Chapter 2 - The Book of Poems

Several weeks into March, Elsa finally found time to have a snowball fight with her sister and friends. The battle could have lasted several seconds, but Elsa did her best to hold herself back, and Kristoff and Sven held out stubbornly. Sven managed to eat almost every snowball she threw at him, and Kristoff refused to let ten pounds of snowballs that had found their target weigh him down. He continued pelting Anna, Olaf, and Elsa with snowballs. Elsa tried to take control of his snowballs, but her power was limited to snow and ice that she created herself, not anything that was formed naturally. But while Kristoff was stubborn, Elsa was even more so. After thirty more minutes Kristoff admitted defeat, and together they all set off towards the castle for an early dinner, followed by several guards who had accompanied Elsa.

"Why did they have to come?" Anna asked, despite herself.

"Sir Magnus, my father's head guardsman, thinks I should have guards around me at all times. For safety purposes, just in case. After all, there was an attempt on my life back when..." Elsa trailed off, her fingers clenching tight.

Anna knew Elsa was thinking back to the time when she'd been attacked inside her ice castle. Even though she was of royal blood as well, Anna never felt afraid whenever she went outside of the castle without guards. Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf's presence made her feel safe. Things must change when you're ruler of a kingdom, and you've known what it's like to have someone point a crossbow straight at your head. Shuddering at the thought of her beloved sister being killed by cruel, thoughtless men, Anna slipped her arm around her sister.

Elsa smiled and hugged Anna back. Sometimes it still felt strange to be doing such things with her sister after all those years of isolation. But they were over now.

That evening, Elsa relaxed with Anna and the rest of her friends as they waited for their food to arrive. As several servants scurried around with the appetizer dishes, a man came into the room with a large silver platter upon which rested a delicious, beautifully cooked pheasant in a bed of herbs and spices. "For you, Queen Elsa," he said, placing it in front of her with a bow. "This is your huntsman Alek's first catch. He wishes that you be the first to try it."

Smiling with pleasant surprise, Elsa delicately cut up a piece and placed it in her mouth. As soon as she did so, her eyes glowed. "It's delicious. Absolutely delicious," she declared. "Alek has done well...and also whoever cooked this. They did a perfect job."

"That was also Alek, your Majesty. He insisted on cooking it himself."

Elsa's eyebrows raised. "Well, give him thanks from me. Actually...I'll tell him myself, after the meal."

"As you wish, your Majesty." The man left the room swiftly.

"Can I try some?" Anna pipped up.

Elsa looked up and saw that both Kristoff and Anna were eying the pheasant enviously. "Sure," she said, placing a small amount of meat on her own plate before sliding the rest down the table.

The remainder of the meal went smoothly, and the dessert was amazing, but the taste of the pheasant lingered in Elsa's mouth. After dessert was over and the servants began clearing the table, she quietly excused herself and strode from the room.

Soon she made her way through one of the castle's side doors and headed towards the servants' quarters. It was dark outside, but the back courtyard was glowing brightly. To her surprise, there was a large bonfire in the center with a stag being roasted over the flames. Most of the servants were gathered around the fire talking, and children were scampering around, laughing and playing. Their voices drifted on the smoke-scented breeze to Elsa.

"I can't believe Alek isn't here," an amused male voice said. "He killed this magnificent stag all by himself and he isn't even around to help us eat it. I'd think he'd want to stand by and boast about how he caught it in some long, elaborate, puffed up tale."

"That Alek is a strange one," a woman declared. "He's almost always off by himself, and he hardly hangs around here long enough to say hello before he disappears."

Elsa slowed her pace, but she didn't turn around. Instead, she slipped behind a tree and listened curiously. She felt bad for eavesdropping, but she wanted to know what the servants thought of Alek.

"I don't trust him," an older woman said. "He's hiding something. I can see it in his eyes – they betray him."

"I just can't believe the queen would hire him. We know hardly anything about him!"

At the mention of the queen, more murmurs arose. "I bet he came because of the queen. He wants something from her."

A woman tittered. "Marriage? Her Majesty would never marry him."

"Or anyone else, for that matter," someone else added dryly.

Elsa flinched. The gossip about Alek had stirred up some sort of anger within her, but the speculation concerning her felt like needles pricking her chest. True, Elsa wasn't planning on marrying anybody in a long time, perhaps even forever, but hearing people talk about it behind her back just felt wrong. Without even realizing it, she stepped out of the shadows and into the full glow of the firelight.

"Oh! Queen Elsa!" One of the children exclaimed. All of the servants turned to Elsa guiltily, searching her face for any sign that she might have heard them.

But Elsa's face was a mask of coolness. "Hello, all of you. I was wondering if any of you have seen Alek. I would like to thank him for the amazing pheasant he served to me this evening."

"Oh, uh, Alek?" The man who had first spoken replied, as though he hadn't just been talking about Alek. "I'm not sure where he is, your Majesty. He's often away. It's possible he's even roaming around the castle, though he shouldn't be."

"Do you doubt my choice in hiring him?" Elsa's voice was quiet, but there was a faint icy edge to her tone that made the servants shift uncomfortably and cast each other nervous glances.

"We...do think he's...sort of a...shady character, your Majesty," the man said with difficulty. They knew how annoyed Elsa could get when someone doubted her judgment.

"For now, he will stay," Elsa said firmly. "But if he does anything truly suspicious, report to me and I'll investigate. Understood?"

"Yes, your Majesty," they all answered humbly.

With that, Elsa swept off, heading back to the castle to search for Alek there. For many minutes she wandered from room to room, but with no luck.

"Where do I go to be alone?" she wondered. "Ah yes. The library."

The royal library was a rather small, dusty room on the second floor of the castle. It had several shelves of books and three comfortable red chairs around a small table. And there, in the one on the far right, sat Alek. He looked deeply absorbed in the thin book he was reading, but after a second he glanced up.

"Oh, hello Queen Elsa," he said, rising quickly and respectfully. "I – I'm sorry about being in here. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to, but once I saw this place the desire to read overtook me."

"That's fine," Elsa said graciously. "I just wanted to thank you for that delicious pheasant you served to me. It was also very well cooked."

Alek looked flattered. "Oh...well...uh...thank you. You didn't have to go out of your way to say so, my queen. I'm just happy to be working here."

Elsa moved a little closer. "What are you reading?" she asked.

"Um..." Alek's eyes darted away from hers. "Just some poems."

"Can I see them?"

"Sure." He meekly handed over the book, and Elsa read the cover. 'Poems by Prince Arren of Bjorn' it said. Her eyes widened. "Where did you get this one?"

"I found it on this shelf over here." He gestured to the exact spot, a shadowed corner of a shelf where Elsa had not rifled through yet.

Elsa flipped through the pages, her pulse speeding up slightly. There was quite a lot of poems, and they looked very nicely written.

Alek glanced back and forth between Elsa and the book. "I'm surprised whoever collects books for this library found this," he murmured after a moment. "People really liked Prince Arren's poems, but they sort of became unpopular and hard to find after..."

"Arren left the kingdom."

"You know the story?"

Elsa sank down in a chair next to Alek and continued leafing through the pages. Most of the poems seemed to be about nature, and adventure, and wondering what the future held. A few of them were about fire. "Yes, I do know the story," she said finally. "I read it somewhere in one of the newly arrived books."

Alek sat very quietly in his chair, suddenly fascinated by his leather boots. Elsa read through a particularly intriguing poem about the glorious beauty of fire and suddenly let out a loud exhale.

"What is it?"

"I just can't help but wonder what happened to Arren. I mean, he's the only other person I know in this age who was Gifted, and he soft of reminds me of myself."

"I can guess why. Both of you had a powerful yet dangerous gift. Both of you ran away from your kingdoms as they suffered from the effects of your power, and both of you were thought to be monsters. Except you...you came back." Alek gazed into her eyes admiringly.

"Yeah." Elsa smiled. "But..." her eyes darkened. "Arren didn't. Where do you think he is now?"

"Oh, he's long gone, I'm sure," Alek said sadly. "Gone forever." His dark, gold-flecked eyes stared into space.

They sat there for a long time in silence. After a while, not knowing what to say, Elsa went back to reading the poem book. She wasn't sure how long she stayed there, her eyes scanning restlessly through poems, when her ears suddenly picked up the soft sound of footsteps heading into the hall. Alertly she looked up to find that the chair next to her was vacant, and Alek was nowhere to be seen.