Chapter 2 – A Christmas Project
"You're going home tomorrow, huh?" Kristoff asked Bern as they headed down to the storage sheds near the harbor on the castle island. The harbor was frozen in, spotted with ice fishing shacks. Outside the breakwater, the fjord moved sluggishly, ice floes bumping up against each other in the cold water. The icebreaker ship that had opened the way for the ships bringing Lingarth's grain delivery had already departed.
"I may as well get it over with," Bern said. "One must keep up appearances, after all."
"How come your parents don't like you?" Kristoff asked.
"It's more complicated than that. My mother wants me around all the time, even though I've ruined her life and am the worst son in the world. It doesn't really make sense until you've lived it," Bern said.
"So you stick around the castle hoping that Elsa will look at you?"
"That was a really low blow, Kristoff."
"Sorry. What happened with her? I thought you were at least friends for a while," Kristoff said.
"I don't know what went wrong. I think I said too much too soon and scared her off. I keep wanting to ask her what happened, but then I lose my nerve," Bern admitted.
They got to the storage sheds near the dock. Kristoff recognized several other Castle Guards already at work loading bags of grain onto carts. Some were in uniform, others were in civilian finery. Lieutenant Almar was in uniform and Kristoff checked in with him.
"Find an empty cart and fill it with grain sacks," Almar told him.
"I'm here to work too," Bern said.
"Thank you, sir, and Merry Christmas," Almar said with a salute. Lieutenant Almar was in his mid-thirties, and completely devoted to his career. Kristoff wasn't surprised that he had nowhere else to go and nothing else to wear on Christmas Day.
Kristoff returned the salute and walked into the storage shed. He and Bern each shouldered a heavy sack of grain and headed to the end of the row where there was an empty cart.
"So my romantic hopes are in shambles; how are yours?" Bern asked.
They dropped the grain sacks into the carts and Kristoff paused before heading back for another one and an excited grin spread over his face. "Want to see?"
Bern grinned back at him. "Is that where you were when you left last week?"
"No, last week I dropped in on Gustav at his estate. This is where I was when I was gone for three weeks last month. I was trying out my new sled too, but this is the other reason I needed to head up to the mountains," Kristoff pulled a small velvet bag out of his pocket and handed it to Bern.
Bern upended it and the ring dropped into his palm. He looked at it closely and then his compliment died on his lips and he gave Kristoff a puzzled look. "No offense to our local jeweler, but he's not capable of a setting like this. And if you don't mind my asking, where did you get the money for a diamond that size?"
"Me. Rocks. I've got friends," Kristoff said smugly. "I had to talk them down from what they initially wanted to give me, actually."
"You got this from the trolls?"
"Think of it as a first generation family heirloom, since I don't have any old heirlooms. And yeah, they've got piles of this stuff," Kristoff said.
"Piles of?"
"Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, what do you call the blue ones?"
"Sapphires."
"Yeah, sapphires too. And lots of gold, silver and copper. I had to insist on gold for the ring because they think copper is so much prettier. The jewels are what's left over after they make a new fire crystal for the necklaces they wear. You haven't seen those, have you? Trixie and Vixie haven't earned their fire crystals yet. The adults have five or six each, or more. After they chisel out the prism they want, they keep the chips because they sparkle in the sun. Bulda used to give me handfuls of them to play with when I was a kid," Kristoff said.
Bern stared at him. "And we're all thinking you grew up in poverty."
"You can't eat diamonds," Kristoff pointed out. "I didn't know people would trade food for those things until a few years ago, and by that time I could earn my own food."
Bern put the ring back in the velvet bag and handed it to Kristoff, who pocketed it. "Would you mind taking a solemn oath to never mention that to anyone else as long as you live?"
"Say what?"
"Kristoff, you get that right now, we're the strange cousins of Europe and nobody wants to talk to us, much less do business with us, right? There's a certain safety in that. We don't have anything anyone else wants, and we've got weird stuff going on here. People avoid us, especially now that we trounced Hamar with some of that weird stuff. If word gets out that there are piles of jewels and precious metals up in our mountains, and they're available without the expense and time of digging a mine, can you picture what will happen?" Bern said.
"Oh."
"Oh," Bern echoed with a nod. "When Gustav has accused you of completely destroying Arendelle's foreign policy, he doesn't know the half of it. You could wipe us out, Kristoff. If the market gets flooded with jewels and gold, our economy goes haywire and then implodes, and then we get invaded. You really are more dangerous than Elsa in a lot of ways, you know that?"
"Oh," Kristoff said again.
"If anyone asks, including Anna, you got that ring from France through my contacts, and I helped you pay for it, understand?" Bern put both hands on Kristoff's shoulders and stared him down. "I'm serious about this. If word gets out, it won't only blow apart Arendelle, but your troll friends are going to have a hard time when humans invade their valley too."
"I didn't think about that," Kristoff confessed.
"I can help you think," Bern said, letting him go. "Have you thought about it now?"
"Sure." Kristoff wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers and reached for another sack of grain. "Hey, can I ask you something really weird?"
Bern grabbed another sack of grain and they walked back to their cart. "You're an endless fountain of weirdness. Sure, lay another one on me."
"You know Bishop Saholt's sermon this morning? Did you think it was strange that he mentioned a fear of success as something that could be a problem?" Kristoff asked. He dropped the grain sack and brushed chaff off of his new finery.
Bern snorted. "Yeah, that's sure not one I have to deal with."
Kristoff didn't say anything as they made another couple of round trips with grain.
Bern went on, "Of course, I haven't had any successes to speak of, and you have."
"Bern, people treat me differently now. It's like they think I'm some sort of hero who can solve any problem and never make a mistake," Kristoff said. "And I know it sounds weird, but that freaks me out. I mean, what's going to happen when I blow it? Then everyone will be mad at me. I never asked them to think I was amazing – it just happened. And I'm not all that great."
"You pulled off something pretty amazing at the Battle of Arendelle," Bern pointed out.
"How come they don't treat Anna like this, then? What she did was a hundred times more amazing than what I did, and it seems like life for her is pretty much like it was before. Everything has changed for me," Kristoff said, throwing down another sack of grain.
"Anna was already a princess, and that's as special as it gets," Bern said. "You went from nobody to hero. Besides, Anna's heroism had a lot to do with Elsa's strange powers, which no one likes to think about. Your heroism was more ordinary, if that makes any sense. People can picture themselves in your role a lot easier than they can identify with what Anna did."
Kristoff stopped by the cart as he dropped in another sack of grain. The exercise was making him hot, even though the winter air was cold. He paused to take off his cloak and drape it over the cart's seat. Bern did the same, and used his scarf to wipe sweat from his hairline before they headed back to the pile of grain sacks.
"Sometimes I can't breathe very well. It feels like Sven is sitting on my chest. That's happened to me most of my life, but it's gotten worse now that I have to be around people so much. I can't handle being around people very well," Kristoff confessed. "I might have to leave next week too, just to get up to the mountains where I can breathe easier."
"That will go over well with Anna," Bern said drily. "You propose, then you leave. How are you going to handle being married to a princess if you can't handle being around people?"
"I don't know," Kristoff admitted. "There's that fear of success coming up again. Some days I want to go back to being a nameless nobody whose biggest fear is falling through the ice into a lake and freezing to death. That's a pretty easy thing to deal with, in a lot of ways."
"An endless fountain of weirdness, that's you," Bern commented. "So you go up to the mountain and breathe? I thought you were hauling ice." They trudged back out of the storage sheds and towards the carts, snow squeaking under their boots.
"Well, yeah, I love hauling ice. And it helps me breathe. If there's not any work to do at the ice lakes, I run up the mountain, or climb a cliff, or race Sven, whatever makes it easier to breathe. I'm up there longer than the other ice harvesters," Kristoff admitted.
"You know most people hold still when they have trouble breathing, right? Exercise makes it harder to breathe for us normal humans," Bern pointed out.
Kristoff dumped a grain sack and picked up a handful of snow and threw it, catching Bern on the shoulder. "I have to make myself tired enough that my brain shuts off; then I can breathe."
"Mm-hmm, so it isn't breathing, it's thinking. You're up in the mountains trying to stop thinking so you can breathe instead," Bern said. He pitched a snowball back at Kristoff and missed.
"Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way," Kristoff said. He side-armed a snowball at Bern and hit him in the chest. "You normal humans can think and breathe at the same time, can you?"
"It's a talent I picked up as an infant," Bern said.
Kristoff plowed into him and knocked him over. Bern threw him off into the snow. Another Castle Guard paused to give them a strange look and they got to their feet, brushing snow off their Christmas finery before heading back to the shed for another sack of grain.
"So why don't you stay here and breathe? Climb the castle walls or something?" Bern suggested.
"Things get worse if I try to stay around, I'm finding. I do things that are worse than leaving. Like up in the mountains when Gustav wanted me to be there when he delivered the demand for reparations to Hamar, I nearly set off a duel because I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I told you about that, and you laughed, but it wasn't funny because I didn't mean to do it. I knew I couldn't handle being around people right then, but I couldn't get out of the assignment," Kristoff explained. "Gustav was pretty mad at me."
"I have a hard time picturing Gustav mad at anyone," Bern said.
"Well, in the most diplomatic way possible, Gustav ripped my head off," Kristoff said. "And the first time I spent time with Elsa, did she ever tell you about that?"
Bern shook his head, dropped his bag of grain into the cart and leaned against the cart to listen rather than heading back for another sack. Kristoff threw his grain sack down too.
"I knew I shouldn't have stuck around, but Anna insisted, and I can't tell her no. So I go on this picnic with them, and I end up making Elsa cry. I made both of them cry, actually," Kristoff confessed. "The thing is, I knew I wasn't in any condition to be around people."
"You made Elsa cry?" Bern demanded. "What did you do?"
"I picked on her. Then I yelled at her for hurting Anna," Kristoff said.
Kristoff didn't even see it coming, but suddenly he was staggering backwards, gasping for breath and holding his stomach. His heel caught on a chunk of ice and he fell. He sprang back up, ready to hit Bern, before he caught himself. The other guards started to come over, then stopped as Kristoff waved them off.
"All right, fine, I deserved that. Elsa didn't hit me; she forgave me," Kristoff said. "She and Anna are both pretty amazing that way."
"Don't take advantage of them, Kristoff," Bern said, still angry.
"I'm not trying to! Will you listen to me! I'm trying to tell you that sometimes I can't be around people! So I just take off and stay in the mountains until I feel like I can trust myself not to make a girl cry, or ruin Arendelle's diplomatic relations, or whatever else I shouldn't do. But the more I do things the right, the worse it's going to be when I do something wrong! Don't you get it? I don't want to be like this but I can't fix it! Do you just want to tell me to try harder? Because that's not working out so well either," Kristoff said, the frustration with himself erupting out of him.
"Is there something I can help with?" Lieutenant Almar asked as he approached.
"We're going to take a break for a few minutes," Bern said. He grabbed Kristoff by the shoulders and shoved him away from the carts and around the corner of the storage sheds. Kristoff was gulping air and shuddering. Bern turned his back and gazed at the wintry blue sky to give Kristoff time to get himself together.
"Hey, Kristoff," Bern said over his shoulder, "Here's a question for you. If you were Elsa, how often would you freeze the whole world?"
"About four times a day," Kristoff admitted. He was bent over with his hands on his knees, still gulping air. Then he started brushing dust, chaff and snow off his new finery.
"Me too," said Bern. His shoulders relaxed and he shook his head "Listen to me lecture you about being around more for the people who need you. I skipped Christmas with my parents because I can't meet my mother's expectations. I'm home for two days and I get so antsy I have to leave even though I know it hurts them that I don't stay longer."
Kristoff stared at him. "Yeah, like that. Do you ever start feeling like you can't breathe?"
"No, I can always breathe. But I don't eat much when I go home. I spend the whole time trying not to vomit," Bern confessed.
"I can always eat, but I have to get away or I can't breathe," Kristoff said.
"You and Elsa are a lot alike, you know that? You both run scared from people and end up with a pile of ice," Bern said.
"Yeah, I noticed that," Kristoff said. "I figure the only reason Anna puts up with me is because she's so used to Elsa."
"Lucky you."
Kristoff nodded.
"When are you going to tell Anna all this?" Bern asked him, tossing snow at him.
"Three days after never," Kristoff said, throwing a snowball hard at Bern. He missed, and it hit the back of the storage shed. "She hates it when I leave. If I told her I'm always going to leave whether she likes it or not, she'd get mad at me."
"Hey! I've got a great idea! Why don't you go in your room and shut the door? Then Anna can knock on the door for the next thirteen years and you can refuse to answer her," Bern shot at him.
"I don't have much of a door."
"That mountain makes a pretty good substitute."
"I don't even know what to say. I can't breathe when I spend too much time around people. How weird is that?"
"It's thinking, not breathing, remember?" Bern corrected him.
"Oh, that makes it even better. Anna's so smart. So I get to tell her it's too bad I'm not more stupid than I already am," Kristoff said, rubbing his face with both hands.
Bern kicked snow at him. "Because Anna just hates it when people need her, right? I mean, you tell her that you're worried about something and you need some love and understanding and she's going to tell you to get lost. Yep, that's Anna all right. Whatever. Stop underestimating her."
Kristoff pitched another snowball at Bern, catching him in the chest again, feeling the tension of having said too much about himself. Like it always did when he couldn't immediately get away, the fear of having been too open translated into anger. "You've got a sarcastic streak, you know that? Why do you even care? Just leave me alone."
"Kristoff, I told you once that you're about the same age my little brother would be if he'd lived. You caught that, right?"
Kristoff shrugged. "I had a younger brother that died too."
"Don't you wish you had him back?" Bern asked.
"Only every day. My sister too. Parents, people like that," Kristoff shrugged again, trying to make it not matter so much. Bishop Saholt had nearly set him off this morning with the unexpected understanding, then he'd spilled his guts to Bern and now he was angry because he could feel tears pricking the back of his eyes.
"So I found a brother. He can be really thick in the head sometimes, but I still like having a younger brother again," Bern said.
"You did?" Kristoff asked, then puzzled it out. "Oh."
"Yeah. Oh."
"I need to go," Kristoff said, turning away and pretending to comb his fingers through his hair so he could wipe his eyes on his sleeve.
"Sure you do. Talk to her anyway, all right?"
"Lord Councilor?" Lieutenant Almar asked, coming around the corner of the storage sheds. "The grain is ready for delivery, if you would care to alert Queen Elsa to make the announcement."
"I'm on my way," Bern said.
When Kristoff glanced at Bern as he walked away and saw Bern wiping his face too, he decided he really would talk to Anna.
So I just had Kristoff confess to anxiety attacks. Whaddaya think?