We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.
"Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope, and Love"
Act II:
Chapter 24
"A New Mission"
The brilliant sun that had been glimmering on the waters from its lofty place up in the sky abruptly takes a bow behind some dark, foreboding clouds that had mysteriously gathered over the Nidaros Cathedral.
Extending a hand that soon balls into a useless fist, and feeling utterly wretched that the result of his salvation came at the price of that sweet little firecracker of a pixie, Eugene Fitzherbert hugs his uncontrollably weeping wife all the tighter.
He looks up through his swollen eyes, fighting tears that probably would fall for the first time in his adult life, to where Hans Westergaard was similarly embracing Elsa.
Hans was gazing down at her with utmost anxiety in his sorrowful green eyes as he holds the distraught, heartbroken queen up in his protective arms, as if she were but a weightless snowflake.
But the weight of the entire world seemed to have fallen upon the slumped shoulders of the devastated golden blonde who was yet standing some dozen feet from where the others were on the shore. Kristoff Bjorgman was ensconced in the river rushing all about him, with not a thought to self.
How could there be? Every single second that was still pounding in his ears was for her. For his Anna who had been stolen from him.
"Anna…I didn't watch you close enough, I'm sorry…! I have to bring you back home…" Only the winds could hear the whispered murmuring on his trembling lips between his tears as Kristoff sinks to his knees beneath the river's currents.
What seemed like the distant roar of rolling thunder makes Eugene look up, disoriented, to the threatening sky. With a heavy heart, the guilt-ridden thief had been about to go to Kristoff to stop the young fool from drowning himself in the waters, but a permeating sound coming from the throbbing ground behind them caught his attention instead.
This 'thunder' was emanating from the hooves of a cloven-toed hero, for Sven had broken free of where he had been tied to the post (for appearance's sake for any hesitant churchgoers.)
Upon hearing his best friend's heart wrenched cries, the empathic reindeer swiftly galloped past a surprised Hans, still with Elsa, and a shocked Eugene and Rapunzel—just to reach Kristoff as fast as he could.
Sven, with forlorn eyes, nudges his broken-spirited pal with a comforting nuzzle. But the stunned Kristoff didn't respond to his furry friend's prodding. With a big, doleful gaze and a sorrowful begging grunt at the look of complete, lost despair that was inscribed all over the big man's speechless face, Sven takes the initiative to lower his neck and head into the water to scoop up and roll on his back, like second nature, the despondent blonde from the river that Kristoff was drowning his sorrows in.
After instinctively looking around for Anna, his beloved second passenger who was nowhere in sight, the grey-brown reindeer's eyes seem to zero in on the now growing tiny in the distance steamboat departed far down the River Nid's bends. Without a single word passing, Sven takes a deep breath into his flared nostrils, and closes his round eyes that were steeling with determination. His furry brown ears prick up, as if listening to some unknown voice on the wind while he carries Kristoff, the reindeer trudging to the riverbank.
The durable rangifer crooks his neck to ensure that his unaware-of-the-world-around-him rider was firmly astride, then Sven's four sturdy legs take off like a shot past the two wide-eyed couples at such a rampaging sudden speed that the vacuum of high-velocity blows a standing nearby Olaf into several parts, that a side-stepping Pascal avoids being avalanched by. The snow mounds, stick branches and carrot all scatter upon the bank in the reindeer's speedy wake with a numbed Kristoff automatically clutching onto his fur, trusting his childhood friend to help him retrieve his stolen true love once again.
"We must give chase." Recognizing the reindeer's full gallop speed of nearly 80 kilometers per hour versus their horses', even driven hard, at only 45-50 kpm, the logistically minded Hans urgently calls the order in that superior, princely voice as he immediately spins on his heels to race back towards their parked sleighs near the church front.
He was still carrying his clingy queen to his chest all the while.
"Get it together, snowball." Feeling responsible for this entire, unlucky mess and its resulting tumult, Eugene springs to action. With pumping adrenaline, he ignores the throbbing pain in his right arm and wholeheartedly launches into the 'team spirit.' This former loner gathers up the remainder of Olaf's wriggling, escaping appendages—along with his quickly rushed and plunked back together incorrectly body on top of head—and tucks the rest under his one good arm.
He then pats his shoulder for Pascal to jump aboard while, with his other bloodied, bullet ridden and frostbitten arm, he holds out his hand to Rapunzel, who grasps the wearied, scraped and cut limb with a look of gratitude for his strength to return to her side, though both had hoped the privilege of being together again, wouldn't have had to come at so dear a cost…
"What do you STUPID pirates think you're doing?! Kidnapping a princess of a European Royal House is a major illegal offense! It's punishable by…uhmmmm…hanging! Yeah, hanging! I can just see you two losers dangling by your sorry necks from the yardarm back in Arendelle! You'll be begging my good sister for leniency for your wicked crimes or a pardon of amnesty from justice—or to give you parole from your rightful penalty of death in commo—commut—Oh, beg her to grant you mercy, anyway! As if! You'll still swing! So there!" Once Princess Anna had managed to wiggle her freely loose lips from the snug gag around her spirited mouth, the feisty girl lets it spill out—all this past hour's pent up venom with self-righteous indignation.
Even if she couldn't quite remember how to say or spell some of the big, book words that were just on the tip of her vehement tongue!
"I t'ought I told ye to gag ze talkative wench, Job. She gives yer Captain a monstrous headache somezing powerful. Zough she be a pretty little missy…" Lecherous Captain Houtebeen, with his roving one eye, slowly drags his pegleg across the wooden deck of the 'borrowed' steamship craft he had called in some underhanded favors to parlay his greedy hands upon.
Hearing her loud and annoying voice all the way from where he was on the foredeck to the bridge wheelhouse where Job had tied the squirming girl to the center compass binnacle, the bent and twisted old man reaches one his gnarled hands to touch the bound Anna's angry pink cheek.
But the peppery Arendelle sister was no slouch when it came to the self-defense against a man's unwanted attentions that her parents had taught her.
Yes, they did!
CHOMP!
Anna comes within millimeters of viciously biting off the unpalatable pirate's wandering digits, but the crusty old man yanks them away, just in time, so as not to sustain yet another handicapped body part.
"You just stay away from me, you ugly old man!" In much more anger than fearful retaliation, Anna yells unwisely loud in Houtebeen's now ringing ears. The bitter, bad-tempered aged pirate raises his arm to backhand the insulting young guttersnipe, but wise Job's gentle and patient palm comes to rest on Houtebeen's fiery shoulder, causing him to stop just short of striking the closed-eye and fully-prepared-to-be-hit young woman.
Job then signals to him that something was amiss with the ship, which begins to slow, sputtering for coal, diverting their attention.
Anna peeks open one eye after a few anxious seconds, when the harsh expected blow never comes to her expectant face.
"Huh?" She glances around the enclosed wheelhouse to see the pair of pirates had simply chosen to abandon her. Job had returned to attending to the engines below deck, beneath the main mast.
As for the pirate Captain, he had managed to collect his composure enough to silently stand at the navigation controls near the bridge's windowed viewscreen with his back to her.
"Hah! Scared ya, didn't I?!" The yet restrained Anna boldly proclaims to herself with a broad, narcissistic smile that only begins to fade when Captain Houtebeen's white-streaked red bearded chin pointed at the wheel steering the craft, curls up with a smirk at something gleaming gold clutched in his hand.
"Oookay…I'm sorry about calling you names before. Kristoff keeps telling me I've gotta work on 'keeping my inner calm'. So how about turning this boat around and dropping me back off at that Cathedral? Or any near port will do. Don't worry, I'll find my own way home, if that's more convenient."
'You catch more flies with honey.' Mama used to say.
Trying to now sweet talk her way out of her nervousness, Anna starts rattling off. The innocent little girl in her still half believed in the innate goodness of others, if you just said the 'magic word' with a pleasant, winning smile.
"Please…?" But the politeness 'magic' doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on this churlish old rotter. "And if you just give me back our kingdom's Orb of Saint Olaf's that you've got there and let me go, I promise we won't prosecute you or charge you with any crime. Hey! There might even be a finder's fee reward for you if you return it and me within twenty-four hours or something. And we'll just forget anything ever happened. How's that sound?" Anna displays her friendliest, hopeful-est, toothy-est smile from where she was strapped and secured to the brass, wooden binnacle.
"A reward for zis little golden beauty, ye say?" Houtebeen continues to lovingly pet the golden Orb he was admiring in his hand, as if it was his most cherished possession. It sparkles in the late afternoon sunlight, penetrating the due west glass viewscreen. "No, meisje, I have waited me whole life for her. She is mine…and ye too will remain me little pawn. So, I'm afraid Job and I will have to risk yer unnerving sentence of death by hanging—as unpleasant as ye make it sound, Princess—mercy or no." Houtebeen's previous anger flare was appeased by his level-headed first mate's greater wisdom to follow their new plan. Instead he ridicules Anna's pitiful attempts at intimidation.
"A pawn? Like in chess?" Anna quizzically wonders at the odd use of the term that she knew from days of youth playing the ancient South Asian intellectual game with her sweet, unassuming Mama, who had been a brilliant strategist at the chessboard who could always out jump her little girl's pawns and knights, protecting her king easily before guileless young Anna could bat an eye in checkmate to the Queen.
Oh, Mama! I just wore your wedding dress, but I wish I could be half as clever as you to get out of this! You always knew the right words to say...
Anna remembers most of all her kind mother's ability to sing her Papa's worried brow away each time he came down from Elsa's locked room in great anxiety for his eldest child's woes. She recalled the nights her mother would sit her distressed husband before the roaring fireplace and serenade away his disquieted shaking concerns with her lilting soft strains, in loveliest song.
Now I understand your worries over Elsa's solitary condition—but you don't have to worry anymore! You should see how strong she is now!
"Yes, yes, very good, Princess. Houtebeen likes zat. Ye be quiet and he will be ze one for ze ultimate 'chess checkmate' zis time. Har hah har…"
The evil pirate's chortles of laughter were unsettling to say the least. But Anna would never give in to defeat—even as the old captain receives Job's signal to set all the steering machinery to full steam again, now that the Caribbean man had reloaded the coal chutes for utmost steam pressure again.
The screw propeller near the tailshaft roars to life as the small steamship surges the waves on course again for its unknown destination.
How strong we both can be…
Anna's eyes try to scrutinize something of the compass dials she had been strapped to. Though she never did pay much attention to her father's wide collection of his lifelong naval tour's nautical souvenirs, his compass on the library shelf always did intrigue the little girl who yearned to travel beyond the castle's walls.
Whether it was pointing N, S, E, or W or any of the half-increments in between, small, lonely and sheltered Anna of Arendelle dreamed of traveling to each far off destination someday. The bright eyed youngster would fill her empty day with imaginary travel spent lion-taming on Africa's high plains to the Deep South, climbing China's Great Wall to the Far East, or exploring by railroad America's frontier of the Wild West. Each exotic location was excitingly depicted in the new collection of Encyclopaedia Brittanica that Mama had imported, especially for her intelligent girls.
Even if they couldn't visit them, Queen Idun's girls would at least be educated to see the world through the periscope of these informative books, full of important up-to-date data and thrilling real life stories of actual heroes and heroines making history—not just living through it.
Back to present day harsh reality, straining her eyes according to the compass aboard this steamship she was an unwilling passenger on, Princess Anna assesses that she would be traveling—barring a few westerly ticks—mainly towards magnetic North. It was the one direction, for all its cold barrenness, not much interesting animal nor plant life, nor modern invention, that had least fascinated the girl who had lived in Norway's already fairly high in the Artic Circle northern spot on the spherical globe.
But I'll keep you warm here with me in my heart. It makes it easier when life gets hard like this…Oh Kristoff! I know you will be so worried sick because you love me so much! And I love you so much that I'm worried sick about you worrying yourself sick over me…
Please watch over him while I'm gone, Elsa...And I love you too...
Sven's thundering hooves cross the Trondheim lowlandsregion's gentle valleys and rounded hills into the more rugged mountain terrain north of Skogn, Hylia and Straumen without stopping for rest in some 10 hours now since they began this continuous run.
But Sven understood his best friend's aching heart so thoroughly that the compassionate reindeer gave his absolute special all to race across the plains at full throttle.
Though, climbing upon the Scandinavian Mountain ranges that naturally dominated the country's eastern interior in this blind trek North, even sturdy Sven was beginning to feel the intense muscle strain in his pounding legs.
It had been ceaseless kilometers since the pair had left Trondheim and Kristoff had not yet uttered a single spoken word to him. Only a hand would signal the reindeer transport forward along this mad dash North, for everything in the landscape was telling Sven to.
But no verbal speech ever need be transmitted between the close pair as Sven instinctively followed the adrenaline driven course a silent Kristoff and the whispering whipping wind through his unruly hair seemed to be conspiring together to chart.
Still, the Midnight Sun flavor of a Norwegian mid-July made it pretty hard for a tired-eyed Sven to gauge the actual time of day, other than that of the count of the raging, swiftly crossed kilometers on Sven's mental odometer.
The reindeer's cloven hooves did not let up from his ultra rapid 75 km gallop, though Sven, every now and then, would steal a glance back at the quiet man clinging to the fur on the creature's back, riding him. That is, until they come upon a long fjorden cutting vertically across this craggly stretch of land.
Sensitive and sweet Kristoff had been holding back a cloudburst of tears for a great deal of the trip, kicking himself mentally the entirety of the night that never would grow darker yet.
'To love, honor, and protect.' That's what I said I'll do. But I didn't. I just didn't…
I didn't protect you, Anna. They were all right about me. I am such an idiot!
The heartbroken young blonde squeezes hard in punishment his lifelong companion's furry shoulders that he was hanging onto until both felt about to pop. But Sven's empathy recognized Kristoff's agony for Anna's loss. It hurt the reindeer deeply as well, for he loved the sprightly girl almost as much as his buddy did. Their mutual affection for this precious imp was one of the only things either male owned in this world, beyond one another's friendship.
So with teary eyes, both males rush headlong forward, until Sven wakes up enough to come to an abrupt stop near the edge of the Namosfjorden's bedrock shoal.
"Don't stop, Sven!" In a desperate yet commanding voice, Kristoff finally breaks his silent, introverted rebuke as the cautious reticent pack animal carefully pauses at the glittering fjorden's shore.
"HOMMN!"
Sven's deep-throated bellow questions his normally level-headed responsible partner's unwise order to try to sidestep over the freshwater estuary blocking their path. After all, this body of water's shallow end near the shoals sill varied from the unpredictable fjorden's main sill which could possess a depth of merely 2 meters deep to, oh, say, a 400 meter drop at any given point.
Sven personally, after all these long years traveling together, knew that Kristoff usually saw the unassuming waters' perhaps treacherous dangers. But could Kristoff see it now through his clouded tear stained eyes?
Perhaps the throbbing pain stabbing a Kristoff's head as well as symptoms of a broken heart made the sane young man lose nearly all his sensibilities and reason. The only thing he was certain of was the overwhelming need to keep traveling North to find her, as sure as if he were reading a compass' dial directing him so.
Kristoff's pointed booted feet kick into Sven's shocked sides as if he were no more than a pack animal merely to ride and haul loads than a very dear friend.
"HOMMN!"
A disgruntled Sven lets out another deep deterring call, shaking his affronted head as he does so to warn off Kristoff's uncharacteristic stubborn high-handedness. Sven's behooved legs back away from the rushing churning waters that Kristoff was urging him yet to recklessly cross.
"Come on, Sven! We can make it! Crossing this little fjorden here will shave hours off our time!" Kristoff loudly raises his voice in complaint of his reindeer's recalcitrance with angry frustration for the first time since they were together.
"Anna needs me to save her from those pirates, Sven! Please, Sven. Please help me. She's in terrible danger and needs me to rescue her." Kristoff was pleading by now. Kristoff was openly weeping amidst his heartfelt begged pleas as he leans his throbbing head down close to Sven's soft neck, burying his face in the reindeer's furry neck nap as he did when he was a scrawny little kid needing a warm hug when he was trying so hard to fit in as a big man Ice Harvester.
Remembering back on those times, Kristoff never felt lonely, despite growing up with no kin, no family, because faithful Sven had always been that one constant companion at his side to talk to, work with, play with, eat with, sleep with, to hug and hold onto when things got too rough.
The wind suddenly picks up around the pair of them.
"Anna needs US."
And for the first time, though his adult realist mind always tried to convince that believing little boy in him that his 'conversations' with Sven were but figments of his fertile imagination, Kristoff can plainly hear the vacillating deep timbered words spoken directly to his now receptive brain finally in tune with nature through the nostalgic memories of their past together.
A voice that he had always heard, yet never acknowledged, that, as the tall blonde man glances around at the vast nothingness surrounding the two lone figures, could only belong, up here in the desolate section of country to—
"Sven? That was you, wasn't it? Maybe I'm too exhausted, Or got hit on the head too hard one time too many this morning and it's got me hearing things, or—" Kristoff, ever the logical, down-to-earth skeptic, attempts to reason this inexplicable through, as the whistling winds around him swirl, and the tears stinging behind his eyes are abated, his cloudy vision cleared.
"It's always been me, since the beginning, Buddy. You just didn't want to understand me when I talked that way, sometimes."
The grey-brown reindeer with the baritone wobbly voice that Kristoff's subconscious at least was mimicking, now was definitely smiling up at his old pal who was hearing the world through new ears more and more since his destiny had been revealed to him.
With a smiled chuckle, despite his great troubles and sorrows, Kristoff swallows the dry lump in his throat with sheer wonderment.
"All these years, I knew I was never alone." The rugged man whispers gratefully as he presses his head down to his sentient beast's affectionate muzzle and they both close their eyes in a warm snuggle, innocent kids alone in the world together still.
"Now, let's go save Anna!"
Kristoff and Sven, now in nodded full agreement, back up before taking a running charge forward in complete unison. As reindeer and man fearlessly take a flying leap over the narrowest twenty foot section of one of the landscape's thinnest fjords, Kristoff is reminded of that first crazy leap of faith when he tossed Anna onto Sven's back over the gorge on their first adventure together being chased by wolves.
But this time, as Kristoff's clearing mind vows, he would be the one chasing that old Sea Wolf now.
To the ends of the earth, I'll hunt him down, until I get my Baby back safe and sound…
"Wow! Reindeers really DO fly. Who knew? Glad we caught up in time to witness your 'reindeer games,' Big Fella. You Norwegians sure know how to put on a show."
Kristoff and Sven's heads both swivel back to the other side of fjord's steep bank where a battered and broken, yet noisy, Cousin Eugene was standing up in the passenger's seat beside his capable wife who was in the driver's side, of the Official Ice Harvester's sleigh that its master had left behind at the Cathedral.
Rapunzel, who was pretty good with horses, even the bad ones, had put her talented hand to the helm of the speedy craft, pulled by Guddy.
Sorry you missed this fun jaunt, Maximus…Ha ha
Hans had had to split up his 'horse team' since Sven had gone after Kristoff. He and Elsa shared the driver's bench of the Vis-à-vis sleigh with Iriserende and shortly arrived not far behind.
"Kristoff! Please listen! We must talk to you!" A shaky voiced Queen Elsa had gathered herself together over the past few hours of the frantic trip. She takes a deep breath after having used all the control her distraught heart could muster on the road, focusing on creating ice between the two sleighs, to make up for the horses' lesser speeds to run faster and catch up to Sven.
She shouts across the small fjorden's rushing currents to Kristoff, her wide blue eyes darting to Hans beside her, for his support.
"Please, Mr. Bjorgman, it is essential! We must speak!" Hans' tenor strains project across the moving waters but Kristoff turns away, not interested to have the 'teamwork' pep talk. He was masculine enough to want to be left alone to solve his own struggles and track down his beloved wife.
"But, Kristoff! Please wait!"
"No. She's my responsibility—not yours anymore, Elsa. And not anyone else's concern, either." He gives Hans a challenging glare. "I'm the one supposed to take care of her! I'm her husband and Anna's my wife. I'm going to find her. I can't let her down again!" Kristoff hotly screams out across the chasm. The Norwegian young man was old-fashioned to hold onto the set conservative inveterate tradition of man protecting his mate—at all cost to himself, even to the point of going it alone.
"Anna may be your wife, but she's still my little sister." Anna was all the family she had left in the world, and a choking Elsa was on the verge of mental breakdown again at the thought of her sweet little sister at that wicked pirate's mercy. She recoiled in despairing remembrance that she had been the one powerless to stop him while Anna had been at his knifepoint.
Fortunately for both agitated parties concerned, observant Hans seemed to have a sixth sense for when this emotionally deprived Queen needed some outside stability as he rests a warm palm over her already frosted over shaking left fist.
"Elsa. Use this fear inside to your advantage to get us across this fjorden to Kristoff." Prince Hans softly, yet succinctly, commands the shivering young woman.
"What?! How can I…?" The scared look crossing her perturbed glowing eyes, with her ice powers already riding on the edge of lawlessness, prompts Hans only all the more.
"Here. Like this." He breathes in her shocked ear as the red-haired Prince boldly extends one arm over her right shoulder in order to be able to have both his fearless hands lift beneath her two sleeves' purple forearms to extend her ice ability brimming digits in the direction of the narrow freshwater fjord below.
Elsa's wild eyes spin to meet his becalming unwavering ones as she vividly recalls being the wayward cause of a frozen fjord closer to home, what now seemed a fractious, undisciplined lifetime ago.
But Anna needed her now, more than ever, to be in full control of all her faculties. And this time Elsa would overcome each of her emotional frailties to rise to the occasion for her baby sister.
ZZZZSSSTTTT!
The contained ice magic freely expelled from Elsa's controlled hands, held up in their aim by Prince Hans, coats the roaring summer waters with its opalescent sparkle until the entire Namsosfjorden freezes stock-still in an early induced frost.
"Whew! Whew! Where's your bell and wand, Christkindschen Angel?" Using the name of the young feminine gift giving angel who traditionally was purported to visit good children bearing presents throughout Prussia's Christendom, orphan boy dreamer Eugene Fitzherbert still had his irreverent wit in multitude, intermingled with the pain and guilt on his heavy conscience as he lets out a low whistle to this Ice Queen's crystallized marvels.
"Although, I'm sorry to say, I haven't been much of a good boy this year." He sighs, displaying his conciliatory arms.
"Eugene!" Nagging wife Rapunzel slaps her husband's right upper arm in reprobation, not realizing it was the exasperating teasing man's bullet-ridden one until it was too late and a squealed moment of unadulterated pain escaped his lips.
"OWW—OWWY!" His yelped scream echoes across the frozen iridescent fjorden.
"Oh, sorry, Honey." The sheepish lip-bitten brunette smiles up at him in apology as she drives the sleigh onto the ice, following Hans' lead with the Vis-à-vis.
"No prob, Blondie." The afflicted man bites his femininely connected high-pitched whimpering lip as his deft opposite hand reaches over the back seat to rip off Olaf's icy head to use as cold compress for his smarting discomforted gunshot wound to his pounding arm that his gentle wife had just whacked.
"How's the weather up here, Flynn-er-Eugene?"
"Of course. Just my luck to pick the talking part." Just coming short of tossing the snowman's animated noddle to vindictively snow-in Pascal who had been sitting pretty between man and wife in the front sleigh seat. The swarthy man decides he would rather go through the trouble of exchanging Olaf's disattached head for his lower snowmound rather than put up with the snowperson's inane chatter.
"But, is this end safe?" Holding Olaf's butt end at arm's length (until his throbbing appendage truly required some downtime with the ice) and displaying to Rapunzel the unflappable Olaf's posterior wrong side up just to make her smile, Eugene only receives his wife's straight unamused lip. The normally jovial man was trying to reclaim some of his old humor, but he was afraid to admit, he was uncharacteristically falling short of hitting the mark.
Guilt always had a way of doing that.
"Poor Kristoff. He looks so devastated, like he really truly loves her to bits. I hope we can find Anna soon." She whispers to him as they cross the recently formed iced fjord to traverse to where the dejected burly blonde young man was slumped against his sad-eyed reindeer.
"Good thing Hans is so awfully smart to know Elsa could do this to get us across. He's very brave to always be there to endure her icy touch." Rapunzel's voluminous green eyes look over to where the Vis-à-vis was crossing the frozen fjord, adjacent to their open sleigh. Hans gave her a small smiling nod of acknowledgement in return, which only cemented her husband's own green-eyed mistrust.
"Yeah, 'awfully.'" Eugene rolls his eyes at the way women threw compliments at every guy with a pretty boy face. "That dandy fop is full of surprises." Giving his drooling wife a crooked brow of suspicion, Eugene murmurs beneath his breath in the passenger's seat as he gives the other covered sleigh driver a one fingered salute (We won't specify which exact one). As the Vis-à-vis passes ahead of them, Rapunzel's eyes in Eugene's purview, seem to trace the handsome figure in the driver's side all the while with an unhealthy pride.
Hmmm. While the cat was away? I wonder…
Flynn Rider lets out another small yelp in his painful attempt to sling careless arrogant arms over his cynical head.
"So, you're here now. What did you have to tell me that's so important? Hurry it up, I've got to get moving to find my wife." The usually relaxed and even-toned Kristoff Bjorgman rudely states in an irritable voice, just itching to get back on the open road. The responsible driver in him knew that after today's long stint, his overworked reindeer he was currently watering could use a break for the night, though the disorienting light made it appear to still be late afternoon.
For the further North they went towards its Arctic Circle location, during the time of this mid-July midnight sun, it seemed continually daytime with the sun disc constantly yet above the horizon for all but five hours a day here in the mid-north country.
"Kristoff." Elsa purposely walks towards the kneeling down man after Hans extends to the elegant Queen a gentlemanly helping hand down from their sleigh. "Thank you for waiting." She says with emotion building in her apprehensive voice when the tall blonde doesn't even glance up to meet her wary eyes. Elsa then looks to the confident man standing beside her, who takes this uncertain hesitant pause as her cue for him to speak.
"Mr. Bjorgman." Hans swiftly utilizes his long legs to take him to the side of the fjorden's bank where Kristoff, despite his best efforts, upon finally meeting Elsa's quivering eyes up close, can't help his distressed balled fists from shaking in helpless fury at this horrible situation of losing his dearest girl too.
"—Kristoff." Hans crosses many distances to lay a brave hand on the taller man's bent over shoulder.
"WHAT?!" Shaking off Hans' friendly hand, the mild-mannered man nearly growls up at his former rival who had wronged his Anna once upon a time.
Not dissuaded, the Danish Prince gives him a look of stoic resolve.
"It would be unforgivable of me to deceive any of you good people at such a difficult moment, and I wouldn't have mentioned it to Elsa—er—the Queen, if I didn't think the smallest hope was better than none, had I been in your understandably unenviable place—" Hans forges on nonetheless in his address to the fiercely angered mountain man. "—But from bits and pieces I had gathered on board the Pearl Lady, in the previous past few months of my service there, I believe I may have a rough idea of where Captain Houtebeen could be heading with your wife."
But in the moment Hans finishes talking, Kristoff jumps to his feet, a wild crazed look springing to his eyes as grasping hands grip the redhead by his shirtfront.
"You know where they've taken Anna?! Where?! TELL ME NOW!" Kristoff turns ferocious in a split second as he harshly grabs Hans shoulders to shake the knowledge out of the thin man violently.
"I only can conjecture an approximate location, merely overheard from a dropped muffled word here and there whilst I was serving their midday repast. The Captain and Job, his First Mate, always tried to keep their navigational rendezvous point close to the vest, so I never did, regretfully, discover the precise area demarcation on their Mercator projection chart. Though from the distance I glimpsed the map once, your instinct, I believe, is quite correct that the target is undoubtedly in this North Sea hemisphere—" With compassionate emotive eyes, Hans answers honestly of everything he knows to this point that might illuminate the pirates' destination course. Hans was truly saddened that he had only a well-pondered slew of 'maybes' to offer the desperate husband, as Kristoff's hopeful eyes rise and the fall at the former naval man's semi-uncertain declaration, until—
"Latitude North by 67 degrees 44 minutes 52 seconds. Longitude East by 12 degrees 45 minutes 08 seconds."
Kristoff, Sven, Rapunzel, Pascal and Olaf's jaws all drop upon Flynn Rider's deadpan serious monotone recitation of these numerous numerical and measurements of some kind foreign, as if he were the mythical elfish Nisser befuddling them with his pranks.
But not to Elsa. Creasing her brow in confused anxiety, the studious girl was her Naval Father's daughter enough to immediately recognize—
"The exact lateral coordinates of a small uninhabited island in the Lofoten archipelago located in the far Northwest of your country, situated between the munincipalities of Vaeroy and Moskenes. And if I recall my Academy studies correctly, that particular sector of the North Norwegian Sea contains—"Intellectually studious Lieutenant Hans Westergaard was a virtual encyclopaedic fount of all things seaworthy, until his verbose explanation is cut off from his definitive insights by another lifelong naval marine enthusiast who studied the ocean well in days of youth.
"—the Moskenstrauma." A thoroughly dazed Queen Elsa completes the well-educated man's sentence, fear evident on her face as she suddenly clutches his arm.
"Whoa. You've got to be kidding me! Those coordinates I picked up in that pirate's cabin that I've been carrying around in my crazy photographic memory of a head were heading for the 'Maelstrom'? The ship swallowing, boat capsizing, man-eating bottomless whirlpool vortex, black hole graveyard feared by pirates and Navy alike?" A gulping wide-eyed Eugene interjects incredulously.
"If that's where they're taking Anna—then, you're DAMN RIGHT that's where we're going!" 21 year old Kristoff angrily barks out as he towers his full 6 foot 5" strapping height over the scoffing thief, who had knowledge of this legendary marine phenomena. Perhaps not from the love of the sea as Hans or Elsa, but rather from his quick calculating coin-clinking con-man's love of sunken treasure to be found upon the High Seas in days gone by.
"It's where I'm going, anyway. Come on, Sven." Physically elbowing past the former criminal who got them all into this mess, a frustrated Kristoff grabs up with a grunt a few supply bags and ties them to Sven's colorful straps. The tall restless blonde sighs as he brushes off the rest of the team without so much as making eye contact as he mounts his tired from racing all day, yet still steadfastly dogged partner of a reindeer with the newly mapped out goal in mind.
At least he came up with that. Kristoff's final stray thought for the good-for-nothing scavenger was mostly kind as he prepares to sprint off with Sven again.
"Hey, Kristoff. I'm sorry. I know it'll never make up for my mistakes—plentiful they may be." Eugene approaches the reindeer's rider with a truly remorseful look on his chiseled features.
"Whatever it takes to get that precious little sunshine sprite back, you can count me in all the way." The swarthy man of action makes a quick-footed detour, despite the stabbing pain of his open wounds and intense muscle strain from all that digging this morning—
Was that just this morning? Wow, time flies when you're having fun…
Flynn Rider defies getting trampled under the rangifer's solid hooves, to stand directly in front of a dumbfounded surprised Sven, stopping their momentum completely.
"Please, Kristoff. Anna would want us to do this together. You know she never wanted anyone to be alone." Elsa, using all of her mental prowess to control her own cold sorrows and frozen fear for her missing sister's sake, takes a place at Flynn's side to also stand in front of Anna's husband on his reindeer.
After a tense minute, Elsa breaks the ice by petting behind Sven's grateful fuzzy ears with loving affection. Making him flinch, Elsa then lightly touches Eugene's frostbitten extensors on his left forearm with a tentative absolution for his obviously repentant soul full of past wrongs that inadvertently caused this calamity, this grand adventure that was now filled with heartache and pain, in the first place.
"Because she loves us all so much in that big huge heart of hers, Anna would want us to stay together, like a proper family should in times of troubled crisis." Elsa's beautiful blue eyes glisten with the tears of thinking of her very best friend in her sister's sweet disposition to connect with Kristoff. The stoic man's attempts to remain steady and resolved all this while crumbles, as his eyes begin to quiver again with the unquenchable tears again in the truth behind the blue sky of Anna's big sister's startling blue eyes.
"You're right. We have to bring her back to her family." Thinking expressly of his bright-eyed girl and her friendly smile that could light up the room—no the night sky itself—Kristoff's untrammeled stubbornness dissolves as he clambers from Sven's back to give Elsa a big brotherly bear hug.
"Anna will be waiting there for us, you'll see. God will lead us to her again, I'm sure He will." Whispered on Kristoff's sobbing neck, the once cold as ice Queen indulges in her hard-won emotions of warmth with her stanch devout belief and loving tender compassion.
The tears were dripping down both their faces, as the Queen and the Ice Harvester find common familial ground in the mutual adoration for the spunky young girl with the indomitable spirit that brought their hearts together.
"Well done, Sir." Hans asides to Eugene after the darker man returns to the sleighs, leading Sven along with him.
"Sure, Good-lookin'. I've been good at patching up family spats since I was a little kid. Not that I had much of a family to spat with in the first place. But that's just semantics." The double black-eyed thief quietly chortles to himself at his own inside joke, totally unaware at just how 'inside' the joke was on him, until he notices the uniquely familiar stolen glances passing between the snazzy younger man he was conversing with in the falling dusk and his own beautiful-to-behold-in-any-lighting-wife.
"I consider myself an expert on families now, due to the fact I have a SUPER BIG family of little snowgie brothers. What are semantics?" A curious Olaf wanders by in his inimitable discomposed responses up at the humans who had a hard time getting the whole family thing down pat.
Eugene shakes his head at the annoying snowball, dismissively ignoring him.
"Look, I know I've been a little off the beaten track, with all the plotting pirates and gross gravedigging that I've been up to of late. And I'm aware that I certainly do require a bath, and a shave pretty soon if I want to live with myself, nevermind other people, however—" Eugene pauses in his tirade to rub his overgrown beard in choice of his next low-spoken words.
"—is there something going on here I should—or probably should not—depending on your point of view—know about you and Sideburns here, Blondie? Or should I call you 'Brownie' now, since you seem to want a change from horrible husbands."
Eugene's two black eyes, grown further darker with the furtive thought, vacillate in open-minded curiosity between his chocolate haired Rapunzel and red-headed Hans who had been giving one another high signs since the suspicious husband had met up with them again. The latter had been attending to the tired reindeer Flynn had brought to them, once he retrieved a carrot to feed the nutrition starved Sven after his long nonstop all day journey to get here.
"Oh, yes. How perceptive you are, Mr. Fitzherbert. There is something of keen interest that your wife and I have been discussing—"The innocent eyed Prince displays a disarming smile amidst his posh language, that only strengthens Eugene's vague allegations with his choice of too polite terms when—
"Prince Hans? Is there someplace you could direct our party to where we could take camp nearby, please?" Exerting her royal rule, Queen Elsa, with Kristoff's head leaning on her shoulder in comforted support, calls over to the always attentive to her every whim Dane who indeed drops all—including confusing conversation with the troubled married couple—to scurry at the Queen's beck and call to her side where Elsa was steadying the exhausted body and soul, of the large man who had obviously been using the delicate lady's welcoming shoulder to cry on.
"You got some stiff competition for that one there, Darlin'" A skeptical Eugene murmurs to his quizzical wife beneath his breath, his worldly mind considering how Hans had jumped at the leggy blonde's mere whim. But Rapunzel was so happy to have him back, she didn't quite get her smoothtalker's envious insinuations of herself and the dashing young prince. Both watch Hans spring to action, tethering Sven to Guddy in a swift sailor's knot to the Ice Harvester sleigh as he and Elsa usher the dazed young mountain man into the back seat bench.
Hans then returns to apprise Eugene of their immediate itinerary.
"What do you think, Sir? There appears to be a thicket of tree cover around the edge of that last bend around this fjorden. We can head there, since it's still freshwater and the animals will be provided for to rest, once we've scouted around the area. This is wolf territory, though the late night sun has kept the grey wolves that travel in packs at bay, thus far. Although I am by no means an expert in Norwegian topography, from what I remember in my book-learning, the sun may be setting soon in these parts. So we must keep torches lit all night to ward the ravenous creatures off." Hans digs inside the Vis-à-vis sleigh's cargo hold to bring out a pair of torches, one of which he lights to rest in the carriage's holder as he was speaking. He then pats a nervously giggling Rapunzel on the back of her hands over the reins she takes up as sleigh driver.
"Wow, And I thought I could talk the hind legs off a donkey." Eugene breathes in a jealous sneer, poking fun at Hans' lengthy paragraph of instruction. The older man was never good at taking them anyway.
"Yup, I think you have all the finer points covered, Handsome. And I wholeheartedly agree it's a good ideato keep hungry wolves away from our women." The indignant thief states snidely with one eyebrow raising at each purposeful term directed at the younger man as the green-eyed monster in him twists a sarcastic lip at this overt display right before his eyes.
"Yes, keep an eye out for the speckled grey and white wolves. They hunt in packs of six or eight, so please try to have your sleigh remain close to mine. That too will discourage the creatures." Hans responds, unaware of Eugene's suspicion.
Hans gives the wide-eyed scared looking girl a deferential smile as he turns to leave. "I don't mean to worry you, Princess. But an ounce of prevention—"
"—is worth a pound of ICE CREAM CAKE!" Olaf adds his sweet-toothed flavor to the conversation as he hops up into the sleigh's back seat, his childlike innocence never daunted by anything life had to throw at him.
"Right. Let's get this nutty popsicle stand on the road already. Ouch." Eugene sourly rolls his eyes, his palpitating arm pounding with hurt as he sucks in air. "This is a pain in the ass."
Hans eyes shoot up at his rough language, especially in front of his lady wife. But there had to be allowances in vulgar speech for extreme pain circumstances, he supposed. "Don't worry, Sir, there'll be a respite soon and we'll see to that, too."
"I bet you will." Eugene always had to have the last snide word as Rapunzel merely smiles at his strange behavior when she signals for Guddy to get ready to move as Hans leaves their sleigh to go to the other he would be at the helm of.
"Anna… I'm coming, Baby. I'm coming."
In the back of the Vis-à-vis that Hans signals Iriserende to pull into a cantor towards their decided campsite, Kristoff Bjorgman whispers to the wind incoherently as he finally physically collapses. All the emotionally tumultuous pent-up anxiety and restless 48 hour plus cycle and the harsh beating at the large wrestler's hands he had taken, were finally taking their toll. The normally rugged young man's pure adrenaline driven rush in racing nonstop, his thrashed body and thwomped bashed head worrying himself sick all the while was completely spent, until he was weak as a child, just as Anna across the miles knew her love would be taking this hard.
Brushing the golden hair plastered to Kristoff's sweaty feverish head back with a soothing cool touch, Elsa glances up to Hans in the driver's seat with a fretful look of uncertainty. She was grateful that his steady hand's stability was at her frightened side as they all journeyed forward together as unlikely partners into this terrifying unknown.
The sun that had been keeping them company all day finally begins to wane as the weary travelers move beside the northwestern side of the Namsosfjorden. Though the far-off eerie whirlpools surrounding the far North's mysterious Mosken Island loom on the dusky late night horizon, the one fervent dream of reuniting with their beloved little Princess Anna swirls hope against hope in each aching heart…