Chapter 4 - The Summer Princess
It was summertime now. Anna kept walking across the countryside until she reached the city of Arendelle. The gates opened up for her. "Princess!" said the castle servants, to her confusion. "You've returned!"
"Princess?" Anna said to herself, but wasn't about to say anything.
She rode through the city on a royal open carriage pulled by a white horse named Kjekk, up to the castle. She waved at the people as she passed.
"Princess Anna has returned!" everyone said.
The castle doors opened for her and allowed her to enter. The crowd cheered as the doors shut behind her, leaving her now nearly alone inside the castle.
The king and queen themselves were standing there. "I'm King Agnarr, and this is Queen Iduna," said the king, seeming quite friendly. "We want to welcome you to Arendelle Castle, your new home."
"Welcome, Princess Anna!" Iduna said with a wide smile. "We're having a ball tonight in your honor. Come with me and we'll get you dressed."
Anna followed the purple-dressed brown-hair-bunned Queen Iduna to her new room.
An emerald green, black-corseted, off-shouldered ballgown was waiting for her.
"I hope it's to your taste," Iduna said, hands clasped.
"It's perfect!" Anna said, her arms thrown out.
The summer heat was starting to get to her so she doffed her traveling pink cape and hat there in her room. She went behind a screen to change into her green ballgown. Iduna laced up the corset in the back tightly until Anna gasped for breath. Then Iduna unbraided Anna's hair, brushed it, and did it in a new hairstyle with a twist bun and a braid crown. Finally she hung green ribbons from her bun.
"There!" Iduna said, looking at Anna in the mirror and putting her hands on her shoulders. "Perfect for a princess!"
Anna smiled at herself in the mirror. She'd never been so dressed up before.
"You'll choose a suitor at the ball tonight to wed," Iduna said, happily as a lark.
"Wed?" Anna gasped in shock. "As in, marry?"
"Yes! You'll have plenty of choices. They're lining up at the castle doors as we speak! The line must be one hundred long!"
"Marry?" Anna whispered half to herself. At first she hesitated, but then her face lit up in a smile. "Marry! With someone I just met!"
But then she remembered something in the back of her mind, her friend Jack. She had forgotten him again when Iduna had brushed her hair. Would Jack be there at the ball? She hoped so.
Anna explored the castle on her own, then found herself seated on the throne of Arendelle, head in one hand, bored and waiting for the party to begin. "Why not?" she sang to herself. "Why, oh why should I not be married?"
Meanwhile, the young men and boys of the kingdom of Arendelle were lining up at the doors of the castle. The line was a hundred long. All of them had heard of the princess's ball and had come to try their luck, or at least have a good time.
Jack had managed to turn back visible, and now, dressed in his brown cape, stood at the end of the line to enter Arendelle Castle. The others in line were dressed in fine suits. Underneath his brown cape he was wearing his best white shirt, brown vest, and brown cut-off pants.
"Son," a tall man said to him, when it was his turn to be interviewed and enter. "I'm General Mattias. Are you planning on entering dressed like that?"
Jack looked down at himself. He didn't have any shoes on. He nodded grimly at General Mattias.
"Let me get you a pair of boots, and then you can enter." He returned a moment later with a pair of brown boots from the coat room and gave them to the boy. "And give me your cape to hang up in the coat room," he added. Jack reluctantly handed over his brown cape, leaving him in his white shirt and brown vest.
"There," Mattias said. "That will do, I'm afraid." He started to drill questions as he held a piece of paper and pen. "What's your name? Where you are from? How old are you?"
"Jack," he answered. "I'm Jack Frost, sir. I'm from Burgess. I'm eighteen years old."
"Well Prince Jack of Burgess," Mattias said, hands behind his back and bowing slightly. "You're free to enter. Good luck, son."
Jack walked into the castle with Mattias at his side. When he entered the ballroom, Mattias announced him as "Prince Jack of Burgess!"
Anna was lost in the ballroom, hiding from the crowd of finely dressed people and eating her dinner off the banquet table. She stuffed some bon-bons into her mouth. She was making her way through the crowd across the dance floor, staring down at her feet, when she knocked straight into someone.
"Oh, excuse you!" a voice said. "But really, you should watch where you're going…" She looked up to see a handsome boy with messy brown hair, brown eyes, and a lopsided grin. "I was talking to myself," he clarified.
Before Jack was a beautiful girl wearing an emerald green ballgown with a braid crown and a smile on her face. Could it be Anna?
"Jack," the girl said. "Imagine seeing you here."
"Were you expecting me?" he teased her.
"I hoped you would be here."
"It wasn't easy to sneak in past the guards," he joked. Then he realized something.
"Excuse me, Princess!" He bowed down lowly. "Anna, I didn't know you were a princess," he said looking up at her.
"And you're Prince Jack," she teased him. "So I heard, when you came in."
"Do you want to dance with me?" he asked.
"Yes!" Anna agreed giddily.
Jack took her hand in his, and put his other hand on her waist, while Anna put her other hand on his shoulder. "This isn't like a country dance back home in Burgess," he joked. Then he spun her around in a waltz. They danced in circles around the ballroom, in a figure-eight or eternity sign like when they had ice-skated on the frozen pond.
"Oh, Jack," Anna said as they waltzed. "I wish it could always be like this."
"It can be!"
Anna briefly caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror on the wall, but it was different. The girl in the mirror had white hair, a blue dress, and a frown on her face. "No, it can't," the Snow Queen mouthed. She threw out a hand and the reflection changed back to Anna and Jack dancing.
Jack stopped dancing abruptly and put a hand to his heart with a grimace.
"What's wrong?" Anna asked.
"Just out of breath," he lied. He looked at her. They were standing in the middle of the dance floor, but as the princess had stopped dancing, so had everyone else stopped to watch them.
Jack got down on one knee and pulled a ring out of his pocket, holding it up to her in the air. "Princess Anna," he said, "will you marry me?"
"Yes!" Anna said happily. "Yes, I will!"
The Snow Queen was watching from the mirror. "You can't marry a man you just met," she said, lowly but Anna could still hear it.
"Yes I can," Anna said.
"What?" Jack asked.
"I mean, I will!"
"That's great!" Jack said. He stood to his feet, lifted Anna up in the air, and spun her around in a circle.
"My daughter Princess Anna is marrying Prince Jack of Burgess!" King Agnarr announced to the ballroom. "The wedding will be tomorrow! And when they wed, they shall become king and queen of Arendelle!"
That night, Anna and Jack went to their separate rooms in the castle to sleep. The wedding was to take place the very next day. Queen Iduna showed Anna her wedding dress out on a sewing mannequin, a white-gold gown with a matching fitted jacket. Anna climbed into her bed and Iduna wished her "sweet dreams on her wedding night," then closed the door.
Anna couldn't sleep. She got up wearing her green nightdress and tip-toed over to the next room, holding a lit candle in one hand. She slipped in and shut the door quietly behind her. Then she snuck up to the bed. She held the candle over the bed to see Jack laying there asleep.
"Not now, Anna," he said with his eyes still closed.
Anna slipped into the other side of the bed and slept beside him. Before dawn though, she awoke again to see Jack already dressed. "Where are you going?" she asked him.
"I can't stay visible any longer," Jack whispered. "The Snow Queen has me under her spell."
Her eyes flickered shut again and she couldn't help but sleep.
When she awoke in the morning, Jack was gone. She couldn't find him anywhere. She changed back into her traveling clothes, her pink cape and hat, meaning to go and find him again. She explained to King Agnarr and Queen Iduna why she couldn't go through with the wedding.
"I understand," King Agnarr said. "It doesn't seem like Jack to just go missing like this though."
"I believe he's at the ice castle on the North Mountain with the Snow Queen," Anna said bravely. "I'm going to find him."
"I'll help then," King Agnarr said. "I'll give you a carriage to take you up the North Mountain."
Anna set out in the golden carriage pulled by Kjekk the white horse. She waved a mittened hand back at King Agnarr and Queen Iduna, waving at her back at the castle doors. She wondered if she'd ever see them again.
"I'll find Jack," she said to an unseen someone beside her. "I know I will."
