M for sex and violence.
Kai smiled as he watched Anna. The girl was practically hopping up and down on her toes as they stood outside the door.
"Patience dear, she'll be out when she's ready," Gerda said with a smile. Anna had been so giddy she had practically shoved her way half-dressed out of her room. Gerda had tried to force something frilly over her head but Anna had been faster and woken up earlier. Now the girl stood outside her big sister's door dressed almost like a boy; a green corseted jacket on top of some – and Gerda had no idea how they had found their way into Anna's wardrobe, although one name appeared as an immediate suspect – green leathery trousers. Gerda had tried her best by wrapping a shawl around the girl but she simply was not presentable.
Anna paced back and forward with a smile on her face, and not just for the reason that Gerda and Kai thought. After a careless sentence from a servant Anna had been a girl with a mission. She had spent the rest of the week exploring the castle high and low, not just idle exploration to stave away the black boredom that consumed her but with a purpose now. Daddy – no, he was father now, mustn't forget – had smiled when she said she was looking for ideas for Elsa's birthday present. She wasn't really lying. She had been looking for the perfect birthday present for Elsa, but it wasn't inspired by any item she had seen. In one hand she clutched a small wrapped box containing a tiny marble ballerina figure, something she knew Elsa would like. It wasn't the real birthday present though.
She had a surprise waiting for Elsa, one she knew Elsa would love.
"Good morning your majesty."
Wrapped up in her own excitement Anna had missed it. She snapped her head around to see Elsa closing the door beside her, a look of surprise on her face that quickly turned to pleasure as Anna rushed forward and hugged her.
"Happy birthday!"
Elsa smiled and rubbed at Anna's head. "Thanks sis. What did you get me?" She took the box from the outstretched hand and opened it carefully, the red and blue paper falling away to show… "It's beautiful Anna, thank you."
"I know you liked the ballet so I thought this would be nice! I wrote a little message on the bottom too, you can read it later c'mon!" And she dragged Elsa away before the older girl could complain, only managing to pass the marble figurine off to Gerda before she was dragged to breakfast.
"Happy birthday dear."
A hug from father and a kiss to the forehead from mother was the best Elsa got from her parents. She didn't mind or pay much attention to the idle chatter during breakfast, mainly because she was still wondering about the tiny little figurine from Anna. Elsa had no particular love or hate for the ballet, she would simply rather read the stories they were telling in the books themselves, rather than watch people re-enact it via dance. The marble figurine was nice enough, and so was the message on the bottom of the carved wooden pedestal it stood on (To Elsa, love, Anna) but there was no special significance in it for her. So why?
In comparison the presents from her parents were much more breath-taking. From her mother an ornate golden telescope that Elsa took a single glance at as the paper fell away and fell in love with immediately. From her father a giant book that…
Well, one present that was more breath-taking. The years had made Elsa an excellent liar and the expression on her face didn't change, but her heart sunk a little as she saw the title of the huge illustrated tome her father had given her. She recognised the name because there were a dozen copies in the castle library. She didn't know for sure but she would make the guess there was one copy for every crown princess in the last hundred or so years. She would also make the guess her parents would not react well if they knew she had read them.
A Young Woman's Geneaology
She gave a happy sigh and smiled as she idly flipped a page. "Thank you, father." Faces stared back out at her from the heavy pages. Royalty or the equivalent of every country in Europe going back three generations were printed on every inch of paper, beautifully illustrated. Ornate scrollery and flowing lines between pages traced paths of ancestry to the modern day. Elsa knew that when she flipped to the back there would be two final pages there. One of them she knew would have her own picture there, with her own details, and she would be suitably awe-struck and would gasp for her parents when she did so. The final page would be blank, just an oval and some blank space underneath. A line would link the two portraits.
She flipped the pages and made the gasp, and felt her father put a hand over her shoulder. "That's a very important space Elsa. We'll talk some more after your birthday."
"Of course father." One day. I couldn't get a single day before this started?
In another way she felt…better, almost? Like a small but consistent weight that she had been dragging around since the first time she had woken with bloody sheets underneath her. She was a royal princess and she knew what would be expected of her, beyond even what her parents had instructed her tutors to tell her. She could already see the conversation taking place in her head; there would be quiet words – probably with her mother, her father would be far too embarrassed – kept very non-specific. There would be talk of princes and kingdoms and alliances and obligations, but in the end the vague cloud of words would solidify and it would be there spelled out for her:
You will marry a prince because the kingdom requires it.
She kept up the smile as she ate her breakfast – fluffy white bread and warm bacon instead of the usual toast and milk – and tried to push it out of her mind. Everyone at the table looked so happy instead of her. Her father and mother were talking quietly at the head of the table, and Anna was…
At least you're not Anna.
Elsa felt rotten just thinking it, in the special way you hate yourself just a little when you think something you know is bad and know is true. When she married, a prince would be marrying her. She would be queen and she would rule and he, whoever he was, would rule beside her. Anna wouldn't have even that. Elsa knew how royalty worked. Anna was useful. A spare. Kept in reserve as something useful in case something happened to Elsa, and then as something traded for an alliance. She'd leave Arendelle and take her place beside someone else, and that would be that.
Unless the rules changed, a cold little voice whispered in her, but she ignored it. Sometimes she wished she had read less. Every book from that little section of the library had shown her a little more of the chains around them both. Chains that grew tighter by the day as Elsa neared her eighteenth birthday.
"Elsa, come along now."
And just like that breakfast was over, and Elsa stood away from her empty plate – but she didn't remember tasting a single bite of it – and followed her parents from the room.
Later in the day a servant, one of the trusted few, would come by to clean up after the royal family. The plate would be thrown away into the refuse, as would the tablecloth underneath it, the two of them having become so cold they had fused into a single object.
The play was one of Elsa's favourites; A Midsummer Night's Dream. The troupe had been brought in especially for the day, the main gates being opened ever-so-slightly to admit them in the night. Normally she would have loved to watch it, sitting as close she could to the stage and entranced while the men and women performed the story about love and marriage and farce and tragedy.
Or at least it had been her favourite when she was younger, and the main things she remembered had been the funny little fairy trickster Puck, and the beautiful fairy-queen Titania. Now the scenes she heard with greatest clarity were of the first act, not the second. The words drifted up to her from the makeshift stage below:
"Be it so she; will not here before your grace consent to marry with Demetrius, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens! As she is mine, I may dispose of her: Which shall be either to this gentleman or to her death, according to our law immediately provided in that case."
The words stung at her like a whip, and she turned ready to be furious at her father, only to see him cringing at the words as well.
Good.
He coughed and put an arm around her shoulder. "Let's talk for a few minutes, Elsa," he said, and gently led her away from the balcony they were watching from. It wouldn't have been worth the risk to have his little daughter so close or visible to outsiders of course, not where a little mistake might have shown them something he didn't want them to see. She kept quiet though, and let herself be led around the courtyard until they were standing in a draughty little guard tower that overlooked the town beyond. In all the years Elsa had been looking out over it, it had barely changed. Arendelle might have been frozen in time for all that was different down there. I wonder if the rest of the world moves so slowly.
"Elsa, I know we've always talked about great responsibilities…"
"Yes father?"
The king looked down at his oldest daughter. "You'll be coming of age – truly of age – soon, and there are going to be some great changes in your life."
"Like what?" Elsa could see her father wrestling with the words. Part of her wanted to try and help him find them, but another part wanted to let him struggle with it, and lately the latter part had been winning. Like weights on my back.
"There are going to be a lot more people in your life soon Elsa."
Elsa felt her chest hitch up at the words. "What do you mean?"
"You'll be…when a princess turns eighteen there are…events. Yes! Events that need to happen."
She's read the books. The word her father is looking for but doesn't know is 'debutante', and that word drags behind it a whole lot of other words. Some of them good, some of them bad, some of them to Elsa distasteful, but she shoves them to one side right now because one of those chains of words starts at debutante ball and continues on to guests and ends at open gates.
Her father looked down at her and saw the smile suddenly plastered over his eldest daughter's face. "Elsa? Are you alright...Elsa?" he says in surprise as she rushes forward and embraces him around the waist. King Agdar looked down into the mass of platinum-blonde hair hugging him fiercely and smiled.
Her face hidden and buried in her father's chest, Elsa smiles too.
Neither of them are smiling for the same reasons.
"Congratulations. Here."
"On what? Surviving another year? Thank you. HEY!"
Kristoff's thrown carrot is intercepted mid-air as Anna hops around Elsa and grabs it.
"That's my birthday present."
"That's her birthday present."
"All I get is a carrot?"
"All I have is carrots."
"Then give me that other one you're holding."
"That's Sven's birthday present."
"Reindeer's don't have birthd-"
"Happy birthday Sven!"
Anna hugged the reindeer around the neck and he responded by trying to lick her face off. Anna laughed and just danced away from the sandpapery tongue.
"You're very cheerful. Remind me whose birthday it was again?" Kristoff said, watching the girl hop around as Sven chased her around the stall. Even the stables are clean today for Elsa's birthday, and Kristoff's usual reindeer odour is barely noticeably.
"Thanks," he said as Anna pointed this out. He turned to Elsa. "So is this when we…what?"
He stops talking as Anna's eyes opened wide and she rushed towards him flailing her hands at him in a very unladylike manor. "Shhhh!"
"'Shhh' what?" Elsa asked, looking between them. "Anna?"
"What?"
Elsa watched the pair for a second, just to see their awful, awful poker faces. "What are the pair of you hiding?" she asked, crossing her hands.
"Nothing," Anna said. "Nothing at all."
"Liars. But fine."
"What are you doing today?" Anna asked.
"Cleaning up after the play," Kristoff replied. "Somehow ten people can make a hell of a lot of mess."
"It's culture," Elsa chided him.
"Culture is a bunch of trees where they shouldn't be then, all dropping leaves everywhere, and horse-droppings somehow."
Elsa caught Kristoff staring at her, and looked away. "What? What is it?"
"Are you alright Elsa?"
Quickly Anna turned to her sister, mortified that something might be wrong with Elsa and she hadn't been the first one to pick up on it. "Elsa? What's wrong?"
"…Father was talking about marriage," Elsa replied eventually. They didn't know it but they were the first people she had even mentioned it too. Somehow the idea of talking to Gerda or Kai about the subject was just distasteful.
"What?"
"Not actual marriage," Elsa said quickly. "Just the idea of it coming up soon."
"Well, you're a princess, it's kind of what princesses do," Kristoff replied, already dodging out of the way of Anna's arm.
For her part, Anna was looking at her intently. "What's wrong with that?" she asked. "You get to marry a handsome prince, and rule the kingdom."
Kristoff was standing next to her and couldn't see the look in her eyes. Only Elsa saw that. A spark of something. "Well, yes, but…"
"That sounds like a fairy tale," Kristoff said.
Anna squirmed. "Don't you want to?"
Elsa sighed. "Yes but…well…I'm not against it."
The pair watched her as she kept giving out single word answers, her discomfort obvious to them both. Kristoff had no idea why, and assumed it was something he didn't need to know about, himself being a poor servant and her being the crown princess. Anna had no idea why, and assumed it was something her sister wasn't telling her, and decided she was going to find out the second she could.
She already knew how she was going to do it. She just had to wait.
In the meantime… "I forgot something," Anna said, smiling at her two friends. "I'll be right back."
Elsa and Kristoff watched her leave. "Where's she off to?" he muttered.
"Who knows," Elsa replied. "Probably realised she's hungry and went to steal something from the kitchen," she said, almost entirely accurately.
"Your majesty, princess Elsa?"
"Yes Kristoff?" Elsa asked, looking at the tall blonde servant. Even if he still spent a lot of his time around the stables he had stopped being a boy a year or so ago when he had finally out-grown some of the castle guards, and his official title on the pay-scrolls was ice harvester/general serv. now. The bales of hay he hauled around the castle grounds had been replaced by huge blocks of ice, as Sven and Kristoff went off to bring the stuff back from the north mountain. Maybe with someone like Kristoff it wouldn't be so bad, Elsa thought, as he withdrew the hand from behind his back.
"Happy birthday. Sorry I couldn't wrap it."
It's beautiful. A small crocus flower, carved out of ivory – or most likely bone – and then polished to perfect, hanging from a thin chain that's probably steel or iron rather than silver. It's still beautiful though, and she smiles as she looks at it and puts the chain over her neck. "Thank you Kristoff."
"Hey, I figure its small payback for everything you've shown me since I got here."
"Here's one more then." She takes the small pendant in one hand and lifts it up to her lips. A soft gust is all that it takes, and the white bone is peppered with shining blue icicles like gems. When she drops it back to her neckline is sparkles there in blue and white. Elsa can see the breath catch in the man's throat.
"Wow," he whispers.
"And now it's your turn and you can tell me what you two are plotting."
His mind tries to make a ninety-degree turn to keep up with Elsa, and trips up and falls down. "I…umm…what?"
"Kristoff…"
Figuring that with the object of fear absent its safe enough to talk, he raises his hands in defeat. "I really did promise not to tell you, but…"
"Well?"
"Anna gave you a present already?"
"Yes." The small confusing figure.
"Well let's just say you should go take a real good look at it."
"Why?"
"Because it wasn't her real gift."
Anna turned up at dinner late and red-faced. "Sorry! Sorry I'm late!"
"Really Anna, you didn't need to run all the way here for the cooking," her mother teased with a smile.
Anna sat down at the table and brusheed a lock of hair out of her face as she picked up a spoon. She was about to dig into her potatoes when she felt something kick at the side of her leg, and looked sideways at Elsa. Her older sister was staring deeply into her own meal, but a hand drifted up to her shirt and tapped at the button there.
Anna fixed her shirt as quietly and subtly as she could.
"How was the day my dear?" the queen asked.
Elsa smiled. "It was lovely," she said, and meant it. The conversation with her father had been washed away by the rest of the day, as the entire castle had come together to try and make it as happy as possible for Elsa, for a daughter that most of them would never have.
But Elsa wasn't thinking about the wonderful day she had just had, she was thinking about the little Ballerina figure, and the small display stand it had stood on. The small display stand she had removed, to find the bottom circle of marble, the only remnant of the small cylinder it had been carved from, and the message cut into the bottom.
kitchens meat room midnight dress for cold
dress for cold
And she had. Elsa crept through the castle, sneaking from corridor to corridor in a blue woollen jacket covering something similar to what Anna had been wearing all day, only in blues and whites instead of greens and browns and reds.
She opened the kitchen door as silently as she could, wincing at the creak it made every millimetre she moved it. Eventually it was wide enough to slip through, and Elsa found herself in the kitchens of Arendelle. Usually the busiest part of the castle, the stillness and darkness make the place ten times as sinister as in daylight, racks of gleaming cookware and knives reflecting what little light there is to-
"Boo."
Elsa clamped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming and barely stopped her feet leaving the floor. She turned, heart pounding, to see Anna grinning at her. She slapped her shoulder with a mitten-covered hand. "Not funny Anna!"
In reply Anna stuck her tongue out. "Yes it was."
"So what's my present?" Elsa asked, anger at being frightened like a five year-old instantly replaced by excitement and anticipation.
Anna grabbed her hand and whispered with a twinkle in her eye: "Follow me."
Elsa let herself be led passively through the winding turns of Arendelle Castle's lower corridors. Built when an attack from a neighbouring country wasn't just an idle thought but an expected thing, they were short and twisted and thin, enough to let a single attacker through one at a time to be skewered by defenders from all sides. A good plan for a rich country under threat of pillaging from raiders, but less so for a peaceful trading country whose greatest problem was trying to get the chickens to the dining table before they cooled down.
"…wondered how people got in and out and I thought 'hey, there's no way there'd only be one way in or out' right?" Anna said, not even checking to see if Elsa was listening.
As they walked – well, as one walked and one was dragged – the candles on the walls got shorter and shorter, and the clean floors became dusty and ill-swept. They were in the oldest and lowest part of the castle. "Anna…"
"…so I got to thinking about the best way to get out during a big battle right? There's no way it'd be near the front 'cause that's where the fighting would be, and so…"
Elsa smacked into Anna's back as the redheaded girl suddenly stopped.
"Here!" Anna said proudly, and gestured with both hands at…
"It's a wall," Elsa said, unimpressed. She hadn't really been paying attention.
Anna strode forward and started running her hands across the stone surface. She giggled. "Nope."
Comprehension finally dawned on a tired crown princess. "Anna, did you find…"
Click
"Yes!"
Anna stepped back and beamed in happiness as behind her the impassable stone wall just…slid aside, like it was on the smoothest of ice, to show a dark corridor beyond. Elsa watched in amazement as a huge shape walked out of the darkness.
"Kristoff!?"
"Happy birthday your majesty," the servant said with a smile. He turned to Anna. "This is the dumbest idea you've had yet."
"It's the best you mean." Anna reached into the darkness and took out two small torches which she lit from the single burning candle on the wall, and handed one to Elsa, a small bag, and something long and thin rolled up in a cloth wrap.
Kristoff sighed. "You two will be the death of me."
"Where does it go?" Elsa asked, and received the answer she was dreaming of.
"Outside."
"Oh, Anna."
"I love you Elsa, happy birthday."
The stars were beautiful.
The stars had always been beautiful of course. Elsa had loved to stand in the darkened courtyard just as night fell and stare up at the sky as the red-and-golden sunset faded, and was replaced by the dark curtain of night and the twinkling motes of light peppered through it. Somehow though they were even more beautiful from outside of the castle, as if the entire stone edifice had a net of fog over it, and now Elsa was seeing them for the first time.
The tunnel had ended not in the city, that would have been far too close for an escaping royal to feel safe, but actually past it by some miracle of stone and wood that made Elsa nervous when she stopped to think of the water above her. Eventually the tunnel had wound and climbed – more than once Elsa had had to clamber over a broken stare or hug the wall to climb the steep slope where water had washed the stairs away – so much that Elsa had wondered if they were climbing the north mountain itself. But the nameless engineers who had built the castle had built well, and there had been no blockages to stop them.
Finally after what seemed like hours Anna had clamped her hands over Elsa's eyes as she had felt air wash over her cheeks. Her little sister had said "Trust me," and Elsa had allowed herself to be led blind out of the tunnel. She had felt snow under her boots and the wind pulling at her hair, and finally Anna had twisted her around and said look Elsa and taken the hands from her eyes, and then the entire world was laid before Elsa. They stood halfway up the small wooded hills sat in front of the colossal northern mountain like guards before the queen, looking down on Arendelle. The castle and the town were laid out for them like a picnic, illuminated by torchlight.
"Anna, it's beautiful," Elsa whispered as she stared down at her kingdom. Even the air felt purer, fresher here outside the castle walls. She imagined she could see the individual guards carrying the torches on their nightly rounds. She felt tears prick her eyes and wiped them off before they could freeze in the night air.
"Are you okay?" Anna asked, wide teal eyes looking into Elsa's with worry.
"I'm just so happy," she managed to blubber out, and wrapped her arms around her sister as they both slipped to the ground. "Thank you so much Anna."
The two sat there in blissful silence, just staring down at the town and castle. Elsa felt more at peace here in the cold and wet snow than she had in months of comfort and plenty. She felt like she could have stayed there forever. Something was tugging at her mind though. It took her a second, then she realised what it was;
This is the closest you've ever been. There's nothing between us now.
"Anna?" Elsa said, whispering.
"What?"
"Can we get a better view?"
Anna followed Elsa's eyes, and stared up at the north mountain, just visible through the canopy of trees. She looked at her elder sister and saw the light of the summit reflected there. "Sure sis, but we need to go back soon or someone will notice we're gone." She stood and brushed snow from her jacket. Anna smiled slyly. "Can you make it a little easier for us?"
They laughed and danced through the forest. Every step Elsa made onto the tundra throwing ice and snow out of their paths and into the trees where it re-froze, making glistening jewels of ice and water where they landed. Elsa swept her hands through the air like a conductor, the powdery white whirling around them but never touching them, the centre of the their own personal whirlwind. They carved a magical path through the forest that anyone looking from the town would have seen; a shining path of perfectly frozen trees surrounded by the plain white and green of the rest. They didn't care though, they were lost in the moment.
Every few seconds Elsa would look back at the town growing every smaller, so small she could almost hold it in her hands, and then back up at the northern edifice before her that whispered to her. And the summit, above it all, the snow streaming from it like a royal cloak.
Anna laughed and fell to the ground, exhausted. "Enough Elsa! I'm too tired." She giggled and made a snow angel underneath her. "Let's fly back down."
Elsa collapsed next to her and the two stared up at the sky. "This is the best birthday present ever Anna."
Anna licked her lips and ate the snow from them. "If we-"
Whatever words Anna was about to say next were drowned out as both Elsa and Anna heard a noise behind them. A low rumble that travelled through the ground and through their skin and right into their bones.
Avalanche was Elsa's first thought, and the blood in her heart ran cold. She didn't know if she could control that much ice and snow. It was winter and the sleets of summer were meant to have frozen safely into glaciers, but they had been making a lot of noise, maybe enough to set a smaller one off? Elsa reached inside herself and felt better when she felt the power waiting there for her. If it was-
"Elsa…" Anna whispered, and in one word Elsa knew it wasn't an avalanche. She turned and gasped.
The bear was old. Even from a few meters away Elsa could hear it wheezing, and see the white fur that practically covered it. As she watched it stared right back at her with black pus-entrusted eyes, tongue lolling from its mouth, cracked and broken. This deep into winter it should have been hibernating with the rest of Arendelle's wildlife. It hadn't been able to gather enough food before the freeze had set in and now it was doomed, wandering the forests looking for whatever it could to try and survive, stripping the bark from trees to try and find berries or bird nests.
It's starving, she realised, and then she felt real fear.
Then fear wasn't removed as Anna reached for the small roll of cloth at her side and drew out the sword she had had Kristoff mis-place for her. Not an ice-knife this time, it was a real blade like the kind of the guards used, old like everything else in the castle but kept razor-sharp. In Anna's hands it looked huge, almost too big to hold.
"Don't worry Elsa, I'll protect you," she whispered, and even though Elsa could see how brave she was trying to be, she was exactly as scared as she was. The brave knight protects the princess. Elsa could see Anna's dream coming true in front of her and she was terrified by it.
No no no.
The bear crept closer, the growl turning from a low rumble to something else, and Elsa and Anna scrambled backwards away from it. Elsa could feel it in her stomach. Her arms and hands tingled.
I'm not a defenceless princess. I'm strong. I'm powerful. I have-
The bear stood up on its hind-legs and roared. The sound seemed to coat the entire world around them as the doomed creature charged forward. And so did Anna.
"ANNA!"
Anna was afraid. Terrified. But both of those things were grabbed and shaken and thrown aside by worry and anger and she ran forward, sword held behind her. The bear in front of her took up all her senses, shining in white and brown as the rest of the world darkened, and there was just it and herself charging towards each other.
I'm going to die, a small part of her cried, but it was drowned out by…
By…
Happiness?
Righteousness?
…
Something deeper?
And then suddenly there it was, inches away, as it reared up again drawing back a paw that could have weighed more than her, and was swiping down with sharp claws to end her.
Anna wasn't trained. She was an expert archer but her parents had taken steps to make sure every single person in the castle knew better than to let Anna so much as touch a blade. But how hard could it be? There was an end you held and an end you pointed at other people, and you swung away until the point end was inside them.
What saved Anna was two things, but she would only remember one: The bear was huge, but it was starving and made from hunger and half-blind from age. The paw that would have torn her face from her skull went over her head because she was so short. Suddenly Anna was right there next to it, holding a sharp blade and with only herself between a mouthful of rotting bear teeth and her sister.
The second thing was the bear stumbling, when suddenly the land it had spent its whole life on betrayed it and icy claws rose up from the snow to grab its legs. The next step forward that would have crushed Anna never materialised, as with feet frozen to the soil it flailed around and crashed sideways to the ground, clawing for purchase as it landed on its belly. It roared in pain and anger as it looked up, and that was the last thing it saw.
It felt good. More than good, it felt right. Anna watched herself like a dream as the blade slid through the bear's flesh and skull like a knife through butter. It reared up, bellowing like a fallen god as the steel rammed through its eye-socket and into the brain and Anna felt herself lifted to her fee with it. She kept her grip on the blade screaming out for strength and pushed as hard as she could, and her reward was immediate as the bear'sspasms shook the blade through its face. Hot blood gushed from the creature's ruined face and covered her and she gasped from the heat of it. It flowed from the dying thing's wound and down her hair and face, across her clothes and down under her shirt and from there across the leather pants she was wearing, soaking every inch of her. In the storybooks she had read wounds were bloodless things, maybe a dramatic stab in the hero's arm would draw a small line of red. Nothing like this. The beast's frantic dying heart seemed to be pumping every drop out of it, and Anna was saturated in the beast.
The old bear reared up one last time and gave a final bellow into the heavens, the moon behind it seeming giant and overwhelming, and Anna stared up at it as its champion and killer. And there it stayed, standing and howling at the moon, as around it huge spikes of ice burst from the ground like flowers after rain, skewering it and holding it there. Behind her Elsa's hand pointed at the bear, as if she were a general commanding the mountain itself to annihilate her target.
Anna licked her lips and tasted the rich copper of its blood on herm as the bear's life finally left, and it stood there pinned to the sky, dead.
"ANNA ANNA ANNA ANNA-"
She was bowled to the ground by her sister as Elsa cannoned into her, crying incoherently. Cold snow underneath her replaced the hot blood covering her.
"You saved me," Elsa whispered, sparing a single glance at the bear. No majesty or terror now, just a lump of dead fur and flesh. She wanted to kill it all over, make her ice stab and skewer it until it died again.
"You saved me," Anna whispered, looking past Elsa's shoulder at the ice that covered the dead thing's feet. She felt Elsa moving her head around staring into her eyes, her face, her arms, asking are you okay are you okay over and over again. Her mouth didn't want to work properly or she would have told Elsa she felt fine. Better than fine. Her right hand still gripped the blood-covered sword that had killed the bear and she tightened her grip on it. She felt better than she could ever remember feeling. Every inch of her seemed to tingle. Giant worried blue eyes looked into her own. Even if Elsa had been bleeding from a dozen wounds she would still have worried about her first. She loved her so much.
"Anna are you really okay?"
She licked her lips again. "I'm really okay. I-whoa."
Elsa lifted her up and practically hoisted Anna onto her back. "We're…we're going home," she said, voice shaking. She could feel the blood trickling down her back from Anna's clothes. The past few hours of heavenly bliss had been erased and replaced with worry for Anna. She spared one final glance at the north mountain before turning back and practically running in the direction Anna was pointing, back towards the tunnel exit. The mountain whispered in her ear as she left it behind:
I will wait.
"She's fine," were the first words on Elsa's mouth the second the darkness receded, to be replaced with the single candle of the stone wall.
The look on Kristoff's face would have been amusing under any circumstances and ran right through the spectrum, from confusion to fear to worry, bypassing anger then doubling-back to land on worry again, where it stayed. Elsa's words did little to dislodge it.
"What did I say what did I tell you?" he said as Elsa explained what had happened. The story of how Anna had charged the bear like something out of a fairy-story made him gasp with admiration for just a second, before the entire weight of the situation landed back on him.
"Be quiet and help me," Elsa whispered, as she lowered Anna from her shoulder. The younger princess stood there trying to tell them both she was fine, honestly, but they both ignored her.
"What do we do?" Kristoff asked, looking at the pair. They looked like they had been through a war. Anna was coated in blood, head to foot. The green leathers and wools she had worn were soaked through, and even after an hour the blood was still fresh and dripping, the cold and damp stone passage having dried it out not at all. Elsa was better but still a long way from good. Her back from red and sticky from having carried Anna, and her clothes were wet and damp everywhere else. If he had been told they were refugees fleeing a war he would have believed it.
Anna gasped for air from on her hands and knees, and it took Kristoff a second to realise what she was saying. "A bath?" he asked in confusion.
Enlightenment dawned. "The servant's quarters have baths right?"
"Why would Kristoff know?" Anna said, and giggled from the floor. She sounded drunk, and she was but not on alcohol.
Kristoff nodded, and ran off without waiting for further instructions. It would be daylight in a few hours, and not even God would save him from the wrath of the king if any evidence of this night remained when the maids came to wake the princesses.
"Anna, are you alright?" Elsa asked again, for what might have been the hundredth time that night.
Anna waved her hands in the air. She couldn't communicate what she was feeling. She felt fine. More than fine. She felt like she was floating on air and buried in the ground all at the same time. The melted snow and blood that covered her felt like a victory cloak. Something that threatened her and her sister, and she had destroyed it utterly.
She had killed to protect Elsa, the same way the ice Elsa had given her heart an icy armour to protect her, and that same heart knew it had felt good.
No wonder all the boy want to grow up to be knights, if they get to feel like this all the time.
I want to feel like this more.
Kristoff ran back. "We're drawing up baths now, come on. We'll burn the clothes."
Elsa's head snapped up. "We?"
Kristoff looked bashful, but didn't look away. "You're both girls, and I needed help," he said. "They're trustworthy, they'll stay quiet."
"They had better," Elsa whispered, and from the look in her eyes Kristoff knew he had better warn both Natalie and Eva that this time when he said no gossip he had really, really meant it.
"Anna, come on," Elsa said, trying to grab her sister by the hand. But the blood and snow was too slippery, and she had to settle for levering her exhausted and delirious sister up from under her shoulders. Together Elsa and Kristoff managed to get her to some
Anna's skin burned as they did so. It felt like her heart was pumping at a million beats a second, and every drop of her blood roared in her ears. Was this how the bear had felt as she had killed it. Every time she moved her soaked leathers swept over her skin and she felt that exhilaration from all that was left of the thing she had ended. She feeling crept over her as she and Elsa and Kristoff walked through the servant's corridors as silently as they could, the entire castle sleeping around them and ignorant of what was happening.
Finally they reached a lone wooden door, and two more shadows materialised before them.
Kristoff nodded. "Thanks for coming."
The two servants stood there gaping at the princesses, one tired and haggard and the other blood-soaked and smiling. Both wonder of them what had happened and both knowing they would never dare ask.
"Your majesty, if you would follow me," Natalie the cook's assistant said, head down and not daring to look directly at the crown princess. Elsa let herself be led away, one hand only detaching from Anna's after there was no other choice.
"Here," Eva whispered softly, taking Anna under the arm that Elsa had vacated.
"Thanks," Kristoff said again. "Bring the clothes to the furnace, we'll burn them when this is all done," he said, and left.
Eva tutted as the two were left alone. "Whatever will I do with you?" she whispered as she unlocked the small washroom door. It was remote and dark and not used much, just like the other one Elsa was being led to. Perfect. "Was this afternoon not enough for you?" she whispered.
Anna could feel the warmth and shape of the maid next to her as she was led into the dark room illuminated by a single candle, and the warm bath already drawn there. Eva unhooked herself from her charge and dipped a hand into the bathwater. The maid had dressed quickly and wore a simple white dress, without the usual assortment of corsetry, ruffles and aprons of a working servant, and Anna could see every curve and movement of her body underneath it. Eva turned and gestured towards the warm bath, one finger cocked at her.
When princes killed the dragon they were given a prize right? Half the kingdom, or whatever.
Anna wanted a prize.
"Your majesty, come" Eva whispered, and what remained of Anna's will snapped like a broken twig.
Eva felt hands encircle her from behind to push her around roughly, and she turned to see Anna staring up at her, teal eyes wide and mouth parted ever so slightly. Before she could react or say anything Anna pushed forward until their bodies were touching, chest against chest and blood-soaked leather dress against thin cotton shirt, and Anna's head craned upward to stare into the maid's own, eyes lidded and heavy.
When Anna spoke Eva could hear the lust on her voice, thick like honey.
"Eva."
The kiss was nothing like any of the ones before. Not like the first troubled and nervous peck they had shared months ago when Anna had come again to the kitchen's spice room, the curiosity and girlish infatuation only barely winning out over nerves and fear. It wasn't like any of the ones they had shared since then either. The nervousness about the act itself had been replaced by the nervousness they would be caught, even as it lessened and they had grown more comfortable. But Eva had had enough men and women to know when something was being held back, and on their occassional short trysts Anna had had chains of obligation and tradition wrapped tightly around her. Tasting the young princess had been fun, but nothing more.
The Anna before her now wasn't that Anna.
Hands that would normally have been fidgeting behind her back grasped at her sides and clawed under the dress until Eva could feel blood-soaked palms caressing her belly. She was a good few inches taller than Anna and stronger besides but she felt herself pushed back by the heat and want of the younger girl. She felt water splash against her dress and twisted them both around so that instead of falling into the bath Eva found herself pushed back and back, and suddenly there was no more back for her to go to, and Anna was crushing herself against Eva, forcing her lips apart, and Anna's tongue was inside her mouth lapping at her like a starving woman. Eva was forced to return the favour just to breath, and the two stood there against the stone wall, tasting each other in the warm heat of the washroom. Finally the kiss ended, and Anna drew a shuddering breath as she drew back from Eva, head thrown back and arms still wrapped around the girl's flanks. Anna's tongue that had been wrapped around Eva's still poked out of her mouth, coated in their saliva. She panted.
Like a bitch in heat, Eva thought to herself wonderingly. To have the princess of Arendelle hanging from her like that was…indescribable. But she had a job to do.
"Are you…satisfied, Anna?" Eva whispered, watching as Anna licked her lips. Her dress and chest was coated in blood from where Anna had pressed against and touched her and she knew she'd need her own both later, but first-
Suddenly Anna's head snapped forward again, and in her eyes there was no nervousness or fear. Only naked lust. "No," the princess whispered thickly, her hands still wandering around Eva's sides.
Eva kissed Anna on the forehead and grabbed her hands to dis-entangle them from under her dress. She turned away from Anna and back to the bath. "Not now. When you're older we- AH!" Suddenly she was dragged and pushed face-first back against the stone wall.
"No," Anna whispered again, and Eva could feel the younger girl pressing against her hard from behind. "More. More."
The hands that had been creeping around Eva's mid-section rose up and she could feel slippery warmth passing over her belly and ribcage, up past her sides and around until she could feel Anna's fingers clutching roughly at her breasts. Without waiting for permission or refusal rough fingers covered and gripped and twisted at her nipples and Eva gasped and twisted under the girl's hands as heat shot through her.
Anna's hunger was indescribable. She was ravenous. Something warm and dark was beating at her from lower than her heart, lower than her stomach, and it itched and itched and she needed to feed it but didn't know how. She opened her mouth and sucked at Eva's neck as her hands moved over Eva's breasts and scratched and slid over the gorgeous-feeling mounds, and beneath her the servant girl writhed and gasped. Anna had total power over her and it was intoxicating, in a way that the occasional glass of wine her father allowed her to have wasn't.
Underneath her hands Eva twisted as if there was some position that would let her escape from the assault the princess was making. Her breasts were red now under the dress, coated in blood of whatever accident Anna had been in, and her nipples felt sorer and sorer as the girl – just a girl making her feel this way! – teased at them mercilessly. "Anna. Anna!" Suddenly the bottom dropped out of the world and the hands left her breasts, and with a crash and thump Eva was on the ground and Anna was above her, straddling her.
"Call me your majesty," Anna whispered, staring down at the girl. She felt powerful, in control. The blood of the bear that still coated her seemed to seep into her bones and grant her strength. Underneath her legs Eva looked up at her like Anna was a goddess. The maid felt warm and good underneath her, blood-covered where Anna had been touching her. She felt the itch inside her growing and growing where her legs met Eva's belly. Without conscious thought she reached forwards and ripped the flimsy dress away from the panting milkmaid, revealing the pale skin and huge breasts beneath that rose and fell with every breath the she took. The itch turned into a burning then, and she knew she wanted it all, but frustration paused her hands. She wanted the girl underneath her and she would take her, but she didn't know how.
Eva saw that in her eyes and sat up, breasts pushed into Anna's chest as their heads came together. "Like this, your majesty," she whispered, and her hands were at Anna's jacket and trousers and were untying and pulling and twisting until Elsa felt the cloth fall away from her skin and they were both naked together on the warm stone floor, the bath long forgotten. Eva's body twisted underneath Anna and she cried out as flesh flowed over flesh, and the insane heat and itch that was all of Anna's world heated up like the sun.
"Like this," Eva said lustily, and her hands drifted down, tracing circles on Anna's belly that made her gasp and quiver. She matched her movements and both of them were red-faced and panting for air, as Eva led her fingers on a dance past Anna's belly and down to her sternum and Anna matched her. Finally Eva's fingers went down and drifted over Anna's sex so lightly they barely touched at all, and Anna felt every muscle in herself twist and tense as the itch shot through her entire body. Her own fingers left Eva's body and she clawed at her belly as if the insane pressure there could be let out if she just dug a hole out through herself. Then Eva bucked up underneath her, the light touch turned into assault on her sex as she drove two fingers up as far as she could go into Anna, and the world ended around her.
Eva watched as the girl above her twisted and begged and moaned in words she wasn't even sure Anna knew she was making. Her own cunt was wet and ready but she ignored it in favour of watching the princess above her be reduced to a bundle of screaming nerves, back arched and bent back almost double, mouth opened to the world screaming silently as Eva pumped in and out of her again and again. She licked her lips as she watched the girl climb and climb and stay there. Eva had driven her to the edge and threw her off but she just…wasn't falling. Anna's legs gripped her sides with a crushing force as she clenched her teeth and tried to gulp for air at the same time. Dark red blood covered her from head to toe, dripping down her belly and past the princess's drenched lips. Her legs twitched as it flowed down and past her and onto Eva and the floor. Her hands moved around her own body as if looking for the source of the experience, tracing patterns in the warm blood. Eva had never seen anything like it.
"I…" Anna managed to say through her gasps. She was staring up at the ceiling but seeing none of it. Every inch of her body was screaming in fire and pleasure, and pain. It was like there was…something was blocked. The burning itch at her core wasn't going away, no matter how much she scratched or clawed at herself.
"Anna…" Eva whispered, her free hand caressing Anna's small breasts. They wouldn't be as big as her own, and probably not as big as her sister's either, but they were sensitive enough to make Anna pay attention to her. "What's wrong?" she asked, making it worse as her fingers idly twisted a small nipple.
"I…can't," Anna gasped, and moaned again as Eva's fingers moved inside her. "More," she whispered, and had to cover her mouth with her hands as Eva obliged and both hands were working inside her, thrusting up inside her and rubbing around the little area of skin that was making her jerk like a puppet and cry and moan like a dying thing.
"Here?" Eva asked. "Here? Here?" Every time she asked she moved her hands and Anna bit down on her hand to stop from screaming.
But every place was wrong. The burning fire at the core of her body wasn't going away. It felt like she had climbed a mountain and was at the summit, but there was no way down. Instinctively she knew there should be one, but she didn't know what it was. Anna gasped and writhed and twisted under Eva's hands as they manipulated every part of her, but nothing worked. Nothing worked. There was a furnace inside her burning her to ashes and she couldn't put it out. She was drowning in an ocean and she couldn't swim to the surface. "More. Oh God, more. More!"
But nothing worked, and finally Eva stopped. She withdrew her hands and lifted herself from Anna's body and looked. The young princess sprawled out before her, covered in that strange dark blood and soapy water and her own wetness. Eva herself panted and twitched, frustrated with her…inability…to finish the girl underneath her. No boy had ever lasted so long under her touch, but here the problem wasn't that she didn't want to, but that she couldn't. Anna's hands went between her legs and rubbed, making herself twitch and gasp with the feeling of it. She was unsatisfied and she knew it. The itch had withdrawn back inside he as Eva's hands had stopped their worship, but it wasn't gone. "I'm sorry," Eva whispered, feeling strange as she did so.
Anna looked up to see Eva straddling her again, wet and big above her. There were bite-marks around her neck and on her nipples. The eyes that usually looked out at her with such a cool gaze stared down at her, wide with desire, and the lips that usually bore a faint smile were opened wide and panting just as badly as hers was. Below the large, full breasts and tight stomach her sex twitched inside a dense brown thatch, and as she wanted it dripped onto Anna's stomach. Everywhere on her body she was marked in red where Anna had pressed against her, and the bear's blood was printed on her like a mark of ownership. She felt the heat inside her rear up again, possessively.
Mine! Anna's hand drifted over that nest of brown hair, and Eva's belly twitched in response as she gave a pleasurable little gasp.
"How?" Anna asked through painful breaths, and Eva knew what she was asking. The older girl grabbed Anna's hands, and led them down to rest on her soaking-wet sex.
"Like this. Ah." Eva's head reared back just like the bear's had done, but when it came forwards again there wasn't death in her eyes. "Listen," she whispered.
"What?" Anna asked quietly, as Eva's hips bucked and twisted as Anna moved her fingers over Eva's warm flesh.
Eva bent and leaned over Anna until her breasts caressed Anna's chest and their lips were nearly touching. "I'm going…umm…to teach you a word. Ah!"
"What?" Anna asked, and reached into Eva the same way Eva had reached into her, feeling Eva's warm and wet flesh all around her fingers and watching as her curves moved above her at Anna's command, tongue lolling out of her mouth as she reached for air and stomach tightening with the sensations Anna was making her feel as she twisted and moaned. How could a boy compare to this?
Eva brought her head back down and there was barely any intelligence left in her eyes, only a desperate need. "F…fuck," Eva whispered into her ear as Anna's hands worked in and out of her like a wheel.
"Fuck," Anna whispered back, and just the sound of the word seemed to make Eva tighter around her.
"Fuck me," Eva whispered through clenched teeth as her large breasts heaved with every movement of her body, and Anna could see light in her eyes. It wasn't the same kind of light she saw in Elsa's when she had been looking at the stars. It was a light looking past her and through her, and Anna watched it come and go with her fingers inside Eva. So she did it again, faster and faster, and put her teeth on Eva's chest and sucked at her nipples until they were raw and used her hand to caress and tickle and twist at every inch of Eva's tight flesh, and when she was done she looked at the older girl, driven so deep into her own pleasure that she could barely move or speak, and watched silently as Eva hit the same peak Anna herself had stood at, and began the fall.
"You…your…m…majestyyyyy, my…QUEEEEN! AHHHH!" Eva half-whispered half-begged through the orgasm that was ripping her body apart inside from her nipples to her cunt. Then Anna's lips were on hers, and she screamed into them as she came hard, eyes closed against the lights, and so unable to see Anna's smile as she jerked and groaned and gushed hot under the princess' touch. Anna brought her hands up to Eva's mouth and Eva licked the younger girl's fingers without being asked, throat bobbing and chest moving up and down as she sucked her own wetness. Anna looked, entranced, at the thin wet strings joining her fingers and Eva's tongue. She wiped them off on the same tongue.
Eva licked her lips and stared at her through exhausted eyes. "My queen," she said thickly through a mouthful of herself, and the look of carnal desire and satisfaction that Eva gave her was almost as good as falling off a mountain of her own.
Anna had her prize.
She lay in bed, too exhausted to move but too exhausted to sleep. There had been a bath afterwards, but Anna barely remembered either it or the walk back to her room. If anyone had come across the pair they would have found the younger princess in a normal nightgown being escorted through the castle by a servant who had caught her stealing from the kitchens. Not a bad princess who had snuck from the castle, gotten into a life-or-death situation against a mad wild animal, and sneaked back in with the help of a guilty castle servant. Certainly not a wild princess who had gone with that same castle servant to a remote part of the castle and done…and had…
And fucked each other 'till they screamed.
Even the thought of the word Eva had taught her made her squirm.
Anna stared at the ceiling of her room and held her hands up before her. If she closed her eyes she could still see the red blood of the bear covering them. The blood had covered her like a thin suit and in the end had taken both of them scrubbing painfully to remove it. When she had been wearing it though…when she had been wearing it!
She had felt like a different person. Like one of the wild men from the stories, crazed berserkers with the strength of ten who could sweep away nations before them and kidnapped princesses to be their brides. She had felt like she could have done anything. She had done anything. She had taken her first kill and her first conquest on the same night and she wasn't sorry about either.
And if anyone had dared known or dared ask, she wouldn't have been able to tell them which she had liked better.
In another room, Elsa stared up at the ceiling like Anna. Her hands were free and waving above her like a conductor, and waves of ice and frost were etching themselves onto the ceiling in a familiar pattern; two small human figures, and a larger bear. One of the small human figures held a sword, and another wore a crown. All around the bear spikes and chains were painted pointed towards its heart.
For the first time in years she had used her powers in anger, and they had sang at her command. She had helped save her sister. Even if her father somehow found out and was furious, he couldn't take that away from her. Even if the thought of marriage and courtship didn't interest her, there was only a single year to her debut, and the castle gates finally opening. In one year she would be able to show her parents how wrong they had been.
Both sisters lay in their beds and felt triumph.
The bear was found by a group of hunters the next morning, dead from a dozen places, huge spikes of ice impaling it from every angle and its head hacked apart by a strong blade. The ground around it was coated with blood that in one place was mixed in and smeared together with the snow, where the beast had fought with it's killer. A blade lay forgotten on the ground, but no-one dared touch it.
Most of the hunting party kissed the small charms of saints they carried with them, and made the sign of the cross on their hearts to ward off whatever devil surely did this thing. There would be no hunting today.
A couple of the hunters however made a much older sign, quickly and silently while their more devout friends couldn't see them.
A word would be whispered in homes that night, among those who had lived in the fjords far longer than these modern Christian newcomers, and who quietly kept the old ways.
The word was Vanir.
Chapter notes at cobraygordon dot tumblr dot com as usual.
Incidentally I'd like to thank everyone who's followed/fav'd so far. I can see the traffic stats via FFnet but it's always nice to know people are actually reading and enjoying the story rather than just clicking the page and passing by. I notice I got a bunch of new readers after elsannaheadcanon published a link, give a shout out if there's anywhere else I should be submitting this to. All feedback is appreciated and cared for, and if the good responce to this story keeps up I'll start responding to questions and stuff individually (something I normally avoid due to nervousness).
Thanks again, hope you're enjoying the ride.
~Cobray