Chapter 4 – Horsing Around

Standing on her tiptoes, Anna waved to Kristoff one last time, as he rounded the fence at the far corner of the stable yard and went out of sight. He and Sven were off to the mountains to collect ice for the palace, especially important now that he was the Official Ice Master and Deliverer, Anna thought with satisfaction.

Spinning on heels, Anna started walking back through the stables to the castle. Elsa had promised to spend the afternoon with her in Arendelle town today and they were going right after Anna saw Kristoff and Sven off, though Elsa had probably started working on something else as soon as they had left her office. Kristoff had come to the castle to talk to Elsa, something about ice harvesting and business; Anna couldn't quite remember or understand. Kristoff was talking about the impact on commerce and something about product access and price stability, and Elsa was saying something about personal and entertainment use, but Anna had stopped paying attention. Then they started talking about ice, just ice. The different kinds of ice, water source location, water quality, mineral content, color. Who knew ice came in different colors? It's ice colored! Kind of clear, a little white sometimes. Now if you were to freeze some lingonberry juice, that would have some real color. But you have to be careful about splashing when pouring the juice into the ice trays, because lingonberry stains something terrible. Ruined a brand new dressing gown the other day at breakfast, knocked the whole pitcher over. She was just trying to describe the design on the sails of ship that just arrived that morning, using her hands to shape the crest of some strange bird-lion-thing, and boom, splash! And it was Elsa's dressing gown, too, Anna was just borrowing it. She promised Elsa that she'd get her a new gown as soon as they got to town again, since she saw a really pretty one in that shop on Primrose Street, blue and ivory, which would be great matching Elsa's eyes and hair, and maybe they could get two, one for Anna too, in blue to match her eyes, and red to match the lingonberries! Wait, what?

Anna broke from her reverie, finding herself having crossed the entire stables and almost exiting the opposite end. She was planning to stop at the stall where they kept her horse, Starlilly, but lost in thought, Anna had strode right past her. Turning again, Anna found herself facing another horse she recognized.

"Don't I know you?" asked Anna to the horse. It was a solidly built, dun colored horse with a black and off-white mane. And the last time Anna "bumped" into it, he was carrying him, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles.

As Anna looked at the horse, it raised its head and met her eyes, raising its eyebrows inquisitively, right back at her. Weird.

"Oh ya, that one, princess, is a strange one." came a voice from behind Anna. Anna smiled, looking back to see Gard Bjørnholt, the Master of Horse for Arendelle castle. Now late in his years, Master Bjørnholt had worked in, and later been in charge of, the castle stables for longer than Anna had been alive. King Agdar always respected him and his knowledge of and skills with horses. He had even taught both Anna and Elsa how to ride when they were little, and continued working with Anna after Elsa had gone into hiding. Standing a half-foot taller than Anna, he tied his now gray hair back in a tail, not unlike that of the horses he cared for. His thicker, rural nordic accent stuck out when he spoke.

"His name is Sitron, according to that blackguard prince. Still, cannot hold a man's actions against his horse, now can we?"

"Why is he still here?" Anna asked, looking back towards the horse.

"The ship that he and the prince came in on was equipped to carry horses in its hold, but that's the one that got tipped over when in the fjord froze over. It was lost when the Queen melted everything. The prince was sent home in a jail cell on the ship from Lloraine, but they couldn't carry horses. So here he stays until something is worked out."

"He's a smart one, that one is," Bjørnholt continued. "We take him out into the stable yard every day for some exercise, and he pretty much takes care of himself. And when I call to the boys to bring the horses back in, it's like he's heard me and actually rounds up the other ones and helps bring them in."

"A good fjordhest, too. Not from the Southern Isles or thereabouts, but from up here. One of the Bergen teams, if I'm right. Good stock, those horses."

Bjørnholt turned suddenly back towards the other end of the stables. "Ulrich, what do you think you're doing! You have it backwards!" Then turning back to Anna, "Excuse me, princess, but it seem I need to teach the new boy how to saddle a horse." And giving Anna a quick bow, he rushed off.

Anna returned her attention to the horse. "So, um… you doing okay? They treating you alright?" she asked, not sure what to expect. During their strange encounter at the dock, Anna was rather distracted by Prince Sideburns, but she did remember the horse acting like he understood what was going on.

So it only surprised Anna mildly when Sitron raised one roof up and shrugged. The horse actually shrugged. At least, to Anna, that's what it looked like.

So Anna probed further, "You didn't actually know what Hans was up to, right? You just carried him around."

The horse backed-up in his stall, actually looking offended. Shook his head and gave a rather dismissing snort.

Anna crossed her arms, putting on hand to her chin, assessing the situation. "Okay, so I'm talking to a horse, which is a bit weird, but the horse seems to be understanding me and is talking back, which is totally bizarre. But at least I haven't gone as kooky as Kristoff, actually talking in Sven's voice."

Back to talking to the horse. "So, what do you want to do? I suppose we'll be seeing a ship from the Southern Isles eventually. They're going to want to deal with the mess Prince I-shoulda-broke-his-nose made. They should be able to take you back, or at least work something out."

Sitron shook his head from side to side, then tapped the ground twice with his right hoof.

"You want to stay here? Oh sure, you're a Fjord horse, you probably want to go back to your own, um, herd." Anna interpreted.

But the horse disagreed, shaking its head again, and stomping the ground again, but this time hard.

"Oh, you want to stay here here! In Arendelle?"

Sitron nodded.

"Um, I guess we can work something out. Tell you what, I'll talk to Elsa. She's queen, she can probably declare an executive order or something."

Sitron nodded again. Anna was getting a bit weirded out, but she thought she had conversations with Sven before. Maybe.

"And I guess you're feeling cooped-up here in the stables, right? I'll come down tomorrow and take you for a ride, get some exercise."

Another emphatic nod from the horse.

"Okaaaay. Done talking to horses. I'm going to go now."

And so to top off, Sitron lifted one leg and dipped his head. Bowing.

"Okay, bye."

The Queen's office is located on the second floor of Arendelle castle. It is positioned next to the library, and even has an internal door connecting the two rooms. The walls are lined with dark, rich pine and a window looks out over the now busy courtyard. The office is equipped with several bookshelves, a locked cabinet, and a large wooden desk, which once belonged to King Agdar, and to King Yorril before him. And now Elsa sat behind that desk, handling the affairs of state, one treaty, agreement, or declaration at a time.

While Anna was seeing Kristoff off, she could squeeze in just one more bit of work before Anna dragged her away for their afternoon in town, thought Elsa. Not that she didn't enjoy spending time with Anna now, but there was work to be done.

From a stack of papers from the Minister of Foreign Affairs… the kingdoms of Porsgunn and Lyngdelle are each sending official representatives to Arendelle. Elsa made some notes of her own. Porsgrunn was a close kingdom to Arendelle, both geographically, it being only fifty miles up the coast, and politically. Porsgrunn and Arendelle had some regular trade, and they often had coordinated their navies when dealing with raiders and pirates. Their relationship had become somewhat strained over the last thirteen years during Arendelle's withdrawal from the world, and since that withdrawal was because of her, Elsa was determined to re-establish that relationship as best she could. As for Lyngdelle, while Arendelle also had some small amount of trade with that kingdom, their prince was a bit of a social peacock, and it was likely they just wanted to be seen to associate with Arendelle, now that they were drawing so much attention.

"Hey, what are you doing!" accused Anna, barging in from the hallway. "I told you, no more queen-work today."

"Well, if you weren't spending so much time saying good-bye to Kristoff…" Elsa verbally reposted, smiling.

"Hey, I wasn't…" Anna blushed. "I was just talking to…" a horse. Okay, maybe she shouldn't mention that. "Fine. What's left? I'll help out and we can go."

Else waved towards the last stack on her desk, "Just the latest correspondences."

"Great!" declared Anna, plopping herself in the chair on the opposite side of the desk. Leaning over, she grabbed a couple items, handed one to Elsa and opened the other.

After about a minute of reading, Anna suddenly crushed the letter into a ball, and started looking for a burning fireplace to throw it into, but of course, there wasn't one. The cold never bothered Elsa, anyway.

"What is it?" Elsa inquired.

"Nothing important. Just some jerk who doesn't have anything better to do with his time than write nasty letters," said Anna.

Elsa sighed and asked, "What does it say?"

Anna frowned back at Elsa a moment, but then opened the letter back up from its balled form, smoothing it a bit on her knee. "Some idiot, and I'm basing that on the spelling…" holding the letter up and then turning it on an angle to follow the text, Anna continued, "and the grammar, says Arendelle shouldn't be ruled by a witch... Sorcerers are evil… Well which is it, witch or sorcerer?... and you'll be the next Malificent." Anna dropped the letter back onto the desk, "Well, at least he's read his history."

Anna crossed her arms across her middle to keep warm, because the temperature had suddenly dropped, and a drizzle of sharp, freezing rain had started to fall in the office. She knew that was not a good sign, and tried to move things along. "What do you have?"

Out of a packet, Elsa pulled a handful of thick sheets of paper and a note, clipped to the top. Pulling the note off, she saw a child's drawing, of herself, standing on in the castle courtyard, her hands raised with a giant snowflake in the sky, surrounded by other people who were all shown to be smiling. The next one, much simpler, showed her sitting on a throne made of snow, a bright white ice crown on her head, holding hands with Anna who stood next to her. The rest were similar. The note was from a teacher in a school in Arendelle town, explaining that her class had insisted on this class project.

And the weather in the office changed to big, fluffy snowflakes.

By the time Elsa was done looking though the drawings, Anna had finished making a little Olaf on her desk. Laughing, Elsa said, "So, lunch in town?"

"Thought you'd never ask!"