Rapunzel didn't make it past the courtyard before being intercepted. The castle was lively with people reacting to the thawing of Corona's harbor. Guardsman Nils, when he spotted Rapunzel, turned the attention of the man he was conversing with toward her. Rapunzel knew she wouldn't get away without engaging with them.
"Your Highness," Nils addressed her as they strode up to her. "I understand you are leading a mission to follow Princess Elsa. This is Captain Bjorn, of Arendelle's navy. He may be of assistance to you."
The captain bowed, precise with formality without wasting time, and clarified that he was the captain of the ship sent in pursuit of Princess Anna. "My ship and crew is at your service. We are the fastest vessel in your harbor, I believe."
"That's perfect," Rapunzel answered, relieved that the brief delay would make up for itself. "We are going to Princess Anna's rescue, too." As she had expected, the news invigorated the Arendelle captain. She thanked Nils for the introduction, then continued to rejoin Maximus, confident that Captain Bjorn would follow. He did, leading a horse borrowed from Corona's stables. When both she and he were mounted and on their way back to Flynn and Kristoff, she quickly filled the captain in on what they knew.
She hardly had to mention the word "pirate" before the captain set his steed to galloping down the hill. Allowing Maximus his speed, Rapunzel easily kept pace.
ooo
Elsa considered what she had made. It wasn't much of a palace. She dropped through the window frame and stepped down into the tower. "Home sweet home," she said. Her shallow breath barely moved her chest.
Resemblance to Rapunzel's tower ended at the casement window. Inside, Elsa's creation in ice was a single, simple room with a high ceiling. The smooth floor mocked a large rug like the one in her childhood room, thin ripples in the ice making the illusion of texture and pattern. It was her room, frigid blue and silver sheen, ice window panes like beveled glass, a canopy covered bed made of white ice and frost. She walked to it and lay herself down. For a moment the hard surface that was not a soft featherbed confused her. And there was only one bed, here. No bed for Anna.
She got up again. Her ridiculous cape swished and swirled. Her crystalline shoes clicked on the false rug. She would close the windows and seal herself in and wait until she, too, turned to ice through and through. She told herself she was not bothered by the cold; it had always been waiting to take her.
A sun-warm breeze gusted in through the window before she could close it. It caressed her face and then withdrew, like a gentle hand beckoning her to step back outside the window.
She closed her eyes a moment. A warm tear spilled down her cheek; she touched it with her fingertips, startled by its heat. She looked at her fingertips. The tear had become lacy snowflakes, so she blew on them and they swirled away like seed puffs blown from a ripe dandelion head.
She was not surprised when Olaf stood there, in place of the snowflakes. He gazed at her with his wide eyes and his smile of gladness and his awe of her. She turned her head and didn't look at him. "I'm free," she said.
"Sure," Olaf agreed.
"I don't have to decide anymore. I don't have to lie. I don't have to do anything."
"Uh-huh," Olaf nodded.
She turned around. She leaned against the window ledge and said, "I should have never come to Corona. I should have stayed in my room in Arendelle, locked the door, and never come out."
"That wouldn't have been fun," Olaf commented.
"What does that matter?" It came out as a cry. "Anna is gone! She's gone, and nothing matters!" Her chest hurt. She pressed her hand against her chest, against the sharp pain. "Nothing I did... I couldn't keep her safe!"
"But your parents sent you away. You had to go."
"We were just playing," Elsa said. "I didn't mean to... I was trying to catch her."
"It was an accident." Olaf was matter-of-fact.
"It was my fault!"
"You didn't tell Anna to come. Why was she alone, anyhow? Why didn't your parents come for you. Or even better, why didn't they send for you?"
Elsa sobbed.
"Ever?" Olaf asked.
"It should have me on that ship. That ship that sank." Elsa's voice steadied. "I should have died. I should be dead."
"Aw," Olaf chuckled, "one little sea storm couldn't have killed you. Not you, Elsa. You make storms."
Elsa stiffened. "I made that one. It was my storm," she whispered. She flickered a frightened glance at Olaf. "I killed my sister. I'm a monster. A witch. I'm evil." Her voice shook. "Maybe it wasn't an accident."
"You don't mean that, do you?"
"Of course not!" Elsa gasped. She paced while wringing her hands. "I don't know what I'm doing!" She gestured around the room. "I don't understand this. Or why... I..." She reached a wall and put her bare hands against the icy surface. "I thought of running away, so many times. I thought being alone would be a relief. " Rushing back to the window, she leaned out and scanned the horizon for the ship she had sent drifting away. "How could I have done this to Kay? To everyone?"
"But I can't undo what happened," she said. "I can't go back."
"Why not?"
Elsa gave Olaf a puzzled look. "Of course I can't."
"Why?"
"I can't!" she shouted at Olaf. She pressed her hands to her temples. "How could I? Everything is changed." Olaf stepped close and pat her elbow with one of his stick hands. The touch was comforting and not as weird as a stick hand should feel. He smiled a toothy smile up at her. She looked away.
"Hey, what if didn't?" he asked in a conspiratory whisper. "This could all be a bad dream? Maybe you're dreaming?" He turned a circle in place with arms out toward the room. "This is pretty weird. It could be a dream, right?"
"I'm not dreaming," Elsa said softly. "I wish I were. Anna is gone."
Olaf insisted, "But are you sure? Why would she be on that ship, anyway? Do you think she really could have sneaked on? We don't really know that she did. She probably changed her mind or got talked out of it. I bet she's fine."
Elsa crouched down so that she was face to face with the snowman. "Olaf, you're forgetting. I was captain of the guard. I know what this is. Just like the times I was there to give someone bad news. It's a terrible thing to be true, and you don't want to believe it. I don't want to believe it. I would like it to be a misunderstanding, but I can't make it so by wishing."
"You wish me real, and I'm here," Olaf countered.
"Why are you here, Olaf?" She waved a hand, and he went away. Olaf was a childhood thing, an imaginary friend for her to talk to about home, about Arendelle. Or so she had thought. Nothing more than talking to herself. She called him back. "Olaf, what are you?" she asked him.
He shrugged. "I dunno." He thought again and brightened with a grin. "I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs!" He opened his arms expectantly.
"But I'm cold all the way through," Elsa said, nevertheless hugging the short snowman closely.
"I'm cold all the way through, too," Olaf said, "you know."
Again, Elsa waved Olaf away, back into snowflakes that sparkled and disappeared. She turned toward the view outside the window. Carefully, she climbed onto the window sill. She arranged herself until she was comfortably sitting in the window. She leaned her head back against the frame.
ooo
By the thin, gray light of Arendelle's dawn, King Marius opened weary eyes to the sight of Queen Genevieve reading near a window. A curl of smoke spiraled from the recently extinguished candle stump left on her desk. He watched her clutch the letter to her chest and look out the window with a bleak expression on her exhausted face.
"Have you been up all night again reading them?" he asked.
She was startled by his voice. She folded the letter's pages and half turned toward him.
"You must stop," he urged. He sat up. He pulled a dressing gown on and climbed out of bed. He raked his fingers through his hair and slowly went through the motions of dressing.
"You will not read them," the queen accused. "One of us should know."
The king shook his head. "They are Elsa's, and Anna's, private letters. Anna will be unhappy enough to find her trove discovered."
The queen crossed to her desk, where bundles of letters lay in piles. Though Anna's parting note had explained her intentions, her room had been searched afterward for any clues that would elaborate on her motivations. In fact, the castle and grounds had been thoroughly searched, with the hopes that Princess Anna had been playing a trick. However, the letters had not been in the castle. It was Kristoff's mother, shocked and grieved by the connection she made with the coincidence of her son's absence and that of Anna's departure, who brought forth a box that the princess stored at their small cottage, guarded by Kristoff's safekeeping. The key to the cypher itself turned up tucked between the canvas and backing of the Joan of Arc painting in the hall of portraits.
After days spent closely reading each letter, Queen Genevieve no longer needed the key to decode the secret script. She was devastated to find out her eldest daughter's bare feelings. She could not stop reading and rereading the letters.
"We were so wrong, Marius," she said to him. "She let us believe that she was happier there. She hid her loneliness from us, but not from Anna. And Anna kept her secret."
King Marius went to his wife and took her hands in his, requiring her to relinquish the pages she held back to the pile. "You are making yourself ill," Marius warned. "It is not too late to make amends to our daughters. You know Anna will not be dissuaded from returning with Elsa, and in the end this will all work out for the best."
Queen Genevieve removed one hand so that she could trace the new gray hair at the king's temples. "You say so, but I can see your worry," she whispered.
"I had hoped The Messenger would have been intercepted and turned back," he admitted. "They must have had a good wind at their back, but we will have word from the pursuers before too long. An unofficial message if nothing else first."
The queen looked away. Her gaze fell again on the letters wrapped in ribbon.
The king continued, "Think instead about Corona's good news."
"I wish I could think of my brother's happiness, now," Genevieve answered. "But my heart is full of Elsa's sadness. Selfishly, of my own, too. I let my sister-in-law be the mother I should have been. I—"
"We did what we thought best," King Marius said with a sigh, reminded of the painful decision to send Elsa to her uncle and aunt. Neither had been wholeheartedly for it, but they had concluded that it was the best option for Elsa. Keeping her away so long had come from an inability to face the trouble of her powers. She had been born with her powers, but as a baby she had done no worse than chill the bathwater. The outbursts of ice began after her fourth birthday. The accident while playing with Anna made Elsa frightened of her growing power. The attacks had quieted, even disappeared altogether it seemed, in the environment of his in-laws' household, and he had not wanted to address the possibility that the problem came from his shortcomings as a father. Who else could shoulder the blame?
ooo
Elsa watched the small shape on the calm waves that was the ship with Kay on it. A current would catch it and carry it into shipping lanes, where he could be found and taken back to safety. She should have done better for him, she rued. Between her hands she made a round lens out of perfectly transparent ice. She made an opaque tube to house it, playing with the lengths and thinking all the while that it was pure laziness not to simply do the math instead. At last she found the right length and looked through the ice spyglass at the ship.
She continued watching him, sometimes with the spyglass, sometimes with her eyes straining to follow the speck upon the low, blue waves. After a long time, a second ship appeared. She put the spyglass to her eye and focused on the new arrival. They raised sails to turn their course toward the ship with Kay. Soon they were alongside. She saw the tiny shapes of a boarding party cross over. They raised the sails on the snow, and both ships proceeded on their way together. She frowned when she realized that their course aimed back in her direction, though obliquely. She continued to watch them, aware that her tower would soon be within view to their lookout. She could already make out a figure in the rigging without using the spyglass. She hoped the climbing sun would make the clear ice tower appear to be an illusion of water and mist.
The thought gave her an idea. She raised a cold mist from the surface of the water, calling the wet cloud upward to create an obscuring wall between her and the ships. A misty horizon would help create the illusion that her tower was a sea mirage. The sight could be discounted by the sailors as easily as a vision of mermaids. Since she wanted to continue watching the ships' progress, she left a hole in the mist at the level of the window. She drew tacked her cloak over the window to serve as a curtain that she could peer around with the spyglass she had made.
She didn't account for the reflection of the sun on the water. Every few minutes she had to wave aside the moving mist to keep her line of sight to the ships clear. When the reflected sunlight caught the lens of her spyglass, it glinted like a signal mirror.
ooo
