The Wanderer's Tragedy


The phone rang on the nightstand, startling Agnar out of his sleep and causing Idunn to shift over and mutter something incomprehensible. Agnar turned over and looked at the clock, which read 3:29 in the morning. He sighed as the phone continued to ring, then he rose to his feet and picked it up, answering in a bleary voice.

"Hello?"

"Agnar? It's me, Gideon."

"Gideon?"

The voice on the other end laughed heartily. "In the flesh. How are you, old friend?"

"Great. When I can get my sleep, that is," Agnar rubbed his eyes.

Once again, Idunn shifted over in her sleep while muttering. Not wishing to interrupt her sleep, Agnar silently slipped out of bed and crept out of their room towards his study.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"You, did. But whatever this is, I'm sure it's important otherwise you wouldn't have called. How are things?"

"Good, good. And you're right, this is important. I didn't call you to exchange pleasantries, so I'll jump right into it. I've found something. Something big."

"Have you now? Okay… I'll bite. What've you got?"

"A tablet, with an inscription describing the location of the holy grail, belonging to one Sir Bors."

"Are you serious?" Agnar sat down in his chair. "Where?"

"Italy. Venice."

"Venice? How did he end up in Venice?"

"I didn't say Bors was in Venice, just that his tablet wound up there. Nobody knows where his remains are buried, but his tablet did end up changing hands quite frequently after he passed."

Agnar thought for a long moment. It was almost too good to be true. Every lead he had ever turned up over the years had been nothing more than a dead end. Over a decade of searching and he was still no closer to finding the grail then when he had started.

"Agnar? You still there?"

"Yeah… yeah I'm here. I just don't know about all this. How can you be sure?"

"I'm as sure as I've ever been. Come on, when have I ever lied to you?"

Though Agnar still wasn't convinced, he also knew that it was the most concrete evidence he had come across. Part of him believed that it would just lead to nothing as it always had, and yet another smaller, yet more insistent part of him believed that if he let this go, he would never rest.

"I can be in Italy by next week."

... ... ...

A week after Anna's fourteenth birthday, the siblings were greeted by a familiar sight. Agnar and Idunn's bags were packed and ready to go by the front door. The pair were yet again, taking off to another part of the world.

"We'll be back before you know it," Agnar said as he hugged each of his children tightly.

"Sooner, if I have anything to say about it," Idunn said as she kissed each daughter on the forehead.

Elsa and Anna watched their parents as they drove away and turned at the road, disappearing from sight. It was one that they had become overly accustomed to, and at the time neither Elsa or Anna had any fear or doubt over whether their parents would return or not.

Little did they know, that cool evening in April would be the last time they ever saw them again.

Agnar and Idunn never made it to Italy. Their plane was overtaken by a storm and crashed somewhere over the North Sea. The wreckage and any trace of its occupants were never found, buried beneath the cold and indifferent currents.

... ... ...

"My ladies? I… I have some… deeply tragic news," Kai said as he stepped into the kitchen where Elsa and Anna had been quietly eating breakfast.

Anna looked up, apprehension filling her face when she saw the plain mask of grief that was etched across the loyal house servant's features.

"What is it?" Anna asked slowly.

"It's… your parents… something… their plane crashed," Kai said as he struggled to maintain his composure.

Elsa was looking up now, for a brief moment she locked eyes with Anna on the other end of the table, incomprehension spreading across their faces.

"Wha- what do you mean crashed, Kai?" Elsa asked, disbelief lining the edges of her voice.

"Forgive me… I only know what I heard. There was a storm… their plane crashed into the sea," Kai looked down, his face screwed into tight concentration. "They haven't been able to find the wreckage."

... ... ...

Anna was sitting on the floor outside Elsa's room, just as she had when she was a child. The halls of Arendelle Manor were silent, overwhelmingly so. It was as quiet and still as a tomb.

Cenotaph. A cenotaph is an empty tomb. When the remains haven't been found. Anna thought blankly to herself, which had brought on a renewed flow of tears.

Instinctively, she reached a hand up to Elsa's door and knocked gingerly with a shaking hand.

"E-Elsa?" Anna whispered.

She didn't think Elsa could hear her. Even if she could, Anna knew she wouldn't respond. The door to her room stood as tall and silent as the rest of Arendelle Manor. Anna laid her head back against the wood and shut her eyes against the tears that flooded them.

Just on the other side of the door, Elsa shuffled her knees to her chest and bowed her head. Neither of them spoke to each other, and left each other alone to weep bitterly into the long night.

... ... ...

In the long years that followed after the death of their parents, a great shadow descended upon Arendelle Manor, entombing it in hallowed silence. The days passed by in the selfsame manner, which turned into weeks, then months, and then years as they rolled by.

With their parents gone, Kai and Gerda continued to serve the remaining Kaldborg daughters to the best of their ability, fulfilling the role of their legal guardians as per the last will and testament of Agnar and Idunn. Also included in their final wishes, the entire fortune of the Kaldborg family, as well as the manor and of all its contents were left to Elsa and Anna. Not that it mattered, as no amount of wealth or riches could have brought back their parents.

Kai and Gerda dutifully attended to their young charges as best as they could. They took them to school, and picked up at the end of the day. They prepared their meals, though both girls started taking them in their rooms. With their parents gone, family dinners became a thing of the past. The manor was kept clean and orderly, and the grounds were well maintained.

As for Elsa, aside from when they were taken to school, she was rarely seen outside of her room. If Anna had not known better, she might have thought Elsa had perished alongside their parents. She had become something like a ghost, passing through the halls of the manor silently and ethereally. When Anna would enter a room, she might see a brief flash of blonde hair turning the corner. Other times, she might hear footsteps echoing through the long corridors wherever Elsa wandered, but remained invisible. Her presence at the manor became something entirely felt, sometimes heard, and rarely seen.

Through the long years, Anna never gave up on trying to reconnect with Elsa. She knew better than to try and trap her into a conversation, so Anna found other ways to engage with her distant older sister. She'd often leave chocolates out - their favorite indulgence - not as bait but simply a way for Anna to express her care and love for Elsa. Small gestures were the way to do it, as anything more substantial than a passing hello in the hallway would cause Elsa to stiffen like a deer in the headlights and retreat immediately. Though Anna was often frustrated because she still didn't understand why Elsa pushed her away nor what had caused the strain in their relationship, she remained stubbornly persistent and loved Elsa just the same.

Even so, the monotony of their existence soon became insufferable to Anna. She conversed daily with Joan of Arc in the portrait room, first as a way to distract herself until eventually, her ramblings became therapeutic for her. Each of the Kaldborg girls had been left to process their grief in their own way. Anna had channeled hers into focus, spending endless amounts of time in the library or in her room researching the life's work of their parents. She needed to understand it, to turn over every stone just as her parents had to discover what clues might have gone missed, or what details had slipped by. Anna dedicated much of her energy to the search for the grail as it was her strongest connection to her parents and her only coping mechanism of coming to terms with their death.

As the years went by, her obsession grew. Thought galvanized into action as she drew up plans, made notes, charted maps, and cataloged her research. She didn't think she would ever act upon them, but it brought her a small measure of peace nonetheless.