"Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope, and Love"
Act III
Chapter 35
"This is the Moment"
In this summer solstice's hottest day of the year, the blazing sun hung high in the Northern sky over the uninhabited 1.5 square mile rocky island named Mosken. There was an enigmatic stillness in the very air of this remote location that had chiefly been left untouched by humanity.
The intimidating and mysterious Moskenstraumen, directly to the north offshore, as told by many sailors' frightful tales of impending doom and woe to crafts, warded off day travelers and many a-wanderer from ever exploring the small obscure island further.
Unless you were a traveler with mission.
After their impactful entry onto the eastern watery inlet's white rocked sandy beaches, Kristoff and Sven made a mad dash towards the Mosken island's enigmatic interior.
["Which way, Scuttle?"] Silently driven until this fork in the mountain road juncture, Kristoff quietly projects his mental thoughts back and upward. He trusted that the seagull was somewhere aloft at his back, though the mountain man's eyes never stray from their forward line of vision.
["Let's see… That patchy-pirate guy's ship landed over there… And your ship pulled in over here and… Yep Yep! Last I saw of your pretty Princess – loaded down with supplies too heavy for such a tiny girl, mind you me – she was climbing up that mountain over there… Well, somewhere, thereabouts… Or was it over there? I could've sworn that boulder moved since last I was here…"] Scuttle may have had a bird's eye view of the path the kidnappers took Anna up the Wilhelmstind peak mountainside, but the trying to be helpful seagull with a bad memory and even worse sense of direction had a penchant for bouts of being dizzy.
["Scuttle. Just give me a left or right general bearing."] With a beyond frustrated sigh at the inept fowl, a gruff Kristoff tries to keep his cool, though inside, his yearning heart was breaking to locate his missing girl and fold her up in his strong arms, safe and sound again.
["Umm…"] The dipping down dippy gull squints one eye to scan over the quiet moss overgrown rock-faced landscape. The white bird cranes his neck and gesticulates with his feathers until he finally comes to an animated conclusion.
["That-a-way!"] After a few hard knocks to his noggin, Scuttle wracks his rattled head to recall the funny configuration of the stony precipice that was jutting out in the shape of an upside down boot.
["I remember saying to myself that it's funny that it looks like a giant climbed up the mountain peak and left his one boot all topsy-turvy on the peak of that hill your little missy was starting up towards."]
"You're right, Scuttle! That part of the mountain does look like a giant's boot! Like a really big foot size 112, or maybe 114 in the color of a sandy tan, if you look at it from this perspective." Olaf's calm prattling voice comes up over the cliff edge behind Kristoff and Sven after he comes full skittering on Elsa's formulated ice slick.
The happy snowman assesses the seagull's point of view with a rather disturbing detached head inverted in his branch hands. The comical scene was made even more disconcerting by the strangely neck rotated, bug eyed, green chameleon on the snowman's headless shoulder.
["I'll try to find the rest of the Scuttle Recon and see if they've got any further information on our pretty princess' whereabouts! I'll catch up with you guys later! Just keep a low profile until then, Team! Over and out, Prince My Kristly!"] With a salute, the seagull flies into the opposite direction of the sun high in the sky.
Shaking his head at the sidekick banalities, Kristoff redirects Sven in the direction of the green mossy incline connected to the upwardly tilted western side of the island mount.
With his golden Saami longbow and arrows in their quiver strapped to his back flying in the wind, the Snow Prince and his speeding reindeer take off again, just as a handsome red head appears to peer over the cliff side.
With a naturally agile legged climb, Hans leaps onto the higher-level to let out a frustrated breath. He watches the reindeer and rider they were just about to catch up to race away again in a new direction entirely.
The Danish Prince gazes down at the decapitated Olaf and the unruffled lizard on his shoulder who remained standing there.
"Keep it together, please, Midshipman." Kommander Westergaard chides Olaf as the young man quite chivalrously leans back over the cliff rise to aid the lady he had been escorting as his skating partner on her ice path up to this rocky hillside.
"Kristoff?" Rising to the surface, as light as a feather Elsa asks as she pauses the stream of her focused ice powers and allows the dashing figure to physically take over and pull her strained body the rest the way up the steeper hill.
"Don't worry, your Majesty. Mr. Bjorgman just started in that direction. I'll keep an eye on his course, but I advise that you rest a bit. At least allow yourself a few moments in this bright sunlight to recharge. May I say, how impressive you have been to get us this far, so quickly." Hans speaks with genuine concern for the breathless young woman who was showing, in his opinion, an enormous amount of presence of mind and self-control in her anxiety to let loose all her pent-up fears in order to find her missing sister.
Especially now that they were so close.
"Thank you, Kommander." Her ice blue eyes normalizing at his reassuring calming words, Elsa affords a kind-eyed Hans a smile. Their hands still interconnected, he squeezes Elsa's yet frosty wringing palms encouragingly without flinching at her cold fingers' touch.
Their blue and green eyes lock within the newfound emotions awakening for one another amidst all this chaos enveloping them.
"It's nice to see you two kids holding hands, however –" A strained voice comes out of nowhere, interrupting the tender scene.
"– a little assistance for your injured-armed bro may be required about now, Lillebror."
Hans and Elsa break their deep eye and hand lock at the caught-in-the-act accusation spewing from the rocky hillside behind them.
"Ungh! Ergh! Eugene! You're too heavy for me!" Rapunzel was there at the edge trying her best the heft up her decidedly larger and heavier bodied spouse.
Clinging to the cliff edge, Eugene looks up to his own breathless lover with a cocky arrogant smirk.
"That's 150 pounds of pure sculpted core muscle at a perfectly toned 21.5 BMI, Liebling! Thank you very much." Insulted Flynn Rider, if nothing else, had pride in his gorgeous physique.
But the smaller framed young wife, herself infirmed with the early stages of pregnancy, was finding the task of relocating that indeed striking, yet destabilized, physique too difficult.
She already had exhausted herself in the exercise of crawling over Eugene's bent over elevating back to be boosted up to the high hill knoll followed by a nimble footed final hop up.
But with much pain etched on his gorgeous features, Flynn Rider found his busted right bicep a bit of a downer when it came to a—what was before simple—climbing task for the natural in-shape former 'cat' of a burglar.
"Oh, yes, Storbror! Forgive my tardiness! Please excuse me, Queen Elsa." Ever the polite gent, with a quick scan of the departed reindeer team's directional track, Prince Hans respectfully bows to a smiling Elsa, with Olaf toddling at his tall booted feet. He then dashes back to assist his weakened big brother's plea for help up the rocky hill.
"Ouchy, Lilllebror! Be more gentle! I took more than a few falls for my blushing bride on the ice back there. By the way, you and that leggy Queenie could take this sort of thing up professionally as a perfectly well-matched skating pair. And beyond these new bumps and bruises, there's a bullet in my yet! Not too sure where my yet is yet, but—oww! Watch those branches, Snow pal! They're sharp!" Hans lifts the man up with a bemused smirk as Eugene makes cracks, caterwauls and complaints all while his younger sibling, with Olaf's 'help,' gets the noisy thief up to the top of the cliff in one whiny piece.
Pascal merely shakes his head at the man who still calls him a 'frog' from time to time as the lizard wipes his hands of him and jumps to Rapunzel's shoulder instead.
"My Eugene is too funny. He even makes jokes when he's in a whole lot of pain. I think he tries to – oh, hey, Elsa? Are you okay?" Rapunzel's amused smile at her erstwhile hubby's vocal antics as she wanders over to where the lone Queen was standing atop the hill vanishes the closer she gets her cousin.
That's when Elsa suddenly grasps her own head as if she was in an out of the blue world of hurt herself.
"I do not know… All of a sudden, I don't feel very well…" That's when Elsa begins to violently shiver. Goosebumps inexplicably covering the great majority of her rapidly blue tinged skin peek out beneath her purple and lavender trimmed high collar and long skirt. The Ice Queen instinctively wraps her arms around herself in response to her entire body quaking with the surge of influxed raw ice energy almost beyond her control.
Worried Rapunzel goes to the young woman standing alone on the barren rocky hill, but the aura of ice exuding from Elsa's every pore repulses the warm-blooded brown-haired Prussian princess back in cold shivers
"Elsa? Guys! Something's wrong!" Rapunzel yells loudly over her shoulder for help to the others when the platinum blonde's eyes flash with a pale blue white light that was blinding to behold. She watches Elsa's whole being begin to glow with an encasement of super-cooled jet streams of the air frozen about her.
"Stay back! I don't know what this is! Don't come near me! Please, just stay away…" Elsa shrieks and begs in panicked warning, feeling that unsettling déjà vu sense of when her ice powers first culminated. She was about to lose her well-maintained control.
But there was nothing she could do about it, because she didn't know what caused this wild surge so abruptly, nor did she have any idea how to stop it."
Rapunzel starts to reach out for Elsa until her husband's protective arms pull her back towards him before she got lost in the flurry of clouds of snow and ice and hail swirling about the uncontained Ice Queen.
Even Olaf, as he tries his best to get near Elsa, is blown apart and scattered over the hillside in pieces.
"Queen Elsa, find your inner calm!" It was left up to Hans to rise to the occasion, just as he was the only one in the past who dared to take rein of her complex emotional struggles with her expanding ice powers before. She heard only him then time and time again, so he was confident he could take up the case again now.
The redheaded man braves the pelting hail to move towards Elsa fearlessly. With both his hands up in the frozen charged air, Hans Westergaard gestures for her to ease back down from this unexplained outburst.
But Elsa's whited out frosted eyes empowered with a secret source didn't even seem to register what he was saying, or even see him as the gelid hurricane continues to increase about the pair of them. Hans fights the storm to get closer to her wavering and quaking lithe form.
"Snowflake! Please remember what we're here for! To save Princess Anna!" He tries to gain her focus but it only seemed to cause her to panic all the more, as he's forced away with a cold blast of wind.
"Elsa!" Hans strains his squinting eyes to see through the furious thrashing hail in the frozen fog flailing form. "I'm well acquainted with the storm you're going through myself!" He struggles to raise his lyrical voice to speak against the swirling blizzard's din, but perseveres nonetheless.
"Alone, confused, discarded, lost. I recognize you've felt that growing up, too. Because we're two of a kind—'a perfect matching pair,' I daresay, as my big brother just stated. And I believe he meant more than just in skating, if I discern my newest Storbror's insinuating humor." He tries to inveigle the wild eyed girl into calm remission with charm and wit.
"And I know, you know, deep down, that all that pain and so much more can be conquered by the true inner peace that only comes from the Lord."
"'Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.'" (I Peter 5:7)
The handsome prince of the Southern Isles could look no more attractive to Elsa than in this moment of his genuinely spoken retelling of simple truth in the Biblical wisdom that cleaved through the ice storm veiled over her confused heart. His undaunted warm hands somehow make their way through the fierce storm to be placed on her frozen shoulders, as Hans' sweet voice calls her back to her senses. Elsa's hazy blue eyes finally clarify in the frosted curtain of ice that dissolves at last in his full valiant embrace.
The pair of them stand like this on the hillside, intertwined together for several minutes before Hans quietly decides she was ready to be spoken to.
"Snowflake? What just happened?" Hans softly whispers in Elsa's hair as he hugs her close to his warm chest to bring her back to sedate normalcy. He tries to revitalize her still too cool temperature by rubbing her arms up and down for the friction's heat.
"I don't know. I just don't know. It was as if I could feel…as if I were someone else for a moment. And I don't understand who or what or how. Only that we—both of us—are terrified deep down of what's to come. Of something beyond our control." Elsa's luminescent wide eyes, that had been idly tracing Rapunzel and Eugene's comical scrambling adventures in gathering Olaf's wayward parts rolling down the rocky hillside back together, now connect with Hans' contemplative gaze.
"'And the God of all grace, who added you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.'" (I Peter 5:10)
Enveloping her in his arms, the man recites the New Testament quote, as the young Queen attempts to steel herself in the King of Glory's reassuring grace that does indeed surpass all understanding. With his head bent protectively over hers, he knew that there were no limits to what he could—and would—do to keep her safe, and he silently asks the Heavenly Father to give him the strength and fortitude he would need to do just that.
Praying for her sister's safety, Queen Elsa of Arendelle looks upward to the sun beginning in its setting descent into the western side of the protruding rocky mount Mosken Island's eerie landscape, as the regrouped party again begin to trek toward Kristoff and Sven's raging path into the wind…
Several minutes before…
Not so far away, in the cool hidden recesses of the darkened talus caves above, Anna closes her eyes, still reeling from the unbelievable recovery of her thought deceased parents.
She leans her head upon her dear Mama's lap as the tired Queen strokes her baby girl's caramel hair to settle her.
The two females had been crouched together in the dank shaft on the cold dirt floor for a while now. She and Queen Idun had been evicted from the chamber at the old captain's command over half an hour of long discussion ago that they were not privy to hear.
Job had been keeping vigil over them in the stifling blackness. The tall first mate, after studiously unpacking some of the captain's belongings from the one bag of supplies he brought up the side of the mountain with him as if by rote, for he'd done it many times over the years they've haunted this cursed cave, was leaning against the entrance towards the narrow chamber as a guard. When his tasks were completed, Job silently started to whittle away at a small block of wood produced from his pocket.
Not more than indistinct murmuring between the two male voices could Anna decipher emanating from the cavern chamber down that long winding shaft. But her pricked up ears could every now and then, make out her Papa's often weakly choked out baritone. King Agdar was doing the majority of the talking, as if reciting some dialogue of poetry or prose aloud that Anna would keenly pick up in bits and bobs within the echoing cavern walls.
"Mama, what's going on in there? Why does he want to talk to Papa alone? And why has he kept you prisoners here for so long? How have you lived in this place? Why didn't we know?!" Anna begins to spout off a thousand unanswered questions at once to her poor spirit beaten mother. The older woman pauses in her songful humming and petting of her tiniest baby she'd missed so terribly these past five years that Idun could almost start to sob to feel her longing arms around her little Anna again.
"Still so bright eyed and curious of the world, my little dolly?" Queen Idun smiles in the face of her immense fears to give her child that special maternal look of caring, no matter what was happening around them.
Though Anna always had her father's shade of orangey brown hair, Idun could now see in the maturing young girl, the youthful version of herself reflecting on Anna's sweet yet spicy features.
"And already married I see. Is he a good man? I do wish I didn't have to miss your wedding day, min liten flicka." The observant mother lifts Anna golden ringed wedding band finger with a regretful, nonetheless proud look on her yet lovely features that begin to softly weep for the loss of important years.
"My Kristoff is the best ever. I can't wait for you to meet him." Anna nods, joining her mother in tears as she thinks of how utterly good her Kristoff is, how lucky she is to have landed him, and how proud she'll be to show him off to her parents.
"He's really big...and really tall!" With a disconnected, yet adorable, proud phrase to describe in extra large terms her beloved ice harvester in every way-body, heart, and soul-Anna squeezes her likewise emotional Mama's trembling hand with a silly girl-in-love smile.
"How is your sister?" The Queen then guardedly inquires of her other less open, yet infinitely more complex daughter, as eyes glance up in knowing that Job was listening to every word of their whispered private conversation.
"We had quite an adventure back there but – Elsa is so much better now. We've opened up the castle gates and even started a year-round ice-skating rink." Wiping the shared tears from her eyes with playful grin, Anna had a quaint way of equating her mystically gifted older sibling's well-being and becalmed state of mind with the open to the public all-year-round community Ice Pavilion now gracing Arendelle castle's once tightly closed doors.
"Then you've finally found out her secret. And you're both coping with it. Prisa Herren." Idun pauses to look upwards and thank God." My good girls. Your Papa will be so glad to hear that. He's worried himself sick over the two of you, especially considering how uncertain a state we left Elsa in, no matter how unintentional. Funny thing is, your Papa and I had already decided Elsa was of age enough to finally deal with the truth, and bring things out to the open with you when we got back from the wedding in Corona. But that wasn't to be." Idun carefully phrases her always contemplative husband's anxiety that she continually had to assure the doting father of his two intelligent and courageous daughters' ability to tackle anything – as long as they had each other to rely on.
Just as my Agdar has always had my love to lean on for support, I've prayed that a sister's love would be sufficient to melt Elsa's frozen heart. As close as you girls were when you were little children, I knew your love and affection should be enough to see her through.
"I must tell you, in deep reflection, your Papa and I have come to regret how we'd separated you two when you needed each other the most growing up. I am so sorry." The doe-eyed woman tearfully admits to her dear child now that she has the chance she thought would never come again to apologize for what she knew inside was wrong.
"Well, we're the best of friends and the closest of sisters ever now! So you needn't worry, Mama. It all turned out for the best. Elsa means the world to me and I know I do to her, too. Olaf calls us 'BSF' – 'Best Sisters Forever'." Anna proudly relates to her concerned mother of her reclaimed bond with her big sister Elsa, and their closer than close sisterly hand in glove relationship that had only blossomed since they started being honest with one another.
"Olaf, mitt barn? A love interest for my Elsa, perhaps?" The Queen cocks her head at the obvious masculine name reference with a spark of hope behind her weary eyes.
Though an independent woman in mind herself, at heart Idun had come to understand that a young woman of Elsa's age and personality would still possess romantic notions, in spite of the icy girl's emotional struggles and difficulties relating to other people.
"Hee hee hee! You're still so funny, Mama! Olaf's our talking snowman." Giggling, Anna was still innocent enough to find the sunny side of life, even in utmost times of tumultuous dark clouds and strife.
"Then I take it, Elsa hasn't found anyone special to share her heart with, as you have with your Kristoff?" The concerned mother says in deep consternation with knitted disquieted eyebrows.
"Not if I can help it." With a twisted lower lip and scrunched up nose, Anna sourly makes a murmured negative face at the unwanted stray thought popping into her head of the one man in the world – no, that one redheaded villain – whom she would abhor to romance her beloved big sis.
Which, not knowing any prior background story, leaves the already pensive Queen Idun utterly confused by her younger daughter's at first lighthearted smile that transformed to scornful and bitter in the blink of an eye.
"I wouldn't share a sandwich with that loser again, never mind my sweet sister's pure heart!" Anna continues to venomously mumble as she scrambles to her incensed feet to begin to pace back and forth in the cave shaft entrance like a wild woman.
Job's eyes follow her every move, though his head never moves a centimeter upwards from his work.
"What are they talking about for so long in there?!" Though the calming voice of her father's lovely baritone had quelled her worries up to this point, go-getter Anna was not the type of gal to take a back seat and wait quietly for things to happen without her input for a long stretch of time.
Her curious ears were just itching to eavesdrop, her restless feet already on the move, as, with boundless energy, Anna crisscrosses the room several times back and forth, making Idun and Job both a bit dizzy to keep up with her flighty tracks.
Although, her mother could claim that same fire in the belly that she herself once had in her own youth reflecting there in her daughter's daring bright eyes. And by the same token, she could sense that her feisty little girl was about to make the same bold and foolish moves she would have before being blessed by two children and some twenty-five years of happy marriage to the most wonderful man who ever lived …
The mature woman, who was anxious for her 'step and fetch it' little child's safety, could do nothing but shake her head warningly and marvel at the Creator's design of passing down not only physical genes, but also characteristic traits from parent to child. And no one understood that soulful fact more than this Scandinavian Queen for her children.
['Anna. Be careful.'] Idun mouths silently as the girl's worry for her dear papa, who was still speaking somewhere deep within the cave walls, overrides any basic fear for self.
[' Mr. Job would never hurt me.'] Anna's tripping feet take her straight towards where the dark man that her innocent goodness had come to somewhat trust was leaning against the shaft wall. She believed him too busy at work with his project to even notice her stealthily sneaking by…
TIPTOE…TIPTOE…
Anna's naïveté would be the end of her someday. That or her innate clumsiness.
CLATTER! BANG! SKITTER!
"Where you be going, missy?" Alerted by her accidental kicking over a pile of stones and pebbles across the floor, Job catches Anna in the act, despite her best effort to be covert.
"Uh, I was just wondering what…umm… you were carving over here, Mr. Job." Anna guiltily covers up her clandestine tracks with a brilliant bright toothy smile up at the super tall 6'7' pirate sentinel who was guarding the shaft egress, and was now glaring down at her.
As if to feign sincere interest, Anna glances around the man's wide shoulders to glimpse the wooden item he had been whittling away at for the greater part of the past half hour wordlessly.
"A Crucifix? Wow, Mr. Job. That's really nice." Anna gives the Caribbean man a more genuine smile now. The girl brought up in the Lutheran faith and childhood instantly recognizes the symbol of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for the redemption of mankind that Job was carving.
"Back in Guadeloupe, me Muma always wanted me to carve her one. But dis dumb man never got 'round to it. And den it be too late. So I's make it for her now." Job murmurs more to himself than Anna as he holds up the roughhewn small wooden figure hanging on a tree that his big coarse hands had been meticulously carving for years, every time he felt the need to cleanse his fouled soul.
And this time, for these crimes he was but an accessory to, the soiled stain over his heart was dark and deep.
In the faint lantern light affixed to the cave wall at his side, Anna could make out how Job's dark eyes had landed with pity upon the shivering petite framed frail Queen a few feet away. There was an undeniable look of longing remorse flickering against the open flame in his eyes.
"It be cold and damp in here. You be needing a blanket, Mama." In his low bass Job states, as he locks eyes with a surprised Idun. She nods back at his kindness, aware that it was the despised pirate's quiet unspoken first mate who took fastidious care of her and her injured husband concerning their basic necessities since the beginning of their capture.
The dark man then turns from Anna to reach a big hand into one of the few rucksack bags he had managed to cart upon his back with a sparse amount of their supplies.
But that moment of inattention is all the audacious Anna needs. She's scurries like an intrepid little mouse in the shadows under his line of sight. She slips quietly into the shaft entrance while Job was bringing the retrieved blanket covering to her mother.
Idun does her best to keep the man talking and preoccupied to cover for her brave child, as Anna quickly sneaks her way through the cavern's pitch black corridor…
Moments earlier…
"'Taper up there, which Christ holds dear;
By day by night, burn altar light;
Olaf did so, that all men know;
In Heaven be, from all sin free;
Lies at this day, where good men pray;
Hand, nails and hair, grow fresh and fair;
A heavenly Saint, to heal men's plaint—'"
"—You must understand, Jol, this skaldic poetry is only legend. A rousing tale, perhaps spread to inspire men from century to century, passed down from generation to generation. But none could truly find any merit in the stanza verses' literal veracity beyond speculative exaggeration of some 'legendary spring's' mystical healing effects. I myself always believed the entire Saga, while at times based on true facts of battle and actual events, was merely an analogy, portrayed of our patron saint, of mortal flesh seeking the healing light of the Almighty's enlightenment." With this scoffed disclaimer, King Agdar, body weary, still retained a gallant presence in the chamber, as he pauses in his well spoken memorized recitation of chapter after chapter of his most famed royal ancestor's life story. Line by line, as told in the heroic soaring verse and rhythmic epodes, Agdar himself put this ancient poetry to memory decades ago as an only child raised in the immaculate solitude of being reared to be Norway's next ruler.
But his audience of one wild-eyed madman of a pirate whose patience was running low now would not be dissuaded. The angry redheaded pirate leaps up from his perch beside Agdar on the injured King's rock ledge cavern table that served as his immovable bed.
"CONTINUE reciting the Saga for me! Or ze Queen—" Houtebeen begins to bellow threateningly, his sunken eyes wild and hollow with feverish craze as the glowers over the prone vulnerable king like an merciless octopus about to suck the life from his prey.
"You so much as touch one hair on that woman's head, and so help me—" Literally bristling, Agdar's handsome blonde brow furrows as the willowy half figure of a man sits bolt upright, damning the intense pain shooting through his broken body. His icy blue eyes blaze at the pirate with such deep derisive fury that this Norske king's quiet cold commanding growl far outweighed any intimidation of the old pirate's vicious yells and red-hot screaming threats.
"Yes, yes, my dear King. Captain Cornelius Jol vill keep to his vord concerning yer beloved Queen. Has he not, all zese years, taken good care of ye and she? Houtebeen vill even promise to free ze lovely lady on ze morn if ye do exactly as he asks." The crusty pirate's snake oil promises dangle before Agdar as Norway's King tries to find his calm center again, he eyeing Houtebeen circumspectly.
"You must forgive zis old man's momentary excitement. It simply is ze stirring way you tell ze Saga of your Sainted Olaf zat has Houtebeen all enthused. Please to continue now. Ze Captain of ze Pearl Lady vill not interrupt again, he promises." The wily old man catches his ill received frenzied bad temper to diffuse the situation with a wide repugnant grin and ingratiating smile with his one good eye across the sitting up King.
"Yes, well… In the end, I don't care what happens to me anymore. But if you honestly vow to let Idun and my daughter go away from here in safety, I will acquiesce to your demands. Though I still fail to understand how my remaining here to continually retell of this ancient Saga to you will help you in your plight, Captain."
"Please, to humor a temperamental decrepit aged man, one experienced old sea dog to another." Captain Houtebeen plays on honorable Agdar's proud naval career and service for his country's Navy.
"Fine. If you keep your end of the deal, I will keep mine. Just let my dear ones go." Still regal and classy, despite his harsh infirmities, the King closes his eyes to take a deep bracing breath and force his weak aching body to stay focused enough to finish reciting the remaining stanzas of this strophe of ancient skaldic poetry. He would have to learn to overcome the continual gnawing pain, without his adored Idun at his side to face it any longer. As long as his Queen and his precious girls were safe, Agdar could withstand anything.
"'When God's light glows, on waters clear flow;
The crowds do come, the deaf and dumb;
Crippled and blind, sick of all kind;
They're cured to be, on bended knee;
And off the ground, Rise whole and sound.'"
"Zere! ZERE! Zat's ze part ! Zat is it! Tell me yer leg doesn't burn at its stub end to be full again, to be able to run and climb and hop and dance! Tell me yer arm does not long to reach out and hold zat beautiful woman again, to squeeze her hand in yers once more! Tell me ye don't yearn to hear zose vords, man!" The peg like Durchman hobbles about, recklessly animated as he thrashes around the dimly lit chamber. He projects his gnarled arms straight out to almost fall backwards in his exuberance as he points his cane towards King Agdar's own missing two limbs.
Agdar only needs to pause for mere moments before distinctly speaking the verse on his heart.
"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'" Job 1:23
Unpretentious Agdar responds in the contented words of Biblical hero Job. Though every inch of his carnal human nature desired to scream out in agreement "Yes, I do!," every millisecond of his promised immortal godly soul cried out to suffer through and trust in the Supreme Being's greater plan for his life, whatever there was of it left here on earth.
Righteous King Agdar would deny the Devil's willful gnashing discontentment with a resounding "No, I don't!" instead, no matter what the cost to himself 'til his dying day.
"'I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right side, I will not be shaken.'" Psalm 16:8
The good, devout man, even in his constant pain and strife, still found his core strength in the great faith that has carried him through every trial of his life, though they be many.
"Good thing ye are a praying man, O Norske King, because either way zis turns out, ye vill soon meet yer Maker. Whether zis does ye in, or Houtebeen has to do ze honors himself, once he sees if yer legends be fit enough for him to DRINK!" After pacing about deceptively like a hungry lion, the cautious self-preservationalist aged pirate once again calls upon unexpected strength to suddenly grab, in a flash of grasping arms and harsh hands, an unsuspecting King Agdar by the neck in a choke hold.
Though the shocked younger man struggles, in his weakened state from years of pain and neglect, he could do nothing but succumb to the wicked pirate's vehement attack. His widening pale blue eyes watch in astonishment as Houtebeen produces Arendelle's stolen Holy Regalia's Golden Orb in one clutching hand.
With the other grimy paw, the pirate roughly squeezes the handicapped King's jaw open and begins to pour several drops of the yet sparkling crystal clear waters he had gained from that inexplicable spring near the banks of the River Nidelva.
When in the skirmish at the Nidaros Cathedral, in this concealed golden vessel, the wily Captain managed to preserve these rescued drops of water that sprung forth when blessed by the golden rays of the Creator's life-giving—moreover, life-restoring—Sun from the Heavens above…
And as the cowardly peg-leg degenerate Captain Houtebeen forces weak and broken, yet still distinguished and idealistic, King Agdar's dry throat to swallow the moisture, the pirate anxiously awaits this test of the holy miracle foretold of centuries before he's been patiently waiting for all this time…
The world starts to swirl around the ashen haired double amputated Norwegian monarch's coolly disoriented mind on another plane that sinks into a glacial sea of palest blue, as his physical form falls to the ground, frigid and cold…
"What have you done to my poor Papa, you Monster!?" Princess Anna of Arendelle loudly shouts directly in the pirate's deafened ear, as she races into the cavern chamber after just arriving to witness the evil villain's forceful attack on her father from the dark corridor she finally found her way through.
The aggressively aggravated Princess roughly pushes the peg-leg aside as she rushes to her downed, writhing and wounded Papa's wretched side on the cold damp ground.
"Verdoemen!"
At Anna's ferocious fierce shove, Captain Houtebeen loses all balance. The peg-leg, along with the shining golden orb's vessel that still held the half drunk remainder of the shimmering precious healing waters of that blessed spring reserved for his cautious self still clutched in his grubby fat hand, both go teetering over…
All of the dreaming, scheming and screaming over the long fought and clawed years for the evil, aged 'Houtebeen'—'the Peg-leg'—pirate Captain Cornelius Jol III would be for naught…
Liebling – Darling in Germanic-Prussian
min liten flicka – my little girl in Swedish
"Prisa Herren" – "Praise the Lord" in Swedish
Mitt barn – My child in Swedish
Muma– Mother in Caribbean
Verdoemen! - Damn! in Dutch