"Who are you?" said Elsa.
"You can call me Meredith, if you like," said the woman, her long pale lashes flickering in the light of the fire.
"Well, I am the Queen, Queen Elsa of Errandale, and I demand that you release me." Elsa sat up as straight as she could, becoming her dignified self. Yet, to her great surprise, the woman burst out laughing. It was a hearty, healthy laugh, not the laugh of a murderer or a kidnapper.
"Of course I know who you are," the woman smiled. "You are Queen Elsa, the marvellous queen of this land. It is an honour to have you in this house. And you are welcome to leave anytime that you should so wish."
Elsa wasn't sure what else to say, so she said it. "Why did you bring me here?"
"You were hurting, and I wanted to help," said Meredith blankly, before taking a sip of her tea.
Elsa stared at her. Then she stood up, and straightened her skirts – which was difficult to do in a dignified manner, as she was still wearing her cotton nightgown. "Well, it has been a lovely visit, but if you will excuse me, I have a country to run and a holiday to take, so I will now take my leave. If you could just point me in the right direction."
Elsa was at the point of opening the wooden front door, when Meredith spoke. "You are not sick."
"What?" But Elsa knew. She suddenly realised that her headache was gone, she wasn't nauseous, she didn't feel like throwing up and she most certainly did not feel as if she was about to create ice at any moment and freeze the land. She stared down at her white hands; the ice spirals weren't tingling for the first time in weeks. "What's happening?"
"You might want to sit down," said Meredith sympathetically. She waited until Elsa had slowly walked the way back to her armchair, and had sat down stiffly. "Elsa dear, dear, dear Elsa. These people that you are with all the time; they're bad for you. The atmosphere is getting into your blood. Soon, it will get too much. You can thank the princess Anna for taking you on this holiday, or you may never have run into me."
"What do you mean?" demanded Elsa. "The atmosphere is getting into my blood, what on earth is that even supposed to mean?"
"Elsa, when did you first discover your powers?"
"I was born with it…"
"No, when did you first realise you could control it?"
Elsa thought for a moment, trying to keep her head. "It was when I was very little still, I must have been three. I remember making a snowflake on purpose. It was a big surprise." Elsa almost smiled at how astonished her mother had been. Her father had called every specialist in the land, swearing them to secrecy. In the end it was just decided that she had powers, and they must keep them secret.
"Your parents didn't know what it was, did they?" asked Meredith, cutting into Elsa's thoughts.
"No."
"Elsa, they're not your real parents."
Elsa scoffed then. "Don't be ridiculous!"
"Anna, you are not the daughter of King Agnarr. You are the not the daughter of Queen Iduna. You are an ice princess."
"That doesn't even make sense, don't be ridiculous!"
"You are an ice princess," Meredith said, her voice raising a little in her excitement. "You were replaced at birth. The real child was killed by a sorcerer. The king and queen brought you up as their own, but you –"
"Be quiet, I don't want to hear anymore!" Elsa was already on her way to the door. "You're talking nonsense, my parents would tell me!"
"They didn't know Elsa! They didn't know!"
"I'm leaving."
"Elsa, I can prove it, I can!"
Something in the woman's voice – that undertone of desperation and truth – made Elsa pause, her hand on the doorknob.
"Do you ever feel cold? Does your heart ever feel cold? And do you enjoy it, unlike everyone else around you? Do you like the cold?"
"Yes…"
"When you came in here, you stopped feeling ill. When you are with me, you stop feeling ill. You are no longer among the common people, you are with a woman of the ice, and you are healed of your illness. Oh Elsa, it's not just a cold, it's the long held back beginning of the end for you. If you do not remedy this, you will be taken away, taken by the heat! You will melt!"
"Meredith, you're not making sense. And what exactly is an ice princess?" asked Elsa, though she thought she knew.
"An ice princess is a person who is born with the Ice inside of them, surrounding their heart," explained Meredith. "It allows them to have powers. The gift has been handed down through our family, since the very Beginning. There are ice princes too. You should see the village where they all live Elsa, it's amazing, and beautiful! There are frozen lakes and it's always snowing. You'd love it there." Meredith spoke with a faraway mist in her eyes.
"I want proof." Elsa turned, and looked at Meredith, trying to hide the feeling of terror that was creeping into her heart. "I want proof that I am an ice princess. You can't just tell me and not prove it."
"You have powers, is that not proof enough?"
"No. Please. You must understand." She felt helpless, as if something was pulling her into a hole and she couldn't stop. "I can't just believe you."
"I am your sister, Elsa," said Meredith, and there were real tears shining in her blue eyes. "I am your sister, your real sister. Our mother lives in the mountains. Please, let me take you to her. Please."
"If you are my sister, and you have powers –"
"My powers are nothing compared to yours," interrupted Meredith through her tears. "I have them, of course. But your powers are much more powerful than you realise. They're like Mother's – our mother's. Like you, I love the cold, and the ice and the snow – it's in my blood." She smiled then, and Elsa suddenly knew.
She knew, with a pang of certainty that hurt, that Meredith was telling the truth. She had beheld many liars in her time – she was the queen, it was part of the job – and Meredith was not one of them. "I…" she stopped, her voice catching on her throat.
Meredith seemed to understand. "I know it must be a shock," she said sympathetically. "I understand. Why, you've lived with the common people all of your life. It must be terribly hard to come out of the Cave and see the real light. That's Plato, by the way. I had a proper education, though I'm not the queen." She laughed.
"I know Plato too." Then a thought struck her. "Why… if this is true… would my mother… or your mother… just leave me with a family who isn't mine?"
"O-oh," faltered Meredith, "That's a bit complicated, and it would be best if she explained it, but I might as well. You see, there was a prophecy at your birth that foretold you would become the queen of Errendale, and as such, after you were taken from us at birth by a sorcerer –"
"A sorcerer stole me?"
"Yes, don't interrupt," said Meredith, sounding so much like Anna that Elsa very nearly smiled. "As I was saying, Mother had known from the very beginning that you had Powers that were more powerful than all of the rest of us. I mean seriously, not all of us can freeze an entire land – it takes special powers to do that." She smiled. "So she let you live with them. With the King and Queen. And you grew up with them, discovering your Powers for yourself."
"But why?" Elsa couldn't help asking. "Why would she leave me?" She remembered the days alone in her room as a child, studying to become the queen one day, and always distracted by the little nagging thought in her head that kept saying that she would never become queen. Not with her Powers, that dangerous thing that threatened to maim and kill those she loved. She knew better now, of course – or did she? All those days of illness, of swirling snow, of vomiting and coughing and thinking that dying would be better than this. She shook her head quickly. "When I was a child, all that pain and suffering I went through – I didn't have to?"
"No-o, but yes," faltered Meredith. "You see, us ice people, we're poor. Very poor. Terribly poor. It's not nice. At all. Getting food up in the mountains, just from one day to the next, is a huge challenge. And Mother knew that you would have a better life with the King and Queen than with us. Besides, if you became the Queen one day, you would be able to help us. But it's gone too far now."
"What do you mean?"
"You're sick, Elsa. You're awfully sick. You're not now, of course, but that's because you're with me. All those people you've been with, all those years of living with the Common People, it's finally gotten to you. You need to get away from the atmosphere. Mother didn't realise how bad it would be, and we only just found out you were sick, or we would have come earlier. Does that make sense?" Meredith was looking at Elsa with imploring eyes, and Elsa understood – she had to.
"I think I understand." Elsa looked down at her hands. Her world was changing – and she couldn't stop it.
She shook her head. She didn't know for sure – she didn't know anything for sure. Nothing was certain. She couldn't prove it, unless, unless…
Even though it was the middle of the night, Elsa felt wide awake as she said, "Take me to see your Mother."
Meredith's face lit up like a candle shining in a dark room. "Oh Elsa, I am so glad! We will leave straight away!" With that, she got up from her armchair and bustled about the little house, grabbing hold of things out of cupboards and stuffing food into sacks.
Suddenly, Elsa finally realised what she was doing, and gasped. "Oh my goodness, I can't just leave. I mean…" she said quickly at the look on Meredith's face. "I still am the queen. I need to say goodbye to Anna, to my people…"
"Elsa. Do you really think your people would let you go?"
"But Anna would, if I could just –"
"So Anna, your adopted sister, is more important than your real mother." Meredith's eyes filled with tears again, and Elsa found herself thinking, why not. Why can't I go do something for myself for once?
"Very well," she said, and Meredith's face lit up again. And as Elsa helped the woman pack sacks of food for the journey, she found herself laughing. When Meredith asked her what was wrong, she said, "I can't believe I'm doing this!"
"Don't think about it," said Meredith, in a matter of fact tone. "It's what I never do. Thinking is pointless. You should just do it."
And Elsa, who never did anything without planning it through and creating a plan of every possible scenario, nodded and voiced her agreement.
/
It was eight o'clock in the morning. Kristoff was yawning, "Anna, you really do need to get Elsa up if we're going to get at camp by night."
"Maybe we should have stayed longer, you look exhausted," said Anna, by way of protest.
"Just didn't sleep very well," Kristoff said, through yet another yawn. "Seriously, you need to get her up."
Anna groaned and agreed. She stepped up with a little jump, and tapped on Elsa's tent pole. "Elsa… we're leaving soon, you need to get up!"
All was quiet. Anna opened the tent flap, and stepped inside. The first thing she noticed was how achingly cold it was in there. The second thing she noticed was that the bed was empty. The third thing she saw was that Elsa was nowhere to be seen.
She stepped out, and felt her heart pound as she yelled at nowhere in particular, "Elsa! Come on, we have to get going!"
"What, isn't she in there?" Kristoff was saying, before looking in the tent himself.
Anna felt the world slide beneath her feet. She knew that Elsa wasn't in the campsite. She had been waiting outside that tent with Kristoff since five o'clock that morning, but had insisted on letting Elsa sleep in, as she was sick. "Where could she be?" she muttered, shaking her hands. "Has anyone seen the queen?" she yelled.
There was a chorus of 'no's' from the group. The guards started to look, searching in the surrounding forest for the queen. The cooks searched in the wagons. The boys looked up the trees. But the queen was nowhere to be found.
And Anna knew.
"She's gone," she felt herself saying, before dropping to her knees. Kristoff was patting her back, holding her tightly, but all Anna could think was that her sister, her dear sister – was gone.
"Don't worry, we'll find her," Kristoff said.
"She's gone." And then the tears came, softly spilling out of her blue eyes. "Where is she Kristoff? Where is she?"
"I don't know, but we'll find her."
Anna smiled at Kristoff gratefully and leaned into his chest, letting his arms comfort her. However, something deep down in her being told her that nothing would ever be truly the same.
asdfghjkl stick around this mess of a story (might) get better I promiseeee
