1 Month Later…

Anna was looking through the castle's collection of strategy games in the attic.

She was searching for something interesting but she wasn't quite sure what and she couldn't seem to focus on the task at hand. She and Kristof were in what might be called a rut. Not a serious rut but the fact was that they were running out of things to talk about and things to do together. This didn't concern Anna too much. Nothing did concern Anna too much, apart from the health of her family and loved ones. She was a lighthearted being. But it did concern her somewhat. So she was looking, in the hope of finding some game that she and Kristof could play together some evening.

There were checkers and battleship, games they had already played. She also found three chess sets but, of course, they had already played chess...She looked back at the chess sets. One of the chess sets had an intricate golden design on the top of the box and Anna traced it absentmindedly with her finger.

Her finger twitched and tingled. The design was warm to the touch.

She tried touching it again. Yes, it was definitely warm.

Anna considered showing it to Kristof before taking any further action. No. She was too curious, too eager, too brave of a creature for that. She opened the box. Carefully, she set up the chessboard with the pieces on their right spots. Nothing seemed to be happening but Anna knew that something would. She could somehow feel it. She picked up a white pawn and moved it one space forward.

The room seemed to shimmer and glow.

The dinner bell rang.

Anna frowned. It couldn't be dinnertime. She had gone upstairs right after lunch. And yet, there it was, the dinner bell.

Anna left the chessboard where it was and descended the staircase.

"Fiona," she told a servant. "Tell them they've made a mistake. It is only one o'clock."

Fiona wrinkled her nose and fixed her glasses. "It is six o'clock, your highness." She pointed to the clock on the wall. It was indeed six.

Anna wanted to make sure. She checked the clock in her own bedroom. Six. She checked the clock in her own room. Six.

Finally, she dashed back upstairs, where the chessboard still stood. Only now, a black knight stood in a different spot from before. It had changed position on its own.

Anna laughed out loud. This was incredible! Now, to go back to one o'clock. She picked up the white pawn and tried placing it back in its' original square.

The floor shook. Anna fell back, her elbow hitting the set of checkers. She barely managed to hold on to the chess piece. She got up, rubbing her elbow.

So, you couldn't break the rules of chess. A pawn could never go backward only forward. Did that mean she was stuck at six o'clock? She placed the white pawn back to the spot she had taken it from, one square ahead.

Anna reached for a black piece. Would she be able to pick it up? But it was stuck to the board, as if glued there.

Well.

Anna flipped the chessboard over. The pieces stayed stuck in their places. She shook it hard to no avail. Finally, she slid it back into the box.

She waited five minutes, dancing a little dance as she did so. Then, she pulled out the chess set. All of the pieces were lying on their sides, scrambled and mixed- up, as you would expect in any old chess set.

However, downstairs, it was still six o'clock.

Kristof was not as excited as Anna had hoped.

"You're telling me you have a chess board that travels through time."

"Yes."

"And that you traveled from one o'clock to six o'clock today by means of this chess board."

"Yes," Anna said patiently.

"I was looking for you around four. You were nowhere to be found."

"I wonder where I was at four?" Anna said dreamily.

Kristof took a deep breath. "You're not the least bit intimidated by this experience?"

"It was only five hours."

"Yes, but you didn't know that. What if you had traveled months into the future?"

Anna shrugged. "I didn't."

"But – "Kristof gave up on trying to convince her that this was serious. "Please, promise me that next time we'll explore the chessboard together." He didn't mind Anna flying through time so much if he was there with her. But to send her off alone?

"You know, this could be useful," Anna said. "Someday, we might actually have a serious reason to travel through time."

"So what you're telling me is that all of these chess pieces have magical properties?" Rapunzel asked excitedly.

"We've tried the pawn, the bishop, the knight and the rook," said Kristof. "And I've been taking notes on what happens."

He opened up an ornately designed notebook that seemed entirely at odds with his disheveled hair and patchy shirt.

The notebook had been a present from Anna. The handwriting inside was nearly illegible.

"The pawn makes you travel forward through time but you can't go back because, of course, pawns can't move back. The bishop makes you travel forward through time as well but you also end up somewhere else. We ended up in the ice-cream shop five hours later. But with the bishop, you can go back to your original time and place because, of course, bishops can travel in both directions."

"Why an ice-cream shop?" asked Rapunzel.

Kristof shrugged. "The times and places we end up in are random. It doesn't matter. It's always close to home. But you didn't let me finish. The rook made us travel through time when we moved it forward. But it made us travel through space when we moved it sideways and the time we were in stayed the same. So my clever fiancé –" he indicated Anna, "figured out that going forward and backwards on the chessboard represents moving through time and going sideways represents moving through space."

The entire time Kristof was talking, while Anna was hopping from foot to foot with suppressed excitement and Rapunzel was listening eagerly, Eugene was quiet. Now, he spoke. "When you are going back to your original place and time, are you doing anything special to make sure that you end up back where you started?"

"Well, each time we kind of hope that it will work," Anna said.

"Hope? More like pray," Kristof amended. "This is rather dangerous stuff. You've got to be brave to try it." He smiled, looking rather proud of his courage.

"So you are thinking of your original place and time when you return," said Eugene. "Have you tried thinking of a specific place and time when you set out?"

Kristof and Anna blinked and stared at each other.

"It is possible," Eugene said. "That instead of ending up in random places, you could be going absolutely anywhere you like. You just have to think about it. Perhaps, speak it out loud."

"Oooh!" said Anna. "Let's go to Finland. I've always wanted to visit Finland! Or Greenland! Or – "

"Let's try getting to the dinner hall first," Kristof said mildly.

Rapunzel looked like she wanted to say something. She formed her words carefully. "Would you...would you let us try it out? We will be very careful with it. We will bring it back in perfect condition."

"We'll consider – " began Kristof but Anna was already saying, "Absolutely!"

Kristof sighed. There was no holding her back. She would share everything she had with everybody. Even an object of immense magical powers. That was part of what he loved about her so much.