Part Two - Concurrent

VII.

My first years in the Arendelle dungeon might just have been the best years of my life. Not for comfort or leisure, of course, by a long shot. I never was sent to any sort of holding cell; the King must have made it very clear how he felt about me, and the guards immediately threw me into a room accordingly. I fell face first into the dank cell, landing on the scattering of straw that was supposed to be a bed as the guards slammed the door behind me. As I scanned the mossy, cavernous stone room, I found that I was alone with an ashy spot for a fireplace, a putrid corner for a bathroom, and about a dozen rats. The cell was an odd combination of humid and cold, and water dripped into puddles on the ground from moss clumps in the ceiling. Void of energy on that first day, I simply accepted the cell as my new home and went to sleep on the straw.

The conditions in the cell were, to say the least, not ideal. On the first day, an executioner had loped off my frostbitten left hand to prevent me from dying of an infection before experiencing torture, and the stub that was left over still stung after a night of rest. Food was to be served once every day at noon and consisted of a stale lump of bread, a small raw potato, and water. The room was always too wet and too cold; I would find the strangest weeds and insects clinging to the wall, or to me. The rats were a nuisance; they gnawed at my feet while I ate, and woke me up at night with their endless attack on my toes. On the third day of imprisonment, I was pulled into the first torture session.

Well before sunrise, a large ringing thud jolted me awake. I spun my head to see the jailer motioning for me to step out of the cell. He threw a coarse sack over my head as I walked out and, grabbing both of my hand behind my back, lead me to a hot, stony room. He took my hood off for me to behold walls lined with gruesome, blood-spattered devices, and pushed me towards broad and burly man with a leather bullwhip. The first day proceeded as the sessions usually did: the man would give me fifty lashes on the back, occasionally throwing in a shot in the chest or legs or arms for variety. There were days on which I was, for some reason or another, forced to endure one of the machines on the wall, but I try not to think of those too much.

No, the Arendelle dungeon provided me with something much more valuable than physical comfort – knowledge, and control. A month into my stay at the dungeon, the guards threw another man into my cell. He was older, probably over fifty years of age, and had long fading hair that flowed into a white bush of a beard. The deep and grimy ridges and wrinkles on his face surrounding his bright brown eyes contrasted with his muscular arms and broad chest, and I didn't know what to think of him until he had started talking. I don't exactly remember why we started talking; it was just that I felt like I could talk with him for hours, I suppose, and I was right to feel that way. He introduced himself simply as Mikael, and after I had introduced myself simply as Erik, we began a winding and adventurous conversation that lasted until we were too tired to make intelligible sounds. And as we talked with each other for the following months, we began to learn more about each other, and about the larger world. I told my life story, and he what I thought was his. I never thought to ask Mikael how he could have possibly known the things he knew, but I got as much information from him as I could have ever hoped for. I learned that Elsa had been taken to the Valley of the Living Rock, where she was completely healed from her injury, but had no memory of my existence in exchange. Through a newspaper that, with Mikael's convincing, a scrawny guard smuggled in for us every week, I learned that the King and Queen of Arendelle had died on a boat, and that Elsa was to be queen when she came of age. I learned that the King of Fordane had also passed, and that his son had become King Joakim of Fordane. I also learned that King Joakim was his only son…

It took me a while to come to grips with the fact that, in the eyes of the outside world, I didn't exist. Not as Joakim's brother, not as the link between Fordane and Arendelle, not even as a distant memory in Elsa's mind. My entire life had been wiped clean, as if I had magically popped into existence as a prisoner a few months before the King and Queen of Arendelle had passed. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Elsa had made it out of the madness without harm, but even then I found myself forcefully reminded that, as far as she knew, I was just another prisoner.

The most freeing knowledge, though, and the reason I can call those years the best of my life, was the knowledge of fire. For the month before Mikael had arrived and for a month afterwards, I found myself recalling the letter Joakim had given me before I had left for Arendelle every time I sneezed fire or coughed up a flame. I kept it in a crack in the stone near my half of the straw bed, and read it every now and then. I was sick, I kept telling myself. I should have built a fire in the fireplace spot somehow, but I settled on channeling my outbursts through the dusty chimney. However, after the first month of conversation with Mikael, I felt like I could trust him with knowledge of my sickness. Just remember, your sickness is a secret from everyone, Joakim had told me. If telling Mikael everything was a mistake, then it was a wonderful mistake.

Mikael didn't ask for a demonstration first. He assured me that, based on my description, my so-called sickness sounded more like an ability or power than it did a disease, and that I should learn to harness it. It was the first time I had ever heard someone speak of my fire positively; not Dad, or Joakim, or even Elsa had anything to say about my sickness besides that: it was a sickness. Given this boost of confidence, over time I had began to try different things with Mikael, who I supposed used the wisdom of his years to help me succeed. I started out with small puffs from my hand and feet, which took only a month of work to produce on queue. I worked my way up to steady flames, and small fireballs, and fire breath. Within a year I could produce a warm, gentle, radiating heat, which was significantly harder than launching a fireball, as it required far more control.

I hadn't noticed for a while, but I began to realize that all the telltale symptoms of my sickness had vanished. It wasn't as if they had merely gone into remission for the summer months like they had for the last twenty-three years; they actually vanished. I had no sweaty palms or soles, and no feeling of heartburn in my chest, and the need to vomit flames had become so far removed from me that it almost seemed absurd. I discussed this with Mikael during one of our classic talks and, putting his wise mind to thought for a few minutes, reasoned that I had felt sick for all these years because I had been suppressing the fire at my core. With no where to go, it left in painful bursts and slowly through sweat, and pushed harder whenever I was cold or under stress as my core kicked itself into high gear. Now that I had an outlet for my fire, the pressure was relieved.

By the time three years had passed in the prison, I was no longer the Prince Erik of Fordane I had been for twenty-one years, and not only just in title. Partially in debt to Mikael and partially to the hardships of life in the dungeon, I was no longer a sick, whinnying little child. I was a man, a strong man, both physically and mentally. I had control over my fire, and control over my thoughts. I wasn't ready to face a world beyond the four corners of the Fordane castle when I got married. But on that day, about three years since I was accused of attempted murder, I was ready, despite the prison walls surrounding me.