Chapter Four
As Kristoff and Hans stayed upstairs stealing as much food and finding places to hide from the adults, Anna and Elsa were down in the refurbished basement. Elsa anxiously paced back and forth. By no means was this the game she was expecting to play. Of course games with Anna always took unexpected turns, but not once had the games lead to Elsa being some sort of destructive monster. Of course the eight-year-old knew that it was only a game, but she worried that this is how her younger sister truly saw her: a monster.
Perhaps the children had begun to get too wrapped up in their game and started seeing themselves as the characters they had created.
"Elsa?" Anna asked, accidentally knocking down the cardboard boxes she was stacking. "Do you wanna build a snowman? C'mon, let's play!"
Elsa gave a sad smile to her sister and hid behind the old couch they had down there.
"Elsa, I never see you anymore! It's like you've gone away." Anna grabbed two Barbie dolls from the toy box and started playing with them. "We used to be best buddies and now we're not. I wish you would tell me why." In a beat Anna's somber mood switched to something far more upbeat and she ran over to the couch and peered over the edge.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?" she asked again. "It doesn't have to be a snowman!"
"Go away, Anna," Elsa sighed.
"Okay bye." Without another word Anna went to the opposite side of the room. The girls were no longer Anna and Elsa Isenberg. Instead, they were the Princesses of Arendelle, one who was forced to live a life of solitude, and the other forced to keep a possibly dangerous power hidden from everyone around her.
Without notice, Anna asked for a second time, "Do you want to build a snowman?"
Elsa remained quiet. She was told to keep her "powers" hidden from Anna, and what if Elsa accepted this invitation? Would Anna make Elsa lose control of her powers once more?
"Or maybe we can ride our bike around the hall!" suggested Anna as she dragged a bicycle built for two into the middle of the room. "If we don't play soon, I think I'm gonna start talking to the pictures!" she shouted, gesturing to the various paintings they had. After all, Mr. Isenberg was a painter in his spare time, and the amount of pictures they had accumulated reached ginormous proportions.
"It gets a little lonely without anyone and watching time go by," Anna continued.
In Elsa's mind, she was in her room, her parents were next to her. The walls were frozen, and she was scared.
"It's getting stronger!" Elsa cried.
"Getting upset only makes it worse," her father reminded her. He went in to hug her, but Elsa let out a small gasp before shouting, "NO! No. Don't touch me. I don't want to hurt you."
A stack of books toppled down and brought Elsa back to the real world where she was still seated behind the couch, staring at one of her father's paintings of a winter landscape.
Knock. Knock. Knock. The basement door opened, and the stairs creaked as people walked down.
"Anna? Elsa?" their mother called out. "Your father and I need to quickly run to the market. I know it's late, but we realized we need a few more drinks, and we forgot to grab your sparkling cider. We should be back within twenty minutes, okay?"
"Okay, mommy!" With a small giggle and wiggling her fingers, Anna ran over to her parents and hugged their legs.
"Elsa, did you hear us, kiddo?" their father asked.
"Yeah…Do you have to go?" Elsa didn't want to be left alone, especially since she was worried about Anna getting hurt again. Possibilities about any number of things that could go wrong swirled like a blizzard in Elsa's mind. What if Anna fell again? What if she actually got hurt? What if Elsa was the one who hurt her?
"You'll be fine, Elsa. Your Uncle Kai is just upstairs, and he's in charge for now. Nana Gerda is also there, so you two can go to them any time you need anything."
With a small goodbye wave, their parents went back up the stairs. Anna, being quite attached to her parents, ran up the stairs to give her parents another goodbye hug, leaving Elsa all alone. Without a single thought, Elsa ran up the steps and shut the door behind her, locking it to prevent anyone from coming in. She sat on the top step and stared around the basement. The eyes of the paintings stared at her, but Elsa still felt alone and scared.
On the other side of the door, Anna was frozen with confusion. When had her sister shut the door and why? She tried to open the door, but she was too small to reach the door handle, and she didn't know where her parents kept a stepstool. So with a careful hand, she knocked on the door three times.
"Elsa?" she asked. "Please I know you're in there. People are asking where you've been." Silence. "I'm right out here for you. Please let me in." Still nothing. In Anna's mind, she and Elsa were all alone now. Their parents had gone on a journey across the sea and had not returned. They were completely alone except for having one another. "We only have each other," she picked up, "it's just you and me." Anna stared at the unmoving door, and an overwhelming sadness started to fill the young girl's heart. What had she done to make her sister shut her out?
"What are we gonna do?" she asked to no one. "Do you want to build a snowman?" She placed her back against the door and slid down, staring out the nearest window. Anna wanted to ask this to Elsa, but at this point, the little girl was so upset, believing that her sister now hated her, the only comfort she had left was this hope that the two could build a snowman just one more time.
