The Witch and the Wolf
Chapter 1
Tears streamed down Elsa's face as she stared at her hands, trembling and covered in the blood of her sister. Feathers and cotton from the carcass of Anna's bed covered every surface like the snow that was falling quietly through the broken window. Suffocating and thick, the copper smell of blood was everywhere. Red paw prints the size of a human torso lead from the bed out the threshold of the door and into the hall. Swallowing her better judgement, Elsa tiptoed back into the hall.
"Anna?" She called. There was no response. In the dim torchlight she could see that the trail of prints continue the length of the corridor and down the stairs. Gathering her skirt so it wouldn't drag in the mess, she followed the spiral, stopping half way when she saw that from her vantage point to the end all of the torches where extinguished, plunging the remainder of the stairs into dark shadows.
"...Anna?" She said again, expecting, even hoping for silence, but at the bottom of the staircase she saw something stir in the black and heard a low, throaty growl followed by a moan that she recognized to be her sister.
"Anna!" Elsa cried. "I'm coming!" She grabbed the nearest torch off of the wall. "Where are you?"
"E-Elsa?" Anna's weak voice like a bell in the dark.
"I'm here, Anna. Where are you?" Elsa proceeded slowly down the stairs. As she crept closer, she saw the flick of something large and lithe move out of the path of the light.
"Go back." This voice wasn't Anna. It was deep, masculine, and dominant. "I have what is mine to take."
Elsa felt her hands begin to sweat against the wood of the torch. "That wouldn't be my sister." She responded. "Where are you?" She had reached the bottom of the stairs but didn't see anything but the stain of blood that was left where the intruder had been standing a moment before. Was it Anna's?
"I'm right next to you." The voice said. Elsa turned to her left, casting the torch in front of her. Sitting a meager two feet from her was a wolf black as a panther and three times as large. On his massive shoulders and haunches were golden markings in a language that was unfamiliar to Elsa. Yellow eyes intelligent and greedy cut to Elsa's soul, beckoning her to surrender to the fear that quickened the beat of her heart.
Buried deep in his chest cavity was a shard of stained glass, presumably from the broken window in Anna's room. The rest of his dark pelt had smaller shards of glass but not many seemed deep enough to break his skin. In his mouth was Anna, her lower half clutched tightly in the wolf's mouth. Elsa could see the wolf's teeth sunk deep into her right thigh.
"Oh, Anna." Elsa managed, her eyes darting from the wolf to her sister who looked just as terrified.
The wolf shifted towards Elsa, lifting himself higher. "Are you scared?" He asked. Elsa opened her mouth to speak but the horror of the moment had snuffed her words.
"Don't worry. I can smell the fear on you and it's delicious." The wolf opened his mouth, releasing Anna who gasped in pain as she hit the floor. As he licked the blood off of his lips he pressed a massive paw against her back so she couldn't move. Anna whimpered under the weight of the wolf.
"What do you want with Anna?" Elsa asked. "Please, let her go."
"Your naivety is so... precious. This is the Princess of Arendelle. Her use to me is endless."
Suddenly Anna sounded panicked. "Go back, Elsa. Go back and get the guards!"
Instead, Elsa took a deep breath, jutted out her chin and slowly raised her head and shoulders, standing tall and upright.
"Anna might be a princess, but I am her older sister and therefore," Elsa took the end of her braid, twisted it around itself, and secured it into a tight bun with a pearled bobby pin. "I am the Queen of Arendelle. If she is of endless use to you, than mine is infinite."
"Well!" The wolf stood, releasing Anna. He limped towards Elsa, who in turn back away. "That does change things, doesn't it."
"Elsa, no!" Anna cried. She tried to stand but when she put weight on her injured leg it buckled, sending her right back to the floor. She was fighting harder than Elsa had ever seen and it surprised her. "Don't tell him these things."
Elsa continued to back away from the wolf until she hit the wall, her heart fluttering with panic as she felt the stone as cold and dead as she feared she would be. The tip of the wolf's muzzle was inches from her face. She could smell the blood on his breath, see shreds of Anna's green night dress stuck between his teeth.
"I see you are trying to be brave but you still reek of weakness and fear." His nostrils flaring as he huffed her scent. "Does Anna's sister have a name?"
"E-Elsa."
"I will tell you whatever you want, just don't touch her!" Anna squealed from across the room, but she was ignored. "Elsa, don't talk to him!"
"A pleasure, Queen Elsa." The wolf said. "You can call me Pitch. I suppose we are enemies." Elsa said nothing. It took all of her courage to hold Pitch's gaze. His yellow eyes appeared so human, judging every breath she took and every curve of her body.
"I want a sister tonight and I'm beginning to think its not Anna."
Gritting her teeth, Elsa gave herself a moment of weakness to shiver in the presence of the wolf. Closing her eyes she forced the image of Anna, bloody and broken on the floor into her mind's eye. She brought up the sight of her sister's bedroom ransacked and the fear that pierced her heart when she realized that Anna could be dead. She let those words rest on her heart for a moment.
Anna could be dead.
"Pitch," She said. "If you let Anna go I will go with you instead."
"No!" Anna screamed and pounded the floor with her fist. "Elsa, you can't do that!"
"That is an offer that is certainly hard to resist." Pitch looked over his shoulder at Anna, who was slowly inching towards them. Tears of pain were streaming down her face and she was grinding her teeth, using nothing but her arms to move.
Pitch returned his attention to Elsa. "The thing is, I think I should kill your sister."
"No!" Elsa reached out and touched Pitch's ear. "I told you, take me instead."
"You have to sweeten the pot, my Queen. You should know how to barter, you run a country." Pitch said. "Make me a better offer."
Elsa's heart was like a butterfly under glass. Her eyes wandered to Anna on the floor and back to Pitch, then to his bleeding chest with the shard of glass.
"I'll take that out." Elsa pointed to the glass shard. "Then you leave her and take me. Do you understand?"
"No!" Anna screamed from behind them. "Don't take it out, thrust it deeper!"
Pitch chuckled. "Deal." He offered Elsa his chest. Unhooking her purple cloak, Elsa wrapped it around the bloody shard of the glass that was sticking out of his chest. She pulled softly at first, but the there was no movement. She pulled harder and it began to wiggle. Pitch moaned and much to her own disgust, Elsa felt a flicker of satisfaction in the dark place below her heart. Closing her eyes, she reached for that place in her mind again where Anna lay prone and in pain. With a grunt of effort, she pulled hard and fast and the shard came out followed by a slow trickle of blood.
"Anna," Elsa met her sister's desperate eyes, the former asking wordlessly for forgiveness, not permission. "It's to keep you safe. Goodbye."
Pitch lowered his head for Elsa, who took hold of the scruff of his neck and used it to hoist herself onto his back. Underneath her she could feel the sheer power he possessed as he stood to full height and vaulted forward, charging down the halls of the castle before the sister's could say anything else. Pitch navigated with a familiarity that was disturbing, taking Elsa away from the main hall and towards the servant's entrance. Putting his head down, Pitch crashed through the barricaded door and into the night. Elsa looked over her shoulder to call to the guards, but those they were slumped over, their weapon discarded on the ground. Several dark and wispy canine entities stood over their cold bodies, shying away from the light of the nearby torches.
Elsa buried her face into Pitch's fur. He smelled of pine of and ashes. She had gone with the wolf. She had chosen the wolf. Now no one else would die, most especially Anna. She was safe. The remaining guards and Kristoff would find her and help her. As for herself, Elsa had no idea what Pitch wanted with her but his use for her was, as she had said, infinite.
It had been hours since they had left Arendelle. Pitch hadn't spoken a word to Elsa, letting her go through whatever emotion she fancied by herself. Sometimes she was stoic, other times she cried intensely into Pitch's fur. In the moments between she rested quietly between his shoulder blades, letting his rhythmic stride rock her into submission as she pretended her heart was not pinning for her home; for her sister.
Elsa opened her eyes, looking up at the night sky. A blanket of deep blue clouds blocked out the stars, a promise of snow. She couldn't even see the moon. She hadn't the slightest idea where they were but she did know that she had never been this far from home before. Looking behind them, she could see the red drops of blood Pitch left in their wake. He wasn't bleeding badly anymore, but it was enough. Enough that perhaps someone could follow them and find her.
"Pitch," She said a little too enthusiastically. "You're still bleeding. Don't you think we should slow down or even stop for a little bit so you can, you know, recover a little?"
"Heh," he said. "It's insulting that you think I'm stupid enough to think you actually care about me. Look," Pitch motioned to the sky. Fat flakes of snow had begun to fall. "The snow will mask any scent and trace of the both of us."
As she watched the snowflakes collect on the back of the wolf Elsa felt hot tears rolling down her cheeks, because she knew Pitch was right. There was nothing the snow and ice could bring her but a seal of fate. The winter night would cover up the blood, the scent trail, everything. When Anna, Kristoff, and the guards came looking for her, Pitch would have already carried her away to where ever he was taking her. No one was coming.
Then, she felt something ice cold against her cheek, brushing away a tear. Rapidly, Elsa began wiping at her face, immediately assuming somehow a clump of snow had fallen from a tree and hit her face. Then she felt a gentle, but cold gust she could only compare to a whisper against her right ear. Touching her ear lobe, she could have sworn she heard the words 'hold on tight'. They were alone, there was no one who could possibly be whispering to her out here.
A torrential gust of wind slammed Elsa and Pitch, knocking the wolf off of his feet. Elsa screamed and tried to tangle her hands into Pitch's fur but she wasn't quick enough. The wind wrenched her from his back and sent her toppling through the snow. Clawing her way up through the drift she had been supplanted into, Elsa popped up from the snow to see Pitch doing the same about ten feet away.
Out of nowhere, something gold and glittering darted in front of Elsa, leaving a brilliant swirl of shining dust in its wake. Whatever it was disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.
Pitch fixed his eyes on Elsa. His lips peeled up in an ugly snarl. "Get over here!"
"Woah, I guess chivalry really is dead." Drifting slowly down from the sky was a young man wearing nothing but a pair of brown trousers and a navy hoodie laced delicately with frost. He didn't even have any shoes.
A/N: Not much to say, hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing! :)