Thanks to people who have left reviews. I don't say that much (mainly because I don't want to risk appearing the kind of tool who begs for reviews) but I really do mean it. Last chapter got a bunch of them and made some good points. Rest assured I do read every review you guys, and treasure the criticism just as much as the praise. A lot was talked about Anna's actions and I will just leave these two notes: One; while this is still the Anna we know, remember that she is different from the canon in one very important way that's working on her basic personality. Two; adrenaline is a hell of a thing.

Kristoff walked the streets of Arendelle and listened.

Or at least he tried to.

"Morning Kristoff."

"Morning Kristoff."

"Morning Sven. Kristoff."

"M'rnin' Kristoff!"

Kristoff knelt down to eye-level at the last greeting as the pair swarmed him, patting at his pockets looking for gifts. "Hey kids. How you doing?"

Two pairs of brown eyes stared up at him in wonder as he drew out the small shining baubles. They were castoffs from the metalworker's forges, literally just small twisted scraps of bronze he'd balled up on a hot stove and put on a piece of string. But they twisted in the breeze throwing off yellow and gold reflections, and the twin girls gaped in wonder at them as he handed them over and gave them a pat on the head. "Enjoy!" He would never admit it to anyone he knew but he loved doing stuff like that. Little things that cost him nothing but somehow seemed all-important to others.

"Thank you Kristoff!" they sang as they laughed and skipped away back to their mother, who gave him a small wave as they practically jumped in the air to show her their prizes.

"Don't let the castle catch you stealing their brass."

Kristoff turned. "Morning Dag. Hey!"

Dag ruffled Kristoff's hair much the same way Kristoff had done the same for the girls. No matter how much he grew the man always seemed to treat him like the same little kid who'd followed the other ice-miners with his little sled. Looking at him now a decade and then some later Dag barely seemed to have changed. Most of his face was hidden by a huge brown beard to keep the cold out of his face and even in town in the middle of summer he still wore his leathers.

In case of a rogue snowstorm lately? Kristoff wondered.

"They keeping you well in that castle of your lad?" the old ice-miner asked with a pat on the back that could have broken a lesser man's spine.

"More like I'm the one keeping them well you old kludge," Kristoff shot back.

Dag snorted but didn't say anything more, which was strange enough… "What, not going to complain about me leaving a good old honest business to be a castle lackey? Kristoff teased. "Not going to complain about your old good-luck charm going off to brush royal boots and polish horses? Wait."

Dag looked at him like he was simple. "You've not heard then?" he asked softly. "Aye I guess you wouldn't've up in that stone monstrosity. You really need to get out more boy."

"Heard what?" Kristoff asked, resisting the urge to glance back at the castle. The marketplace sat on the town square only a small walk from the drawbridge that led to it. From the middle of it Kristoff could see right through the square and to the guards who stood at either side of the bridge. He resisted the urge to check if they were watching. He wasn't doing anything wrong but…"Something going on?"

"You notice anything a little off about me today lad?" Dag asked in the slow tones of someone asking a question the other person should really know the answer to.

Dag was right in a way. Kristoff really had been spending too much time inside the castle. Years ago he would have noticed it right off. "You're off to gather ice?" he asked in disbelief.

You didn't gather ice in summer. Not because there wasn't any, but because it was simply too dangerous. If you weren't someone who lived and worked around the stuff it might seem a little backward but when you grew up, breathed it, depended on it for your life and wealth, you learned all the little tricks. In winter ice was a solid thing, strong as iron. The mountain and the wind grew it like corn grew in the sunny countries down south and there was tons of it everywhere you looked. Ice-miners did it professionally, taking waist-high blocks of the stuff from lakes and streams, but in winter practically any housewife could walk to the edge of their village and take a chunk of it from a stream or overhang. Ice-miners would spend weeks doing nothing but hauling ice down from the mountains, shaving it into blocks and packing it in sawdust and hiding it in semi-buried storehouses to make it last.

In summer ice-miners, for two reasons. The ice soaked up the heat that flowed around the country and turned from something solid and immovable to something slippery and dangerous, weaknesses and cracks forming in huge slabs that had built up all winter. Anyone who tried to gather ice took their lives into their own hands. This was when the store the ice-miners had built up over winter appeared, taken from the ice-houses and sold door-to-door and in huge slabs to the castle and other nobility that dotted Arendelle. Every scrap they'd gathered would be sold, sometimes even to passing southern merchants from places Kristoff couldn't even pronounce the names of.

The other reason you didn't gather ice in summer was the wildlife.

"What?" Kristoff asked, in utter disbelief at the thing that Dag had just told him.

"There's a god on the mountain," Dag said, fingering a small charm around his neck.

It wasn't the words that confused Kristoff the most. He'd grown up with the same stories every other boy in the north had. Told to him by surly old ice-miners and not parents too, which means they told them the old way; not the clean and sanitised morality lessons but the older versions that left in the blood and guts and consequences of disobeying them. It was the way Dag had said it; blunt and to the point, as if he was pointing out the weather. "What?"

Dag let the small charm drop to his neck and Kristoff got a better look at it. It was just a small rectangle of iron, kept around the man's neck on a frayed piece of string. On it Kristoff could see small scratches: A single vertical line, then next to it another vertical line with two smaller ones coming off it at the top and middle, angled down and to the right.

"''If'? If what"? Kristoff asked.

"No you daft boy, they're runes," Dag said. Swinging it around his finger.

"Runes for what?"

Dag pointed at the two symbols. "Ice," he said. "and God."

Kristoff just listened as the old man talked, his heart sinking as he did so.

They had relocated to the nearest tavern in the marketplace, a dull smoky place that barely let any light in even at noon at the height of summer. Kristoff had dragged the ice-miner in on the promise of free beer and to buy the castle's next consignment exclusively from him. Dag hadn't looked a gift-horse in the mouth, and he wasn't stupid. Beer and eventual money in exchange for answering a few questions was alright with him.

"It started near the end of winter when Harald's group found a dead bear in the woods. He's a daft old bastard and his ice is barely fit to use but he wasn't stupid."

"He killed a bear? So what? You always find a few who didn't hibernate right when spring rolls around."

Dag leaned forward and was practically whispering. "Harald didn't kill it, and neither did anyone else, boy. A god killed that bear."

"A god." He didn't laugh only because Dag could still have probably picked him up and thrown him through a window. Ice-miners were a humourless bunch who didn't like to be laughed at.

"Aye. Tore the thing apart and displayed it on totems of ice like you'd put a flag on a flagpole. Torn. Apart."

Kristoff felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, and suddenly the beer in front of him didn't taste quite so good anymore. "Icicles. Giant…icicles?" he asked, swallowing to try and stop what he'd already drank from coming back up.

I hadn't asked.

He hadn't asked what had happened when Anna and Elsa had come back from that secret tunnel covered in blood. Eventually they would have told him, he thought. He was their friend, and friends shared troubles, right? But the day had ended, then the next, and they hadn't took him aside and whispered it. Then the next day they had come by, and just…pretended…that the last night hadn't happened. They had sat in the garden and talked about the actor's troupe that had played at Elsa's birthday, and about what Elsa wanted for her eighteenth, and about how Sven was doing, and the rest of the horses. He'd wanted to just come right out and ask them, but he hadn't dared.

The day had turned into a week, and the week into two, then a month, and another. Finally six months had passed since that winter night, and Kristoff had simply put it from his mind. Anna and Elsa still laughed and played and joked around, and that was enough. He had considered asking Eva, but had put that thought out of his mind immediately. He couldn't really go around asking for her secrets when he was keeping one himself.

"Giant icicles, just coming right up out of the ground," Dag confirmed, not noticing the peculiar shade of white currently decorating Kristoff's face. "And it wasn't just any old bear either, Harald swears it was the bastard that took Geir two years back. Damn thing tore him up for food, looks like we got our revenge in the end."

Oh bull. Harald would swear he met Christ and Odin if it would get him the attention. It was probably some different bear and you just want to say it was the same one because you went drinking with Geir a lot. But Kristoff put two and two together. "They think a god punished the bear for killing him?"

Dag rubbed a thumb over the little talisman. "I saw that ice, boy," he said with a warning note in his voice. "And that bear wasn't the only one either. Half a year now and there's been no-one taken on the mountain."

"No-one?" That was fairly unusual. With that profession you expected…losses. A careless foot would take a man down a ravine, or a herder's flock would attract hungry wolves, or just plain bad luck would sweep a man from the sides of Arendelle's hills like it was nothing.

"No-one. Not to wolves, bears, snow-cats, nothing. And animals that try turn up dead."

Oh, gods. "On giant icicles?"

"No, but butchered just the same," Dag said, with more than a little satisfaction in his voice. He was getting old for an ice-miner, and he'd seen more than one friend dragged away by a bear, or turn up missing in the morning with nothing but a trail leading into the woods from his tent. "Every few weeks someone'll walk up the mountain and find some wild thing bled out and dead on the mountain near a village or a well. We're protected."

Animals eating animals, and some old superstitious bastards making up stories about gods and monsters. Kristoff asked, feeling the steel bar inside him give, just a little. "How many other people know?"

"Enough. Anyone worth anything who's up on that mountain."

Kristoff ignored the insult. "And you all think there's some kind of spirit living up there?" he asked. "And you're what, worshipping it?"

Dag shrugged. "I've seen the work it's left behind boy." He leaned closer and chugged the rest of his drink. "I've lived decades in Arendelle, climbed the old northern bitch every year since I was old enough to-."

"Yeah, yeah, since you were old enough to carry a pick, and so on."

Dag cuffed him on the ear. "I've been a god-fearing man all my life boy, didn't make sense not to be in my job. But if the thing up there on the mountain is any son of a carpenter then I'll eat my hat and ask for seconds." He fingered the rune-charm. "I remember what my mother told me, and right now I'm more inclined to look to this chunk of steel before I do a wooden cross."

"Careful," Kristoff said. Several other bar patrons were glancing at them as Dag stood.

The man nodded. "Thanks for the beer, boy. You should come back up the mountain. Do a real man's work again."

"I'll think about it."

"Oh Sven. We're really in trouble now."

Now that he knew what to look for Kristoff started seeing more of it. He ignored Sven's licks as he walked the marketplace collecting the things on his list; leather straps, glue, the usual. He let his hands and mouth wander on autopilot while his eyes and brain worked. The former were excellent, and the latter was better than people let on.

After an hour in the town he had spotted five more of the small iron charms. All the same, all with the two runes stamped or carved or scorched into the metal. All of them worn by…well…it wasn't nice but worn by people of a similar status to Kristoff. He'd ask for a brace of birds from a butcher and the man would reach up and he'd catch the silvery flash of iron around his neck. An ice-miner and a butcher, and soon a house-wife and a milkmaid and a farmer. He would smile and ask, and sometimes he'd get narrowed glances and a cold response when they spotted the castle's seal on his money-purse, and others he'd get a little more.

Da says there's an ice spirit living on the mountains watching over him.

Since I started wearing this I've had no trouble since winter.

Makes more sense to believe in something that helps then something that don't.

"Oh sure, I've seen it."

His mind screeched to a halt as the old woman spoke. "Huh?"

"I've seen it." The woman spoke the same way Dag had back in the tavern; with the same lack of worry and slight tinge of awe you would have had if you talked about the royal family, or a stroke of good luck. "A beautiful thing it was too."

Kristoff fed a carrot to Sven to keep him quiet, then turned back to the woman manning the market stall. "How?" he asked, bringing out a single coin.

The coin disappeared into her hand. "I was gathering wood for the winter, by the mountainside, when I saw the wolf." She went on: "I dropped it and ran like the devil of course, but you can't outrun a wolf in the snow, not in summer. That's when it saved me."

"What happened?" Kristoff asked, feeding her another coin like she was a baby bird.

"Well I heard it snarl. But not like a normal snarl you know? Like a dog when something nips at his balls. More of a yelp really. So like a big idiot I turned around to look and I saw it." Another coin, another smile. "The wolf was bleeding, looked like from maybe a dozen places, and the spirit was dancing around it laughing."

"Dancing?"

The woman shrugged. "As good a word as any. Beast didn't stand a chance."

"What did it look like?" he said, throat hoarse, almost whispering.

"Oh I couldn't see that well at night, but it was wearing a cloak made of snow and clothes that shone."

"It could have been a hunter," Kristoff suggested.

"Oh no, not like that. Not like any hunter around here. It was a small thing, maybe just a little bigger than the wold. And it moved so beautifully. And it had a beautiful sword," the woman said with a faint smile, lost in the memory. "It shone, even in the night. Like silver."

"And that's when…"

The woman nodded, and held up her rune. "Had this made the next day. Had some complaints from the neighbours but I'm not worried about them. I've seen the truth."

Kristoff thanked her with another coin and walked away, back towards the castle gates. Even after he got back to his small room in the servant's quarters his mind kept flashing back to Dag and the old woman. They had both believed, and not in a wide-eyed and hopeful way. They didn't have 'faith', because they knew.

Kristoff sighed. There were two awful conversations looming very large in his future now, and he wasn't looking forward to either of them.

He caught her in the morning, coming out of her own room.

"Hello Eva."

"Kristoff. This is a surprise, to find you near a lady's room."

Kristoff had taken enough ribbings on that point over the years to not blush anymore. "You count as a lady now? Listen, I have a favour to ask."

"Do I owe you one?" Eva asked, looking up at him with huge brown eyes. It was an act and a good one, but Kristoff was immune. After spending enough time around a young Anna and Elsa he knew all the tricks about being manipulative.

"Maybe I'll owe you then. You do the washing for the servants, right?"

"Sometimes," Eva asked, eyes narrowing.

"Do any of them have a long white cloak?" he asked.

Not a single twitch. "I believe so, several of us in fact. Did you lose a cloak? I can't sell you a new one but-"

I'm asking you because you spend more time around a certain someone than people say you should and I want you to ask her if..if... People talked, and Kristoff heard. He didn't always understand it or believe it, but he heard. Kristoff sighed inwardly. He simply didn't have it in him to be manipulative, or cunning. He left that to other people. The trolls had always taught him to be open and honest with others. That it would make life simpler. Then they'd sent him into the middle of a huge mess called the Arendelle royal family.

Thanks guys. All I wanted to do was grow up and harvest ice.

"Eva."

"Yes Kristoff?" Eva asked with a smile.

He looked her right in those large brown eyes and smiled back, and gave it his best shot. "Someone with a white cloak has been spotted in the forest causing…well…causing more than a little trouble. If- if you might know who it is…Let them know to be careful, alright? Please?"

"Certainly," she said, staring at him a little harder.

Kristoff had the distinct and unnerving impression she was weighing him up. He tried doing it back but didn't have the knack. In the end what convinced him was that he simply couldn't believe it. Not that little redhead with the friendly smile and the laugh that cheered him up just hearing it. Impossible. "Thanks Eva."

The look on Eva's face softened a little, and she ran a finger down his face. "You're a good man, Kristoff. When are you going to find a girl?"

The only girls I care for aren't for me.

"None of your business," he replied, but not harshly.

Eva turned back to her door. "You're welcome."

Kristoff sighed as it shut before him. One down. One to go.

"Your majesty."

Elsa smiled as he entered. "Hello Kristoff. How are you?"

"Oh, so it's all formality and grace today then?"

Elsa stared at him for a moment, then blew a royal raspberry at him. "I'm supposed to be training myself for the ball."

The ball. Elsa and Anna had been consumed with thoughts of it for the last few months. Kristoff swore that if she could have Elsa would have marked down the days. The sisters were both filled with excitement and happiness, infecting everyone around them. More than a decade locked inside the castle was finally ending. Kristoff had watched Elsa grow up and seen it eating at her, the bitterness in her voice that even she probably hadn't heard. Now that there was finally a date all that one gone. Elsa glowed.

"How's the training going?"

Elsa stood from the seat in the library and curtsied perfectly. The seventeen year-old could make even a simple plaid dress and white shirt look elegant. "How am I?" She said with a laugh, twirling.

He clapped appreciatively. "Stunning. They'll be lining up to propose." He noticed a small twitch downwards in her mouth when he said that, but his mind was on other things. He took a deep breath. "Elsa."

"What?"

"Before I start asking this please remember we're inside a room filled with very valuable books, and also that I'm not wearing clothes for the cold."

"What is it Kristoff?"

"It's about your sixteenth birthday."

Kristoff had known Elsa since they were children, practically. Well enough that he noticed the ever-so-slight changes. Her pupils dilated. Her arms tightened up and her hands grasped each other around her midriff. "What about it?" Elsa asked, and he couldn't tell whether she was angry or scared. He hoped it was the second one.

"Elsa have there…have you…" He tried to find the words. Gave up. "Have you used that passage since then?"

"No," Elsa asked, frowning. She stepped forward and grabbed his hands in her own. "Why, what's happened?"

He looked into her eyes and saw she wasn't lying. He felt better. In fact he felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "Just some stories going around the village," he said, and lifted a hand away from Elsa's to ruffle at her hair. "I thought…well…I thought maybe you were sneaking out at night."

Elsa snorted. "Not after that first time. Blood everywhere and a perfectly good coat almost ruined."

"I was cleaning those clothes for days because you wouldn't let me throw them out."

"It was my favourite coat! I wasn't going to let you just burn it!"

The two laughed, and the topic turned quickly away from gods and monsters in the night and back to what Kristoff was doing, and how Elsa was preparing for the ball, and how much all three of them were looking forward to walking through the town together, finally. Kristoff forgot the panic and worry he had felt, and put it out of his mind. He didn't care about what happened to the local wildlife, or strange beliefs or any of that stuff. Kristoff cared about the girl – almost truly a woman now – in front of him, and her sister, and keeping them both as happy as he could. Giant icicles and dancing goddesses in the night are forgotten, as were dead bears and wolves.

And as spring turned into autumn, the stories continued to grow.

A shorter chapter this week because my arm is all messed up and it's hard to type.

Next week will make up for it.

Chapter 09: Coming of Age

Be there.