The Tears of A Queen – Chapter 7
A Big Hero 6/Frozen Crossover
*** Kingdom of Arendelle, 2045 ***
They had stopped at the hostel to get Elsa changed into one of Honey Lemon's outfits so she wouldn't be conspicuous when they went out for dinner. Honey had also helped her brush out her long braided hair, and gave her a hairband matching the clothes. The change in her appearance was remarkable. With her hair loose she was even more beautiful, if that was possible.
Wasabi, GoGo and Honey Lemon decided to stay at the hostel while Tadashi, Fred and Elsa turned in the rental mountain car. Sigrid Oaken was on duty again when they came up to the counter. "Hoo, hoo! So, how vas your expedition? Did you find any trolls?" She joked.
"No, but we – OW!" Fred yelped when Tadashi stomped on his foot. Fred had a tendency to talk too much.
"Fred always lets his imagination run away with him. We found enough old formations and some ruins to at least finish our thesis, so it was a productive trip." Tadashi glared at Fred while Sigrid fussed with the terminal screen to close out their rental.
"Okay, you vill vant to leave the charges on your credit card, yah?" She tapped the screen a few more times when Tadashi nodded, then said, "Let me haf your 'pad, please, and I vill transmit the invoice and charge your account."
Tadashi was stuffing his 'pad in his bag when he realized Sigrid might be able to help them with the gold coins. "Uh, Ms. Oaken, one thing we did find digging around in some ruins was a box of gold coins. I'm guessing they aren't any good as money, but they must be worth something." He dug one he had kept out of his pocket. The rest were safely back at the hostel. He handed it to Sigrid.
She looked at it closely, hefted it, then handed it back to him. "Yah, dat is a fine specimen of the old currency. Ve converted from speciedaler to kroner in 1875 ven Norway did. It is probably wort' more as a collector's item den as gold, so you vill get t' best price from a collector, I t'ink." She rummaged around in a drawer, then handed him a business card. "Here, my cousin runs t' best shop in t' country, und he is also t' most honest. Oakens never cheat t' customer."
Tadashi looked at the card. "Oaken Collectibles – Best Prices Guaranteed – M. Naismith, prop." it read. The address wasn't far from their hostel, they could check it out first thing in the morning. "Thanks. This is a great help." He turned away and walked over to the window where Fred and Elsa were standing. Fred shook his head slightly and walked out the door.
Elsa was looking across the harbor at the castle. A single tear had welled up and trickled down her cheek. She was hugging herself and Tadashi could see that she was struggling to control her emotions. He reached out to pat her arm, then pulled back, unsure if she would appreciate being touched. He cleared his throat to get her attention instead.
"Elsa? Are you okay?"
She just bit her lip and shook her head.
"We should go. Let's go back to the hostel and get some dinner." He waited, knowing she needed the time to pull herself back from her memories.
After a minute or two, Elsa wiped her cheek, then turned to him and said, "I'm okay. Just … it's hard, seeing my home and not knowing … "
"Yeah. Come on, let's eat, then talk over what we need to do next." They left and met up with Fred and headed back to join the others.
Sigrid finished dealing with the customer that was next after Tadashi, then pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped an icon. "Mikki? It's Sigrid. You should be seeing an interesting customer tomorrow. They found some old Coronation Anniversary gold coins up in the hills. Yeah, those. I told them you'd give them a good price. Uh huh, might be a crocus sighting. Not sure yet, but raise the alert level anyway. Love you, cuz. 'Bye." Sigrid stuffed the phone back in her pocket.
She smiled as the next customer stepped up to her counter and greeted them, "Hoo, hoo! How may I help you?"
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The gang was crowded around a table in the hostels' dining room. The food was good and reasonably priced, and after the exertions of running around the mountains no one wanted to walk very far. It would be an early evening to bed.
Tadashi had rented an additional room, telling the innkeeper that Wasabi's snoring was too disruptive and he needed a room by himself. The clerk tapped in the transaction, took Wasabi's phone to transmit the door key, then thanked them for choosing Oaken Inns and Hostels.
"You'll have to let Elsa have your phone, Wasabi. Better clean the naughty pictures off or you'll shock her senseless!" Fred jibed his friend.
Wasabi looked indignant and protested, "The only thing on there are my school notes and the fanfiction sites I follow."
"Yeah, like all fanfiction is rated 'T' for teens, right? That might be worse..." They sat down and ordered their meal.
Over dessert and coffee, Elsa began the discussion. "So, what should I do?"
No one said anything for a moment, then Fred started, "Hey! We could like sneak into the castle after hours and find that statue and see if there's anything about where it was found. Wait! There must be secret passages, Elsa, are there secret passages?"
"Well, yes, but – "
"Whoohoo! So we use the secret passages to sneak in and break into the Royal Archives because that's where they hide all the secret stuff and – "
The rest of them shook their heads and let Fred ramble on for a few minutes before Tadashi tried to break into his ravings. "Fred? Fred!"
"Huh?" Fred stopped his rant about the Illuminati and their secret codes and looked at him.
"No secret passages."
"But Elsa said there were – "
"I mean, we're not going to use the secret passages. Or use the Illuminati to decode the troll curse."
"What are we going to do, Tadashi?" Elsa asked him.
"Here's a really off-the-wall idea. We walk up to the entrance and ask to see the director of the museum. Then we introduce you and ask him if he has any information about Anna's statue," Tadashi explained.
"He's not going to believe me when I tell him I'm the long-lost queen of Arendelle," Elsa replied in a flat voice. "And Honey Lemon said something about getting me arrested?"
"You're not going to get arrested unless they catch you trying to defraud them. And all we're doing is asking for information, which is not illegal. The worst that will happen is they think we're a bunch of college kids trying to prank them and throw us out." Tadashi tried to reassure her. "Who knows? He might decide to humor us. If not, we're no worse off than we are now, and we'll have a chance to see that statue and scope out the place."
"Yeah, and THEN we can use the secret passages to sneak in!" Fred brightened at the thought of secret passages again.
"That's a very last resort, dude, but … yeah, then we might consider that." Tadashi grimaced and hoped it wouldn't come to that. He realized something and snapped his fingers. "Hey, I just thought of someone who might be able to get us in to see the director!"
"Who, man?" Wasabi asked.
"That docent from the museum I took out the other day, Siobhan. I'll call her and explain that we would love to discuss some of the archeological stuff we found in the mountains and could she get us an appointment." He pulled out his phone and made the call.
A brief conversation later he put it away and said, "We're all set. She said she'd meet us at the museum front desk in three days at 9 am. The day after tomorrow is some big local holiday and they're closed tomorrow because they need to spiff the place up."
"What holiday?" Elsa asked. She had just noticed a poster on the wall and had a sick feeling she already knew. The poster had a stylized gold profile of a woman on a green and purple background with "205th JUBILEUM" printed in gold letters.
"She didn't say." He noticed her staring at the wall and asked, "Elsa?"
"The date, what's the exact date?" she whispered, her stomach churning with anxiety as she had a flashback.
"Uh," he pulled out his phone and looked. "It's July 12th, why?" Elsa's expression tightened and she wrung her hands in her lap. "Elsa, what's wrong?"
"It's the celebration of my coronation. I was crowned on July 14th, 1840. That was the day I exposed my magic and froze the kingdom," she spoke in a voice so faint they had to strain to hear her.
"Oh, Elsa, sweetie, that must be a bad memory for you." Honey Lemon patted her hand.
"It's worse. Hans showed up at the 5th anniversary, that's how I got frozen the way you found me." Her voice was muffled as Elsa had put her face down on the table, her hands still in her lap, her shoulders shaking from her tension.
"Yikes," though Tadashi. "What can you say to that kind of stuff?"
He waved over a server and asked, "My friend here has an upset stomach. Could we get a triple-mocha fudge latte?"
Elsa sat up and used a napkin to dry her tears. "Is that really a thing?"
"Yep, and it's guaranteed to make you feel better."
"Although you may not be able to sleep for hours with all that chocolate and caffeine in your system!" GoGo pointed out.
Elsa sniffled and managed to smile at the five people surrounding her. "Thank you, you don't know much your kindness means to me."
"No problemo, amiga!" Fred smirked.
The server brought Elsa's latte, and they all finished their drinks and went to their rooms. It had been a long, tiring day.
Alone in her bed, Elsa lay awake for a long time even though she was exhausted. Her thoughts kept chasing themselves in circles as she tried to makes sense of the modern world. It seemed like everything moved so fast. At least Arendelle itself hadn't physically changed too terribly much. Fred said that was because the government had decided to keep everything the way it had been because of the tourist trade. Most modern gadgets were kept subtly tucked away where they didn't intrude. If it weren't for the ubiquitous presence of 'pads and holographic screens, she could imagine that nothing had changed.
After more worrying about Anna and Kristoff, Elsa finally managed to regain some composure and lull herself to sleep by tapping on the icon she had asked Wasabi to set up on his phone. It was a 'playlist' of soothing music, similar to the one Honey Lemon had played for her in the tent. With the strains of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' playing softly, she finally drifted off to sleep.
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After a quick breakfast, the group split up. Elsa, Honey Lemon and GoGo went shopping for clothes. Honey and GoGo knew that Elsa would pay them back for anything she bought on their credit cards, plus they were only going to buy a few things at first until Elsa got more acclimated and developed her own taste in clothes. By then she'd have her own money, although the group hadn't figured out how to open a bank account or get a credit card for Elsa in her own name. She had no ID, she was off the grid, she was a ghost to the modern cybernet.
Tadashi, Fred and Wasabi took the box of coins to the shop Sigrid had suggested. "Oaken's Collectibles. This is the place alright," Tadashi compared the business card to the sign over the shop window. They went in, a little bell going ding-a-ling as they opened the door.
"Good morning, gentlemen. How may I help you this beautiful morning?" A genial middle aged man looked up from where he was examining a piece of jewelry with a loupe. He put the loupe down and rested his hands on the counter.
"We found some old coins up in the mountains, and we were wondering what they were worth." Tadashi put the box down on the counter and opened it so the coins could be seen. "Are you Mister Naismith?"
"Yes, I am. Mikael Naismith at your service. Arendelle isn't much for formality, so please call me Mikael." He took off his glasses to polish them with a jeweler's cloth laying on the counter. He was of medium height and had brown hair peppered with gray at the temples. "And you are?"
"Tadashi Hamada, and these are Fred and Wasabi. Sigrid Oaken recommended you to us when we asked her about finding these coins."
Naismith picked up one of the coins from the box and hefted it, then took off his glasses and put the loupe in one eye to examine the coin in minute detail. "Beautiful, this coin is in excellent condition. Where did you say you found it?"
"We were exploring up in the mountains, trying to find some caves on an old map, and on the way back we stumbled across what looked like the remains of an old cabin or something. We were digging around for the heck of it and found this under the hearth." Every word of this was true of course. Omitting Elsa's directions to find the ruins wasn't a lie. Omitting finding ELSA wasn't a lie.
"Well, young man, I can tell you that these coins are a collector's dream acquisition, particularly given the proximity to the holiday." Naismith continued to examine the coins, taking them out one by one from the box, then stacking them neatly on the countertop until there were five stacks of ten.
"Why's that, man?" Fred asked.
"These coins were struck in the year 1845 to celebrate the fifth year of the reign of Queen Elsa of Arendelle. In 1845 they were just every day money, but now, in 2045, with the 205th anniversary of her coronation tomorrow, this is truly a find. I admit I am willing to pay a premium over their collectible value to acquire them from you today, as I can resell them tomorrow at a nice profit."
"That admission doesn't sound like a hard-nosed businessman, Mr. Naismith." Wasabi was a bit suspicious of anyone that open about profiting from a transaction.
"It's not. I am a history buff, specializing in that era. The loss of Queen Elsa and her sister was a great tragedy for this nation, even though it sped up the transition to a constitutional monarchy. Making a profit is always a goal, but this, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity." The man's effusive enthusiasm was transparent. "On the open market, each of these coins is approximately 9/10th of an ounce of gold, for a total of 45 ounces. At today's market price for gold, the entire lot is worth not quite 85,000 US dollars."
Tadashi was stunned. Elsa wouldn't have to worry about paying them back for clothes or food or anything for a while with that kind of money.
Naismith was still talking, though. "That's just for the gold, if someone were to be so foolish as to melt them down for mere gold. No, as historical artifacts they are worth three times that. I am prepared to make a bank transfer to you for 255,000 US dollars if you will sell me these coins." He looked at them over the tops of his glasses, which he had put back on.
All three of them nearly fainted. A quarter million dollars? Tadashi managed to blurt out, "Uh, yeah, that would be … uh, fine." Holy handsprings, his bank account would choke on that many zeroes, even if they would only be there temporarily until they could get Elsa some sort of identity documents so she could open her own.
Naismith sniffed and said, "Young man, I suggest that you check my honesty by taking one of these coins to the main office of the Bank of Arendelle and ask to speak to the Senior Vice President and verify the gold content of these coins. Then go online and check the collectible value I've quoted you."
"Uh, that seems like good advice. Why are you giving it to me?" Tadashi was at a loss why this man would go so far to not cheat him.
"Because you are young and naive. The cure for being young will occur in the course of time, but naivete can only be cured by the cynicism of an older mentor." Naismith's eyes were twinkling.
"You're telling us you're a cynic?" Fred asked.
"No, I'm telling you I'm trying to mentor you," replied Naismith. "While you are doing that, I will be arranging the financing for my purchase so that when you come back later today, assured that I am not cheating you, I will have the funds to transfer to your account. Be sure to bring your encrypted passport to verify your identity."
He carefully placed all the coins back in the box, closed the lid reverently and pushed it back across the counter to Tadashi, who picked it up and nodded, too dumbfounded to notice the piercing gaze Naismith gave them as they left the shop.
The three of them walked about a block before the shock wore off and they stopped dead, looked at each other and whooped, "Do you believe it?" They ran back to the hostel, eager to tell Elsa she didn't have to worry about eating ramen or get a job bussing tables at Oaken's.
Naismith waited until he was sure they were out of earshot, then picked up his phone and tapped an icon. "Kai? It's definitely a crocus sighting. Yes, the box had the Royal Arms on it. These young idiots have no idea what they've gotten themselves involved in. I think we need to up the alert level again, and put more eyes out for them and figure out what they're up to. What? Don't know, didn't ask. Who knows how they found them? We can figure out the details later. We've been waiting for a break like this for a long time. Yeah, yeah. Later."
