QUICK NOTES:

Edited to develop more of Anna's antics in the first months of knowing Kristoff.

Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.

Chapter 7

"Trust me, Olaf."

Anna knelt before the snowman and clasped her hands together earnestly. He wasn't in the habit of distrusting anyone—ever—except for maybe that one time, long ago, when Kristoff took the princess to meet his family. How was he to know they were trolls? At first glance, they'd resembled nothing more than rocks. Perfectly spherical, demurely moss-covered rocks, sure—but rocks nonetheless …

Anyway. Circumstances were different now. Anna was gazing at him with a sort of fervor that bypassed mischievous and went straight to foolhardy. Her eyes burned. Her cheeks blushed a ruddy pink.

It was a bad idea. Even Olaf could see that.

"I don't know …" he said slowly, trying to buy himself some time. He needed to bolster his resolve—he really did—because Anna knew his weaknesses.

"When was the last time you saw them?" she wheedled. "You haven't had a hug from Kristoff in months!"

He didn't bother to point out that Kristoff wasn't the hugging type. Still, the mountain man did have a way of showing affection, and Olaf … just … couldn't … resist affection. Of any kind.

He pursed his lips, made feeble sounds of resistance, would have bitten his tongue if he'd had one.

"Olaf …"

He pulled down on the two out three twigs he had for hair.

"Oooooolaf," she crooned.

And then—

"All right!" he cried, throwing his arms out in surrender. "I'll do it, I'll do it."

Anna squealed and kissed the top of his head. He felt a slight warmth where her lips touched his snow, and all thoughts of refusing her fled his tiny golem brain—though one practical question remained …

"What, exactly, am I doing?"

"Helping me get past the guardsmen."

"OK," he replied, nodding. As though this made perfect sense. "And how?"

Anna leaned in conspiratorially. "I need you to create," she said, "a diversion."

The snowman was rapt. "A diversion."

"Yes!"

He felt himself getting swept up in her excitement. It radiated off her skin like heat.

But ...

"How do I do that?"

There was a pause.

"I haven't quite figured that out, yet," she answered truthfully.

Anna slid off her bed and drifted around the room, absently braiding and re-braiding her hair as she paced. It would take a few days, she assumed, to come up with a plan that might actually work. Because if the princess of Arendelle knew one thing, it was that it was not easy to sneak out of the castle—or into it—when Queen Elsa set her mind to confining her sister for her own good.

She'd learned this firsthand on her sixteenth birthday, when she'd clambered out of her window at night and attempted to descend a climbing hydrangea to the courtyard below. That had resulted in a twisted ankle, for her, and a sweeping removal of all aerially rooted plants from the walls of the palace, for the staff.

Even then, though, her sister had not come out of her chambers—at least, not while Anna was about.

There was also the time, just a year ago, when she'd waited for the inevitable hush of a slumbering household to descend upon the castle before traipsing out its front gate to visit Kristoff and Sven. She hadn't intended to do anything untoward—the thought made her cringe. She simply couldn't sleep and thought a stroll in the wee hours of a warm autumn night would ease her wakeful mood.

Of course, it was late and the stable door had been locked. And both Sven and Kristoff had been asleep, so she'd had to wake them up as discretely as possible by throwing bits of rubble at the loft window. And this had struck her as quite hilarious—a sort of reversal of the balcony scene and all that—though Kristoff had failed to see the humor in it. He'd been grumpy and disheveled and apprehensive about being discovered with the princess at such an inappropriate and ungodly hour of the night. So he'd come down from his apartments and marched her straight back to the castle.

Somehow, she'd managed to twist her ankle on that occasion, as well—which, Kristoff was quick to point out, was her fault entirely. They'd come up with a suitable explanation for it, at the time, and no one was the wiser.

Kristoff hadn't been familiar with the balcony scene, anyway …

Now the princess sighed and paced and chewed her fingernails. And tried to think of a way past the soldiers that were stationed at each and every door in the palace.

She felt a little punch-drunk, to tell the truth. But she hadn't gotten to tag around with Kristoff in, like, forever. And, yeah, she had some friendly acquaintances here in the village, but she didn't really have friends. Not like Kristoff.

Everything in the castle was so grim and sorrowful and scary. She wasn't attenuating the seriousness of their plight—but she had to get away from it, at least for a moment. And she needed someone to talk to, someone who could mitigate her fears, make her feel that maybe, maybe things would come out all right. Her sister was unavailable—she'd made that clear enough—and really, deemphasizing their fears had never been Elsa's strong suit, had it?

So Anna was going to find a way out of the castle, and Olaf was going to help. He was staring at her now, following her movements with an expectant look on his face. She stopped in the middle of the room.

"Sorry, what?" she asked.

But he hadn't spoken, and now his expression began to change from one of collusion to one of doubt. Qualms scudded through his eyes like dark clouds across a shifting horizon.

Oh no, she thought. No, no, no, no, no …

"Olaf—"

The snowman sighed. "It's just that your sister will be so mad."

"But it's not like we're leaving the castle," she argued. "I mean, yeah, OK, we're leaving the castle. But we'll still be on the grounds. We'll be on the court side of the wall!"

"I don't like to upset people," Olaf fretted.

"Olaf, please!" she begged, wringing her hands. She looked at him with such sadness in her eyes, and her words came out in a sort of guttural-piteous-keening wail. And then, in barely a whisper: "Please."

Even a preternaturally happy snowman could tell that she was sincere. True, Anna had been gifted with certain powers of persuasion that rivaled the strength of even her sister's magic. And while she was never malicious about it, she was also not above using this "power" to get what she wanted. It worked on everyone except the queen. Kai and Gerda, for example, were completely in her thrall—as was the rest of the staff. Sven, that dearest of reindeer, did her bidding without question. Kristoff, who was smart enough to know he was being manipulated, gave in to her out of pure laziness. And Olaf, who was made only of tenderness and snow, and who was as artless as Anna was artful … Well, Olaf was the worst of them all.

But this time was different.

He was right, too. The snowman may have had certain overdeveloped sensibilities, but Anna wasn't trying to exploit them—at least, not anymore. She simply looked at him with the same raw and desperate hope that was, at that very moment, flooding through her heart. To Olaf, it was plain as day: the princess needed her reindeer king. And Olaf could also see—even if she could not—that the intensity of feeling within her was nothing less than pure, unadulterated … love.