Chapter 19: Home is where the heart is.

"Anna!"

I opened my eyes and terribly blinding light flooded my vision completely. It didn't take long for me to realize that I was in a hospital room.

"This is not the first time someone calls me with the name of another woman, but it is the first time that it happens to me while I am dressed."

I knew that voice. And it wasn't Anna's.

"Silje… have you seen Anna? Do you know where she is?"
"I don't think I know any Anna. How you feel?"

I completely ignored her question. I wasn't very interested in my health anyway. I just wanted to know about Anna.

"Haven't you seen her? Who brought me here?"
"A helicopter. A trekking guide found you lying in the middle of the forest and called the emergency number."
"On the forest?"

I didn't quite know why, but something shrank inside of me.

"Yes. With a tremendous infection."
"An infection… And… I was alone?"
"They said that, yes. What do you care about? Who's that Anna?"
"Anna is…"

A lot of blurry images and sensations swirled in my head as I searched for the answer to that question. Obviously, Anna was… Who was Anna?

"I… I dunno…"

I grabbed my head with both hands fighting to regain the memory of what I knew was the most important thing in my life. I needed to know where she was; I needed to know how she was; and I needed to know who she was.

"Hey, don't be mortified. It must have been a dream. The doctors told me that you had been delirious."
"Delirious? Anna's not a delirium…"

I looked into her eyes desperate and searching for understanding and what I found was a pitying grimace.

"They said that you had already gotten rid of the worst of the infection and that they would release you as soon as you woke up. Do you want to come to my house until you feel a little healthier?"
"No, thanks. There's no need to that."
"You know, someday you'll have no choice but to let people come to you."
"I gotta find Anna."
"I'm going to talk to the doctor and I'm going home. Please, don't turn up half-dead around again, will ya? Don't spend your life looking for a mirage."

I didn't answer and he didn't seem to expect me to.

"See you Monday at work."
"At work? They fired me, remember?"
"So much are you looking forward to vacation? Don't play hooky!"

She was out the door before I could understand what was going on, and, shaking my head, I tried to focus on what was important. Anna. I tried to get up, but the intravenous drip was holding me back. I waited more and more nervous until the doctor arrived and pretended calm and sanity like a professional actor. Then, the moment I was free from the drip and dressed, and he signed my discharge, I shot out the door in desperate search of someone whose voice, face, or connection with me I couldn't remember. I didn't know who she was, but I knew I needed her.

I ran like crazy up and down the city in search of the unknown and couldn't find a single clue of what it was what I was looking for. I entered each place and I could only feel a chill as I passed the pizzeria. I walked the docks and knew that she had been there, but was unable to reach the memory of her. Night came and the streetlights came on and they caught me; there was something important about them, but I couldn't figure out what either. Then, as if looking at me with an air of superiority, the castle raised before me. I was nailed to the site. I had never entered that place in my whole life, but I knew exactly how it was like inside. It was an inaccessible place and it felt like a second home. What was it all about? What was happening to me? Fuck! Who was Ana?!

Exhausted and scared, I returned home hoping to find some peace there, but the result was the opposite. Everything was in order, exactly as it had always been, but something inside me told me that this order was false; that at that moment the logical thing would have been to find everything made messy and covered with a completely different smell. On the other hand, what had become of Sven? Was I making it up too?

I felt a sharp pang in my head and a flash of Sven flying over an immense wall of ice crossed my mind.

"So it really has been a dream…"

I sat on the couch and hid my head between my knees. That was that smell. My clothes smelled like her… She was real!

"No… That was probably the scent of the person who rescued me. It surely crossed my dreams and that's why I relate it. Crap… Anna doesn't exist, does she?"

Assuming that time would do the part for me that the antibiotics hadn't done, I took refuge in my bed and cried for hours without knowing why or to whom.

Days passed and, rather than losing that uncomfortable feeling, I got used to living with it. To Silje's delight, I went back to the job I thought I had lost and began to restore normalcy to my life. I assumed I wasn't going to find Sven and stopped chasing the vague memory of a dream.

However, getting used to it didn't improve my mood. On the contrary, every day I felt emptier and more irascible. My life no longer had any meaning. If only there was someone I really cared about…

'Anna.'

It came back to me. Over and over. Every time I searched for something important within me that was worth being alive for, her name came to me.

That night I went out to the bar. I had never been a heavy drinker, but perhaps a good bender would rot the part of my brain that generated that disturbing sensation.

"Put me the strongest drink you have, Haldis."
"A bad day?"
"Not especially…"
"You're a sight for sore eyes," I heard the equal parts sensual and irritating voice of Unne behind me. "What have you been doing all this time?"
"I'd like to know."
"Uhhh, that sounds like a brushoff. Thinking of drowning your sorrows in alcohol?"
"If possible."
"And, what do you think if I save you from cirrhosis and help you forget in a much more satisfactory way?" she said bringing her face close to mine until she almost touched my nose with hers.

I jumped up. That wasn't what I wanted. Unne wasn't the one I needed. I ran and went out into the street to end up crashing and knocking poor Silje down with it.

"Kristoff! What are you doing?!"
"Sorry… I wasn't looking where I was going. Are you okay?"

I helped her up and luckily she seemed fine.

"Seriously, what's wrong with you?"

"What are you talking about?"
"Since the forest thing, you haven't been the same again. What's happening to you? What do you need?"
"Her… I need her."
"That... Anna was?"

I nodded.

"Did you manage to remember her?"

I shook my head.

"Are you still thinking about that dream?"
"If it really is a dream… why doesn't it let me live? Why can't I get it out of my head? Why do I feel like I left something so important to me?"

I burst into tears again and Silje came over to me and hugged me tenderly.

"I'm in love with you. You know that, don't you?"

I didn't say anything, but I couldn't deny it either.

"I'm not going to ask you to accept me, I would never date a man for whom I wasn't the first, but I'm going to ask you not to let yourself be defeated by this."
"What can I do, Silje?"
"Go and find her."
"What?"
"I've never seen you interested in anyone until now, but I have no intention of being overtaken by an imaginary woman. So grab that herculean ass and look under every rock and find her. Show me that I'm right by letting you go."
"Under a rock!"
"What?"
"I don't know, but I'm going to the woods!"
"What?!"
"Thank you!"

I gave the best coworker I could have a quick kiss on the forehead and ran up the mountain. I didn't know why, but I needed to go to the forest. Perhaps because it was my place of peace or perhaps because I had already gone crazy, but something told me that that was the only way out. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on Anna, on what that name made me feel.

I let myself be guided by my instincts and by my heart; without thinking, without trying to remember, just feeling. It seemed that the forest spoke to me. The wind guided me and the Moon illuminated my path. I was approaching her. I knew I was getting close to her.

I have no idea how long I spent like this. My feet and legs were sore, I was short of breath, and the cold was penetrating me deeply, but I couldn't stop.

Suddenly, completely lost in the middle of the brushwood, a ray of moonlight illuminated a clearing that caught my attention and all my senses told me that this was the place. I approached slowly, trembling… If she was there… she probably wouldn't be alive. I went through the last thickets and what I saw was, for some reason, as crazy as logical: a hideous figure made of stones and mushrooms of some kind in the shape of a troll seemed to wait for me with open arms.

"Under a rock…" I whispered to myself.

I knelt before it and discovered a fairy ring on the ground at its feet. I dug like a nervous dog looking for a bone and came across a small metal box. That couldn't be a coincidence.

The box didn't seem to have a lock, so I simply pulled the lid knowing that the answer was there, and I found myself with a small, yellowed note in my hands.

'Keep your promise and come back to me, Kristoff, my dream.'

It was Anna. I knew it was Anna. Was I her dream? Wasn't she mine? Was she as lost as I was?

I thought about going town to town, house to house, asking about the woman who had written that note, but the troll kept staring at me as if I was forgetting something important.

"What can I do to find her, mister… fungus… troll?"

And, like something out of an absurd television commercial, a song that I was sure I had never managed to sing, resounded in my head and I felt an urgent need to sing it at the top of my lungs. What could happen, anyway? There was no one around, and if there was, I didn't think there was anyone left in Arendelle who still thought I was sane.

I sang out loud that nonsense until I was almost hoarse and, as soon as the last note came out of my throat, the most beautiful voice in history resounded in my head: "Tastes like lichen!"

Yep, I was going to lick that thing. I didn't know why, and I knew it was quite likely that I would end up in the hospital again for some kind of poisoning, but I needed to do it. I gave it a big lick on the forehead and, unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

Desperate and hopeless, I hugged the troll, lost myself in tears again, and, yes, I begged a stone.

"Nothing makes sense anymore. I don't know if it ever had it. I just know that I need her and I can't reach her. Please, I beg you, in any way you want, I don't care, but take me with her; make me go back to her."

And, suddenly, everything went black.

And then, everything was filled with light and blurred images, and screams and cries flooded everything.

And then…

"Ice?"

And…

"Cuties… I'm gonna keep you."

And…

"What's the magic word?"

And…

"You and this fellow. Yoo-hoo! Big summer blowout!"

And then, finally, my life began.