Chapter 7 – Bern's Mother

Seventeen years ago . . .

Nadja was in a fury of despair that she'd lost yet another one of her children to a fever. Ever since the first one died, she'd set aside every other interest to study heat, fire and fever to learn how to protect the rest of them. Despite her best efforts, they kept dying and leaving her, not even recognizing her at the end when the fevers brightened their eyes past the point where they knew what they were seeing. Every cooling draught and potion she could brew was simply swallowed up by the heat and gone without a trace. She had only one child left now, and in her extremity she'd changed tactics entirely. She couldn't keep them cold enough to keep them alive; this last one she would sear with a heat that would protect him from any further fire. A campfire couldn't burn the same wood again; lightning couldn't set a forest fire if the undergrowth had burned away already; nothing could burn twice.

Nadja took the bottle of liquid fire she'd taken from the cave trolls to the cave near her home where she hid all the supplies and implements that her small-minded neighbors would fear. She poured the fire into a kettle, and steeped it with leaves and brewed it with bark, mixing the fire with enough growing things to wrap the heat in the cool things that grew on earth. The brew took days to steep and simmer; the recipe growing as she combined ingredients from other healing potions to create a potion that had never been made before.

She waited another few short days until her husband was gone away on business again, so he would not object to what she had to do. He was always gone away on business, but even when he was home he was dismissive and distant with her. She couldn't live with the loneliness; her children were supposed to keep her company and they kept going away as well – into graves. She had only one child left, and if he died too, then there would be no one left to love her. He must survive; Nadja couldn't bear to be alone.

"Bernard, Mother has medicine for you," she said the evening after Tyvard left, coming into his room where he was dutifully bent over his lesson book.

He knew better than to say anything, but the look he gave her was sullen. He'd been difficult ever since Timothy's funeral; not even cheering up when she'd bought him a new set of books for his tenth birthday. She'd tried to explain that they had to spend more time together now that it was only the two of them forever, but he only withdrew further. Her friends said he was growing up, and all children went through stages like this, but she couldn't bear to have him grow up if it happened like this.

"It will keep you from getting sick. Isn't that funny? A medicine that you have to take when you're well? Mother made it special, just for you," she coaxed him, sitting next to him on his tutor's chair and putting an arm around him. He was too thin, no matter how much she piled his plate with food and made him eat every bite before he left the table.

"I don't want it," he said in a low voice, pretending great interest in his Latin grammar lesson.

"You'll take it and thank me for it," she snapped at him. How dare he rebuff her attempts to help him?

He put his head down on his grammar book. "No."

After Timothy's funeral, he'd found a knife somewhere and cut off his hair as short as it would go. She'd always liked it longer, foaming around his face in a tangle of black curls so much like her own. She'd cried when he cut it off, and he hadn't even said he was sorry. No matter how often she searched his room, she couldn't find the knife, and he kept using it; whenever a curl got long enough to cut, it was gone. Just last week, her husband had taken him to have it properly barbered instead of insisting he let it grow back out like she'd wanted. She hated his hair now, and it made her angry that he would put his head down and make her look at it.

Grasping what was left of his bangs, she yanked his head back up, feeling satisfied at his gasp of pain. If he didn't want to get hurt, he shouldn't provoke her like that.

"You'll take the medicine," she said in her quiet and dangerous voice.

"No, I won't! And I won't play the flute! And I won't finish my dinner! I'm going to grow up and do exactly what I want to do all the time and forever and I'll never see you again!" he shouted at her, springing to his feet so suddenly that the chair fell over with a clatter.

She stood up too, calm like steel coming down over her anger. Her nails bit into his cheeks when she forced him to look at her. "You will take the medicine and you will never speak to me like that again." She squeezed until she forced tears from his eyes. "Don't cry, Bernard, you're too old," she said as she dropped his face.

He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands while she poured medicine into a cup and held it out to him. "Don't make me be the bad guy, son, you know how you hate that."

His chin still shaking, he accepted the cup that she pressed into his hand.

"Drink it so fast you can't taste it," she suggested.

He did as he was told. Other than these occasional outbursts, he really was a good boy. He drained the medicine and coughed, dropping the cup. Instantly, Nadja was by his side, supporting him, crooning comfort. "It's all right, sweetheart. Mother knows best. It's just a bit of medicine to keep you from getting sick. Come sit with Mother."

She led him over to the rocking chair. He was getting too long to fit on her lap anymore, but she pulled him there anyway and rocked him until the shudders stopped.

~###~

Present day . . .

Bern glanced around at the front parlor. Nothing ever changed here. He left his hat on a table and ran up the front stairs and to the room where his father had spent the last two years as an invalid since his stroke. Pastor Anders waited in the hall outside his door, standing as Bern approached.

"Is he?" Bern asked.

"Still with us. He's been asking for you," the pastor replied.

Bern knocked once and went in. "Father?"

The curtains were closed, only a few streaks of afternoon sunlight filtered through, putting the candles to shame. The room was closed and hot. The body in the bed was all that remained of a proud and strong man. He was already as thin as a skeleton, with waxy yellow skin and white hair that floated around his head. He wasn't old enough to look that decrepit. When he heard Bern's voice, he turned his head and blinked until his eyes opened.

Bern sat on the chair next to the bed and took his hand, full of regret and remorse. He should have done more, somehow. He shouldn't have abandoned his father here. Perhaps he should have brought him to the castle and hired a nurse, even if it did mean his mother would have come too. All those maybes and should haves didn't mean anything, and he knew it. He'd abandoned his father as the price of freedom from his mother; he didn't love his father more than he feared his mother. And now it was too late.

"I'm so sorry, father," Bern said. "I'm so sorry. I should have, I shouldn't have, I don't know." Tears streaked Bern's cheeks. "Everything should have been different." He couldn't see any way to do anything but exactly what he'd done, but that didn't make it right.

He felt a spastic pressure on his hand. His father was shaking his head back and forth, but Bern couldn't tell if it was a deliberate motion or not. He tried to talk and Bern leaned in to listen, eyes still blurred with tears. The words were garbled. All Bern could make out was "stay away," in a tone of understanding. If anyone could understand what he'd done and why, it would be his father, who was now offering him forgiveness and absolution together. Somehow, that was as heavy a burden as condemnation would have been.

"I'm so sorry," Bern repeated. "I'll take care of her now. I'll make sure Mother has what she needs." He stopped as the full import of his responsibility crashed down on him. This is why he'd never prepared for his father's death. It came with the threat of his mother coming back into his life and demanding he take care of her.

Tyvard's head was rocking back and forth more strongly now. "No," Tyvard said weakly. "Your mother," he stopped and swallowed and coughed. "A real witch," Tyvard managed to say. Then his hand went limp in Bern's. He coughed some more and then was quiet, fallen back into whatever passed for sleep when someone was this close to death's sleep.

It would have been grotesque if it wasn't so sad. Those were likely to be the last words he would ever hear from his father.

~###~

Bern stopped at his childhood room to retrieve an armful of clothes to take down to the guest quarters to dress for dinner. He nodded greetings at the servants. One of them showed him to the guest room that they'd hastily prepared for him. He sent his boots to be brushed and polished while he washed up and changed into a dinner jacket and clean trousers, then knocked on the neighboring room to find Kristoff.

"I don't suppose you brought a dinner jacket?" Bern said.

"I had about three minutes to get ready to leave, with Anna pushing me out the door so I wouldn't miss you. I've got what I'm wearing."

"Come here, and let's see if something of mine will fit you," Bern said.

"Maybe that will get you to crack a smile," Kristoff said, following Bern back to his room. "Hey, your mother's actually pretty nice."

"Yes, she is. As long as everything is exactly the way she wants it, she can charm the spots off a toad," Bern agreed absently. "At least the trousers will be long enough," he said, tossing a pair at Kristoff and then handing him a shirt and blue jacket. Kristoff went back to his room, and when he returned, he was holding himself carefully, managing to get the buttons fastened on the jacket which was far too tight through the shoulders. "If I inhale, I'm going to split out the entire back seam."

"Leave the buttons undone," Bern suggested. "We're not having company tonight, and mother can just assume you don't know how to dress for dinner. Grunt once in a while and tell her you don't know how to read either."

"Do you want me to use a fork or my fingers?" Kristoff asked.

"Either, just as long as you don't lick the plate. Have you ever figured out what to do with a napkin?"

"At least you smiled. I was beginning to think we were here for your funeral instead of your father's," Kristoff said.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry. I'm going to say the wrong thing about sixty times a day. Did you get to talk to your father?" Kristoff backpedaled.

"A few words," Bern said. He handed Kristoff a necktie that would hide the fact that Kristoff couldn't do up the collar button on Bern's shirt.

"Kristoff, you do know there's more than one fork, right?"

"Oh, does it matter which one I use?"

"Watch me and copy what I do, okay?" Bern said.

"Okay. And I was joking, by the way, I do know there's more than one fork. I once spent an entire afternoon with Anna and Gerda, learning about forks."

"I can make using a fork look easy. Just watch and be amazed," Bern said.

In the formal dining room, the large table was set with only three places, translucent porcelain dishes, goblets, silverware, and finger bowls. Bern looked at the elaborate setting and wondered if his mother was deliberately setting Kristoff up to make a fool out of himself. Not even the castle used that many forks at a state dinner.

They got through the soup course conversing about the roads and the weather without incident. The servants served the main dish, a fileted fish with mushroom sauce and spiced tomatoes and crisp flatbread. Bern pushed the food around on his plate, occasionally taking half a bite and willing himself not to choke on it. Kristoff was putting away food at an impressive rate and Bern toyed with the notion of distracting his mother long enough to dump half his food onto Kristoff's plate before his mother commented about what he wasn't eating. The servants would probably notice though.

"I received word that Lady Adele and Lady Mirabelle will arrive tomorrow," his mother said.

Bern nodded in acknowledgement.

"I met them," Kristoff volunteered. "They came to the awards ceremony after the Battle of Arendelle. And they've been to the castle several times."

"Yes, I'm so glad my friends receive invitations. They come tell me about them later, to keep me company, I suppose. I can't imagine they're gloating about the fact that they still have a connection to the castle's social functions and I don't," Nadja said.

"The castle issued an open invitation to the awards ceremony, mother. Everyone was welcome," Bern said, and then regretted that he'd said even that much.

"I wouldn't have wanted to make you uncomfortable by actually attending, son," Nadja said sweetly.

Bern speared a tomato and then mashed it into a pulp instead of eating it.

"I never have been able to understand why Bernard is so embarrassed to have me around," Nadja confided to Kristoff.

"Ah," Kristoff said, shooting a glance at Bern, who stared at his plate.

"Do you see your mother often, Kristoff? I imagine she's so proud of you."

"My parents died when I was young," Kristoff said.

"How tragic! But there is more than one way to lose a family member. Death may be one of the easier separations, when all is said and done," Nadja went on. "Bernard and I were inseparable when he was young, but boys grow up to be men who forget their mothers. Bernard is very proud and ambitious. He's never been the same since he got a taste of business as a boy, and then his father got him that job in politics. It was blatant nepotism; I know at least a dozen other men who were better qualified. King Agdar never would have accepted him, but his daughter probably isn't as demanding about her advisors' qualifications. Women don't know much about business, you know."

Kristoff kept his mouth full so he didn't have to reply.

"Tell me, Bernard, is the queen happy with your work on the economy? I hear from friends and servants that there are shortages in the marketplace, and I've seen some coins come through our contacts that don't seem to be what they should. I'm just a woman, so I don't know much. Things would have to be very bad before I'd even notice a problem," Nadja said, reaching over to pat Bern on the arm.

Bern was swallowing convulsively, trying to moisten his dry throat without risking a sip of wine that could choke him. His mother didn't lie, which made her statements impossible to counter. He'd learned not to try. The most poisonous thing about his mother was that he believed her when he listened to her. He wished Kristoff wasn't here listening to this.

When their butler interrupted dinner to say that Lord Tyvard's death was imminent, Bern welcomed the interruption, even for such a macabre reason.

Bern and his mother kept vigil at his father's bedside for the next two hours, listening to death rattle in Tyvard's throat, expecting each breath to be the last. Pastor Anders stayed with them, murmuring scripture. When his father let go of his final breath, Bern held his own breath, waiting for another reprieve, finally expelling a gasp of regret that his father was gone. Nadja pulled the sheet up over his face.

"I'll keep vigil with him tonight, mother," Bern said.

"Do you want me to stay too? I'd hate for you to be alone," his mother replied.

"I'll be fine," Bern said.

"You would rather be alone than with me," his mother said sadly while Pastor Anders pretended not to hear.

Bern resolutely said nothing.

"You always have a home here. No matter what happens politically or economically, regardless of what anyone else says about you, you can always come home. Maybe someday you'll appreciate that." His mother kissed him on the cheek and left the room with the pastor.

Bern found the matches and lit every candle he could find, setting all of them on the table next to his father's bed, making an oasis of light in this room of death and darkness. He stared at the flames. The chaos of his thoughts had drained away in these last few hours of waiting for death, leaving a void behind. There was a terrible suspicion filling that void. He watched the candles, the way they flickered at even the slightest draft. Flames gave way to everything; they never stood strong, but shifted however far it took to accommodate the shifts in the air and keep burning.

The hours passed. The clock chimed. And Bern tried to believe that his mother hadn't really done what he was afraid she'd done.

~###~

The next morning, Kristoff was coming back into the house after checking on Sven when he saw Bern duck into the front parlor. He hurried the last few steps, and stuck his foot in the door before Bern could close it entirely.

"Hey. I'm sorry about your father," Kristoff said.

"This really isn't a good time, Kristoff," Bern said. He had dark circles under his eyes and he hadn't shaved yet this morning. The clothes he'd worn to dinner last night were rumpled from having sat up all night in them.

"Pretend I'm not here. I can be quiet, remember?"

Bern didn't make another effort to get rid of him, but went to a tall writing desk in the corner and folded up the top. He started pulling letters out of pigeonholes, keeping some on the desk while putting others back. Then he pulled out the drawer and set a stack of correspondence on his lap and began sorting it. One pile went on the desk, the other pile went on the floor.

Kristoff looked around the room, and went to examine the curios on the shelf. The small statues probably had some meaning he didn't understand. The portraits on the wall were oils of families in their best clothes, with the occasional portrait of a man or woman alone. Books smelled of dust. The entire room felt old, connected to previous generations in a way Kristoff could never match. History weighed on him, and he wasn't even part of this family. He stole a glance at Bern and didn't wonder that he was beginning to crack under the pressure.

The biggest book Kristoff had ever seen held court on its very own polished oak stand. It was easily a handspan thick, with an old leather cover. He looked back at Bern, and then opened the book at random. It was hand-lettered, not printed, and the handwriting was so stylized he couldn't read any of it. He risked a question. "What's this?"

"The family Bible. We don't actually use it for reading. It's where we write down births, marriages and deaths," Bern replied. The stack of papers on the desk was growing; only a few letters joined the pile on the floor.

Kristoff carefully turned it to the front. The first several pages were covered in spidery handwriting. "Yeesh! There's like a hundred generations listed in here!"

"The trolls don't have something like that for you?" Bern asked him.

"Are you in here?"

"At the end of the list, yes," Bern said. "Keep turning pages. You'll find it."

Kristoff turned the pages. Every name had at least two notations: a birth date and a death date. Many also had a wedding date recorded and a spouse added. The last list in the Bible ended part way down a page that was blank and waiting for more entries. Kristoff had known that Bern's siblings had died, but it was sobering to see their names all written. Bern's name was fourth in the list of six children, and the only one that didn't have a death notation written next to it. He looked at it closely, spelling out something. He read fairly well now.

"Hey, I thought you said your full name was Bernard," Kristoff said.

"You were going to forget you knew that, remember?" Bern said, opening a second drawer and pulling out another pile of papers.

"This says your name is Burn," Kristoff said.

"Really? Mother always called me Bernard. Father called me Bern. I assumed mother was using my full name. It was just one more way they could fight about me," Bern said, scanning letters.

"You never checked your own name?"

"It's too depressing to see that list, Kristoff. I don't care what the family Bible says about me as long as I don't have a death date like everyone else," Bern answered.

Kristoff shut the Bible and walked over to see what Bern was doing. Bern set another paper on the pile on the desk and Kristoff picked it up. It was a golden flower with seven large wavy petals interspersed around seven smaller petals, set on a purple background.

"That's pretty. Is it a sunflower? Elsa would like it," Kristoff said.

"It's a sunburst, not a sunflower. My cousin Rapunzel drew it; she's quite artistic. My mother had a sister who was obsessed with the magical properties of sun fire. She thought it could grant her eternal youth and she kept trying to get Mother interested," Bern said.

"Sun fire? Grand Pabbie talks about earth fire," Kristoff commented. "Can I keep the sketch?"

"That's my mother's private correspondence, Kristoff, so probably not," Bern said. He started putting the larger stack of letters on the desk back into the drawer.

Kristoff set the sketch back down for Bern to put away. "You're going through your mother's letters?"

"I'm looking for official correspondence related to the family shipping business. Two years ago when my father had his stroke and I joined the government, I signed a power of attorney giving Mother authority to manage our family business. Despite her comments at dinner last night, Mother is very intelligent about business and is capable of running things on her own. I haven't kept close track of what she's done because that would mean talking to her. I've ignored the family business, and now I'm beginning to wonder if that was a mistake. I'm looking for letters and shipping invoices to find out what she's been up to," Bern said. He folded up the smaller pile of letters on the floor and put them into his jacket pocket.

"Why don't you just ask her?" Kristoff asked.

"Are you coming to my father's burial this morning? I need to get ready," Bern said, shutting the desk. "I can find you a black cloak to wear or something."

"Yeah, sure, I'll come," Kristoff said.

Bern and Kristoff washed up and shaved. Bern wore a black jacket over a gray shirt with black trousers. Kristoff buttoned up a long, black cloak over his regular clothes and resigned himself to sweating as the sun climbed higher.

"Does your family do breakfast?" Kristoff asked, worried that he wouldn't get anything to eat just because Bern wasn't.

"In there," Bern said, pointing him towards the breakfast parlor. To Kristoff's surprise, Bern came with him. Kristoff filled a plate at the sideboard. Bern poured a cup of coffee.

"Is any of your family coming? Will that aunt or cousin you mentioned be here?" Kristoff said before he shoveled his mouth full of food, mainly to get Bern talking instead of brooding.

"My aunt's dead. Her daughter killed her," Bern said shortly. Then he didn't answer the rest of the question. Kristoff was too stunned to ask anything else.

Bern downed three cups of coffee before his mother came in, dressed in black, with a short net veil covering her face. She also got nothing besides a cup of coffee. Kristoff went back for seconds. He eventually got self-conscious that the only sounds in the room were the grandfather clock ticking, and him chewing. Bern and his mother sat side by side, sipping coffee and not saying a word, their mouths pulled down in identical expressions. His mother's black, spiraled hair contained a few silver strands that served to highlight the rest of the darkness.

The burial was brief, uneventful and unemotional. Pastor Anders read the liturgy, Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer. Kristoff stood with his head bowed next to Bern. As the solemn scriptural words flowed over him, consigning the dead to rest, Kristoff's mind went back about fifteen years, and he wondered if anyone had read scripture when his parents, sister and brother were buried. He'd visited their gravestones later, but had been too close to death himself to attend their funerals.

When the service ended, he walked behind Bern and his mother back to the house. For all the warnings Bern had given him about his mother, Kristoff hadn't seen anything that would have justified Bern's opinion of her. In fact, she might have been responding to Bern's overblown fears. She'd said some thoughtless things at dinner last night that happened to be true, if unkindly interpreted, but that was all. He wondered if Bern had let a few bad memories color his relationship with his mother too much.

When they got back to the house, the servants who had attended the burial dispersed back to their tasks.

"Mother, I'd like to show Kristoff the rest of the house, if you have no objection," Bern said.

"Of course, son. You know the rules," Lady Nadja said absently. "I'm tired. I'm going to rest before Adele and Mirabelle arrive."

"Yes, Mother," Bern said.

The three of them went up the stairs together, going separate ways at the top. Kristoff unbuttoned the black cloak and slung it over the banister. Bern scooped it right back up and led Kristoff into a hallway, entering the fourth door down. He hung the cloak in a wardrobe.

"So what room is this?" Kristoff asked.

"What?"

"You said you were giving me a tour," Kristoff reminded him.

"Oh. Do you really want a tour? This is my room," Bern said. He left before Kristoff could look around, pulling the door shut behind him.

"What are all these other doors?" Kristoff pressed, hoping to get Bern talking instead of lost in his own thoughts.

"My siblings' rooms. Do you really want to see them? The rules are that you don't touch anything. You don't change anything. Ever." Bern pushed open a door and Kristoff looked in at a spotlessly clean room with pink wallpaper and a white lace canopy bed. "This is Angelique's room. See the puzzle on the table? She was working on that puzzle twenty-nine years ago when she caught a fever and died. Don't ever finish the puzzle."

Bern shut the door and opened the one across the hallway. "This is Jonathan's room. He liked blocks. He was quite good at building block towers. How would I know that since he caught a fever and died before I was born? Because of the block towers." Bern pointed. "See that one? It's nine blocks tall. It's been nine blocks tall for more than thirty years now. See the one next to it? It's only six blocks tall. Once I put a seventh block on it. That was the only time in my life that my mother beat me."

Bern shut the door and opened the next one. "This is Timothy's room. I was nine years old when he caught a fever and died; Timothy was five. You recognize the name Timothy, right? He's about your age, or he would be if he'd lived. He's the only sibling who lived long enough after I was born for me to know him as anything besides a headstone. We'd been painting pictures the day before he got sick. See? They're still fastened to the easel. Mine is the one on the right. I was painting a bear who was looking for a cave to hibernate in. It's night time in the painting, but I can't put the moon in it because that would change something. Timothy was painting a red mess. He never did tell me what it was supposed to be, and now I'll never know."

Bern shut the door and kept going. "Do you want to see the next one?"

"Stop it, Bern," Kristoff said, putting an arm out so he couldn't reach the next door.

"Oh no, I haven't shown you Teresa's room yet. She liked to sew. She'd gotten quite good at it by the time she turned twelve and died. The needle is still in the apron. She was attaching a flounce to it, in case you were wondering. And then there's Terence's room. He liked animals, bugs actually. He collected bugs. Did you know that when bug bodies get old enough, they just turn to dust and blow away? We can't have that, now can we? Mother found new bugs, the same kind, and pinned them to the board, so nothing will ever change in his room either. She has to find new dead bugs every so often. Do you want to see them? Decaying bugs can't stop mother's goal to keep things the same here. I'm the only one that changed, and she hates that. I grew up. I left. I did something I wasn't supposed to do and she can't turn my room into a shrine because I keep changing."

Kristoff shoved Bern up against the wall. "Stop it, Bern."

Bern was talking too fast and his eyes were too bright. "There's only one left, Kristoff. Why stop now? Do you want to see Andrew's room? He was only a baby when he died. Fortunately, all the diapers had been washed before he actually took his last breath, so there aren't any soiled diapers that have to be preserved unchanging forever. His room is quite sweet, actually, a baby's room typically is. There's blue wallpaper on the walls, and plush rabbits on the floor. The quilt that Aunt Gothel sewed for him is hanging over the crib. It's got that sunburst pattern you liked so much. Aunt Gothel made one just like it for her daughter, the one that grew up and killed her. Would you like to see it?"

"Let's get out of here before you go any crazier," Kristoff said.

"Oh, I'm not crazy, or not any crazier than anyone else who was raised in their siblings' mausoleum. Mother wasn't unreasonable, though. Their actual bodies are buried in the cemetery. There aren't any skeletons behind these doors, just ghosts, only we call them memories," Bern said. He started to laugh, high-pitched and hysterical.

Kristoff shook him, trying to snap him out of it. "We're getting out of here."

"You can leave, but I can't. She's going to trap me too, Kristoff. She said so last night. She said I'd always have a home here, no matter what. Isn't that a sweet, motherly sentiment? I'm such a terrible son that I immediately started to think the worst of her kind offer. I'm not actually giving you a tour of the house. I'm on my way to ransack my father's office in search of more correspondence. Do you want to come? Do you want to find out what she's done to the economy so I can't ever leave?" Bern asked. The laughing stopped, but he started to shudder instead.

"You're crazy," Kristoff said.

"Only when I'm here, Kristoff; I'm only crazy here. If I ever get back to the castle, I'll be my usual charming self," Bern said.

Bern pushed back at Kristoff and got away from him. "You know, I never could understand how Elsa could stand to live in that castle where she grew up. She gave orders to tear down the north wing of the castle. She said it was because of the damage her coronation storm had done. But you know what else? The north wing of the castle was where she had her childhood bedroom, you know, the one she'd been shut into for thirteen years. And that's where the dungeon was too, where she was locked up and put in chains. She can't stand to live there either, Kristoff, so she tore it down. I'm tearing this place down as soon as mother dies. Even before her body is cold, I'm having this place razed to the ground. Maybe I'll burn it."

"I'll help you tear it down. Where's your father's office?" Kristoff asked. If he wouldn't leave, then Kristoff was going to stay with him. At least he hadn't tried to send him away yet. Kristoff knew he had a hard time around people sometimes, but he wasn't crazy like Bern was right now.

"Down this other hall," Bern said. "It's all right to change things in there, or at least it was up until yesterday. Maybe now that he's dead, she'll preserve his office forever too. This is my last chance, Kristoff, so I have to hurry."

Kristoff kept hold of Bern's upper arm, preserving the illusion that he had some kind of control or connection over his friend as they got out of the hallway of closed doors and into another wing of the house. Bern pushed open a heavy oak door and they both went in. The room was refreshingly normal. The window was open; the summer breeze stirred the blue curtains slightly. There were two desks, one piled high with documents, the other held a writing pad with inkstand and pen. Shelves and drawers lined the walls.

A map of the North Sea and its bordering countries was framed and hanging next to the window. Kristoff went to look at it while Bern opened a drawer full of letters and invoices. Arendelle was tucked inside a fjord on Norway's coastline, in the cluster of other city-state kingdoms too small to be bothered by Europe's powerful countries. Denmark had settled them in its expansionist phase back in the 1500s, declared them independent kingdoms, and then left them to their own devices a few centuries later. Norway absorbed them culturally and didn't bother to challenge their sovereignty. Arendelle wasn't the only city-state too small to have its own military.

Easthaven was the furthest north, set on a spit of land that curved into the North Sea and then east again. Weselton bordered Easthaven to the south, followed by Stenneswatt, and then Arendelle. Hamar was tucked in behind Arendelle to the west. Along the coast, Breiwick sat on Arendelle's southern border, and then Lingarth was the last mainland kingdom. The Southern Isles were a scattering of specks in the North Sea. The city-state kingdoms were only a few days sail from each other when the wind was fair, and the waterways on the map were full of colored rhumb lines.

"The lines are the shipping lanes," Bern told him. "They're the trade routes our ships follow."

"You've sailed a lot of these routes, haven't you?"

"Most of them," Bern said, starting to read.

"Hey, do you mind if I write Anna a note? I promised her I'd write," Kristoff said. It seemed that Bern's strange mood had passed, at least for the time.

"Sure, it's all right there," Bern said, pointing at the writing desk. "We can send a servant to deliver it to the castle."

Kristoff sat down and laboriously spelled out a short note, biting his lip in concentration as he tried to remember when to use capital letters. Anna was his tutor, and she would be proud of him if he got the grammar right.

Behind him, he could hear Bern start gasping and gulping. Kristoff turned around. Bern was reading letters and having trouble breathing. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped sweat away from his temples and went back to the letters. As he finished reading, he stuffed them into a brown leather satchel with gold buckles.

"Are you okay?" Kristoff asked.

"Elsa is going to have me arrested," Bern said.

Kristoff didn't try to talk Bern out of being crazy anymore. He turned back and added a few sentences to his letter. Then he folded it and sealed it with wax. He printed 'Princess Anna' on the front of it.

There was a knock at the door. Bern jumped, stuffed an entire pile of letters under another stack of documents, and called, "Come in."

It was the man Kristoff recognized as their family's butler, but he couldn't remember his name. "Sir, your mother asked me to tell you that Lady Adele and Lady Mirabelle have arrived."

"Thank you, I'll be down in a minute. Would you find a messenger to deliver a note to the castle?" Bern replied, reaching for the note Kristoff had just finished and handing it to the butler.

"Very good, sir," the man said with a bow.

As he shut the door again, Bern yanked out the pile of correspondence and started stuffing all of it into the satchel. "Help me empty that other drawer, Kristoff. Hurry, before she realizes I know what she's done." Then he shuddered hard and dropped the satchel. "Why hurry? She wants me to know what she's done. That's why she left it all here for me to find." Bern put his head down on the desk.

Kristoff opened the drawer Bern had pointed to and got out a handful of paper. He was not asking any more questions. Every time Bern answered a question, the answer was unspeakably creepy. He straightened the pile of paper and added it to Bern's satchel. When he shut the drawer, there was a crack of glass from inside. Kristoff opened the drawer again and took out a medium-sized bottle of black glass and held it up, looking for a crack. A piece had chipped off, but the bottle hadn't broken.

"I haven't seen that bottle in fifteen years," Bern said.

Kristoff looked over, set the bottle on the table, and pushed Bern's head down. "Put your head on your knees before you pass out."

He worked the stopper out of the bottle and sniffed it. "Yeesh!"

"It's medicine. Mother made me drink a dose every week for two years to keep from getting sick. Father hated it. They had a huge fight about it, and he must have hidden the bottle because I didn't have to take medicine anymore."

"What's in it?" Kristoff asked.

"I have no idea." Bern was still pale, but his eyes were focusing better.

"Did it work?" Kristoff risked another question.

"If you're asking if I'm still alive, yes I am," Bern answered.

"No, I mean, did it keep you from getting sick?"

"Yes. I still don't get sick, actually. I've never run a fever. That was always the first symptom of the illnesses that killed my siblings. They got a fever. Mother used to check me for a fever twenty times a day," Bern replied.

"At least it worked," Kristoff said.

"Have you heard the phrase, 'the cure is worse than the disease'? The person who coined that phrase was referring to that medicine," Bern said. "Take it outside and dump it out. I bet it kills whatever plant you pour it on. Get rid of it."

"All right," Kristoff said. He tucked the bottle into his sash next to his belt knife to dispose of later.

"Should we greet Ladies Adele and Mirabelle?" Bern asked, standing up and doing up the buckles on the satchel. "Let me put this in my room first. And then, Kristoff, it's time for you to leave."

"I think I should stay," Kristoff said.

"You said you'd leave when I asked you to. I'm asking you to leave," Bern replied.

"Are you going to be all right?"

"Leave anyway," Bern said, his voice rising. "I mean it. Get out."

"Okay. I'll say 'hi' and get out," Kristoff said.

Bern got a ledger off the shelf, and took the satchel of letters and invoices back into that hallway of closed doors and left them in his childhood room. As they went down the front stairs, they could hear the voices of women in the parlor. Bern stumbled and Kristoff grabbed his arm to steady him.

"Is that Bern? I think I hear my son," Lady Nadja called, coming out to greet them.

It was when Kristoff saw the expression on Lady Nadja's face that he realized every word Bern had said about his mother was true. She looked at her haggard and staggering son, and her eyes glinted with triumph, like a cat that's finally toyed a mouse into exhaustion. Then she erased the expression into concern and rushed up the stairs towards them.

"Come sit down, son. It must have been such an ordeal to see your father buried," Lady Nadja commiserated.

"I'm fine. I don't need to sit down," Bern said.

"Mother knows best," Lady Nadja replied.

Kristoff pulled Bern towards him, out of his mother's reach and got him into the parlor, where it would be bad manners if he sat down because the other ladies were still standing.

"Kristoff! It's so good to see you again, even under such terrible circumstances," said Lady Adele, Gustav's wife. "Good heavens, what's happened to Bern? Sit down, young man."

Lady Mirabelle, Rodmund's wife, hastily moved embroidered pillows off the couch and they fussed over him until he sat down.

"I'll be fine," Bern said.

"You know, he probably needs some fresh air," Kristoff said. He could get away with breaking social rules since he had a great excuse for not knowing what they were. "How about he walks me out? I'm really sorry I can't stay longer, but I had some other business I needed to get done. It was so nice to see you both again. Lady Nadja, thank you for your hospitality."

"I'll have a servant bring you your things," Lady Nadja said.

"Great. I'll be in the stables." Kristoff hauled Bern off the couch again and left with him, the ladies murmuring concern behind them.

In the stables, Sven snorted happily at Kristoff and Kristoff rubbed his head and apologized for not bringing him a carrot. "Are you ready to go?"

Sven bleated out an affirmation.

"Bern, want to run away from home?"

"What?"

"Leave with me. What are they going to do, chase you down?"

"I can't leave," Bern said, leaning heavily against the wall and looking at the floor.

"Why not?"

"She's ruined me, my career, the economy, everything."

"Then I'm staying with you," Kristoff announced.

"No you're not!" Bern flared at him. "You said you'd leave when I told you to go, and I want you out of here."

Kristoff dug up a memory from last summer of Anna insisting she wasn't leaving without Elsa. He had the feeling that if Bern had been able to do it, there would be a snow monster erupting out of the floor right now. It hadn't done Anna any good to insist on staying.

Kristoff dug a finger into his chest. "If you stay, you're going to end up as a ghost too. You know that, don't you?"

The servant arrived with Kristoff's things and packed them into the bag slung over Sven's back.

"Just go," Bern said. "I have to get back."

Kristoff watched Bern go back into the house before he walked Sven towards the lane. About halfway down the poplar-lined lane, he turned and headed into the trees. In about ten minutes, they were out of sight of the house, the lane, and the road. Kristoff stopped next to a stream, in a small clearing among the trees. He worked the medicine bottle out of his sash and tucked it into the saddlebag. He wanted to ask someone about that kind of medicine before he got rid of it.

Sven snorted a question.

Kristoff shrugged. "I told Bern I'd leave; I didn't tell him how far I'd go. Let's set up camp."