Ten thousand miles away, in a cave in the North Mountain, Elsa was watching snowmen fight to the death.
She had been unable to bear the thought of all the empty rooms where she and Anna had once laughed; all the ancient stones which still rang with Anna's voice, so close yet so far, so she had refused to return to Castle Arendelle. She had expected her father to give her another tirade on duty, but on the contrary, he had almost seemed relieved. So she had gotten the hidden cave. It was much larger than her bedroom in the castle, her father had seen to it that it was furnished as befit a Crown Princess, and she had her own servants and guards to command, but even after seven years, it still did not feel like home.
The snowman fights, however, were the best part of Elsa's day. There were nearly infinite combinations of existing snowmen to pit against each other, and once those ran out, Elsa could just design new snowmen and start all over again. On average, five of her current small snowmen could take down one of her current large snowmen, if they worked together seamlessly. Each snowman had its own personality, and some of Elsa's favourite fights were those where one side forgot about the other and started a new fight amongst themselves. Sometimes one of the snowmen would even sit down and refuse to fight, and the others would fall upon it and gleefully stamp it into powder. But most of the snowmen she created were wild and angry and ready to entertain.
That day she had pitted a particularly vicious large snowman she had nicknamed Marshmallow against ten small ones. Marshmallow was the winner of five previous battles, and as his roar echoed through the cavern Elsa used as an arena, the seven small snowmen scattered in terror. He would surely have to destroy a few of them to make the others attack. Otherwise, Elsa hoped that he would chase them into one of the two corridors where she had hidden a large snowman to serve as a wildcard. Neither of them had been told which side to take, and it would be interesting to see which they would choose. Elsa had learned that the only way to judge a man's true character was to put him on the battlefield. The same went for snowmen, and for little white-haired Crown Princesses.
"Who do you think's going to win today, Olaf?" Elsa asked the snowman against whose leg she was leaning.
"Big win," Olaf grunted. "Big always win."
Elsa laughed. "Oh Olaf, you don't understand anything about strategy!"
"What strategy? Can Olaf smash?"
"No, Olaf, you can't smash strategy." Elsa rested her head on the compacted snow that made up his knee. "Well, I guess someone as strong as you and I could."
Olaf's laughter rumbled through the cavern as he patted Elsa's head with one icy claw, leaving frost in her hair. "Small queen. Sweet queen. Olaf strong, but small queen stronger."
Elsa still remembered the day seven years ago when she had created Olaf.
That was back when she was still staying with the garrison at the Weselton border. The soldiers there had been hard men, cold as the grey cliffs that surrounded the meagre fort. They had not been cruel to her, not even while her father was away, but they had never been kind either. Even their horses kicked and bit when she tried to offer them apples and carrots.
Elsa would surely have crumbled had it not been for that glorious ecstasy of vengeance; that murder-scented wind that blew in from Weselton every single day.
And Olaf.
It had started on the night after Elsa had destroyed the capital. She had expected to feel closure; triumph; elation; anger; fear; anything at all. But there had been nothing. She had felt like a punctured balloon as she lay on her cot and wept, feeling a little bit of her soul leaking out into the cold night air with every sob. If the guards outside her door heard anything, they did not show it.
She had dreamed of Anna again that night, building a snowman against a burning sky, giggling louder and louder until her giggles turned into shrieks of pain. And she had realised that the icy apocalypse she had unleashed upon Weselton could do no more to avenge Anna than the snowman they had built that night could have done to protect her.
The morning had dawned upon Elsa building a snowman in the courtyard.
Elsa could have used her powers, but she chose not to. Breaking the compacted snow apart with her bare hands had felt almost like digging a grave, and when her fingers began to ache she had gritted her teeth and kept on digging, savouring the cleansing hurt. Every little detail of the snowman had had to be exactly as it had been on the night of Anna's death: the same peculiarly shaped head; stick arms of the same length; pebble eyes of the same shape and colour. A carrot stolen from the store room had completed him nicely.
"Hi, I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs!" the snowman had announced after Elsa brought him to life with just a casual wave of her hand. Elsa had knelt and cried in his stick arms.
They had spent the rest of the day wandering through the fort, scaring soldiers and talking about everything and nothing. It had sent a twinge not unlike pain through Elsa's chest when Olaf told her that he did in fact remember Anna. He thought that Anna gave the warmest hugs out of anyone he had ever met – though Elsa's cold hugs were nice too. Yes, she did, Elsa had replied, and she would have started crying again if Olaf had not hurriedly asked her to tell him some funny stories about Anna. Elsa had told him all about her and Elsa's raids on the royal kitchens, and the way Anna had always cajoled Elsa into using her powers for the purpose of pranking staff and foreign ministers alike. Every time the sweet sorrow threatened to overtake her, Olaf had patted her shoulder and told her that people never really died; that they lived on and brightened the world with happy memories.
In the evening they had built a little model of Castle Arendelle in the courtyard. Olaf had been terribly excited to see his "birthplace", and Elsa had hesitated for a moment before finishing the castle with a wall of blue ice, complete with twigs and rocks for the men and weapons trapped inside it.
It was then that the soldier had staggered into the courtyard. Olaf had waved at him, and the soldier's eyes had gone wide in terror. With a cry of "Goddamn it!" he had stumbled back, slipped, and fallen on his backside in the snow.
Even from a distance, Elsa had been able to smell drink on him.
"Don't be afraid of him," she had said with a smile. "He's my friend. His name is Olaf."
"Monster," the soldier had spat in reply. "Helping the war effort was one thing, but this... this is blasphemy! You're a monster making more monsters. The king should kill you once this war's over."
He had struggled to his feet and left almost at a run, and Elsa had rolled her eyes and promised Olaf that her father would deal harshly with such rudeness.
Olaf's smile had disappeared as he asked Elsa if he really was a monster, but before Elsa had had a chance to reply, the soldier returned with four of his comrades. Their faces had been hard and grim and they had not walked; they had marched across the courtyard as though into battle. An iron fist had twisted Elsa's heart as she noticed that two of them carried a steaming cast iron pot between them.
"What are you doing?" she had asked, springing to her feet. "I don't need you. Go back to your wine."
The soldiers had paid no attention to her.
"What do you think you're doing? Don't come any closer. The heat's bad for Olaf!"
"Damn right it is," the soldier who had called her a monster growled. "I'll grab that damn snowman, you take care of the girl!"
"Oh, no," Olaf had muttered. "Oh, no no no no, this is bad... Run, Elsa! I'll draw them off!"
But the soldier had already launched himself at Olaf. The snowman had squealed and tried to run away on his stubby legs, with the soldier scrambling behind him. They had struggled around the courtyard, trampling the snow castle, splinters of the ice wall tinkling like broken glass under the soldier's boots while Elsa begged them to stop.
"Please!" she could remember herself screaming as two soldiers twisted her arms behind her back, squeezing her hands between their bodies. "He's my friend; my only friend! He never did anything to you, he's harmless, why are you doing this, let him go, please!"
But her words could just as well have been snowflakes. In the trampled ruins of her Castle Arendelle, the drunken soldier had pinned Olaf to the ground. His carrot nose was snapped in half; one of his arms was missing and the other stuck out at an odd angle; his pebble eyes were big with terror. And the remaining two soldiers were holding the pot over him, tilting it until a drop of steaming water wormed into his cheek with a hiss...
"Noooo!" Elsa had howled, choking on sobs. "Let him go, I'll do anything! PLEASE!"
And Olaf had begun to change.
A whirlwind of snow had risen around him, blowing the water away harmlessly. He had bulged out like a marshmallow in an oven as the snow stuck to him, his stick arms and hair snapping off, his pebble eyes and buttons clinking to the ground. His torso had widened into a snow-swept mountain; his arms and legs had grown as thick as tree trunks; his face had condensed into two black holes for eyes and below them a mouth that gaped like a cave. Shards of blue ice, sharp as swords and thick as stalactites, had sprouted from his hands, his back, and the roof of his mouth. With one sweep of a club-like arm, he had sent both soldiers and the pot flying. As his fist closed around the drunken one, Elsa had noticed that there was no longer anyone holding her arms.
"Bad man hurt Olaf!" he had roared, smashing the soldier against the perimeter wall over and over until Elsa's head had begun to pound from the impact. By the second blow the soldier had lost consciousness, lolling like a ragdoll in Olaf's grip, his face the colour of curdled milk.
"How you like hurt, bad man?" Olaf had asked as he dropped the soldier to the ground. His fist had been stained pink with blood, and he had laughed with a sound like the ground opening and all the deep dark things awakening from their slumber.
When the King arrived, he had assured Elsa that she and Olaf had done the right thing, and that the drunken soldier was not dead, only knocked out.
All the same, Elsa never saw that soldier again.
"I understand it now," Elsa said aloud. "Papa had planned it all along. He wanted to see if I can transfer my powers to the things I create."
"What small queen say?" Olaf grunted. "Olaf not understand."
"It's nothing. Just something I remembered from long ago."
The two reserve snowmen had joined Marshmallow after all. Elsa watched them obliterating the shrieking small snowmen, and felt just a little disappointed. Big always win, Olaf had said, and the other snowmen all seemed to think so too. Justice and revenge and championing the oppressed did not seem to cross their minds at all.
In fact, Elsa was forced to admit, not much did.
It was useless to miss the old Olaf. He had been weak and fragile, just like that little princess who had stood on the watchtower and refused to kill people even though they were enemies. Survival was moving forward; letting old precious things flutter away like dandelion seeds from the lips of a child.
Elsa wondered, without really feeling anything, just how much had been planned by her father. Two years ago, five of her guards had cornered her in her bedroom as she changed into her nightgown and tried to force themselves on her. They had squealed like pigs as she mounted each of them on an ice spike. One year ago, her replacement set of guards had delivered to her two men whom they claimed to be Weselton spies. She and Olaf had managed to keep them alive for two weeks. Watching them die with their broken hands clasping her feet had not hurt at all.
She wondered how long ago her father had last come to visit her.
She wondered how long ago she had last seen the sky.
She did not keep track of the days. Of course, she could have if she wanted to, but she did not see any point in doing so. Only the years she counted, because every Christmas her father would come to visit her, and they would have a little dinner with her guards and handmaids. He brought her expensive gifts – an ermine fur coat that had become food for moths in her closet; a white silk dress set with rubies that she never wore because it made her look like she was bleeding all over; earrings with diamonds and sapphires which she never bothered finding when they fell out; even a little white kitten with a jewelled collar that wandered out into the snow and died.
"Small queen look sad. Snowman fight bad? Must Olaf go smash?"
"Yes, Olaf," Elsa admitted, "I am sad. No, don't go smash Marshmallow, he fought well. I just can't live like this anymore."
Olaf cradled her like a baby. "Olaf's queen. Why queen sad?"
"Because I need another war, Olaf." Elsa sighed, and two tears slid down her cheeks, freezing solid on Olaf's arm. "I need more vengeance. I need more death."