"Mrowr?"
Anna was awoken by something soft and fuzzy rubbing itself against her face. She opened her eyes to find a brown cat staring at her expectantly. If any other animal had woken her so early for the sake of getting pet, they'd be hurled out the door almost as fast as Anna would return to sleep, but cats have a powerful hold over the minds of children. Anna cooed in delight and sitting up in bed to give Cocoa Beans a good scratching.
It took a few minutes for Anna to glance at the clock and realize she was actually up before Anders's daily wake-up call for once. Her plan came flooding back.
Anna had stayed up late thinking, and she'd finally realized why the door to Elsa's room was always locked – Elsa was a privilege. When Anna had stolen all that chocolate, she'd lost her desert privileges, and when she'd crashed her bike down the stairs, she'd lost her bike privileges, and now she'd lost her Elsa privileges. The only problem was Anna didn't know what she'd done wrong this time. But, when you thought about it, if she didn't know what she'd done wrong, she couldn't possibly apologize for doing it, meaning it was really unfair of Mama and Papa to punish her at all. Meaning there was nothing wrong with sneaking in a little visit to Elsa, now was there?
Of course, Mama and Papa would still be trying to stop her, but Anna knew she had one big advantage over them – she was much cleverer than her parents. They thought they could pull a fast one on her by letting Anna sleep in later than Elsa. That way, they could ferry Elsa out of her bedroom to bathe without giving Anna a chance to lay eyes on her (Bathing was one of the few reasons Elsa ever left her room anymore. Anna didn't think Elsa had been let out more than three times a day since she started keeping count). But Anna was way too smart to fall for that.
So here was the plan: Listen for Anders to open Elsa's door, then burst out of her room, and before they could stop her, run and give Elsa a big hug and build a snowman and be best buddies again. Foolproof.
Slowly, carefully, Anna crept out of her covers and pressed her ear against the door. The cat mewled and jumped off the bed to rub against her legs. Anna scowled at Coca Beans, putting a finger to her lips. "Shh!" She had to make this count. If Mama and Papa were holding Elsa prisoner, she was probably completely miserable and needed her awesome sister to come save her.
"Time to wake up, Princess Elsa," came a voice from the other side of the door, followed by the sound of a doorknob turning.
"AHA!" The "burst out of her room dramatically" part of the plan went off without a hitch. But, um, Anna might have been a tad overzealous and jumped out before Elsa's door was actually open.
"Anna, what are you doing awake?" The other problem was Anders wasn't alone. Anna could handle the old fart by himself, by this time he happened to have Mama and Papa with him. All three grown-ups stared at Anna.
"Uh..." Anna could feel her clevererness fading.
Mama traded glances with Papa. They had a way of plotting schemes without saying anything aloud.
"Why don't you and I go get some breakfast?" Mama took Anna by the hand.
Anna found herself being led downstairs. She'd wanted to demand (very politely) to see Elsa, but at this point Anna knew the response would be, "Your sister is going to be busy today," and she was getting really sick of Mama always leaving out the "and for the rest of your life" part.
Anders and the king watched the mother and child vanish down the staircase.
"You'll have to deal with her eventually, you know," said Anders. "You can't keep making up excuses forever."
"Right now, Elsa's issue takes priority." Like his wife, the king had a youthful look about him, but he still commanded respect with his rigid posture and pencil-thin mustache. His face seemed blank, but Anders had known him long enough to tell it was actually full of concern. Without another word, the king opened the door, and the two of them entered the room.
Elsa's bedroom was looking much better today. Most of the icy patches had melted and magically dissipated back into nothingness. It was Elsa herself who looked terrible. She was curled up in the fetal position on top of her bedspread. Well, actually, she was lying on top of the thick layer of ice on top of her bedspread.
"Good morning, Elsa," the king said gently. "Anders tells me you had a bad night."
Elsa feebly lifted her head from the pillow to face them. Her eyes were bloodshot. "It won't stop," she said in a trembling voice.
"Elsa, you're letting yourself get upset." The king's face was the picture of calmness. "Your ice wasn't a problem until you became scared. You used to control it so well! Just last month, you started making shapes with your ice, and you were so proud, remember?"
But his words only made Elsa tense. "I can't go back to that. I'm sorry, I tried!" She returned her head to the pillow and shut her eyes tight. "I'll just... I'll just stay here. The bed's already frozen anyways."
"Princess Elsa, you can't spend the rest of your life in bed," spoke up Anders. "Look, you can't really be freezing everything you touch. What about your clothes?" His eyes flitted to her violet nightgown. "They seem fine."
Elsa shot him a glare. "I'm wearing the clothes, and I can't freeze myself," she said indignantly, as if it was self-evident.
This was one of those rare moments Anders was reminded Elsa was still a small child. Personally, he found her reasoning flawed at best, but he had the uneasy feeling the magic didn't care how he thought it ought to work.
Anders turned to the king. The look in his eyes meant he'd gotten an idea. "Anders, fetch the queen."
"And then the troll kissed me and it was really gross," Anna was saying through a mouthful of food.
"Don't talk with your mouth full," the queen said mechanically. She seemed to be trying to stare through the wall in the direction of Elsa's room.
Anna pouted, not that her mom noticed. This situation obviously called for extreme action. "Mama, Mama, look what I can do!" Anna launched a scoop of scrambled eggs out of her spoon. The yellow goop soared across the dining hall and nailed some poor undeserving soul in the back of the head.
(The Admiral swore and nearly fell out of his chair.)
"Anna, you know better than that!" Mama's attention was successfully acquired.
"I'm sorry, Mama." Anna put on her most adorable voice and gave her mom a big hug.
The queen chuckled. "You could get away with murder with a face like that."
"Pardon me, Your Majesty?" Just then, Anders approached the royal end of the table. "Your husband requests your presence."
"Of course." Anna watched her mom swiftly exit the room.
Two seconds. She'd had her attention for two seconds.
Anna stared at her plate. She felt weird. She didn't enjoy her parents scolding her for being bad, but the scolding happened to involve them laying eyes on her for a moment, so there was an overlap of interests that meant Anna had no choice but to misbehave. Funny, parents laying eyes on you was one of those things you took for granted until you didn't have it anymore. Come to think of it, Anna didn't just feel weird... She felt sad and a little bit angry, too. She wasn't used to all these negative emotions, and she wasn't sure they quite agreed with her.
Anna decided the best course of action was to scarf down her food and scamper off to Papa's study. There was plenty of paper, pens, and ink in there for Anna to use. Well, nobody had given her permission to use Papa's work supplies, but nobody had forbidden it, either. Anna figured she could understand her confused feelings better if she wrote them down. She'd seen Papa write things down all the time, and while Anna hadn't completely mastered the whole "language" concept yet, she got the general idea that writing was something smart people did, and, heck, she was the smartest person in the whole building.
At first Anna considered writing words, but that was something her tutor made her do, which meant it couldn't possibly ever be fun, so instead she switched to pictography. Somehow, a picture of Anna sitting by herself looking sad got transformed into a picture of Anna standing next to Elsa, and then Anna got carried away by the thrill of artistry, and by the time she put the pen down, she was looking at an entire portrait of all four family members and the cat standing in front of the castle with trees and everything. It was really good (Actually, unbeknownst to Anna, the picture was lacking in several key components of quality artwork, such as drawing everything in proportion and making the limbs thicker than a line).
Realizing it would be an injustice to deprive the world of her masterpiece, Anna scoured the castle for a parent to show it off to. She found Papa in the closet where the girls' gloves, boots, and coats were stored.
"Papa, Papa, look what I drew-"
"That's very nice, Anna, but I'm working right now. Show me later, alright?"
"...Okay, Papa." Anna watched him grab something off the closet shelf and then disappear behind Elsa's door. The picture hung limply at her side.
Philistine.
"Are you sure this will work?"
"I promise, Elsa."
Her father's face held unwavering confidence. Elsa took a deep breath and gingerly grabbed a chair leg across from the roaring fireplace. The white fabric over her palms squeezed against the wood tightly. Nothing happened. Elsa exhaled.
"Excellent." Her father beamed. "You've made real progress, Elsa. I'm proud of you."
The first thing out of Elsa's mouth was, "Does this mean I can see Anna?"
The slightest hint of a frown crossed her father's face. "We can't risk hurting her, Elsa, and she's too young to keep a secret."
"I'll make sure to always keep the gloves on, please, I promise-!"
"Elsa, calm down. Remember what we just said."
"...Yes, Papa." Elsa relaxed her face, mirroring her father's.
"The gloves will help, but they're not a substitute for true control. There could still be an accident. Your powers aren't done developing, so we don't know what could happen. You've caught us off guard before. Remember when you froze the floor with your feet?"
"That was only once..."
"But I promise you this." Her father knelt to hold both of her hands, and for once she didn't flinch away. "Once you have mastery over your ice – once you can safely touch things with your bare hands – then you can see Anna again."
Elsa gave a small nod. "Thank you," she said quietly.
By the following week, Anna had realized the status quo wasn't going to change by itself. Elsa would continue to stay locked in her room, and Mama and Papa would continue to invent wild excuses to ignore Anna, and Anna would continue to roam the empty castle, drawing attention to herself via increasingly destructive means, and it would all keep going and going until Elsa was an old lady, Mama and Papa were scratching their heads going, "Didn't we have... more than one daughter once?" and Anna was standing in the smoldering ruins of the castle, which would have still failed to attract any meaningful attention to herself.
Anna put her best efforts into averting this looming crisis, but there was only so much influence a five-year-old can exert on a household. Anders had taken away her crowbar, meaning Anna was fresh out of ideas for getting into Elsa's room, and her parents had started sending Kai and Gerda to punish Anna's misbehavior in lieu of themselves so that they could spend more precious time with the daughter they actually cared about.
Mama didn't even bat an eyelash when Anna charged into the study yelling, "Mama, Mama, there was a weird guy outside the castle! You'd better go arrest him! I think he wants to a-duck me!"
"Abduct," Mama said, giving only a brief glance out the window at the empty courtyard. "And we have plenty of guards protecting us. You're perfectly safe. Now, I don't want to hear you making up stories again." She returned to reading her boring legal documents.
"I hope he abducts me and takes me far away from here," Anna muttered, slinking out of the room.
Okay, so attracting her parents' attention was a bust. Fine, no problem, that just meant Anna could focus the brunt of her efforts on rescuing Elsa from her room. Anna had to go about this carefully. Elsa had never been quite as brave and rebellious as Anna, so she would be a little scared to leave her room at first, but Anna remembered all those times they'd played in the snow, and she knew, deep down in her bones, that Elsa was her best buddy, and given the slightest chance, she would die to play with Anna again. It was simply a matter of waiting until their parents' guard was down and then pouncing. And that meant camping out and being patient.
Anna had had the right idea before – hiding in her own bedroom and waiting for the sound of Elsa's door opening – she'd just made the mistake of springing out while there were grown-ups about. Anna watched through her door's crack, breathing softly. She was totally committed to her steak-out, even if it meant she had to skip potty breaks (Her room didn't have a fancy adjacent lavatory like Elsa's). This would be the most important mission of her entire life.
Half an hour in, Anna broke down and ran to the toilet, but she was only gone a minute before returning to duty. Anna waited another half hour. Then another hour. Then a day. At that point, camping out in her room became less of an important mission and more of a regular activity, like brushing your teeth. She also might have let her guard drop a couple times, but she'd been having the best time playing with her dolls... To her credit, Anna did leap to alertness every time she heard a door creak, but it would always be Mama or Papa or Anders or Gerda escorting Elsa somewhere. No dice.
Anna didn't know how many days she ended up waiting, and she didn't care... because one day she heard a distinct voice cry out "Mama! Papa!" followed by the creak of a door, and she peeked through the crack and saw a head of silvery hair but no grown-ups, and it was worth the wait, dang it! Anna spared a quick glance out the window. The snow hadn't completely melted. There was still time.
Elsa's room was almost entirely devoid of ice at this point. She hadn't thought it possible, but Elsa was growing used to not constantly freezing things. She'd actually read a book, reveling every time she'd turned the pages and watched as they didn't frost over and stick together.
The weight on Elsa's shoulders had been lifted. She'd begun harboring the tiniest hope that maybe, just maybe, she'd almost mastered her ice, and in a few more days she would see Anna, who would be alive and happy, and they'd look back and laugh at that stupid time Anna had climbed too high on the snow pillars and Elsa had hit frozen her head trying to break her fall.
Elsa lay sprawled across her bed, the workings of a smile playing on her face. She turned her book's page with a gloved hand. Riiiiiiiiiiiip came the sound of the glove snagging a loose spring and tearing Elsa's hope to shreds.
The ice immediately turned the novel into a paperweight. Elsa cried out and tumbled backwards onto the floor, then skidded because suddenly the floor was icy, too. Had her hand even touched the floor? It was just a tiny hole in the glove, what were the odds of...? But then a bolt of magic turned the ceiling to ice, and Elsa definitely hadn't touched the ceiling.
She could feel it wriggling against her fingertips. The gloves had held back the magic like a dam holds a flood, and now it was all pouring out more violently than ever before. The ice almost sprang out again, but Elsa quickly covered the hole with her other hand. The magic pushed back, but she managed to hold it in place.
You're not breathing right.
Elsa did her best to control her lungs, to relax her face, but it was all so much easier when Papa was here.
"Mama! Papa!" Listen to that voice. She sounded terrified.
Don't let it show. Don't let it show.
By some lack of foresight, spare gloves were kept in the hall closet, which was a few feet from Elsa's bedroom. She steadied herself, took a deep breath, and opened her door. It was the longest few feet she had ever seen.
Elsa took one step, then another, her good glove pressed tightly against the torn one. Soon enough, she was halfway there. See, that wasn't so bad, was it?
"Elsa!" But then came the sound of another door creaking open. Anna looked a lioness fixing to pounce on her prey.
Elsa had longed to see Anna for weeks, but now she couldn't even look at her face. All her eyes agreed to point to was the streak of white hair moving closer towards her.
"Elsa, Elsa, do you-?"
"No! Don't touch me! I said I'm not playing in the snow with you! Stop asking!"
Anna halted mid-charge. Elsa swung open the closet, grabbed a pair of blue gloves luckily in reach of her eight-year-old stature, and then bolted back to her room.
She was extremely thankful she hadn't looked at Anna's face.
Anna remained camped outside Elsa's door a while longer. She wasn't doing it because she wanted to play with Elsa or to see her or anything. No... No, that would be dumb. Elsa was a jerk. She was just doing it because... because she felt like it! Stop asking questions!
Cocoa Beans prowled down the hallway, oblivious to the situation. The cat pawed at Elsa's door and mewled. A second later, the door opened a crack, and Cocoa Beans slipped in. The door quickly re-closed itself.
Anna stared. Then she slowly returned to her own bedroom, crawled into bed, and slammed her head against the pillow. It was just a stupid cat! See if she ever gave it treats again! What was so great about it anyways? It was... just a... stupid... cat...
It had been two weeks since they'd had any behavioral problems out of Anna. That meant she was either sick or dead. Anders opened the door and stuck his head into her bedroom.
"Ah, Princess Anna, I wasn't going to believe you were being well behaved until I saw it with my own-" His eyes fell on the head of Anna's favorite doll, which had been sown to resemble her sister. Then his eyes fell on the body of the doll, which was on the other side of the room. "Princess Anna?"
"I'm not leaving," Anna said from under the covers. "I can stay in my room forever, too."
"Anna, what's the matter?" asked Anders, hating himself because he darn well knew what the matter was. "Do you want me to get your parents?"
"Don't bother," said Anna, returning her head to her pillow. "They don't love me anymore, either..."
Elsa stood in the center of her room, staring at the un-torn blue gloves she now wore. Somehow, she wasn't in the mood to keep reading.
That was when she heard the voices through the walls. They sounded faint from her room, but it was clear the voices were raised. "I'm the king! You won't speak to me that way! Don't you ever tell me I don't love her! I sacrificed everything for both of them! Do you think it would have come to this if there was any other way? Do you think you're the only one who hurts every time you see the white in her hair?"
There was a reply too quiet for Elsa to make out.
"I have had it up to here with your cynicism. Get out, Anders! Out of my presence!"
Never. Elsa had never heard her father lose his temper before. She looked to the brown cat sitting across from her.
"Mrowr?"