Chapter 3

Hendrik awoke the next morning not knowing where he was. He had to think for a moment and let the gears start turning in his head again before he remembered. This happened to him sometimes and was never a pleasant feeling to wake up to. He slowly recalled the events from last night. In all likelihood, the sisters had probably decided to send him away. It didn't make sense for them to keep him around.

He stiffly got out of bed and clumsily dressed himself. He looked down at the comb on the dresser. He decided not to break it and headed out into the hall, hoping someone would show him the way to wherever the food was. He hadn't eaten for almost a day.

The sisters were already down in the dining hall again eating breakfast. Elsa was sitting quietly while Anna complained that Kristoff had already come and gone to get more ice without talking to her.

"Am I doing something wrong? Is he trying to avoid me? Maybe he decided I'm too talkative or something and decided he doesn't love me anymore. What have I done?" Anna let her head fall on the table with a thunk, narrowly missing her plate of eggs.

"Anna, don't hurt yourself. I'm pretty sure Kristoff wouldn't have married you if he minded that you were talkative. I'm sure he just wants to harvest as much ice as possible before winter. It's surprisingly warm today and he just saw a good opportunity to go harvesting again," Elsa tried to assure her sister. Anna didn't usually get up this early and that was quite evident in her overly dramatic behavior. Elsa had insisted that Anna get up at the same time as her every Tuesday, hoping this would cure her habit of sleeping in until almost noon. So far it was doing nothing for Anna, but did provide Elsa with a great deal of entertainment on Tuesday mornings.

Anna quickly woke up though and looked up when Hendrik heavily sat down in the chair opposite of her. She had to put her head back on the table for a moment to hide her laughter. Once she had suppressed her laughter enough to hold it in, she leaned over to Elsa and whispered, "His bed head is worse than mine!"

Elsa almost choked on the sip of tea she had just taken, trying to not laugh and to not spit it across the table. After she had stop coughing she whispered to Anna, "You couldn't have waited to tell me that after I swallowed?" Both of the sisters giggled until they noticed Hendrik looking at them. Anna suddenly became very interested in her spoon and Elsa took a hasty sip of her tea, which only led to another coughing fit.

A servant brought Hendrik a plate of eggs, sausage, and biscuits. Hendrik picked up his fork and slowing began shoveling eggs into his mouth. Most of the forkfuls dropped back onto the plate before they ever reached his mouth. Anna had to excuse herself from the table before she burst out laughing again. Elsa luckily had enough training as queen to hold in her laughter. Her eyes rose from Hendrik's sloppy eating to his eyes. As she looked at them more closely, she noticed they had snowflakes in them. Small, intricate snowflakes, a light frost blue that lay across his pupils and irises. Beautiful, Elsa thought. Then the snowflake covered eyes looked up at her. Elsa quickly became interested in her fork. Not the spoon so much, no that was quite dull, but the fork, yes, very interesting.

"Helping?" Elsa looked up from her fascinating fork to Hendrik who had just spoken.

"Help with what?" Hendrik didn't say anything. Elsa then realized, "Oh! Yes, we are going to help you unless the council has any large objections. For now, we've decided that you'll stay here until you're fixed, unless you have somewhere close by where you were planning to stay." Hendrik slightly shook his head. "Then you'll be staying here while we're helping you."

"Okay." Hendrik went back to gnawing on his biscuit. The answer had not been the one he had expected, but he now accepted it as a simple fact.

Elsa narrowed her eyes. Maybe we should have sent him away. He obviously doesn't care whether we help him or not. Anna came back into the room calmer than when she had left.

"So, you want to go work on our fort?" she asked with a hopeful gleam in her eyes.

"Anna, you know I can't. Kai set up a council meeting about Hendrik that's about to start, and I still have to finish going over all of those agreements."

Anna sighed. "Just thought I'd check since Kristoff's still gone." She rested her check on her fist in a dejected way that made Elsa feel guilty. She hated it when Anna did that.

"Haven't you started up your architect group again anyways?"

"Naw, not yet. Everyone's focusing on their own homes and family right now because of the war. Some of their homes were damaged when the armies broke through the walls."

Elsa silently cursed herself for not knowing that. She was the queen! She should know about these things. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that. Well, since you're free anyways, why don't you show Hendrik around till I'm done? Is that okay Hendrik?" Hendrik looked up with a piece of sausage hanging from his mouth and nodded. "Excellent. We'll work on our fort later, I promise."

"Don't promise. You might not be able to," Anna said glumly. Elsa closed her eyes in frustration. She wondered if Anna realized how much she wished she could spend more time with her.

"Fine then, I'll try to work on it later. Now go show Hendrik around." She walked out to head to the meeting.

A nna looked back at Hendrik who was looking at his plate like he expected more food to magically appear. Anna rubbed her face. This is going to be fun. "Come on. Let's go show you around the grounds."

It was not fun. Hendrik walked excruciatingly slow, and if she wasn't careful, Anna would be twenty feet in front of him without noticing. The art gallery was the worst. What was normally one of her favorite rooms in the castle, turned into a torture chamber as she waited for Hendrik to slowly make his way around the room and inspect every piece of art.

Anna was lying on her back on a bench, plotting revenge on Elsa, when she heard a grunt of pain. She looked up to see Hendrik slumped against a wall, a circle of frost surrounding him.

"Hendrik!" she exclaimed as she rushed over to him. "What happened?"

"Storm," he winced. "Happens sometimes." His leather gloves were stiff and covered in frost. Anna imagined that if he hadn't been wearing them, there would have been a much bigger ice blast.

"What do we do?" she asked, all boredom washed away.

"Wait. It passes." Hendrik's normally blank expression now twisted with pain. Anna looked around not sure whether to listen to him or get help. She decided to wait and after a minute, Hendrik's face was less pained, and the circle of frost was a puddle on the floor.

"Does that happen often?" Anna asked. Hendrik sat for a moment in silence, thinking. He probably should have kept track of the episodes, but hadn't thought to.

"Unpredictable. More now," he decided. Anna pondered this for a moment, trying to decipher Hendrik's one word answers.

"So, they're random, but they've been happening more frequently?" Hendrik nodded. He seemed to be better now with his face back in its usual expressionless state. "Do we need to do something now? Or are you okay?"

Hendrik shook his head. "Keep going." Anna helped him up and he started walking like nothing had happed, not even acknowledging Anna's assistance.

"Thanks Anna, for being concerned about my life. Oh, no problem Hendrik, I do that all the time," Anna muttered bitterly under her breath and stopped by the back gate, waiting for Hendrik to catch up.

H e was almost to the gate when a little voice behind them said, "Hi, I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs!"

Elsa took a deep breath, steeling herself for the worst as she walked up to the council room door. As she had walked down to the council room, Elsa realized her decision to help Hendrik may have been a bit hasty. Even if it ended up being the right decision, the council would still give her a hard time for acting so reckless. Elsa took one more breath as she opened the council room door.

Inside, sat ten council members, three of them women, the rest men. They sat at a long oval table with a small throne on one end of the room. Elsa came in and sat on the throne. Seven of the council members were ones Elsa had elected when she took the throne and the other three were ones that had been councilors for her father. Even though Elsa did not agree with how her father had run Arendale, the council members she had kept, were the ones responsible for keeping Arendale from complete destruction in the three years between her parents' death and her coronation. She felt it wouldn't be right to replace them after what they did for Arendale.

The head of the council, Minister Magnus, stood up to speak. "You're Majesty," he droned with a bow, "we received your note from Kai, and do indeed have some things to discuss if we may." Elsa nodded and Magnus went on. "First, however, we would like to hear your thoughts first," he drawled. Elsa gripped the hand rests. Hearing Magnus' voice always put her on edge.

"What would you like to know? As I informed you in my note, a man who goes by Hendrik appeared yesterday, almost frozen. As a reasonable human being, I think it would not be right to send him away if I can help."

"Mhm," the Minister hummed. Elsa clenched her teeth. If Magnus hadn't been the one most responsible for keeping Arendale running, she would most likely have replaced him just to get rid of the mind numbing drone of his voice. "Well, be that as it may, the council does have some concerns."

Of course they do, thought Elsa.

"First and foremost, I believe the whole council agrees that it was hasty and irresponsible for you to agree to such a big decision without consulting the council first."

Called it. Elsa replied, "Perhaps it was, but I had good reasons and it was a question that needed to be answered right then."

Magnus tapped the tip of his feather pen to his chin and sighed. "My Queen, could the man not have survived till we discussed this?"

"I wasn't one hundred percent sure he would and more so I thought he might leave if I didn't give him an answer quickly."

"Why would he leave if he had the hope you might help?"

Elsa took a small breath and let it out slowly. They were wasting time arguing about something that couldn't even be reversed. "If you were dying, would you want to wait around while people discussed whether they would help you or not instead of finding a more definite source?" Magnus opened his mouth to speak again but Elsa cut him off. "But really Minister, this is not the point of this meeting. I would like to move on if you're finished." They looked at each other for a moment in a silent standoff. The minister grumbled and agreed to move on.

"So then, as I said, some of us do have objections." Elsa settled herself more comfortably into the throne. This was going to be a long discussion. "There is a portion of us who fear that if we let this man stay to be healed by you, in whatever way you have planned to, you will compromise your duties to Arendale for the sake of this stranger."

"I would never do any such thing. As queen my first priority is Arendale," Elsa stated, her brow furrowing.

"Yes, my Queen, but you have been known to be quite sympathetic towards others and have put your own personal needs before Arendale's before. Arendale cannot afford their ruler to fall behind on her duties right now in its time of restoration."

"I have readily agreed that I made a mistake at my coronation but I thought that was in the past now," Elsa retorted, furious that Magnus was bringing up her failure during the Great Freeze even though it had already been discussed and forgiven.

Another councilor to Elsa's right stood up and said, "If I may, I would like to remind you my Queen, that like Magnus said, only a portion of us agree with this." He was one of the new councilors, but Elsa remembered his name to be Andar. "There are some of us that agree with your decision." Elsa nodded her thanks to him.

"So that I can see what the overall council thinks, can I please see a show of hands for those who do agree with this decision?" Five of the councilors raised their hands, consisting of Andar, another male councilor, and the three women. Elsa sighed. Why couldn't they ever just all agree with what she said? "Very well, please explain again why this decision troubles you. No some else besides you this time Minister." Magnus sat down with another grumble as a counselor named Gudrek stood up.

"You're Majesty, before I begin I would just like to say that all we say and do in this meeting is for the benefit of the kingdom, nothing more, nothing less. Now, to summarize, our concern is that if you take in this man and start devoting time to his wellbeing, you will be less focused on repairing the kingdom. Arendale is still in a state of disarray. It is mending smoothly right now, but if you turn attention away from it, it may not come out of such a state."

Elsa thought for a moment. She was already struggling with trying to find time to spend with Anna. How could she also find time to help Hendrik? "I see your point councilor, but the fact still remains that he could very well die if I don't try to help him."

Theodore, another councilor, stood up to speak. "You're Majesty, the sacrifice of one life for the good of many is trivial."

"It won't be trivial to his family if he's got one!" One of the women, Frieda, retaliated.

Magnus now spoke up and replied, "Well then councilor, one family for the good of many." All of the councilors were standing now and the tension in the air was stifling. The room was on the verge of a chaotic shouting match.

Another one of the female councilors named Bertha had the bravery to speak. "Is that how you treat these people's lives Minister? Like a bunch of facts and figures? Is that how you think of the men that died for Arendale to? Do you think those families would accept it if you went up to them and said, 'Oh sorry for your lose. That's just how the equation came out'?"

"Councilor, I'm not saying that it's perfect, but imagine how many other people would have died. Just imagine that for a moment. Hmm. Doesn't seem so appalling now does it?"

Elsa spoke up and said, "Minister have you read the poem 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'?"

"I can't say I have."

"'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved with mankind.' Those are lines from the poem. They are words I hold to be true especially in an instance such as this."

Magnus looked upon the five councilors who opposed him and said "I doubt they have any solid knowledge to back up their claims. They're mostly new councilors with no experience or knowledge of these matters."

Elsa interjected before everyone could start yelling. "Minister, no matter how right you think your argument is, you will stop provoking the other side! There will be no foul play at this meeting. Now sit down. Everyone." Everyone slowly sat back down still glaring at each other.

"I apologize for my rudeness you're Majesty. I was only trying to do my job and convince you to do what's right for Arendale." Magnus apologized none too convincingly.

"You mean try to convince me to do what you believe to be best for Arendale."

"I have facts."

"Arendale's inhabitants aren't machines," snapped back an opposing councilor.

"Enough," Elsa commanded. "I have heard both arguments and both have value; however, I am queen and I have the final say. My opinion has not changed. I will accept the responsibility of helping this man and keeping Arendale on track. Does everyone understand me?"

Everyone nodded their heads except Magnus who softly asked, "Your father would have wanted it my way Elsa. You know that don't you girl?"

Elsa's annoyance tipped over into furry as she shot out of the throne. "Minister you will address me as queen! And I don't care what my father would have done! I am the ruler of Arendale now and I will choose to do what I think is right, not what he would have done! I have given my final answer. This meeting is over, council dismissed." She swept out of the room in a stormy rage. A chilled breeze blew through the room as the door slammed shut.

Elsa marched down the hall until she turned a corner and almost ran into a guard.

"You're Majesty!"

"What now?" Elsa grumbled.

"Something happened to our guest. This way!" Baffled, Elsa followed the guard down the hall until the he stopped and pointed. There lay Hendrik on the ground surrounded by a ring of ice spikes with Anna and Olaf looking over him.

"What happened?" Elsa exclaimed. Anna looked at Elsa with a mixture of guilt and fear.

"I think Olaf might of just scared him to death."