the streets with a small dog running around his feet. He had his arms crossed and a pensive look across his face as he gazed off in the distance. He was looking to the gates that separated the village from the villa that belonged to Anna's wealthy family.
He cursed himself. He had been such a fool.
While she would be living in elegance, he'd be an enemy in his own country.
His hand reached for the star that adorned his coat. He became lost in thoughts of the girl who seemed untouched by the evil of the world. The girl who seemed to be placed in front of him from another world where the stars burned in the night only for her.
The girl he had only just parted ways with.
The restless dog beneath him barked up to him. He looked down eyeing the scruffy mutt knowingly.
"There's no talking me into this one, pal."
The dog began to whine and Kristoff rolled his eyes.
"What do you want me to do? Waltz into her Nazi estate? Oh hello there, Captain Hans! Nice skull on your hat there. What does that represent? All the people of my heritage? You don't say!"
He glanced back down to the dog who gazed back up to him. He laughed to himself before looking back to the entrance in the distance.
It was then that his clever smirk slowly faded and a feeling of dread filled his chest.
He wasn't certain where the feeling had come from but it was enough to keep him on the sidewalk a moment longer.
Just then, a gleaming, black, Opel Olympia, car stopped before him. With a long honk, the window rolled down to reveal the ever-joyful grin of a full-faced young man.
"Sven! And Sven!" called the man behind the wheel.
Kristoff could hardly believe his eyes. "Olaf?"
"Sven! What are you doing lurking around outside Anna's estate?"
Kristoff awkwardly scratched the back of his head, "Uh, we just said goodbye. I'm going back to work now."
Olaf frowned, "What?"
Kristoff didn't understand Olaf. The strange man had been there when him and Anna were searching for Elsa. He, like a few, had prospered in the time of war. Being a streetwise scavenger, he stored disappearing goods and sold them at an outrageous price to the rich making a killing in return.
And, for a reasonable price, he had agreed to help them track down the would be Baroness.
"What do you mean 'what'? She's there and I'm here. Do you need to get your eyes checked or something?"
"Woah there, Sven! No need to get upset, you donkey!" Olaf giggled and turned to the passenger seat producing a diamond earring. "I was just returning this. When she did that quick change in the back of my car, she must have forgotten it."
"Could be worth a lot," pointed out the ice businessman only wishing he didn't care enough to mean it.
Olaf smirked to him, "Ohhhh Sven, if only we were men of such low morals!"
Kristoff looked to the ground annoyed.
"Say hello to her for me, would ya?" he said shoving his hands in his pockets.
Olaf looked sadly to the desperately in love man trying to act nonchalant.
"I will," he said putting his hands back on the wheel with a warm smile.
Kristoff nodded to him as he rolled up his window. Yet, something stopped him halfway.
"You know, I really didn't think you loved her enough to leave her like this. I'm proud of you today, Sven."
Kristoff looked back to him wide-eyed before he sped off.
He stepped into the street watching the car disappear down the road.
In an exasperated sigh he threw his hands above his head and clasped them on top his hat.
He turned back to the sidewalk to see his dog starring blankly to him.
"What the hell?!" he cried, "Why does everyone think I have some sort of heroic choice?"
Dropping his hands and looking back up the street, a cold breeze washed over him.
In the next moment, he heard the long honk of a car speeding up the road behind him. He quickly jumped to the side in time to catch a string of slurs and curses from the driver, and a glimpse of Elsa pressed against the back window looking to him to save her life.
To be continued...?