NOT-SO QUICK NOTES:

OK, so I think I'm going to make this the last chapter I post until my midsummer revels have ended. I'll be back in August, and this seems like a nice place to hit the pause button.

If there's one thing I abhor, it's over-sentimentality. The thing is, I happen to be an excessively sentimental person. So I'm always trying to write with restraint. It's very hard for me to wrap up stories such as these without stepping over that line—especially since the characters are all wound pretty tight emotionally, at the moment.

So if you think this chapter strays into maudlin territory, let me know. If you don't think it does, let me know that, too—I'm a sucker for positive reinforcement. Just please be gentle. I'm sensitive.

Anyway, I feel kind of good about this one because I think I've managed to stay on the acceptable side of the mawkishness divide. We'll see …

Chapter 13

Elsa slept as though she'd been bewitched. No one disturbed her—no servants to deliver the tea (they had been instructed to place a setting just outside the door), no statesmen to discuss policy (the few well enough to do so were closeted in with the equally few corps of engineers), and no sister to launch herself from the shadows as a means of torturing the queen.

She was alone.

From the window of her sister's room, she might have looked down upon the broad palace courtyard. A year ago, after the incident with Hans, she had turned that space into a skating rink for the entire city. It was not perhaps a very vast or a very grand enclosure by certain standards, but to the two people trying desperately to find each other there, it was infinite.

By this time, the lowering clouds had begun to mingle with the sea air to create an odd, misting sort of precipitation. And yet Olaf would not be deterred from helping Kristoff reach the princess.

"Stay with Sven."

Olaf shook his head.

"It's too damp out there. Your flurry will dissolve!"

But they both knew that Olaf's flurry was the least of his concerns on a day such as this, when the wind had a bitter edge to it and the sky became more and more threatening. No, it wasn't the flurry that troubled them … because while the air was cold enough to keep Olaf in shape on his own, it was not cold enough to turn moisture into snow. And if that dark sky released what it was presently holding, the snowman himself would dissolve.

Still, Olaf ignored the man's concern.

"You know," he said aimlessly, as though they were chatting over sandwiches on a sunny day, "Elsa saved me from the heat once." He found an empty packing crate and pushed it up against the wall by the stable door. "If only she could do the same for you and Anna. And all the others …"

Kristoff shook his head. "I don't think a flurry will work for us, Olaf."

"That's not what I meant," returned the snowman. He wiggled his fingers. "She's got cold hands."

Kristoff narrowed his eyes. What?

But Olaf abandoned the thought and set his himself the task of clambering up onto the crate. Then he stretched his odd, sundered little body to reach the fastening of the door. It didn't seem to occur to him that Kristoff could do this in half a second, but neither did Kristoff move to help him.

"You shouldn't go out in this," he insisted.

Olaf didn't respond. He merely stretched further to unpin the door latch.

Kristoff made a restless movement. He felt prickly and hot and, well, this was ridiculous. Anna was in her room, at the moment, and she was sick—really sick. And there was no longer any reason for him to protect her from … himself.

He had to get to her, but instead he was arguing with a snowman.

Olaf turned and gaped at him as though he'd said all of this out loud. Maybe he had; he couldn't tell. Everything seemed to have taken on a dreamlike quality …

But if Kristoff had uttered his thoughts aloud, the snowman didn't reply. Instead, he peered at the ice deliverer with a worried expression.

"Neither should you," he said. And then he unlatched the door and tottered out into the courtyard.

Kristoff glared after him, raked a hand through his hair, and tugged his hat down over his head.

On a clear day, when a man had his usual wits about him, it was rather a pleasant walk from the stables to the castle gate. But this was not a clear day, and the two lonely figures that were making their way to the postern by the kitchens, where Kristoff hoped to gain admittance, were neither of them fit for a stroll. As they trudged across the flagstones, the chill mist began to coagulate into a drizzle. And then the drizzle into a shower. And then, when they were just halfway to the service entrance, the shower turned into a dense, freezing rain. It dripped from his hair and into his eyes, ran tendrils down his collar, soaked through his heavy wool gakti.

Kristoff, at this point, was not entirely lucid. And Olaf …

Olaf began to disintegrate with every step.

Above them, on the castle's second floor, near a window that looked out over the square, Elsa began to stir. And before them, her arms pressed tightly across her body as though this might shelter her from the downpour, knelt Anna.

Kristoff stopped dead in his tracks—actually stopped—and stared disbelievingly through the storm. It couldn't be her. Not here. Not like this … But there was no mistaking those braids, even from halfway across the court, even through a veil of sheeting rain.

He spoke her name but his voice was lost in the torrent …

She had been barely three steps from the door when she'd felt her muscles begin to seize and spasm. She'd cried out—first in surprise, then in pain. But by the time she'd been able to collect enough strength to project her voice for help, the sky had unleashed itself upon the city as though determined to wash away its impurities. Anna had been seeking, if nothing else, to breath the free air; instead she thought she might drown.

She was weak and disoriented by the undulating shroud of water, so she sank to her knees and laid her palms against the flagstones. As though this would stop her world from spinning. As though she could anchor her febrile thoughts to this place, this moment. Meanwhile, the cramping sensation in her abdomen returned, and she curled in on herself. It blazed through her body, burned into her throat. She retched and gasped for air. And then she began to cry.

Somewhere a thin call wavered against the rushing sound of the rain. She could not make it out—where it came from or by whom—and so she closed her eyes and paid it no heed. It was nothing, just a wisp of some kind, a hallucination.

Moisture crept through her clothing. She could feel the chill sinking into her skin, into her marrow, where it would linger like an aching, inexorable fog. When the rain turned to sleet it seemed to penetrate her joints, slurry her blood, and condense between her very synapses. She couldn't get up, couldn't move her arms or legs. She couldn't even lift her head … It hurt too much.

But then she felt a pressure on her arm, followed by a voice—incoherent, at first—slowly resolving itself into something familiar. A timber, a cadence, a warm humming reverberation.

"Anna."

She surfaced, becoming aware of a hand on her shoulder, a shadowy figure in the rain. It pulled her close, wrapped its arms around and beneath her, lifted her gently from the ground. She rested her head against its shoulder, his shoulder.

"Kristoff," she breathed.

He tightened his grip.

"I've got you," he said, and repeated it again and again and again. "I've got you."