Of the Snow Queen's Palace and What Happened There
Gilbert had left Elizabeta only a short distance from the door to the palace, and she walked to it easily enough, only to be stopped by two figures, guards made entirely of ice.
"None shall enter here except by order of their Majesties," the first said, as the second grabbed her shoulder, leaving a handprint in frost there after turning her towards him. "You must leave now, stranger."
Elizabeta hissed at the intense cold in her shoulder, which had cut through the coat and down to her very bones, but looked straight into the white eyes of the first guard and said, "I have business with the Snow Queen, and will not leave until it is complete."
"You may not go in," the first guard replied, still expressionless.
They stood before her, not moving except to speak, and Elizabeta stared back at them. "Your Queen has stolen something of mine," she explained, slowly and deliberately so as to keep any anxiety out of her voice. "I wish only to retrieve it."
"You will fail."
"Perhaps." She shrugged her shoulders, hand still on the handle of the frying pan. "Perhaps not."
The guards looked her up and down once more, and shook their heads. Their grating voices chorused, "We will not let you enter."
"And yet I must." There was a moment of silence, in which Elizabeta stared down the two ice-men, before she gripped the handle of Tino's pan in both hands, and swung it with all her might against the chest of one of the first guard. She hit him with the side, rather than the flat, and he flew backwards, dented and crackling.
The other guard watched the exchange silently, and met her gaze when she turned on him, still shaking his head. This time, she swung at his neck, and shattered his hand into pieces when he held it up in defense. With a few more swings, she had the second guard on the ground, neck chipped and cracked dangerously, only to see the first again, on his feet and accompanied by a third.
They ran at her together, and while she managed to break one of the knees on the new guard, the first grabbed her other wrist, at the point where her coat sleeve met the end of her mitten. The cold sunk in faster there, and Elizabeta cried out in pain. She escaped the grasp only a few moments later, by breaking the guards arm, and brushing away the pieces, but her arm was already numb nearly to her elbow. Another swing, which landed near the dent from the first one, sent him to the ground, crackling loudly again.
Elizabeta took a moment to catch her breath, grip her wrist in the other mitten. Her hand was going numb alarmingly quickly, and pins and needles were still racing up and down her arm. When her grip did nothing to warm the wrist, she hugged the whole arm to her, hoping to surround it with her coat and so let it recover. In this way, Elizabeta walked though the now unguarded doors of the Snow Queen's Palace, which stood on the frozen sea.
For a long while, she walked though empty corridors so silent that the sounds of her breathing echoed off the walls and in her ears. Everything was white, as the walls and floor were made of ice and snow, but without the light from even the dim sun outside, it seemed dark. Elizabeta wandered aimlessly for a long stretch of time, though she could not say exactly how long, seeing only the same white walls around her, until she came to the very center of the Palace.
The center was one room, and here the floor turned from white snow to pure clear ice, which reflected as well as any mirror. Through the floor, and through her own reflection, Elizabeta saw shoals of fish swimming, and a large seal chasing them. The water was an eerie blue-green, and the whole room was cast faintly in that color as well.
On a raised dais across the room, were three thrones, though the one on the right was empty. On the left hand side sat the Snow Queen, all in white, and just how Elizabeta remembered her from that one night in the forest.
Beside her, on the center throne, was a man. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, and just as pale as the Snow Queen, with eyes an unsettling purple in an otherwise childishly friendly face. Instead of the white furs the Queen preferred, he wore a wool coat, surprisingly undecorated, and a circlet of what appeared to be pure ice about his forehead.
Elizabeta, of course, barely noticed them, for also across the icy hall was Roderich, sitting at a crystal clear piano just to the right of the dais. He was playing something incredibly virtuosic, with all the feeling of an icicle, and it sent a chill through her to hear it. But after a moment to steady herself, she started towards him, calling his name.
He didn't turn, or even look up from the keys of the piano. As she approached, she saw the slightly pink tinge the keys had taken, and winced, but did not stop until she was just behind him. Elizabeta stopped then, and took a deep breath before placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Roderich, it's me. Elizabeta." He turned, and his expression was completely blank as he looked up at her. "Don't you remember me?"
The man blinked, and said the name a few times. "Elizabeta? Elizabeta. I knew someone by that name once."
"That was me." She sat down on the piano bench, and took one of his hands in hers. "We were to be married."
"Were we?" Roderich seemed puzzled for a moment, and peered at her for a long moment before the memory dawned on him. "Oh, yes. I remember now. Hmmm, right. Well, there's no reason to anymore."
Silence stretched between them as Elizabeta stared in horror. "I love you," she said, in a trembling voice. "Is that not a reason?"
"Not when its a lie."
"Roderich! How can you say such—"
"Can you deny it?"
She opened her mouth to respond, but the words died on her tongue. A moment later, she swallowed and asked, "Why propose in the first place, then?"
"It was expected. Easy." Roderich shrugged, but Elizabeta shook her head at him. "I needed someone who was as good at pretending as I was. You were even better." He watched Elizabeta with a vaguely curious expression as she fought to hold back tears. "It would be acceptable for you to cry now. You came all this way for nothing."
"No. I didn't. I won't." She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked back at him. "It wouldn't do me any good, and tears would just freeze on my face."
Roderich nodded once in response, though his expression was troubled, and said, "That is true."
The two of them sat at the piano together in a static silence, before Roderich blinked and cleared his throat. "I should introduce you to our hosts. It was the Snow Queen herself who brought me here, and her sister who made the piano for me."
"We've met, Roderich," the Snow Queen called from her throne, smiling a little at Elizabeta. "I'm sure you remember."
Elizabeta simply nodded. "Shall we skip the formalities then? You must have realized by now that your journey is at an end. Roderich is content here, more than he was with you. Let him remain here, as he wishes, if you have any love for him at all."
Elizabeta took a few moments to stare at Roderich, who was staring, apparently awestruck, at the Snow Queen on her throne, before nodding once. "Let me have a little time with him to say goodbye then, if I am never to see him again."
This the Snow Queen could not reasonably deny her, but she watched Roderich turn back to the piano and begin to play again, picking up from where she had stopped him before, and smiled.
As Roderich played, Elizabeta sat next to him and watched his fingers dance over the keys. They bled a little after he held chords, when his skin would freeze to the keys and be ripped away, but Roderich never seemed to notice. He just stared at the wall behind the piano, his expression serene yet focused, and ignored Elizabeta completely. She waited until he finished before speaking again.
"May I?" She asked, gesturing to the piano. "You taught me to play one of the songs I knew. I think I still remember how."
Roderich shrugged his shoulders and shifted over on the bench, giving her more room and access to the middle range of the keyboard. The only song Elizabeta knew was the lullaby her grandmother had sung to her as a child, set to the simple harmonies Roderich had arranged for her, but she had played it many times on his piano after he disappeared, in his memory. Roderich seemed to recognize it, and looked at her with a confused expression.
After playing the melody once, haltingly, on the icy keys, Elizabeta sang the lullaby while accompanying herself. She made more mistakes this time, as her fingers started to freeze to the keys, and her throat was raw with disappointment and failure. The words of the song, about spring coming to a mountain, seemed meaningless and hollow in such a desolate hall, and Elizabeta found herself nearly ready to give up and slink away into a cold corner, never to move again.
It was then that Roderich's cold hands covered hers, taking over the piano part. Her singing faltered, but he slowed with her, and nodded for her to continue. They went through the whole lullaby again, and again with Elizabeta improvising a second verse. The ghost of a memory pulled at her mind, but it was fleeting, and gone by the time she looked back at Roderich. His eyes were warmer now as he looked down at the keys, expanding her clumsy chord progressions into counter melodies and trilling ornaments.
Elizabeta sang along to one more repetition, then fell silent as Roderich closed his eyes, and meandered through a number of variations, finally settling on a rich and grand hymn-style arrangement. As he came to the closing cadence, he turned his closed eyes to the ceiling, and smiled as if he could see the clear sky and feel the sun on his face.
As the last chord rang through the room, the piano cracked right down the middle, and fell to the floor, shattering into thousands of pieces as it hit the more solid ice. A single tear rolled down Roderich's cheek, and though he turned away so that she wouldn't see, Elizabeta gently pulled his face back towards her, and wiped the drop of water away with a smile. "Don't cry, Roderich. It will freeze on your face."
He nodded, and shivered, but stood and walked over to the Snow Queen's throne. "Your Majesties," he began, "You said when I arrived that you would not keep me against my will. If you will indeed stand by that, I think it time that I go home."
The Snow Queen glared at Elizabeta over Roderich's shoulder, but said nothing, only nodded. Roderich bowed low to her and to the man seated next to her, and turned on his heel. Now freed from the spell that had been on him, his lips were turning blue, but he smiled, and there was a light in his eyes again. Elizabeta felt a weight lift from her heart.
After wrapping the man in the coat she had borrowed from Berwald, though, Elizabeta hesitated, even as Roderich started towards the door. "Wait," she called to him, "I'm not finished here." Her words echoed through the room, and out into the empty halls, as she turned back to the Snow Queen again.
"You have what you came for, do you not?" the Queen asked her. "What keeps you?"
"There is something else you took from me, so long ago that I had almost forgotten. It is yet dear to me, and I would have it back."
"This is what happens, sister," the man said, a strange twinkle in his eye. "You give into the demands of the small and they think they are not so small anymore. You put too much faith in your tricks and too little in her."
Snow Queen sat, staring at Elizabeta intently for long enough that the girl thought she may have frozen in her place.
"What more would you have from me, little flower?"
"My oldest friend, to whom I owe my life," Elizabeta replied, trying desperately to keep the shivers out of her voice.
"Prove to me he has everything he desires here, and I shall leave without another word. If not, I shall bring him home to his family."
Gilbert had been sitting on his own chair of ice behind the Snow Queen's, and had not been paying much attention until that moment. After all, he had little interest in Roderich and his fate, and no desire to risk his Queen's anger. He had been listening, though, and his head snapped up so that he could look straight into Elizabeta's eyes, and he saw neither lies nor fear there.
The Snow Queen laughed lightly to herself, as she sized up the young woman before her. She had melted her Roderich's heart, it was true, but what chance did such a small girl have against her magic? "Very well," the Snow Queen said, nodding to Elizabeta before asking, "North Wind, is there anything you desire that you do not already have?"
"There is. I'd like some pancakes."
"Pancakes?" The Snow Queen turned to stare at Gilbert, who was lounging in his chair with a self-satisfied smirk. "Is that all?"
"Your Highness," he drawled, without even looking at her, "Everyone knows that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach."
"You haven't got a heart," she told him, her voice suddenly cold.
Gilbert turned to her, the sparkle of mischief back in his eyes after many years, and said, "But I do have a stomach."
"So you do," the Snow Queen conceded. She sighed, knowing there was nothing she could do but go through with the challenge, and nodded once. "Pancakes it is."
As soon as the Snow Queen turned back around, Gilbert winked conspicuously at Elizabeta, who rolled her eyes and then said to the Snow Queen, "If he takes this opportunity to ask for something as simple as a plate of pancakes, then you clearly are not giving him everything he needs."
"He has never asked before." The Snow Queen stood and shot a look at the taller man behind her. "And he has grown so tall that you cannot possibly be insinuating that I do not feed him."
Elizabeta shrugged her shoulders, and let the topic drop. "I assume, then, that you have a kitchen that I may use?"
The Snow Queen nodded graciously, but the pale man in the other throne, who had been observing silently with a strange smile on his face, spoke up. "The General will not be pleased to hear of one failure. If another gets away, he will be merciless."
"It was your failure before, brother, not mine." She turned to smile at Elizabeta. "I will play her game, and the little flower will take what she earns."
And so Elizabeta was shown to a small stone room, where she found a man and a boy talking quietly. When she entered, they looked up in terror, but relaxed immediately when they did not recognize her. "Who are you?" the man asked. He shooed the boy towards another door with a quick, "Find Eduard. Quickly."
"It doesn't matter," she replied, regarding the man curiously. "I simply need a stove and a few ingredients. Have you any eggs?"
He blinked, then pointed to a pantry to his left. "What are you doing here?"
"Rescuing a…er, friend." The man raised an eyebrow, and Elizabeta realized just how unlikely that must seem to him. "It's a bit of a story, but I don't really have the time to tell it. Right now, I need to make pancakes."
The extra explanation did not seem to help. "Pancakes?" he asked, his eyebrows rising high enough to disappear into his hair. His voice was steady though, and he watched her root around what she assumed was his kitchen more curiously than nervously now.
"Yes," She replied as she measured out flour. "Pancakes. Who are you?"
"Toris. I work here." He watched her work with a stunned blankness, occasionally pointing when she asked for different ingredients. "Will they be angry?"
"I am trying to take the North Wind, I guess. They seemed more frightened than angry, but..." She trailed off as he stared at her.
"And how do you know the North Wind?"
"Again, it's a long story. Is there sugar?" Toris pointed again, and she found the surprisingly large container easily. As she mixed, she found herself recounting her childhood with Gilbert, fuzzy as her memories were, and how he had disappeared. She described her journey to find Roderich as concisely as possible, but it took longer that she'd expected. When she finished, Toris was still standing in the same spot, jaw hanging slack.
"What's wrong?"
The man shook his head quickly, then smiled. "Nothing. I'm just a little surprised. Not many people would come this far for anyone, let alone risk what they've already won."
"That's fair, I suppose. But what I've already won wasn't exactly what I expected it to be."
"Also, you've challenged the Snow Queen in cooking."
"Well, at least it's not laundry. I hate laundry."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"It's not about pancakes specifically. I need to show her that I can give him something she can't, and then I can take him home. He could have asked for any number of things."
"So why pancakes?"
For a moment, Elizabeta was silent as she flipped a pancake in the skillet, but after a few moments of thought she was forced to admit, "I don't know."
Toris didn't pry further, and let her cook the rest of the batter into a small pile of pancakes. She placed them on a touch wooden plate, and brought them out still hot, with jam and butter and sugar on top the way her grandmother had always served them.
The Snow Queen looked over at Elizabeta's still steaming pile disdainfully, and waved a hand over the small table that was now next to her. In a flurry of white, another plate appeared, covered in perfectly circular pancakes of just the right color, dusted with powdered sugar and arranged prettily enough that the plate could have been called art.
Gilbert was lounging in his chair again when the plates were presented to him, and he took a few bites of each, keeping his face as blank as possible. After a moment of this, he sighed, smiled a tiny smile and grabbed Elizabeta's plate, attacking what was left on it.
"Have you decided, then?" The Snow Queen asked, her tone bordering on disgusted.
Swallowing a particularly large mouthful, Gilbert nodded, and took a second before saying, "I have never been, and will never be anything but honest with you, Majesty. Elizabeta's are pancakes, and yours are nothing but snow and cold air."
There was a moment of silence, in which the Snow Queen glared at Elizabeta so ferociously that anyone less courageous might have fled, even in their victory. This moment was broken only by the man to the queen's left, the king, who said, "You may speak the truth, North Wind, but I think you will change your mind."
"And why should I?"
"Because you will remember, in a moment, why you are here."
Gilbert's eyes widened, as he looked between the king and Elizabeta. "You wouldn't."
"Oh, but I would." The king smiled from his throne. "If you do not keep to your agreement, why should we?"
"That deal was with her, not you."
The Snow Queen just looked to her king, and shrugged her shoulders indifferently. He raised an eyebrow and continued. "It would have been me, not her, who killed the girl."
"She's not so small anymore," Gilbert said, now a bit more wary. "She will be better able to withstand your cold."
"I would not be so certain." The king turned to Elizabeta next, and the gleam of victory was in his eye already. "Did you think you were cold before? Outside when the ice touched you? Did you feel a chill when you entered my palace?"
Elizabeta didn't answer, but her hand gripped her wrist automatically, and she could feel even more acutely how it burned and ached. The king simply nodded, his smile growing just barely wider. He could kill her where she stood if he wanted to, with nothing more than his eyes, and now they both knew. One look at Gilbert told Elizabeta that he knew it too.
And Gilbert was afraid.
She could see it in his face, in his wide eyes and tight line of a mouth. She should see it in his raised shoulders, in his shifting feet, and in the slight trembling of his hands. He was afraid for her, and he knew the powers of the king better than she. It was in that moment that, Elizabeta realized she had never seen him afraid.
"Come now, North Wind," the king said. "My sister and I went along with your little game. Play mine with me."
"I've had quite enough of games for today."
"I won't ask again." The king's grin stayed fixed in place, but his eyes glinted icy cold in Liz's direction. "Play with me."
Gilbert just shook his head, as an idea came to him. A long shot, but worth the try. "I can't just do what you want all the time anymore."
"Why not?"
"I owe her my allegiance too." Gilbert gestured behind him at Elizabeta, who was starting to shiver violently. "I owe her my loyalty, and my obedience. Everything I owe your sister. She's also won me in a fair bargain."
"I fail to see why this is relevant."
"I can't do what you want because it's in direct contrast with what she wants. But I also can't do what she wants because it's in direct contrast with what you want." The king turned a quizzical gaze on him, but Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders and continued. "This is why I dislike having to deal with other people. It always becomes so complicated."
"Make your point soon, North Wind, or it will cease to matter."
For a moment, the fear he'd felt before blossomed back up in the pit of his stomach, but Gilbert squashed it back down, just barely managing to not look back at Elizabeta. "I'm getting there. The point is that I can't do what either of you tells me. Therefore, I have to do what I, as a now somewhat impartial party, feel is right."
"You are not impartial, my friend."
"No, but I have such conflicting responsibilities that I may as well have no ties to either you or her. I have to chose anyway."
"Alright, I will indulge you. What do you think you should do now?"
"Threaten you." There was a moment's pause, in which the king seemed to stumble over a reply. That moment stretched longer as every person in the room realized they had no idea what to say. Gilbert shrugged once more, and whistled for the North Wind, which stirred slowly throughout the hall. Small whirlwinds, turned white by the snow they kicked up, danced lazily around him for a moment before growing and combining into an ever widening cyclone.
"Ivan, if you do not let us leave, I will bring down this palace on your head."
"It would come down on yours too. And on the little girl's."
"You underestimate me." Gilbert grinned a little, and the wind picked up, groaning eerily through the hall and tearing more snow free of the walls. "You think I haven't sat in this room planning exactly how I would tear your palace apart? Of course I have."
"I had thought we were better friends than that."
At this, Gilbert just laughed, and the wind blew even faster, until Elizabeta's hair was snapping behind her and the hall was echoing with its wails. The walls were shaking now, ever so slightly, and when small puffs of snow started flying off of them, the Snow Queen reached over to grip her brother's arm. Neither Gilbert nor Elizabeta could hear her words, but she was clearly panicking.
Elizabeta was struggling to keep her feet before long. Roderich had fallen to his knees by the doorway, she saw, and was curled up as tight as he could in the coat she had given him. But even he, only a few paces away was fading into the white of the storm. She could see no one else, though she thought she heard the Snow Queen's shrill cries mingling with the wind.
Then there, suddenly, was Gilbert before her, reaching out a hand to pull her into the calm around him. He stood at the very eye of the storm and the wind was merely ruffling his hair. "Come on, Liz," he said, and somehow she heard him over the howling, "Come with me, and let's be gone from here."
She took the hand, stepped into his embrace, and they walked together to retrieve Roderich, then out the door of the great room, which collapsed behind them.
[Sorry this took so long. Austria is a bit of a diva. And I really wanted this to be seven chapters, but the What Happened After bit was going to make this too much for one chapter.]
