.
"When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs,
there is little to protest."
― Auliq Ice
༺ ❆ ༻
"Welcome to the Kingdom of Arendelle, Your Majesty!" belted the dockmaster.
Eugene didn't know what it was to have an anxiety attack, yet he did know that for the next little while his whole body felt unreal. His council had been grooming him for this day for weeks, but no amount of preparation could equip him for what it would feel like to be here―to walk down his ship's plank, step out onto the dock, and stand before hundreds of judges. International ambassadors, who happened to be boarding their caravels at this light, were as gobsmacked by his egression as he was by his own courage.
"It's the king!" a girl yelled.
Her broadcast undammed an avalanche of activity from the flower market. Adolescent maidens came capering into the harbor to shove elders out of the way; children bolted from their houses with half-eaten bread in their mouths, and sailors stopped all work to toss their caps and cannonball into the torrent. Bodies began to precipitously fill the marina like fish in a salmon run. The townspeople who were mulish enough to breaststroke their way to the front went completely still when they saw him, and he, in return, went completely white when he saw them. There were eyes agleam with questions and others aflame with virulence, lips parted with amazement and others curled with joy.
Behind the epaulets of his armored infantry, Eugene took a step back on the pier and gulped. The expression his quivering eyebrows pavilioned was no less nauseous than it was when he first sold his freedom to Corona on coronation day. His female attendant handed him a cloaked red bundle, but he was reluctant to take it. The King's Guard blocked the bubbling crowd with their pointed weapons out of fear and confusion. Not one soldier between them could tell excitement from exasperation, so their jumpiness infected everyone else's good sense.
"Put down your polearms!" Spontoons were aimed back at the King's Guard by the flushed Queen's Guard. The screeches of scared and angry citizens had weakened the Arendellian division's poor gumption.
The crowd's rabid pushing and shoving escalated to the point where thrashing arms and shaking fists were bursting from the seams of the cavalry that kettled them. Helmet-less Coronian guards barreled out of the infirmary with halberds. The Queen's Guard didn't seem to understand that the unarmored foreigners were trying to help them, so their mounted colonel whistled for backup.
Frightened for everyone's lives, Eugene dispatched the bundle back into the care of his attendant and grabbed her shoulders to communicate his message, "Gunnel, go back inside the ship and don't come out until I tell you to."
The twenty-two year old dandelion looked deeply into his eyes. "What're you planning on doing?"
"Stopping this before it gets any worse."
His determined gaze froze her for a time before he squeezed her shoulders and walked away. "Oh, b-but...Your Majesty!" She lunged out to catch his wrist, but he was long gone.
The king jogged into the middle of the harbor to raise his hands and shout, "Lower your weapons!"
The townsmen surprisingly stopped frothing, but both guard divisions remained on edge.
Sweat rolled down Eugene's jowl in a wavy line. He looked between the foot guards with his heart pounding in his eyes. "We didn't come all this way to cause any more trouble than we already have," Eugene said guiltily. "No one means anyone any harm!" Alas and alack, if the riots in Corona had front-paged Arendelle's newspapers by now, then the townsfolk had reason to trample the union's signatory.
The colonel of Arendelle's division walked from the beginning of his unit's line to the end of it, sizing Eugene up the way an agitated constable would size up a criminal. He spat on the dock and thundered, "Lower your weapons!"
Spontoons were retracted ambivalently after every Arendellian guardsman looked his comrade in the face. Eugene's men reciprocated the gesture by withdrawing their halberds and frowning helplessly at their king. Relieved, Gunnel touched the grey wolf fur on Eugene's cloak with a gentle hand. He shook the kiss-curl out of his eye and levered the bundle out of her arms, dropping into a dip to properly heave it up against his chest. The little body beneath the velvet blanket was frail and runty.
"Still as fast asleep as a newborn kitten, she is," Gunnel whispered by his ear. Her hazel eyes smiled down on the tot.
Eugene's fingers pulled back the first layer of the blanket to unveil the sleeping beauty underneath. A garden of auburn curls covered her eyes. Smiling, he extended a hand to pinch her marshmallow cheek. She reacted by wiping her cherry nose and turning her head to sleep on the other cheek.
"Eugene, perhaps it would be best if I took her while you―"
"It's fine," he objected unsmilingly, pulling the child closer to his throat. "I'd rather have her with me than with someone else."
Gunnel scraped off the rippling strands that had been slapped across her face by the draft. "Perhaps if you had told Queen Elsa you were bringing her, you wouldn't feel the need to be―"
Trombones disrupted their chit-chat. Both peered at the town to catch the glitter-costumed cavalcade flooding the streets. At the hub of their triangle strolled six coaches carted by Holsteiner horses. The cherub Eugene held wiggled and shuddered, slipping a hand out of the blanket to tug it down over her scalp.
Marquard's boots clomped on the plank as he exited the king's ship. "The drama never ends with this chap. Well, don't just stand there gawping like a goldfish! We mustn't leave your bride waiting!" He waved his handkerchief in Eugene's direction before smothering his cough with it. Marquard's bandaged forehead, palsied hands, and walking cane connoted what they had left back in Corona. "We have already broken one too many promises to augur a warm reception from these people."
"You're not gonna make it like that," Eugene warned, coming to his side to hold his elbow with his free hand. "You should stay on board until I get someone to bring out a bath chair."
"Nonsense. I am a man of Corona and we do not, I repeat, do not, buckle at the knees when under pressure." He stood tall and proudly yanked on his lapels. "Besides, my gait is just fine."
"Your Royal Majesty."
Eugene rotated his head to frown between the blowing strands of fur on his shoulder.
The colonel with the bad attitude held out his arm and declared spitefully, "Corona's beautiful bride awaits you."
Eugene didn't know whether the walrus was talking about Elsa or Arendelle, but the reminder that he would soon be shackled to the ankles of both was plenty to make him cataleptic. As he took a second to take in the Hanseatic Wharf and its bridgework of fanged rooftops, it took every muscle in his legs to help him resist the need to flee to his ship.
"On you go, then," Marquard urged. "Go on."
Eugene swiped the sweat on his jaw with the collar of his doublet and went afoot with the colonel to be squired to his prison. Two lines of Coronan and Arendellian guards cleared the path for his debarking council. A rabble of pubescent girls pushed through the grove of elbows to fan their handkerchiefs at him while rose bearers threw petals at his feet. The king's fur capelet gave his shoulders an intimidating amount of broadness while he walked, touting his gravitas as one of divine omnipotence. To inflate this effect, Corona's Sovereign Wreath―a ruby-stoned state coronet made from gold―coerced his grimacers to remove their hats and bow to what would be a new Arendelle. Eugene looked at the number of people outfitted in embroidered kirtles, beaded caps, top hats, colorful shawls, and red woolen stockings to reflect how cold Arendelle's springs were, for spring in the fjords only bloomed in late March.
One boy used the time to scribble something on a piece of cardboard and then hold it up for Eugene to read:
FIX UR OWN COUNTRY
Eugene panicked and looked away, holding the tot tighter with the grey color of dread bleeding the honey out of his complexion. As a thief, it was no conspiracy that he was used to living life on a tightrope, but as a king, his balance was shaky, and he knew that he could fall into the moat of crocodiles at any moment. Rescuing him from the quicksand in his head was a black and gold carriage designed in Corona's likeness. Instead of going ahead of them, Eugene helped Marquard, Constantine, and Gunnel mount the stagecoach first. All three took refuge in pretending to be engrossed by the commercial buildings as it pulled into the thoroughfare.
Corona's king sat wedged between Marquard's waist and the window like a child being carted to an orphanage. In truth, that was exactly what he was reliving: the sob story of being orphaned, now for the third time, and adopted into a new home that did not want him.
"Arendelle Castle, Your Majesty," informed the coachman after opening the carriage's door.
Eugene looked at the dusky shades of twilight falling on his face in hues of violet. The sun had clunked into the sea like a gold coin, and there were no stars to light the dark.
Anna slid down the fourth floor's winding staircase and hopped off the volute. She skated to a stop after a humming white figure boinked down the hallway. "Wh―...Olaf!"
"Mm-hmmm~?" Olaf twirled around to blink at his caller. The snowman grabbed his cheeks and gasped happily upon seeing the redheaded princess. "ANNA!" The cloud haloing him bounced in sync with his hops as he gamboled up to her and tackled her stomach.
Anna squeezed her arms around him and nuzzled his head, humming with him in mutual contentment. She set him down on the rug to hold the elbows of his twigs. "Olaf, where's Kristoff?"
"Somewhere outside with Sven!" he sang, not quite in harmony with the emergency. His bark claws latched onto the bottom of her dress and fluttered it. "Didja see all the people and all the boooats~ and horses and instruments outside? It's like one great BIG fiesta!"
"Wait, what? They already started the parade?! You have got to be kidding me!" Anna pushed off her knees to run into the Cross Gallery. "We're supposed to welcome him in at the gates, so we hafta slide into it now!"
"Hurray!" Olaf clapped excitedly. "I LOVE parades!" He boinked after Anna.
Manservants and maids rushed to place decorative ribbons and flower wreaths back into their yestermorn spots. They breezed past Anna with such big gusts of wind that she had involuntarily mastered three pirouettes before she could reach the third floor.
"Soooo?" Olaf selected the worst time to be a chatterbox. "Who's this Eugene, hmmm? Anybody I should know?"
Anna was too short of breath to explain in detail. "He was ― Rapunzel's husband ― remember?"
"Ooohhh, of course I re-mem-beeerrr! He's the guy who everyone hates!"
"Uhhh...weeell, that's...one way to put it right about now, but not exactly the nicest, Olaf."
"Sorry about that..."
By surviving the labyrinth of rooms and passages, Anna came out at last upon the library balcony that would let her grab a panorama of the Hanseatic Wharf. She unlocked the glass-paned doors with a jerk and a rattle before jarring them open to fling her body against the parapet. "...Woah."
Olaf waddled out and shoved one eye into the baluster's diamond hole. "Woooah-ho-ho-hooo! Now that is what I call a fanbase!"
So many flag-wavers were gathered in the courtyard that Anna couldn't even see the color of the ground. Arendelle's Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment had completely clogged the artery that ran from the capital's bridge to the heart of the castle's bailey, and citizens were still marching from the town. Scoping out the perimeter further finally brought the six coaches parked around the fountain into view.
"Princess Anna!" Kai jogged toward her. The sweaty sheen on his bald spot made it shinier than a newly laid egg. "Where is Her Majesty the Queen?" he panted, drying his eyelids with a green handkerchief.
"Um, she's, uh...getting ready!" She didn't want to lie to Kai on the spot, but he would drown her in lectures if she told him the truth.
"Your Highness, she was supposed to be ready for his welcoming reception at the gates of Arendelle ten minutes ago, but neither of you answered to our calls!"
"Ten min...? Shoot! Knew I was late! U-uh, where is Eugene now? Is he downstairs or is he being shown to his bedchamber?!"
"He's in the foyer as we twaddle!"
An exclamation mark appeared in the thought bubble above Anna's head. She jetted off, leaving behind a mushroom cloud of dust. "Thanks!"
Kai was bamboozled. He belatedly remembered something of critical importance. "Princess Anna, he also brought"―his lips stopped flapping after he realized that she was already down the stairs―"his child with him..."
Anna's novel energy endowed her with the sonic speed to duck under the maid's vases, zoom past flying petticoats, and sprint to the final vestibule's double doors. Only Olaf caused her to dig her heels into the rug when she saw him reaching for the crocus knob. "Olaf, freeze!"
His fingers hovered over the doorknob in mid-reach, but his joyful face was still beaming at it. Olaf moved his pupils to the corners of his eyes and blinked.
"Um, Olaf...maybe you should"―Anna bent down with her hands on her knees and smiled at him sorrily―"hang back here for a little while."
"Why?"
"Eugene's not really...the 'talking snowman' type."
Olaf just stared at her with his bug eyes, furrowed eyebrows, and immobile smile. He blinked one time in slow motion without changing the expression. "'Talk―ing snow―man' type...?" he sounded out, trying to wrap his head around what she was trying to say.
"Last time I was in Corona, he got totally freaked out when I started talking about you, and I~ think he almost broke his broom as well as his back when Elsa sent a snowgie to his mailbox over three years ago." She closed her eye to exaggerate her wince.
Olaf's mouth shrank into the shape of a tang fish's. "...Ooohhh, I geeet it. He's uptight! Need me ta' take it see-low?"
Anna's chuckle coughed into her words as she said, "Just, uh ― lay low for a bit, at least until we round everyone up for a family dinner."
Olaf saluted her. "Aie, aie, Cap'n!" The snowman trotted off to mingle with the busy servants. "Hey, guys!" he shouted. "Can I help?"
"No!" they chorused.
"Awww, come ooonnn! Don―...Guys? Guys, I can totally still see you."
Anna watched him prance around the corner in pursuit of them. She vacuumed a deep breath into her diaphragm, pushed it out, and then challenged the double doors with her glare. The darn things were heavier than she recalled once she got to pulling, but her nerves weighed over a ton by the time she'd made it to what lied on the other side of them. The first and only Coronans she saw were the slews of men in black breeches and red tunics with ridiculously puffy sleeves. They even wore capes over one shoulder and wide-brimmed hats crowned with black peacock feathers, taking her back to the era Corona still extolled.
One look at their pointed beards made her fear that they would cut a woman's chin should any dare to kiss the men themselves. Between these tricked out ministers ironically stood the only other petticoat in the foyer. Its wearer was pretty―not prettier than Elsa, of course; no one was prettier than her Elsa―but pretty enough to distract a man, especially a lonely king like Eugene. Anna bit the corner of her lip as she studied the girl. The honey blonde hair piled on top of her head was stacked in a beehive of swiss roll curls to create a fontange updo.
Two ringlets poured from the blonde's nape with four more blossoming from the pomaded part in her scalp. Most daunting was the width of the crinoline under her hoop dress. Overkill aside, the chubby legs sticking out of the blanket in her wardship was what nabbed Anna's attention.
"It's the princess!"
Twenty eyes opened fire on her flinching body. Anna parted her lips to screw them up into a painfully embarrassed grin. Before she could wave or speak, the ministers broke apart to reveal her new brother-in-law-to-be, who stopped scolding the mustached Coronan guard in front of him to look back at her with bright eyes.