Chapter II Something is rotten in the Southern Isles
Anna only needed two more days to make her decision. In the early afternoon, she stormed her sister's office, finding her leaned over her desk on some royal paper work, she assumed. She took a deep breath and thundered: "I am going to the Southern Isles!"
Elsa raised her head. "No, you're not."
Anna pouted angrily. "Yes I am!"
"Trust me, you're not," the queen sent her a gentle smile. "You won't go to the Southern Isles, even if it means that I have to freeze the shore a second time."
"Elsa, you don't understand, I need to…" she paused, perplexed, suddenly realizing something. "What are you reading?"
The queen flinched, almost like she had been caught doing something bad. She started shuffling the papers the on her table: "I-what? Documents! Laws! I'm working…"
"That's a book!" Anna reached her with long steps. "That's the book!" Those on her desk weren't documents, but the copy of Love is an Open Door.
"I…"
"Are you crazy?!"
Elsa laughed, covering her mouth, obviously embarrassed by that little weakness. "Oh, come on, it's entertaining in a sort of trashy, dirty way! How do they call them… guilty pleasures?" she narrowed her eyes, obviously enjoying the other one's fury. "It's actually giving me a lot of ideas… have you read the part about the queen's chambers? We should build something like that here…"
"Elsa!" the princess started yelling, and watching that reaction, her sister laughed even harder, almost to the point of tears. "I am joking!" she confessed.
"There's nothing to joke about!" Visibly offended, Anna took the book away from her, almost screaming: "This… thing has been written by a guy that tried to murder you!"
"That's still something only you believe," replied again the Queen. She rubbed her forehead, sighing. "Alright Anna, stop being so dramatic about it… Are you sure you really want to go and visit him? I mean, ok, you're convinced that he wrote this book, but still, what are you going to do about it? You can't exactly force him to unwrite it!"
"We'll see about that, enough kicks in his personal southern isles can solve any problem!"
"You know, Kristoff is really starting to influence you," saying that, Elsa smiled, hands clasped under her chin. "What about him? What does he think?"
"I already told Kristoff about it, and he said I'm free to go."
Elsa glared at her, "Ok, now tell me the truth."
Anna's cheeks puffed out, like she wanted to contain her anger. "Alright," she said. "I will tell Kristoff, and he will probably say that I'm free to go! And if he doesn't agree, what, now I need his permission too to do stuff? I can make my own choices!"
"Nobody is saying you can't," patiently Elsa stood up. "But I think you're obsessing over this story too much… why do you even care?"
"Why?" Anna moved her hands across the air. "Don't you get it? He lied to me! He filled my head with lies and more lies and manipulated me! And now, he's repeating those lies, and twisting them so that they will become the truth even though they're lies and I don't even know what I'm saying anymore!" she huffed, tired and nervous. "The point is, I don't want him to lie to other people and convince them that's how a story is! That they can just meet somebody and surrender themselves to him! I feel like he's creating legion of impressionable preys because of it!"
Elsa leaned against her desk nodding quietly. "Alright… I get it…"
"You do?" those words filled Anna's eyes with hope. "So that means…"
The queen sighed. "You can go to the Southern Isles, yes. Just, please, be careful and don't start any trouble, alright?"
"Oh, thank you, thank you!" the young princess shacked her fists in the air, thrilled by that little triumph. "Don't worry about a thing!"
"I wish I could," Elsa smirked. "And if he did wrote this book… can you let me have a signed copy?"
Anna boggled in terror, but the queen quickly started laughing once more, concluding: "It was just a joke! I swear it was a joke!"
"I wish you would let me come with you…"
"You would probably punch him as soon as you see him."
Kristoff laughed. "Why, you won't do it?"
"Yes, but it will be one against one, that's more fair," Anna smiled, as the blond ice seller helped her carry her bag at the docks.
"You promise me everything will be fine?"
"I promise you," Anna glared at him. "Wait, are you implying something?"
"I'm not implying anything," he quietly answered, abandoning the bag to take her arms. She smiled, as he pulled her towards him and kissed the corner of her lips, making her tremble. They kissed a second time, now with more passion, before they separated themselves.
"It's not you, it's him," he confessed, placing his frown against hers. "He's a lurid rat…"
"I know that better than you," Anna caressed his cheeks, before finally leaving his embrace. She took her bag and moved towards the ship her sister lent her. "I won't stay with him a minute longer than necessary. I'll close this story, and I'll come back to you. Sounds good?"
"Sounds great," Kristoff smiled. "This book… am I in it?"
"No, and you should be grateful for that."
"I am."
She smiled, blowing him one last kiss before the journey began. The travel at sea lasted six full days and nights. During that time, Anna just kept rereading the unholy book, cursing every verb, phrase and adjective of that despicable and putrid piece of purple lies.
Veronica lifted her emerald eyes and soothingly whispered: "Prince, am I allowed to say something that could be effortlessly considered rather mad?"
"Madness is sometimes the key to true contentment my Lady… I love mad…"
"My existence whole as been a long sequence of doors closed in front of my lineaments… but then unpredictably I had the bliss of encountering you…"
"I had the equivalent thoughts, for you see, I've been exploring my entire existence to uncover a position that would gratify me… and maybe the celebrations are taking over my words… or the smell of pastries…"
"Oh my god," Anna rolled her eyes. "How can this thing be a best-seller?!"
Finally, a rather chilly morning, they reached their destination. The Southern Isles were a small archipelago of trees covered islands not too distant from the peninsula of Denmark. The biggest one, in the centre, named Big Roland in honour of the first king and founder, held the vast majority of the country's population. Anna descended from her ship in a green dress and a white shirt with puff sleeves, elegant but still rather casual, her strawberry blond hair closed in the usual braids. She raised her head and starred in disbelief at the capital, her interest entirely focused on the residence of the royal family.
She quickly grabbed the book from her bag, and reread another page.
…Heralda's grand fortress was a quadrangular bastion of rocks black like solid darkness, a single monolithic finger pointed at the sky like the city was a toffee-nosed noble and the world's great rooftop a criminal deserving a whipping. Everything about the mighty stronghold screamed coldness and sadness. Anguish, loneliness and pain overflowed its hallways, the air danced around like the cry of an abandoned orphan…
Anna looked again at the royal palace of the Southern Isles. An imposing tower launched toward the sky, entirely built in black stones. Just more proofs.
Elsa had informed the king of her arrival with a letter, and a coach pulled by way too many horses already waited for her at the docks. In the early afternoon, Anna reached the dreaded fortress and was guided among it's insufferably long and dreary hallways. The ambiance was cold and kind of spooky, furnished entirely with medieval relics, blunt weapons and dark drapes.
"Anguish and loneliness filled its hallways…" she whispered.
She finally reached the throne room. The king's seat too was monumental, blocky and covered in grim details, like wolfs and other animals carved in the stone. Standing there was a man with a perfectly smooth moustache and a white uniform. "Princess Anna I assume…" he called.
She bowed. "At your service."
"I'm King Albert of the Southern Isles. It is a honour welcoming you in my kingdom." She already knew that Albert was Hans' eldest brother. He was looking at her with eyes that seemed filled with joy. "You wouldn't know, my dear lady, what a pleasure is to have you here! It warms my soul, truly!"
"Thank you, your majesty."
"Shame and guilt have filled my heart and my family since that awful… incident in Arendelle. I hope that your presence here is a sign that you're forgiving my kingdom."
"I never held your nation responsible for what happened, King Albert," she ensure. "Speaking of it, the reason I'm here is…"
"Please, you must have had a rather long journey… we'll have all the time in the world to discuss everything you want at the dining table. Me and my brothers have prepared a great meal in your honour…"
"Oh, you shouldn't had…"
"Nonsense!" he smiled. "Everybody will be happy to meet you…"
Nobody was happy to meet her.
The dining room of the castle was another cavernous and gloomy hall of stones, the walls decorated with so many dead animals and birds, either skinned, stuffed or decapitated, that Anna had the impression she was eating in a graveyard. She felt embarrassed and uncomfortable, barely touching her fish-based meal. She was the only woman at a table of twelve men, each one of them closed in a stern, impenetrable silence that she had the lingering doubt was caused by her presence. They all looked stiff and annoyed, eating with a detached look, like they were forced to be there. A tense dome of silence surrounded them all and Anna almost didn't want to breath, afraid of breaking it.
"How is your lobster, Madame?" softly asked Albert, at the head of the table, as calm as a man could be. Despite that, the question made her jump. Those had been the first words spoken in at least half an hour.
"D-delicious…" she said almost too rapidly and not entirely convinced, keeping her eyes on the plate. The thing that made her feel worst of all was her position. There were exactly thirteen seats at that table. That meant she surely was stuck on his empty chair. There was no better way to make her lose her appetite.
The king had introduced her to each one of his brothers, and she barely remembered the sudden rush of faces and names, but some ended up stuck in her head. Brother number two was Hermann, sitting at her right. He was a rather piggish and overweight individual that was spending his time stuffing his face with an army of oysters, eating them like candy, loudly sucking them out of their seashells. Every once in a while, she caught him glowering at her for no apparent reason.
Prince number four, Markolf, seemed rude and violent in every single gesture; his chest filled with medals, his hair a convulsed all-black leonine crest. She remembered him most because of a passage in the book.
…to satisfy her unappeasable carnal famine, the Queen held in her innermost chambers an accursed brothel of personal slaves. The air filled was with the taste of sin, filthiness and fornication of male servants and assassins, as a mountain of thrusting bodies soaked in sweat packed the stone hall. Among them, the hairy ape-like eunuch Markolf ruled supreme…
An henchmen of the Queen that the prince eventually kills in combat. Between him and Hans, there was surely bad blood running. Then there was prince number five, Otto, who sat in front of her. He too, every once in a while, glanced at her with suspect, but really, the worst part about him was the unbearable cigar he was smoking. The lethal mist he blew in the air was making her feel sick, her eyes all watery and red.
Last, she remembered very well the name of the sixth prince, sitting at her left. Manfred he was, and she immediately disliked him, not because of his behaviour, he had actually been much more elegant than the others, but because of his look. Of all the men, he was the one that resembled Hans the most. Dressed all in black, he had long red hair closed in a ponytail, and his face was really a slightly older and thinner version of the man that played with her head.
"So," started Albert once more. "Arendelle must be beautiful in this time of the year…"
"Yes…" Anna weakly nodded. Maybe if she finished to eat soon, that nightmare would have ended. She forced another forkful of lobster in her teeth and it went down her throat like wood chippings, causing in her the need to drink something. She raised an arm, trying to reach a tankard of water. As soon as her hand appeared in the air, almost every single one of the presents gasped in disbelief, wincing visibly. She blocked herself, frozen in place, suddenly feeling everyone's stare on her. What was going on?!
The only one who didn't react was Manfred himself. Tiredly shaking his head, he talked: "Oh dear, this is getting ridiculous. Listen, if nobody asks her, I'll do it myself…"
"Manfred," the voice of the king became slightly louder. "Don't you dare…"
"Dear princess Anna, you'll notice that my brothers are all rather… rigid, today. The reason is they're all sort of spooked by your presence."
"My presence?" she asked, surprised.
"Can you please reassure them you're not planning on freezing our kingdom?"
"What?! You don't seriously think…" she looked around, holding her breath. They were all intensely staring at her, a mixture of fear and trepidation as they waited the answer. "No!" she gasped. "No! No! I-I don't have any ice powers! That's my sister! I would never…"
An enormous sigh of relief passed throughout the table. Voices came from every side: "Oh thank Christ!" said one. "I was sure she was about to freeze us!" said another. "I almost pissed myself!" commented a third.
Anna was left startled by that reaction. Suddenly each one of the princes started laughing, joking, and they were all more than eager to exchange a few words with her, mostly compliments and not enough subtle hints of flirting. A chorus raised up: "Never I saw so much beauty all in one girl! The eyes of an angel and the skin of a fawn! Can't believe you're not married yet! How long are you staying? Every men in his right mind would die to have your hand! I'll be your guide for city! We'll take a boat through to the northern river…"
The change in atmosphere left her so dizzy that she found herself glad to still hear hostility in the voice of Hermann. "How can we really trust you?" he asked. "Why have you come here anyway, young lady?" closing then his thought, he sucked another oyster, louder than usual, making Anna squirm in disgust.
"Brother!" shouted the king. "You're talking to a princess! A little more respect, please!"
"It's alright," she cleared her throat, trying to sound composed despite the situation. "To tell you the truth, I was looking forward to reach this point. I'm here, because, I would like…" she bit her lip. "No that's not the right word at all… I'm here because I want to meet your brother. Hans."
"Hans?" Prince Otto took the cigar off his mouth, looking honestly confused. "Who is Hans again?"
"The brother we want to forget about," said Markolf, a scornful look on his face.
"Oh, that Hans, right…"
"My lady," chimed in king Albert. "Are you perhaps afraid that he's not being punished like he deserves? I assure you, even thought he's our brother, we most certainly didn't go easy on him."
Manfred snorted, "When did we ever?" he muttered, so softly that Anna almost didn't hear him.
"I'm sure he's paying for his crimes, my lord," she lied, smiling. "I would love to know exactly what is his punishment."
"Well, when he came back, in chains," started explaining the monarch. "And we discovered the atrocious, shameful acts he committed against you and your sister the queen, we banished him from the castle and exiled him on Little Rostrum. It's a small island in our domains. He has been there every single day since his return, with nothing but the bare minimum to live. No servants, no land, no nothing…"
"Oh," Anna frowned. "Really? He never left the island?"
"Of course! And he's not allowed to send mail either. Right Markolf?"
"Uhm…" there was a second of hesitation in the voice of the fourth prince, something that Anna caught immediately. "Yes, yes, of course…"
"Markolf is the commander of our army," proudly commented the king. "He preoccupies himself with keeping a watchful eye on our brother's prison."
"Really?" Anna raised an eyebrow, staring at the dark haired prince. "I would love… no, again, wrong word… I need to meet Hans. Would you allow me to go to this island?"
"I don't see why not," Albert smiled. "We can escort you there!"
For the first time since that feast began, prince Markolf looked agitated. He drummed his fingers on the table, his eyes moving around like he was looking for help. Anna kept glaring at him, but then moved her sight, noticing the quiet chuckle that Manfred was emitting at her side.
"What is going on here?" she asked.
"Uhm," Markolf scratched his cheek. "Hans… he's not on the island anymore."
Albert stared at him perplexed. "You moved him? Without my consent?"
"I didn't move him… he moved himself…"
Anna's eyes turned into cracks of anger. "What?"
"When did this happen?" asked Hermann, finally finishing his meal.
"Roughly…" Markolf huffed, "Sixteen… months ago? A week more, a week less… kind of hard to tell…"
The king went pale for the shock. "What?!"
"Alright, alright he escaped ok?!" the fourth prince threw his hands in the air. "I don't know how he did it, when he did it, but he did it! And I thought, hey, good riddance! We didn't want him anyway! So I didn't say anything! It's not like any of you ever asked how he was!"
"He's right," Otto shrugged. "Good riddance. That ginger brat caused nothing but problems!"
"Wa-wait a second!" the realization hit Anna, "None of you knew?! None of you checked if your brother was still there for more than a year?!"
Manfred smiled "I did."
"Brother!" King Albert couldn't believe his ears. "Why haven't you said anything?!"
"I wanted to, but I thought that maybe you all already knew and were pretending Hans didn't exist anymore, like when were kids."
"Aaaah," Otto blew out another cloud of smoke. "Fun times those… hey, remember when he was six and we convinced him that ha was the son of a peasant?"
"And he went and hid himself in his barn for a week!" stepped in another brother. "Oh, my, the laughs we had…"
They all cheered at that memory, but the fun soon ended, as another brother stood up. "Enough talking about that waste of space of what's-his-name! Important matters are to be discussed here! Isn't this the proof we all waited? Once again the incompetency of our brother Markolf has been exposed! I say his position because more puzzling each day!"
The general went up on his feet. "What are you implying Ludwig?!"
"That you have no place being head of our army! It's time for a change of guard here!"
"Over my dead body!" Markolf buried his hand in a bowl filled with caviar and grasped a fist full of the eggs. Immediately, he distended his arm and launched the slimy projectile, hitting Ludwig right in the face, making everybody laugh and applaud.
Anna widened her eyes, not believing that had just happen. "Princess…" she felt Manfred's voice in her ear. "Time to take cover."
"Take wha…"
Came a loud barbaric cry from one of the younger brothers: "Food war!"
In a second, the fishes and crustaceans started flying in the air like they magically regained life. Everybody was throwing everything, even the king snarled in anger, grabbing his plate of salmon and launching it in the air, screaming: "We have a guest! BEHAVE!"
Anna screeched in terror, as the wall of deadly projectiles passed her from side to side, the entire dining hall reduced to a warzone.
An hour later, trembling and panting, practically shell-shocked, Anna staggered out of the fortress and into its great garden. Her hair, ruffled and untamed, smelled of codfish and shrimps, and her dress looked like it had been used as a cleaning mop on the floor of a fish market. Her eyes starred in the nothingness for thousands of yards, like she had just seen the depths of evil in the human soul.
On the other hand, despite having lived with her through the battle, Prince Manfred was perfect and sharp as ever, cheerfully whistling as he walked at her side. "You know, you should be honoured," he informed with an amused tone, with a spin of his walking stick. "The great food war of the Southern Isles Princes randomly occurs only once a year. Selected few outside of the family had the privilege of experiencing it on their skin... the battle at Hans' eighteen birthday caused a rather impressive scar on Otto's chest when a pork rib swirled against him."
"I'm… so… flattered," Anna shivered, hugging herself, took aback by a sudden cold sense of horror in remembering what she had just experienced. No fish should ever be used in the ways she had seen. She swore to herself to never touch sea food ever again. "No wonder Hans is a maniac if he grew up in this plac…" she bit her tongue, suddenly regaining her senses. Wiping away a smear of tuna pate pâté from her cheeks she added: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"
"You're just saying the truth my dear," replied the sixth prince, still smiling. "So, if I may ask, why do you want to meet my brother?"
"It doesn't matter anymore, does it?" she sulked. "Since he's escaped and God knows where he's at…"
Manfred smirked, glaring at her with a smug expression. "You know, I'm sure I could help you find him…"
"What?" she starred back, confused. "How would you?"
They reached the shadow of a great pine, and there took refuge from the hot sun, birds chirped happily in the air giving them a peaceful background. "Come on now, think about it. My brother couldn't really escape his imprisonment alone. Somebody had to help him. Somebody had to pay the guards to close an eye, and have another ship ready for him to sail away from the Southern Isles. And with somebody, I mean me."
"You helped him escape?!" Anna couldn't believe her ears. "Why?!"
"He's my brother, why else?"
"He's a criminal!" she yelled. "He tried to kill my sister and me! He attempted to overthrown Arendelle! How could you help him escape?!"
Manfred puckered his lips, confused. "You seem to have the weird assumptions that I would care about your kingdom… trust me, young princess, I really don't."
"God!" growling, she threw a kick in the grass, sending a pine cone away. "Prince Manfred, is everyone in your family a shifty-eyed snake?!"
He laughed, not at all offended. "More or less. Albert does try to be a nice man, the poor fool… You know, you're interesting," he stretched an arm towards her, removing a crab claw from her hair. "Hans talked to me about you…"
Anna huffed again, disgusted at the idea. "Let me guess, he told you I was a desperate, naïve little idiot that fell for him like nothing…"
Manfred nodded "Exactly. Although, he didn't say idiot, he said imbecile…"
"Ugh," anger was turning into frustration. She had been in the Southern Isles for less than half a day, but she already hated the place with every cell of her being.
"And he also said you were awkward, brainless and..."
"Ok, enough!" Anna glared at him. "You said you wanted to help me. You know where he is?"
"Not really. But I think I can give you something to work with… do you really want to know?"
Anna lowered her eyes, studying the grass. A part of her (the one covered in fish guts mostly) wanted to abandon that stupid senseless quest. The other screamed that if she gave up, leaving Hans get away with everything, she would have never live it down.
"Alright," she said. "What can you tell me?"
End Chapter II
Author's note: my personal set of Southern Isles' princes already appeared in another one of my fanfic, Hunting Day, if you're interested at all. I wanted to rewrite Love is an Open Door in purple prose entirely, but I thought it would have gotten old pretty fast. Maybe it will be an extra at the end.
Toastyann: oh please, nitpick away! It doesn't matter how many times I reread something, there's always a typo somewhere. Thanks so much for the help. As for the romance part, well, you'll have to wait and see!
u r awesome: oh my, you are awesome too my friend.
Nagasha: they say the darkest of hearts contain the purest of poetry. No, they don't really say it, but, they should!
TheElementHero & Converse r life: much appreciated people! I wasn't 100% sure about that little Elsa line, but I'm happy it worked for all of you.
