Chapter 43
Monday afternoon found Elsa, Anna, the Morris family, Lena, Edgar, Bernard, and several guards in the dungeon room where the thirty crates of bottles, the three cork presses, and the corks had been stored. Greetings between the Morris family and the students had been cordial but not companionable, and conversation had been minimal.
Elsa examined her resources, made a plan, and said, "Each of these crates has fifty bottles. While we're working on the contents of one crate the guards will be unpacking the next set. Anna has the slips of paper with the signatures and the labels. Each label is on a wire loop that will fit over the top of the bottle. Alex, Sarah, and Ruth will each be running a cork press. Lena, Edgar, and Bernard will bring me bottles, I'll fill them almost full with ice, they'll take them to Anna to get signature slips and labels. They'll use the compressed corks to stopper their bottles and hold the signature slips in place. They'll loop a label over the bottle and repeat the process until the crate is empty."
"Elsa, that's going to take all afternoon! Can't you think of a way to speed it up?"
"Unfortunately, no. We've only got three cork presses, and that's a bottleneck."
Looking pained, Alex cleared his throat. Once he had Elsa's attention, he said, "Unless, Your Majesty, you use your ice to do the compression of the corks."
Elsa gave a snort of irritation at herself, and rolled her eyes. "Of course. Thank you, Alex." She addressed the guards. "Please get four of the crates of bottles up to the main dining room and then assemble as many of your colleagues and castle staff as can be spared for a while. We'll be joining you shortly." After they left she said, "All right Anna, we should be finished in under an hour and a half. But now the burden falls to you to keep all the signature slips and labels together and organized."
Elsa addressed the throng standing around the enormous dining room table before her. "All right everyone, here's how this will work. As the two carts with crates of bottles move past the table, everybody standing at the table will pick up a bottle and unwrap the newspaper padding it. Sarah and Alex will collect the newspaper. Lena and Bernard will distribute corks, and Ruth and Edgar will help Anna distribute signature slips and labels. Put the bottles and corks on the table. I'll fill the bottles with ice, and make ice to compress the corks. Once I've dissipated the ice around the corks you'll have a few seconds to pop them into the bottles with a signature slip before they expand to seal them. Tighten the wire loop on the label around the neck of the bottle. Another team with serving carts will collect the bottles and get them to the ball room. Then we'll repeat until we run out of signature slips. Is all that clear?"
There was a murmur of assent, and nobody looked confused, so Elsa said, "Then let's begin."
An hour and a quarter and seven broken bottles later, the royal family, the Morris family, the three students, and several of the staff and guards that weren't needed elsewhere stood in the ball room looking over the stack of crates with the prepared lamp bottles. The framing pieces and cord had been brought up from storage, so everything needed to put together lamps was there.
Elsa said, "Why don't you show everybody how to lace up a lamp, Lena."
"Yes, Your Majesty," said Lena. She picked up two framing pieces, cut a length of cord, and took a bottle from one of the open crates. Two minutes later she had built up a lamp and was making sure that the cording was tight. "Voila!" said Lena, and she handed Anna the lamp.
Anna said, "Thanks, Lena. We need to have the finished lamps sorted into groups by location so they can be either distributed by local officials or sent by post. For the people who live locally, we need the lamps sorted into alphabetical order so it'll be easy to present them." Anna looked at the label on the lamp Lena had made. She walked over to a corner of the ballroom and put the lamp onto the floor. "This one's local, so let's start an alphabetized line over here."
Elsa addressed the staff members, "Please spread the word that if anyone finds themselves unoccupied, they should help putting together lamps. If we have fifteen or twenty people lacing lamps they could all be done within a few hours." Elsa started moving toward the ballroom door.
"Walking out on me again?" asked Anna with a small frown.
"Nothing here needs magic, and if I use this time for other work I can join you for dinner."
Anna smiled. "Oh, ok. See you at dinner."
Elsa smiled back from the ballroom door. Just before leaving she said, "Sarah, Alex, Ruth? Please have your letters home ready before noon tomorrow."
"Yes, Your Majesty," said Alex.
Over the next few minutes, the lacing of lamps became organized. Sarah took on measuring, cutting, and distributing lengths of cord. Alex made sure everyone had bottles and framing pieces. Anna organized the finished lamps by location and the local lamps by the recipient family's last names.
Ruth set herself down next to Lena and laced lamps silently for a while. Eventually, she leaned over and whispered, "Lena?"
Lena kept her eyes and hands on her work, but whispered back, "Yes?"
"I'm really sorry about the party games. We didn't mean anything by them. We had no idea anyone would be upset by the Weselton thing. And although the Hans game was a little more questionable, well.."
"You didn't expect Great Aunt Margit to be such a prude," whispered Edgar from the other side of Lena.
Ruth snorted, then whispered back, "To put it bluntly, yeah."
Edgar whispered, "You couldn't be expected to know about Uncle Oskar's problems."
Lena whispered, "And Great Aunt Margit is a prude."
"So you'll forgive us?"
"I will," said Edgar.
"Me too," said Lena. She glanced sidelong at Ruth and grinned. "But you probably shouldn't expect another party invitation from our parents any time soon."
Over the course of the next two hours, four hundred thirteen lamps were laced together. Everyone had had enough of lamp making for the afternoon, so they stopped.
Shortly after dawn the next morning (about 9:00 AM) the Morris family showed up at the castle gates heavily bundled up against the cold. Alex and Sarah were carrying a trunk between them and Ruth had a stack of letters. They went to the ballroom to pitch in with lamp construction.
Anna arrived to see how things were going around ten. On seeing the Morris family she said, "Good morning. Thanks for helping out, but what are you guys doing here?"
"Good morning, Your Highness," said Alex. "Queen Elsa had asked that we get our letters and such to her for censorship this morning. Since you're usually the first one to go through them, and Sarah figured you would want to see how the lamp assembly was coming along, we decided to lie in wait down here and help out until you arrived."
"Well, thanks again for helping. What've you got for me?"
"A bunch of letters and a trunk for Mom's sister," said Ruth, pointing to the trunk placed against the wall with a stack of letters resting on it.
Anna walked over to the trunk, picked up the letters and started looking at the addresses. Alex, Sarah, and Ruth followed her.
Anna saw that one of the letters was addressed to Oscar Carlson. She grinned at Alex and said, "I'll bet you're feeling better about situation at the Academy, right?"
"Yes and no, Your Highness," said Alex with a frown. "It's good to know that my students and equipment have found new homes. But having worked for a year with new lead professors after a major setback, I can't very well yank them, or the equipment they're working with, back under my control when we return. The collateral damage may have been minimized, but it's still going to take years to rebuild my lab and research group."
"Oh. I'm sorry we dragged you away from Corona."
"Pay it no mind, Your Highness. What's happened at the Academy in my absence was none of your doing, and, science or not, I'm learning a lot. There's some consolation in that."
"That's good," said Anna. She mumbled under her breath, "I guess." She addressed Sarah. "Should we have the trunk crated up after we inspect it?"
"Thank you, Your Highness. I'd appreciate it."
"All right, I'll take the letters up to Elsa and after we read them we'll check the crate and get this all ready for the ship back to Corona."
"Thank you, Your Highness," said Alex. "We'll stick around for a little longer and build a few more lamps."
"Thanks! They're really coming along aren't they. Elsa thinks they could all be done by tomorrow afternoon." She raised her voice as she moved to leave the ballroom. "Anybody keeping track of how many lamps have been built?"
One of Anna's clerks called out, "Six hundred twenty nine, Your Highness."
"Thanks, Nils."
All the lamps were built by late Wednesday afternoon. After dinner, Elsa and Anna spent an hour in the ballroom applying the final enchantment to the lamps. The lamps that were going to nonlocal families were crated up for shipment around Arendelle. It would take days or weeks for all of them to eventually be delivered, but with the days still getting shorter, Elsa thought it was important that they be distributed as quickly as possible. The lamps going to local families were put in crates, but kept in alphabetical order.
On Thursday the lamps going to families in Arendelle's other cities, villages, and remote farmsteads were sent on their way with printed notes explaining the gift and how to operate it.
Preparations for the presentation ceremony started in earnest. Cooking began. Tables were moved into the courtyard. Lists were made and checked. It was possible that as many as two thousand people would be descending on the castle and everything had to be ready so the ceremony would proceed smoothly. At least there were plenty of bowls.
It was a little before three o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday. The sky was overcast, the sun was setting, and it was cold. The Morris family was hurrying toward the castle. Well, Sarah and Ruth were hurrying toward the castle, and they were dragging Alex along with them. When they got to the open gates they saw that the courtyard was crowded and filled with families, all dressed in their best, which, considering these were the four hundred eighty three poorest families in the city, wasn't saying much. Sarah and Ruth left Alex by the gates and went to find Anna. She was dealing with a stack of lists at one of the tables next to the castle door and smiled when she saw them.
"Good evening, Your Highness," said Sarah. "Where do you want us?"
"Hi Sarah, Ruth, why don't you watch from the top of the wall." Anna waved over a guard who she instructed to escort the Morris family to the top of the wall near the gate.
Once the Morris family was ensconced on the wall, they could see that there was a structure to the crowd. It looked like an enormous meandering queue, snaking its way around the courtyard. As families came in through the gate and presented their invitations to the guards they were instructed to go around the queue to pick up bowls of stew near the castle entrance. After picking up their stew, Anna's clerks would slot them into particular places in the queue.
"There must be a thousand people here!" said Ruth.
"Closer to thirteen hundred," said Alex.
"How can you tell?" asked Sarah, hoping she might be able to shake Alex out of the last of his melancholy if she gave him a chance to wax boring about statistical sampling and estimation.
"The guards are counting and I asked."
Lanterns around the courtyard were lit as the sun was setting. Soon after, Elsa appeared at the castle door. Surprisingly, she wasn't wearing ice, just queenly robes of regular cloth. Amidst cheers and cries of "Long live the Queen!" she moved to the center of the tables where Anna and her cadre of clerks were making sure everything was ready. As she stopped moving the shouts and cheers quieted in anticipation.
Elsa raised her voice so as to be heard by everyone. "Thank you all for coming. As we approach the darkest time of the year, my dearest wish is that I could ease some of your day to day struggles. I regret I can't do as much as I'd like for you and your families. But I can give you a gift of light. The money or time you would have spent on illumination can go toward food, shelter, and, I fervently hope, new opportunities."
Elsa held up one of the lamps. "These are lamps. They will never need fuel. They will operate at a touch from members of their owner's families, and only members of their owner's families. One touch will turn them on," she touched the glass of the lamp's bottle, "and another will turn them off." She smiled. "If you're wondering why this lamp isn't shining, it's because I'm not a member of the," here she paused to look at the label on the lamp, "Aas family. If left on, the lamps will go out after twelve hours, ready to shine again at the touch of a family member."
Elsa moved over to stand next to Anna. She said, "None of this would have been possible without the help of the castle staff, the designers of the physical aspects of the lamps, and the tireless work of my sister, Princess Anna. And since she has spent so much effort organizing today's presentation ceremony, she'll be telling you all how we will proceed."
Anna said, "Hello everyone. Can anybody not hear me clearly?" She waited for a response, and receiving none, continued. "Ok then, here's how this is going to work. You should all be in alphabetical order, so when I call out a family name, they ought to be the ones at the head of the line. You can put your bowls and spoons on the table to my right. Er.. your left, is that right? Yeah, right. No, left." Anna paused, feeling flustered. She took a deep breath, then continued. "Anyway, Elsa will have your family's lamp and she'll hand it to you. Someone in the family should touch the lamp to make sure it works. After everything checks out you can get more to eat, or maybe some cocoa to drink." She grinned. "Are you ready?"
The crowd cheered in response. It was time to hand out lamps.
"Alright then. Let's get started." Anna checked the list of families and their members. "Could the Aas family come to the table?"
The members of the Aas family stepped forward from the front of the line and put their bowls on a table to the left of Anna and Elsa. They moved across to Anna, who asked "Mr. and Mrs. Aas?" The heads of the Aas family nodded. Anna smiled, and looked at the small children they had brought. "Oh, these must be Jakob and Marie."
"Yes, Your Highness," Mr. Aas said, surprised and happy that the princess knew so much about his family.
Elsa checked the label on the lamp one last time to make sure it was the correct one and handed the lamp to Mr. Aas. He accepted it with a bow and a heartfelt, "Thank you, Your Majesty." Jakob removed a mitten, reached over and touched the lamp's bottle and then gasped as it burst into illumination bright enough to wash out the gas lanterns lighting the courtyard. His gasp was echoed by many in the crowd, which immediately started murmuring.
"Why don't you keep your lamp shining, get more stew or perhaps some cocoa over by the castle door, and find someplace in the courtyard to wait until everyone's gotten their lamps," suggested Elsa. The Aas family could only nod mutely, eyes shining in the light of their lamp.
Once the Aas family got their lamp and everyone saw the procedure, presentation of lamps proceeded quickly. There were the occasional glitches when families had identical surnames (for instance, the five Hansen families), and there were four lamps that didn't light. The families with similar names were quickly sorted out, and the four families were taken aside so the problems with their lamps could be investigated after the main distribution was finished.
From the wall Sarah marveled at the combination of restraint and spectacle she was seeing. Elsa not appearing in her ice regalia, using the regular courtyard lanterns for illumination when she could have used levitated glowing orbs of ice. The only magic on display this evening was that which the families initiated when they touched their lamps. She remembered the effect controlling the magic of a lamp had had on Alex, and he had known what to expect. To the families in the courtyard it must have been tremendously uplifting.
Alex and Ruth only saw the spectacle. As dusk had faded to darkness, a bright magical spark had been lit in the courtyard. It was joined by more and more sparks until the courtyard shone, to eyes used to candle, lamp light, or no light at night, as bright as day.
And after Elsa's concluding remarks (thank you for coming, I hope you had a good evening, leave your bowls and mugs by the gate, travel safely), and the cheering from the crowd subsided, the spectacle had continued, although only the Morris family and the guards on the wall got the full impact of it. When the families that had received lamps started leaving the castle, the causeway became a bright river of shifting and shimmering lights. As they dispersed to their homes the river of light branched and split to become a vast glowing delta that spread out and covered much of the city.
Alex, Sarah, and Ruth were watching the sparkling river of light when Anna came up the stairs to the top of the wall to join them.
"So? What'd you think?" asked Anna with a face splitting grin.
"Anna!" said Ruth, "You've gotta see this. It's amazing!" She rushed to the staircase and pulled Anna by the arm to the outer edge of the wall.
"Whoa!" yelped Anna as she was dragged across the wall. Then she breathed, "Whoa." She shouted back over the wall to the interior of the courtyard, "Elsa! Come here! Quick! You have to see this!"
Elsa raced across the courtyard as quickly as her robes would allow. She thought sadly, "It was too good to last. The wonderful feeling of being able to help my people. The joy on their faces as they controlled the magic and got the briefest glimpse of what it's like to have powers." As she emerged onto the top of the wall all she could see were the backs of Anna and the Morris family. She asked breathlessly, "What's wrong?"
At the sound of Elsa's voice everyone turned toward her and moved apart so she could see the river of light. Elsa's jaw dropped and she stared. Anna, grinning so hard her face hurt, moved forward and drew her to the outside of the wall. Elsa watched as first the causeway, then the major streets, and finally the winding pathways in the hills darkened as the last of the families left the castle and arrived at their homes.
"That was beautiful," sighed Elsa. "Thank you, Alex."
"For what, Your Majesty?" asked Alex, surprised.
"You must realize that none of this would have happened without you." Elsa smiled and threw her arms wide to encompass the city. "Your investigation of the light from my snow led to all of this."
"It may not be science, and you may not be able to publish it," said Anna, still grinning. "But it's going to do a lot of people a lot of good."
Alex swallowed the sudden lump in his throat and said, "You're welcome, Your Majesty. I'm happy to have been of service."
"Your Majesty? What was going on with the four lamps that didn't light?" asked the ever pragmatic Sarah.
That brought Elsa back down to earth, and a frown crossed her face. "That was actually very worrying. Three of the families have enough members so sick that they couldn't attend and sent neighbors in their stead. Sarah, I'd like to talk to you tomorrow in more detail about the flu medicine. I'll want to discuss the best way to deploy it."
"What about the fourth family?" asked Ruth.
"Oh, that was the Hjulstad family," said Anna. "They're.. not a happy family. I think the only reason they live together is that they can't afford to live apart."
"Rather than get tangled in their morass, I just remade their lamp so it would operate for anybody."
Karen Linder said, "Bernie! You knew!"
"What are you talking about, Ma?"
"Those small panels you've had me working on are just the right size to fit around these lamps."
"Keep your voice down, Ma," Bernard whispered, looking around to see if anyone had overheard.
"Wait," Karen whispered. "You didn't just know about these lamps, you designed them! That's what you were paid for. That's what the weird 'The candles should should tide you over until they're no longer necessary' comment on the note meant. And that's where you've been sneaking off to. You were working on the lamps with the Queen!"
"Ma, shhhh," Bernard whispered.
His mother whispered back, "We're so proud of you, Bernie."
A/N - An interesting aspect of the way people solve problems is that if they're given too many resources they often miss better solutions. Thus Elsa's needing Alex to suggest using her ice to compress the corks at the beginning of the chapter.
The contents of the letters going to Corona will be shown in a later chapter.
And of course there's an enormous snaky queue at the presentation ceremony. It's just like meeting Elsa and Anna at Disneyland (the last time I was there, a bit over a year ago, the queue was over three hours long).
I want to thank the reviewers of Chapter 42: Concolor44, PascalDragon, ptahaegyptus2, and SharKohen.
