Chapter 6 - Walking Out of Yesterday
Anna is still brooding over the life-altering revelations from GrandPabbie. She needed to vent her anger to someone. There were only two people she could share this with, so she takes a long walk up a short hill. All feels, no plot in this chapter, as our girls finally mourn together.
Anna was alone.
This was not unusual. In fact, for thirteen years, she had been mostly alone, isolated from people in general and her sister Elsa in particular. Because she was a gregarious, friendly person with an outgoing personality, this was distressing and troubling to her. She chafed under the isolation. After 13 years of growing up mostly alone, she had burst free of the confining castle gates almost two weeks ago, and had promised herself she would never be alone again.
The day of her sister's coronation as Queen of Arendelle had been one of liberation and giddy excitement. She had danced through the castle and the streets, celebrating for herself, not her sister. She had even met a prince, someone she thought was THE one!
Then came the awful disaster when her sister Elsa had been goaded into revealing just WHY she had been isolated from Anna and the rest of the kingdom. Goaded by Anna. Goaded into running away and leaving a howling blizzard in her wake, a blizzard in July.
Anna had pursued her sister, THINKING she now understood her sister's situation, thinking she could bring her back to thaw the kingdom and be her best friend again. And how obliviously, cheerfully she had tried to bring Elsa back to Arendelle from the Ice Palace, not realizing how literal a warning "You're not safe here!" was. She had blindly assumed Elsa was just spooked by the exposure of her secret.
Anna was wrong.
But Elsa eventually thawed the kingdom and reunited with Anna, and everything was fine.
Until three days ago, when Kristoff had told Anna that Elsa had almost killed her not once, but twice. This shock had angered Anna who led them on a visit to the trolls, the three of them together, to confront GrandPabbie. When the full import of what had really happened hit her, Anna was ashamed of herself, and told Elsa so. Elsa had hugged her, and said, "Anna, you can only act on information you have. Mama and Papa hid that from you, and so did I. But if I learned anything from that mess, it's that I will never hide things like that from you ever again."
After returning to Arendelle from the visit to the trolls, the two sisters had parted ways with Kristoff, and spent that night together, talking over the events that had been revealed to Anna. Elsa was taking GrandPabbie's advice to heart, and sharing their happy childhood play with Anna, and the harsh details of the accident where she had hurt her baby sister. They shed a few tears, but there were more giggles and stories of nannies and frozen tea. Anna had never realized just WHO had taught her all those nannie-annoying skills! They fell asleep giggling together, comforted by each other's love.
When Anna awoke the next morning, Elsa was long gone. She had a kingdom to run, and was determined to prove she was fit to rule. It had only been a few days and already Anna worried her sister was trying to do too much too soon. Trying to atone for ... something ... something besides the swirling storm she had created.
Anna spent the day brooding. She wasn't avoiding Kristoff, but this wasn't something she felt comfortable sharing with him yet. She was getting angry again, and she knew who she really needed to talk to.
It was quiet on the hill. The sun was low in the sky, starting to color it with pink and gold. A warm breeze caressed Anna's cheek as she sat rocking, her arms around her knees, staring at the two cenotaphs with the names of her parents carved into the gray stones. The inscriptions were simple: "Idun, Queen, Taken From Us By The Sea". The only difference between them was her father's name on his. "Agdar, King". The people of Arendelle didn't believe much in frills. Obvious, stolid, like the harsh land they lived in.
This was not the first time Anna had come to visit and talk to her parents. It WAS the first time she had come with anger in her heart instead of grief.
"How could you do that to me? How could you do that to HER?" Anna realized she would get no answer, but she needed to vent, and there simply was no one else. Who, after all, could you tell about the anger verging on hatred you suddenly felt toward your parents? Dead parents, who could neither explain nor comfort.
"All those years you let me wonder why Elsa had abandoned me! Let me think I had done something wrong! When I got older, I felt like I was the one with a grievance, it was all about me. Why did I have to be cooped up in the castle because of Elsa? You never explained, just spoke in vague platitudes when I asked you about it!"
"'It's nothing, Anna.' 'Just be patient, Anna!' 'Elsa has a lot of studying to do, Anna.'" Her voice kept rising in volume.
Anna had gotten up and started pacing about halfway through this tirade. She was just getting started.
"Then you went off and died and left us! And Elsa still wouldn't talk to me! She didn't even come to the memorial service! And when I tried to talk to her afterwards, it was nothing but the same silence!"
"And all the time, you thought you were protecting me! And that worked so well that SHE ACTUALLY KILLED ME!" A final scream to the unhearing stones, and Anna fell to her knees again and began to sob.
She became aware of someone sitting down next to her. She was so startled, she almost struck out and knocked them over before she realized it was Elsa.
"El..Elsa?" Anna's voice was shaky through her tears. "How much of that did you hear?" She could tell that her sister was trembling from some strong emotion, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Oh, Anna, what did you just do to her?"
"Enough, Anna. Enough to know that we need to talk some more." Elsa reached out with a tentative hand, the look of longing in her eyes clear enough to Anna. Anna scooted closer to her and embraced her sister, laying her head on Elsa's shoulder and letting the tears flow freely again. Elsa just held her, rocking gently and caressing Anna's hair, crooning soft, comforting wordless sounds as Anna was wracked with sobs.
Some timeless moments later, Anna stirred, wiped her eyes and sat up looking into Elsa's. They were red, and there were still tear tracks on her cheeks, matching the ones on Anna's.
"I'm sorry." Both women spoke at once. They looked at each other and chuckled joylessly.
"Me, first!" Anna spoke, and Elsa nodded.
"I'm sorry for being so selfish. I'm sorry for being a brat at your coronation ball and embarrassing you and the kingdom in front of diplomats from across the continent. I'm sorry for being so stupid and leaving Hans in charge and almost getting both of us killed."
Anna had been reliving thirteen years of her life since the visit to GrandPabbie, reinterpreting all the events she thought she understood in light of the revelation that Elsa had hurt her when she was five years old. Realizing that she had been driving a knife of guilt and shame into Elsa's heart every time she tried to talk to her.
"I'm sorry for being so oblivious that I couldn't see that you must have been hurting, too; that it wasn't all about me." Anna finished her litany. "Will you forgive me?"
Elsa just gave her a small, sad smile. "How can I NOT forgive you? After what you did on the fjord? After all those years when I hid away from you, when I just tried to be the good, obedient girl Mama and Papa wanted me to be, trusting them to be right about this, no matter how wrong it felt."
She looked at the two stones, feeling the grief still raw, three years on.
"I'm sorry I never had the courage to stand up for myself, for you. Sorry that I never challenged what Papa was telling me." Elsa sighed. "Even after we lost them and we were on our own, just the two of us. I was the Queen. I should have acted like one then." She shook her head. "No, not like a Queen. Like a sister. I should have reached out to you then, told you what had happened, told you how much I missed you, how much I needed you."
Elsa continued as she stroked Anna's hand. "It's not just other people we need to forgive. We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done." Tipping Anna's head to look into her sister's eyes, she went on, "I forgive you. I still need to forgive myself. And ... forgive them." A nod toward the stones.
"They made a mistake about this. They had our best interests at heart, they were doing it out of love, but it was still a mistake." Elsa's voice was soft, musing. Anna could have listened to her for days, years, after so long of never hearing that voice. Such a beautiful, expressive voice, full of affection and caring. Even her simplest words were like a song, a melody meant only for Anna.
"Even though we forgive each other, it's not going to erase everything that happened in the past. Pabbie altered your memories to remove the images of my magic. If he hadn't left the fun, you might not have still loved me all those years later. Then where would we be? Both dead, most likely. With a usurper on the throne, and the kingdom still frozen." Anna shuddered, but Elsa just hugged her tighter. "Shhhh...that didn't happen. Because of you; because you never lost faith in me, because you still loved me and were willing to die for me. We're here, we're alive, and after all that sorrow, we have each other again."
"Elsa, how can you really forgive me? I was so selfish, I never stopped to think about you." Anna needed her sister's reassurance. Having all of your convictions about the truth of your life overturned and tumbled upside down took time to absorb.
"Anna, I do forgive you. I hope you forgive me. But it's not a one-time thing. It will take both of us time and patience. Just because we forgive each other, we're not forgetting anything that happened, not denying all the pain we caused each other; we're just denying that pain the right to control our lives from now on."
"But I'm still angry at ... at Mama and Papa." Anna admitted. "It isn't fair; they're not here, they can't defend themselves, but I'm still angry."
A lingering silence.
"So am I. Angry, I mean." Elsa looked at the two stones, kissed her sister gently, and stood up. She walked to her father's stone, laid a hand on it and bowed her head so it rested on his name. Anna could see her lips moving, but couldn't make out the words. Then, louder, so Anna could hear. "This isn't the first time I've come here."
"What?" Anna wasn't sure she had heard correctly. Another revelation; she had thought that Elsa had never left the castle in those thirteen years.
"Yes. I couldn't come to the memorial; the grief was so overwhelming that I lost control of my magic. Then, when you came back to the castle, knocking on my door and ... and ... well, it got worse. Oh, how I wanted to answer you, to cry with you, to mourn them with you. To hold you in my arms like the big sister I should have been. But I couldn't. I was too afraid of hurting you one more time." Elsa was still leaning into the stone, tears trickling down her cheeks again.
"But a few days later, in the dead of night, I snuck out of the castle and came here. I loved them, and I missed them, and I had to tell them that, even though in my head I knew I wasn't any closer to them here than I was in my room. But the heart is not as easily persuaded as the head. My heart needed to be here to say goodbye." Elsa kissed her father's stone, then did the same to her mother's.
She walked back to sit next to Anna once more, wrapping her arms around her sister and kissing her tenderly.
"We can't deny our anger, Anna. It's just part of being human. I'm not a saint, and neither are you. If we deny the anger, we open ourselves to hate. Can you hate them?" A nod toward the stones. Anna shook her head, no. "If we let ourselves be angry, then the hate can't keep its hold on us, and we can forgive. We need to forgive. But never to forget. We learned the lessons, we paid for them in the hard coin of pain and sorrow and shame. We can never forget."
After the two women sat in quiet reverie for a few more moments, Elsa stood up and helped Anna to her feet. Facing her, she took both her hands in her own and looked her sister in the eye.
"On our parents' graves, I swear this to you: I will never again push you away. I will never again keep secrets from you. I will never, ever make a decision that concerns you without sharing that decision with you and letting you share in making it. And I am asking you right now to forgive me if I slip up, because I will make mistakes, again. I love you, I never stopped loving you, and I never will stop loving you as long as I live."
"Oh, Elsa! I promise you the same thing! And I know I'll make mistakes, too, but please forgive me when I do. I am your sister, and you are mine, and you will never be alone again. I love you so much." They both had tears in their eyes as they hugged each other, the loving touch they had been denied for so many years.
Arms around each other's waists, they looked at their parents' memorial stones once more before turning down the hill for the return to Arendelle.
"We love you, Mama, Papa. We'll visit again, both of us." they murmured together.
Two sisters, together, at last and forever.
Author's notes:
Credit for the translation on the cenotaphs of the king and queen goes to "Panya's Blog: Linguistic Aspect" which I found with a Google search, although I rephrased slightly from the straight translation of "She died in the sea" Apparently a programmer who is also a student of linguistics, Panya not only translated the runes on the cenotaphs but the book the king finds in the library with the map to the trolls. I thank Panya for sharing the translation with us. The blog is in Thai, except for the discussion of the runes, so I could not read the "About" page. The Internet is an amazing place.