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Anna threw up most of the journey back to Arendelle.
Not from anything particularly serious, or so the doctor on board assured Admiral Westergaard. It was mostly nerves and over excitement. Afterall, the sisters had never been separated for so long before.
“Will she recognize me? We haven’t been gone so very long, have we, Hans? Oh, I know it can’t have been–but it feels so…”
They came to a halt just shy in view of the fjord not from any premature reasoning or mistake as the Admiral first believed, but rather because the ship could go no further.
Anna drew her shawl around her bare shoulders, freckled from the Southern Isle sun, red from the sudden bite in the sea salt air.
“Why Arendelle,” she said, standing beside her fiance at the hull, eyes gone wide, mouth agape.
“It’s clean frozen over.”
The Queen, they said, went mad.
Not so very long ago, Kai, the King’s old adviser assured Anna, once warm inside the castle. Kai sent over ice harvesters to take the guests from the ships into the city. The Admiral sent her ahead. She sat beside one of them wrapped only in her spring cloak and fox shawl. He was blond and kind eyed and he gave her his hat.
“Are you like the Queen, then?” he’d asked.
“No,” she’d said. “I’m not mad.”
“I meant a sorceress,” he’d said.
She shook her head, his hat too big and falling over her eyes. “I’m just me.”
Her Majesty froze the country, Kai explained, just shy several days before. Upon anticipation of her royal sister’s arrival and much awaited wedding. Anna remembered she had insisted the wedding take place in Arendelle.
“I knew she was delicate,” Gerda, the handmaiden, said that night as she brushed out Anna’s hair. “But I never thought she’d so lose control…”
Gerda covered her mouth with both hands. The tortoise shell brush thudded against the carpet. Anna stared at her through the mirror.
“You knew?” she said. “You knew she could–” She waved a hand out toward the window.
Gerda wiped her tears on her apron as she left Anna’s room.
Anna found him in the stables, unbundled and strumming nonsense against a lute. She handed him a purse full of her jewelry.
“Take me up the North Mountain,” she said. “I need to see my sister.”
He laughed and pushed his hair off his forehead. He was young, Anna noticed then. Maybe not much older than Hans, with red cheeks and an insolent smile.
“Whatever’s in here,” he said, waving the purse at her, “probably isn’t enough for what you’re asking anyway.”
Anna raised her chin, something the Queen of the Southern Isle taught her to do. “I need to see my sister,” she repeated.
“Then you’re going to have to find someone else to take you,” he said and held the purse out to her.
She sighed. “What will you require?” she asked. “Name it, good sir and I will get it for you if only you help me on this journey.”
He shook his head, still smiling, all the while fully aware of who she was. “A kiss, then,” he said. “From her royal highness.”
Anna took a step back. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “But I’m engaged.”
He stood up and stretched, lamp light reflecting off his fair hair. “A new sled then,” he said. “Your fiance thought he could drive mine. Instead he tipped it over and ruined the whole one side. I had to walk back as he rode astride my reindeer.”
Anna came to appreciate Kristoff’s patience.
Three times in just two days she nearly killed them both. Once with the wolves, another time with the avalanche. The third time the most painful as it came by her sister’s hand.
“I owe you a great many sleds,” she said.
They sat together at the mouth of a cave, a faint campfire illuminating what red was left of her hair.
He touched her cheek with a bare hand, his mittens over her own to keep the chill at bay. Her body shook with the cold in her mind and in her heart. If he could stand it, he would give her his coat.
“You owe me nothing,” he said. “But I do wish that you live through the night.”
She smiled, but it was difficult. The ice pieced over her skin, stitched in freckles and snowflakes. “This is all my fault,” she said, between chattering teeth. “She never wanted that I marry Hans Westergaard. She thought him too ambitious. That he sought my place in the line of the throne and not my heart.”
Kristoff removed his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. He pulled her into his arms, pressing his lips to her forehead.
“Would that I could cast in my suit for your heart…”
But she did not answer, lips gone blue, crystals woven between freckles against her face.
When Kristoff returned her to the palace half out of breath, half frozen from the wild ride, Admiral Westergaard stared at his bride-to-be in cold detachment fitting of the feel of her skin.
“Fetch the minister,” he said to a serving man. He directed Kristoff up the stairs. “Take my lady to her room. Then tell a maid to fit her to her wedding dress.”
Kristoff did not understand. “You mean to wed her,” he said, “when she’s near frozen to death.”
“She’s still breathing, is she not,” he said. “Besides, she’d want her last moments to be of our wedding, I’m sure.”
“She’d want her last moments to be reunited with her sister,” Kristoff said, drawing Anna closer to his chest.
The Admiral looked at him then, green eyes sharp and clever. “You’re the reindeer lad,” he said. “So you’ve gone and fallen in love with my bride, have you? You can be buried with her if you like. With her and her witch of a sister. Once we are married, I’ll have the throne.”
The Snow Queen, as Kristoff had come to call her in his head, next saw her sister in her wedding garb: puffed sleeves and lace brocade. She had come to reclaim her kingdom, no longer fearful but eager to display her power. She sent a blizzard through Arendelle, laying out a carpet of crystal that led to the cathedral.
Violet eyes and white hair, she looked a lively version of her sister who, at that moment, was pale and drawn, held up only by Kristoff.
At the sight of Anna, blue and silver in Kristoff’s arms, the murder went from the Queen and she ran up the stone steps, collapsing at Anna’s feet, hugging her knees, sobbing diamonds into her delicate waist.
“What has happened to you,” she said. “My beautiful sister of the summer.”
Admiral Westergaard loomed over her, sword in hand.
“The winter witch murdered my beloved,” he said. “In my despair, I did what my heart told me.”
Kristoff had only time to gasp before the Admiral brought down his sword onto the Snow Queen’s back. But by then, Anna had pushed from his arms and threw herself down over her sister, the sword breaking along the bent path of her spine. Kristoff charged at the Admiral, tackling him down against the stairs, his red head falling against the edge of the step.
When he turned back, the Snow Queen held Anna in her arms.
“Oh, Elsa,” Anna said with a faint laugh. “How I’d dreamed of coming home for a summer wedding.”