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Elsa is seven years old and she has Anna in her arms, bundled with a blanket over the both of them. Mama is reading them their favorite stories, lingering especially on the ones about princesses: that always-lying princess, the Three Princesses of Whiteland, the Princess on the Glass Hill. Anna squirms to attention when Askeladden rides up with his golden mail, bridle and saddle, when the princess gives him her golden apples and they get married and the whole kingdom makes merry at the bridal-feast. Out the window, catkins are blowing over melty snow-swells and leaving spots of yellow all over the white-and-gray clumps, like freckles. Elsa looks admiringly over the catkin-freckles and then turns back to admire the sister-freckles spread like butter all over Anna's face.
"Where our glass hill?" Anna asks Mama. Elsa laughs because she thinks it's a joke; offended, Anna pulls all her freckles into a scrunch. Then Anna looks out the window, too. The mountains are misty-mantled and blue-cast, cutting sudden plunges into deep, gleaming water. Elsa guesses she understands how the fjord could look like glass to her.
"We don't have one, Anna," Papa says. "There aren't any."
"That we've seen, anyway," Mama cuts in.
"How am I supposed to know which suitor to marry if I don't have a glass hill to sit on?"
"That's a long time from now, Anna." Mama smiles, but Anna seems very intent about it, so she continues, "When the time comes, you'll just have to follow your heart. Look for someone kind, gentle, and just. And most importantly: never settle for less than someone you love, who will always put you first and love you in turn."
Anna settles back against Elsa's chest with crinkle-eyed pleasure. Follow your heart is an idea that sits well with her. Elsa squeezes her and pokes her under her ribcage, just to be a little bit of a nuisance. Anna yelps and squirms away, but only a few seconds tick before she decides she's still happiest in Elsa's arms, ribcage-poking or no.
The next morning, Anna wakes Elsa how she always does: divebombing directly into her prone body. Elsa pulls her blankets over her head and Anna bounces and whines and shakes her. Elsa freezes in place, even slowing her breathing way down to make it seem like she's fallen back asleep…
…and bursts out of the blanket pile like a monster as soon as Anna lets her guard down. Anna jumps off the edge of the bed with a shriek; not to be bested, however, she comes back with a pillow and launches it limply toward Elsa's giggling mouth.
When Elsa is done sneezing feathers, Anna grabs her around the middle. "Come play," she begs. "You've been sleeping in forever."
A glance at the clock tells Elsa it's only six. She lets Anna drag her out of bed and into the hallway anyway. She peeks into Mama and Papa's bedroom and sees them still sleeping. They duck past the breakfast crew and the early cleaning crew and out into one of the courtyard's hidden alcoves. The snow—probably the last of the season—is pillow-feathery in the air and already melting into slush on the ground even though dawn's barely crested. Hello, spring.
Anna says, "Make a suitor for me! Like in the fairytales."
Elsa swirls the slush into the shape of a snowman, sticks for arms and two chipped stones for eyes. Anna seems dubious. "He's not even wearing anything," she complains. She sounds so serious. "I can't marry a man who's naked, Elsa."
So they sneak off to find something to clothe him in. They can't take anything Papa's—he's snoring and shifting in his sheets, and Elsa has to drag Anna back into the hallway before she trips over something and clatters both their parents awake—and it's rude to take something from the staff. Somewhere on the castle grounds they find a mucky scarf, a stomped-on hat, and a rug that's been hung up after a wash. When they return to their snowman he's already puddling a little but into the ground but when he's all dressed-up he's no less handsome for it.
"Can you make him dance?" Anna asks.
Elsa scratches the back of her head. "I don't think so. I don't know how."
"You dance with me, then."
"Me? I'm not a suitor. I'm not even a boy."
"We're playing make-believe. You're a prince and I'm a princess and you're at the grand ball to win my hand in marriage."
"You're already a princess, so that part's not make-believe," Elsa points out, like this is the issue at hand. Anna hooks an elbow around Elsa's and drags her into a little kid's idea of a springar. Only a few steps in and she slips on the slush and falls right on her bottom. She starts to cry and Anna flies to her, stomach in knots; after a minute, Anna decides that it was actually very funny, and she starts laughing instead.
They play that game twice or thrice more, each time more complicated than the last, and each time Anna more demanding: she makes Elsa shroud herself one of Papa's (borrowed) waistcoats, hold a fur-trimmed glove over her upper lip and deepen her voice to a rumble; when she grows tired of dances, she starts thinking up increasingly ridiculous displays of chivalry that Elsa can perform for her. She makes up names and backstories for each of Elsa's characters, demands gifts of chocolate and the labor of braiding her dolls' hair, and when Elsa finally lands upon some arcane combination of outfit and personality and rituals of courtship that Anna decides is to her liking, Anna throws herself into Elsa's arms and shouts, "I do!"
"So now we have to get married," Elsa says.
"How do people get married?" Anna asks.
Elsa, who knows a little bit more about adult relationships than Anna does but isn't about to divulge, just says, "Well, first you throw a big party, then you eat a lot of cake, and then you kiss."
So they find their way to the kitchen and each grab a slice of apple cake left over from last night's dinner. They use a spool of the tailor's ribbon for streamers, clap and dance some more and greet imaginary party guests, and Elsa kisses Anna chastely on each cheek and once between the eyes.
Not long after, Elsa almost kills her sister, and then this and everything else is over—at least it seems—forever.
♠
Elsa is twenty-five years old and she has her sister by the fireplace, watching her chew the scenery. A shock was delivered the week previous, when Elsa showed up to game night to a dewy-faced Anna and no Kristoff. "I told the seamstress to cancel the wedding dress. I don't want to talk about it," she said then. I don't want to talk is never a lasting state for Anna. Now she talks and talks and talks and talks. She gestures widely and jumps on and off furniture and makes expressions like a ball of paper that's been six-times crumpled. A bowl of cloudberry cream sits on the table for the last twenty minutes she hasn't even touched it. Sugar hardly lasts twenty seconds in front of Anna so that's how you know this is a very serious thing.
In spite of Anna's fury, nothing she's saying strikes Elsa as particularly infuriating—just sad. Differences in opinion on wedding preparations spiraling into differences of opinion on child-rearing. Minor lifestyle compromises compounding, seeping up through the woodwork, making them both resentful. These are the sorts of incompatibilities that Elsa thinks (she's heard—she's read) young couples only start to encounter three or four years into a relationship, when a new stressor arises and all the honeymoon sweetness has started to wear away. She wishes she had big-sisterly advice to give, but at the end of the day you can't marry a man you just met was sort of an educated guess. She had every book she could ever ask for, naturally, and long conversations with Mother and Father before they died, and sometimes she could hear the staff gossiping down the hallway when they either forgot about her or thought she was sleeping, but there's only so much relationship wisdom a girl can accumulate sitting alone in a bedroom for thirteen years.
"Well, what do you think?" Anna slumps down into the sofa, trills her lips, and blows a sweat-heavy strand of hair out of her face. It's cute, which should not be Elsa's first thought. "Is it just—doesn't it just piss you off, or what?"
Unless there's something you're not telling me, Anna, Elsa thinks, not really, no. Obviously that's not what Anna wants to hear right now.
Out the window the snow is soft and gauzy, moving in slow-whirling eddies around the pillars that keep the castle balconies aloft. Pines like shifting green smoke-plumes billow out from puddling, catkin-covered drifts. In the lazy crawl of evening, the drifts are peach-tinted, purple-shadowed and—like the fjord—a little glassy. Dark shapes of goat willow root hint beneath them.
Elsa gets up and swirls the drifts into statues. Anna's anger is momentarily forgotten while she watches what she's building: forms of pawns, knights, bishops, kings and queens. Chess on ice. A gardener exclaims something from the floor below. Oh, queen Elsa—former-queen Elsa, they mean, always-princess Elsa—she's doing her magic again!
Elsa extends a hand to slumping Anna. Anna sighs when she takes it. 'Oh, fine,' the gesture says. It's an act. Like she'd ever pass up playing in the snow with her sister.
♠
This is how—in a roundabout way, three months later—Elsa finds herself waking to the chi-chi-chrrp-chrrp of the blackcap nesting outside her childhood bedroom window. I'll stay for the spring, she told herself, to give Anna time to reacquaint herself with singledom. Now summer's sneaking in and Elsa's making no moves to return to the Enchanted Forest.
Anna sleeps late even as queen. Color Elsa surprised when she wanders out only half a wink past six to see Anna teetering on a high ladder, repainting the sun-faded folk-blooms on the long panes of a ceiling vault.
A servant keeps the bottom of the ladder steadied with a sweaty brow. "Your Majesty," she says, "you really don't have to do this yourself."
"Idle hands are the devil's tools," Anna says, as if she's ever idle these days. "Besides, it's been awhile since I've had an excuse to paint. Could you hand me the greens, pretty please?"
"We can get you some canvasses. If you're just looking for a way to spend your time there's also the budget to balance."
"I'll take it from here, Gerda." Elsa encases the bottom of the ladder in an ice so sturdy it may as well be diamond. She lifts the green palette up on and icy wind and floats it all the way into Anna's expectant palm. Anna paints the last few details on a guillochéd-looking reinrose leaf. Then she plays the world's most startling game of trust fall, sliding down the ladder and landing straight—bridal style—into Elsa's unsuspecting arms.
Elsa deposits Anna with as much stoicism as she can manage. She resists the urge to tug at her nonexistent gloves but succumbs to awkwardly clearing her throat. "Budget-balancing duties aside, surely you have time for a morning ride with your sister?"
"Time? There's never time, Elsa. You know that." Anna laughs. "There are roads to fix, a whole wing of the castle to refurbish, a garden to reterrace, community theatre projects to fund, import agreements to renegotiate, preparations to make for the solstice, babies to kiss, ribbons to cut…"
"I get that you're trying to stay positive, and that for you, positive means busy, but you need to delegate. Look at you. How much sleep did you even get last night?"
"I'm succeeding at staying positive." She packs up all the paint supplies into tight, lightsafe wicker basket. She kicks the ice once to test its mettle and nods appreciatively. Elsa magics it into dust so Anna is free to fold up the ladder and put it back in its nook. "Crushing heartbreak at the sudden end of a four-year relationship? Psshaw! A kingdom doesn't run itself! Moving ever forward! Nothing depresses Queen Anna of Arendelle!"
"I peeked into your bedroom. It's so messy it borders on uninhabitable."
"Because he left his stuff everywhere, and I don't want to deal with it," Anna snaps. Oh, but she feels bad immediately—her smile falls and her hands fly to Elsa like she's still that scared girl who will send ice shards flying at the slightest flinch. "Sorry, Elsa, I didn't mean—"
"I was offering to clean it for you," Elsa says, "after you ride with me—after you lie down for a little bit and rest your eyes."
The dew is thick that morning, bearing down on drip-heavy leaves. The weather seems crisp enough to drink. Anna does just that while they're out riding. They stop by a shady brook and she disembarks to take a few gulps from a clear stream. The water dribbles down her rosy lips and off her chin and Elsa has to wipe up the long line of Anna's throat with her sleeve. In the summer mornings are still chilly enough that Anna's freckles are hidden in the redness of her cold-nipped cheeks and nose and it seems that she gets even colder when Elsa touches her.
They head out into the taiga, galloping freely and enjoying the sun on their backs. For a minute it really seems like Anna is starting to relax, but then a herd of reindeer come jumping over a hill, blitz past them, and disappear into a thickness of conifers.
Amazing. Elsa'll never get over it, she thinks: this freedom to be out and amongst nature. But Anna's eyes darken. She grips the reins too tightly, turns her horse around, and starts leading back in the direction of town.
♠
Turns out romance is everywhere. Elsa would scant notice it if not for Anna's reaction. A young couple brush noses as Anna and Elsa trot down market street: Anna's shoulders grow incrementally tauter. They take an early lunch as a picnic and literal birds and bees come to flit around them: Anna glares at them like they personally spit in her coffee. They're invited to a production of Love Without Stockings: nevermind that it's supposed to be farcical, Anna is so irritated by the mere concept of a wedding that she leaves the show steaming at the ears.
On the morning of the solstice, Anna is all but pinning Elsa against a kitchen counter, shoving a square of almond cake into her surprised mouth. Her index finger clacks against Elsa's front teeth and Elsa has to reel back to keep from choking on crumbs. "So do you think it's better to go with this," Anna asks, "or this—" and then threatens her with another square, this time apple.
The cooks duck and dodge around them; they're being unusual but no more unusual than usual, or, well—they're a strange family and the staff's long used to it, is what Elsa means. "At least let me finish chewing," she reprimands. When she swallows the first piece, she lets Anna place the second on her tongue. Then Elsa chews, swallows, and concludes, "Also delicious. I can't see why we wouldn't serve both?"
"Didn't we serve the almond last time? But the apple's not the same after Halvor"—the head chef from when they were children, before Olina—"retired. But it's a favorite of the Vesterlanders! I don't want to seem inattentive."
"Aren't I supposed to be the anxious one?"
"I'm not anxious!" Anna waves her off. Seconds later she has Olina's ear, tittering with open-ended worry about the crudité selection. Oh, geez. But what can Elsa do? She's done up the ballroom with so many ice garlands that when the sun hits it'll be near-blinding. The menu is exquisite. The setlist is divine. Diplomatic relations are better than ever. It's not the what; it's the who.
Suitors. It's not the purpose of the party—really, under a less party-happy queen Arendelle probably wouldn't be celebrating the solstice at all—but now that Anna's ring finger is back on the market prospecting nobleboys will make an opportunity out of anything and everything. Why shouldn't they? No eligible man in his right mind, barring an incompatibility of orientation, wouldn't be interested in Anna. She's smart, resilient, playful and kind. Barely into the second year of her reign and she's already proven a measured and beloved leader. She's beautiful bordering on cherubescent. Sometimes Elsa stares so long at the bow of her lips and the curve of her collarbones that it starts to feel indecent. Not that it is. Anna's her baby sister. But she can imagine what a man might think about when looking at her.
Elsa follows Anna around all morning. Where Anna leaves a painting askew in her anxious tottering Elsa restraightens it. She steals herself into Anna's bedroom—now cleaner than it's been in ages—to help her dress. Anna slips out of her pajamas and laces herself into her party dress. Elsa helps with the buttons. Even the briefest, most incidental brushes against Anna's skin are a pleasure to the fingers. She vows to never take these little allowances for granted. The wispy hairs on the nape of Anna's neck stand at attention, either because she's cold or because she's alert. Elsa follows Anna's gaze to the other end of the room. Her hope chest is open, all its treasures gleaming in the light of the open window.
Anna breaks away as soon as Elsa's finished. She goes to her hope chest and grips either side of it. Elsa presses her cheek softly against Anna's shoulder and feels her shaky exhale. Neither of them have dowries, but the chest is still filled with things for the ceremony itself: jewelry and pigments and perfumes, a bridal crown, a collection of sølje passed down from their Father's mother and a silky slip Elsa must assume is for the wedding night.
Anna turns around, placing a palm on either of Elsa's shoulders. She leans into her, almost like she's lost her balance. She looks up at Elsa with wet eyes and asks, "Am I—do I look fine?"
She looks like she's crying, which does nothing to tarnish her beauty. Adds to it, in a charmingly-vulnerable sort of way, even while Anna's sadness gnaws at Elsa's gut. "Stunning," Elsa says without hesitation. "You always do, Anna."
"Even with—?" Anna rubs her eyes and smiles sardonically, as if to punctuate.
"You look beautiful with even with ten hours of bedhead and a puddle of dried spit on your face. Trust me when I say you have nothing to worry about."
Anna's expression does a strange thing: first her spirits are lifted; she flutters back on her heels like a bluebird and her wobbling lips curl into sunshine. Less than a second later it turns even more sardonic than before. She pushes off from Elsa's shoulders and looks away.
♠
Anna gets too drunk at the party. She's not so drunk that she needs help undressing but Elsa follows her into her bedroom at the end of the night, regardless. It's very late; Elsa hasn't looked at a clock in awhile, but she'd wager past one. Once she gets Anna free of her buttons Anna flails onto the bed and wrangles herself out of her chemise. The alcohol must be making her feel hot. She lies face-down, top half bare, wearing only her drawers and stockings. She grumbles something and then turns her head to stare at her bridal chest. Elsa walks to the end of the room, closes the lid, and slides it out of sight. Then she goes and lies down next to Anna. Anna breathes so quietly that for a moment Elsa thinks she's fallen asleep.
"Why are you still dressed?" Anna mumbles.
"Because this isn't my room."
"It should be."
Elsa's chest clenches. "That I'm the firstborn and I should be queen, you mean?"
"No. You're happier like this. Anything that makes you happy is good. I mean that we used to share a room. Why do you have to go back down the hall and sleep in a different room?"
Elsa's chest clenches harder and differently. She pushes the feeling down. "We'd need to ask the staff to move my bed to your chambers, and I don't want to bother them this late at night."
Anna hiccups. She holds her breath in an attempt to rid herself of them but only ends up making it worse. She shifts so that she's leaning on her elbows; Elsa glances instinctively at the movement and then immediately snaps her eyes back to the ceiling when she catches sight of Anna's bare breasts.
Anna starts to cry again.
Hold her, Elsa thinks, but Anna's half-naked and she feels frozen in place. Her heart beats like a rabbit thump. She squeezes her eyes shut so hard she sees white. She feels the shake of Anna softly trembling on the bed. She is a terrible older sister.
It's only a few minutes before Anna quiets down. She has better control over her emotions than Elsa ever did—just by allowing herself to feel them. How ironic is that? Elsa feels her shift on the bed as she wipes her eyes. She sighs long. Sad, but calm. Maybe crying uninterrupted is what she needed, Elsa tells herself. It's a weak excuse and she knows it.
"I miss him so much," Anna says. Her voice is cracked. She sounds tired beyond the lateness of the hour.
"...Four years is a long time. It was your first real relationship. Grieving it for a little while is healthy."
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually missing him or if I just miss it."
"'It'?"
"Romance," Anna says. Certainly that was the number one thing on Anna's mind long before she ever met Kristoff. She never needed to talk to Anna directly to know that. Elsa would hear her voice echoing down the hallway and through her door: talking to the paintings, putting on her little voices for all her little characters, make-believing in love.
"You get angry any time anyone even mentions romance."
"I get so jealous I can barely stand myself, is what I get."
"There were a number of boys at the party who would have been happy to reintroduce you to the concept."
"I don't care about them, Elsa."
"What parts do you miss the most?"
"Holding hands. Falling asleep together. Cuddling." Anna sighs. "Dancing. Spontaneous acts of flowers. Reading together. Talking about everything. Knowing someone backward and forward, what makes them laugh, what makes them scared… but being surprised by them sometimes, too."
"We do those things," Elsa says. Then she thinks, why did I say that?
"We do." Anna shifts her head so that it's resting in the crook of Elsa's shoulder. "I miss sex."
Elsa laughs awkwardly. "I don't suppose it'd be appropriate for me to ask you what you miss about that."
"The way everything else seems to just melt away when you're doing it." She must still really be drunk, Elsa realizes, or else there'd be at least a hint of embarrassment in her voice. "How wild it can get: getting pinned to the wall, dragged around, thrown onto the bed. Being touched like I'm the most precious thing in the world. Kissing." The bed shifts again as Anna drags her hands down her face. "God, Elsa, I miss kissing. We should give whoever invented kissing an honorary title of nobility."
"I've never done it."
"Really? None of the Northuldra women sparked your curiosity?"
"Curiosity, perhaps."
"Mm," Anna hums. "You did do it once, though. I remember."
"What are you talking about?"
"When we were kids, before you… went away. When we played that little make-believe game."
"What game?"
"'Princess-and-suitor.'" She delivers the title with an affected dreaminess: a little girl's idea of a swoon. "You know, when you used to dress up in Papa's clothes and pretend to woo me and stuff."
"I remember that. Of course I do—but I never kissed you."
"You did. You literally said we had to kiss at the end in order to be married."
"That was on the cheek, Anna. You're not actually counting that, are you?"
"I swear it was on the lips! And like I said, we were kids. It was chaste. I'm not saying you did anything weird."
"I'm not saying it would have been weird, either. But you're misremembering. It was definitely on the cheek."
"So you weren't my first kiss?"
Does she sound disappointed? Does Elsa actually want to know? She tells herself she's too tired and that Anna is too drunk. The night's gone long enough already. She tries to get up. "I think it's time to go to sleep," she says softly, but Anna clings to her arm, pulls her down, and wraps herself tightly there. Elsa inhales sharply at the feeling of Anna's bare breasts.
"It's not that late. Play that game with me. I'll be the princess and you'll be the suitor—or I can be the suitor this time, if you want."
"We're too old for that."
"Come on. Please?"
"No, Anna," Elsa snaps, wriggling herself free. In her head she hears echoes of door knocks and Anna's kitten voice hesitantly asking if she wants to come out and play. She thinks, I want to. She always wanted to. It doesn't matter what she wants, though.
She tries not to look too hard at Anna's confused, tear-stained face as she slips out the door.
♠
Elsa stands in front of a mirror, buttoning herself into a men's waistcoat and tying her hair into a ring of braids. There's a war being fought in her head and it's clear which side is losing. I'll play that game with her, like she asked — it's a dangerous position to put myself in, and I won't — she wants me to — it's inappropriate — she needs me to — I can't control myself — I can't leave her alone again. I left her alone for so long.
She considers brushing her brows and jawline with pigment to give it a more masculine contour, but that strikes her as excessive. Would Anna even like that? Now that she thinks about it, is Anna exclusively interested in men, or did Elsa just assume? It's strange that she's never asked. She knows exactly why she hasn't.
She inhales. She steels herself.
She's doing this. She has to. She already committed to it, anyway.
It's been more than a week since that drunken conversation, there being too much to do entertaining lingering diplomats to even consider indulging in a game like this, and Anna's not taking audiences today—it being Sunday—so when Elsa slips into her study and clears her throat and in her most boyish register says, "An audience with her Majesty?" Anna's brow knits together, confused. She has a reprimand for this unexpected stranger formed in her mouth already when she turns and sees how Elsa's dressed. Elsa expects laughter or at least an amused smile. She doesn't expect the way Anna blinks slow, the way her eyes sweep up, lingering on where the waistcoat tapers, where the hair has been brushed cleanly away from Elsa's round cheeks.
"Elsa? You look—"
Elsa tries to fill in: "Silly?"
"Handsome," Anna finishes. "What inspired the makeover?"
Elsa's getting déjà vu from the time Anna came to find her in her ice castle, staring up at her from the bottom of the steps. Elsa shakes the memory away. She clears her throat. "If I may, your Majesty," she says, offering a hand—which Anna takes immediately, as if on instinct, "I've come to make my bid to begin courting the Queen of Arendelle."
Elsa can see the gears turn in Anna's head. It only takes a second for everything to click into place. She blinks a flutter and mutters a few unintelligible syllables. Her face turns redder than a cherry and she drops it into her head. "Oh my god, I was drunk. This is so not funny," she groans. She peeks up at Elsa again through her fingers. "Well, okay—it's a little funny. I'm an idiot. And also sorry. You can go put your regular clothes back on now."
"It's not supposed to be funny," Elsa says earnestly. "You said you miss romance."
They're interrupted by a curt knock against the doorframe and the poky head of one of the staffers. "Queen Anna, we've just received gifts for you from an anonymous admirer."
"Can you bring them up for me?" Anna asks. She glances up at Elsa from the corner of her eye while Elsa keeps her expression practicedly disaffected. After a few moments of dripping silence the staffer drops off a box of spices, coffee, wine, silks, and—in particular—a whole blooming bouquet of Anna's every favorite flower.
"Elsa, this is a lot. Can we even afford this?"
"Anything less would be an insult to you."
Anna pauses like she doesn't know what she wants to say next. Or perhaps she knows what she wants to say, but isn't sure how to say it. She fiddles with the pins in her hair. She musses herself up without thinking. "Are you… is this for real?"
"We're playing princess and suitor."
"Obviously, but I mean—" Anna exhales. "No, of course. It's a game. Ignore me. I don't even know what I was asking."
"But it's for real, too," Elsa says. She thinks, heart hammering, danger, danger! Why did I just say that? Well, here's why: Anna's eyes widen like twin moons and sparkle even brighter. Her grin is so full that her freckles contort. It takes a mountain of self-discipline to not immediately reach out and touch her: to trace every scrunch of every freckle and map them to the joy in Anna's sleeve-borne heart.
(Like always, Anna reaches out and touches her instead.)