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Anna awoke with the unmistakable sensation of death.
Her eyes were tightly closed, eyelids trembling slightly as her body tensed under the covers with the pure and undeniable rush of fear in her veins. She felt the touch — it was cold as a nightmare. A wave of despair washed over her body, and she, drowsy, tried to push it away.Despair doesn't help. Despair only makes things worse. She knew this instinctively. It was something her being had internalized long before, when the fear started to appear.
The numbness, however, didn't stop. Harmless tickling at first, then cold. A cold she hadn't usually felt. Anna was trapped in that particular state between drowsiness and sobriety, and her fingers closed around the pillow.
Whatever it is, i'm not going to wake up, she said to herself in a fervent whisper. She was exhausted, every muscle clamoring for rest. Her body began to tremble, but she ignored it. Ignored everything. She wouldn't surrender. She wanted the dream, the chivalrous prince and the princess with golden curls who had a romance worthy of songs.
Where was I?, she wondered, biting her lips from the cold. The princess had already been cursed by the wicked fairy. She needed the prince's presence, certainly, but he still had to be introduced. Now, the kingdom was suffering too…
Anna shuddered as deeply as she could. Ice had settled inside her body and mind, and now she could only think. Memories. Restless, terrible memories, which she had done so much to bury, returning now with a clarity that stung her eyelids.What can we do now to stop it? What can we do now to stop it? She didn't know. She never knew. Her subconscious had let her go. Sleep slipped away completely, and Anna opened her eyes, every little part of the body still asleep.
She blinked twice. The weariness had left her members; now, she gazed at a white paradise blocked by two ice heads. One of them, she recognized, was the maid Vantaksova, with icy features and long hair that—she vaguely remembered from earlier times—used to be brunette.
The other statue was more plump (or at least as far as the ice, with its naturally sharp properties, could go, it could be plump) and had a slightly less oblique surface. Freja. Both maids who had served her and Elsa all their lives, and whom her sister had specially assigned to take care of Anna's necessities.
“Princess”, says the statue of Vantaksova, gently removing her hand from her cheeks. The nails were very close together, however, as if she wanted to dig them into her face. “I apologize if we have caused you any trouble, but you seemed to be very sleepy today.”
Oh yes. Anna lightly touches her cheek, feeling a small injury there. Vantaksova also seems to notice, and her eyes widen. She's surely imagining what Anna's sister would do if she discovered she'd been physically hurt during her awakening; nothing good, one would expect. Anna knew her only other family member, and so did the maids.
"Yes," she says, knowing the statues' intentions. Frowns vaguely, trying to recall a concept. The rest of the dream slips away from her mind like a winter breeze. "Help me get dressed now. There's something to be done."
The maids make a hurried curtsy and move through the room with a glide. Anna remains still, staring at the walls of the room for some seconds before rising. It is, like all the rooms in the castle that have been transformed since that remarkable night, made of ice: but thermal ice, made especially so that Anna could exist there comfortably.
With a unique beauty, she appreciated her surroundings like no one else.
She jumped out of bed under the pretext of skipping around, but stopped when she encountered something she hadn't seen before. Another statue, supposed, though this one must have been her age. She was a girl, who wore, as far as could be noticed, what had once been a maid's outfit. Her eyes were perpetually fixed on fear.
Anna tilts her head to the side, curious. Has a memory of her from the back of the mind; covered in holly and a hazy feeling. She was one of the villagers your sister had turned earlier, Anna vaguely remembered, a day or two before. A girl of similar age to hers, caught stealing bread and trying to sneak into the castle to kill one of them. For killing my mother, the girl had said, while kneeling, her voice full of resentful venom.
Anna remembered feeling a small fear churning in her stomach as she listened to the opening part, sitting next to her sister's main seat. How could anyone have gotten close enough?, she thinks, feeling her throat slightly blocked. How? How? How? The sister also seemed overwhelmed by
the issue, her fingers closed around her sister's cheeks, before hearing the new cries.
She could punish her in ways she can't even imagine.
The girl laughs. Anna remembers the laughter; she remembers being somewhat touched by it, although she doesn't know why. Perhaps because she was certain of what would come next.
Nothing you do will hurt me.
Ah, that's what Anna thought, sensing the hatred in her words. Ah. Of course she would. Elsa always had. She had lost the thread of the memory afterward, but remembered, logically, what had probably happened in the event: Elsa freezing the girl's soul and heart, Elsa binding her to her commands, the girl's screams of terror as she felt her body, once human and poor, slowly freezing into tiny, irreversible fragments of ice. Upon realizing that her mind was no longer her own, but Elsa's sister's.
Anna slides past the girl herself, and senses the moment she tries— really try — moving her arm muscles to do something. It doesn't work, obviously. Anna sits like a lady on the white ice, staring at the flower-shaped mirror while Freja and Vantaskova begin to adjust her.
This ritual is familiar to the spirit; as familiar as counting stalactites on the ceiling or conversing with statues and paintings on the walls. Usually, Anna asks the maids to invent stories, their almost identical voices forming a chorus of distant fantasies of happy fairy tales. This time, however, she can do nothing: the idea of identical voices and empty eyes seems quite uninteresting to her. Instead, she hums a melody to herself, observing her own reflection in the crystalline surface.
She had turned fourteen two months earlier. Or three? It was hard to keep track of time. But she was sure she was a year older, and it was reflected in her face: freckles were still prominent, it seemed, but the cheeks had lost some of their fat and her hair looked shinier. She was noticeably thin, but not as thin as she had been a few years ago. She had a memory and smiled.
"I look like a princess, don't I?" says Anna, in her usual agitated voice.
Freja responds immediately.
“Of course.”
Anna turns around as the two braid her hair, raising an arm and addressing the new maid.
“Bring me the storybook from the bedside table.”
There's a flicker of surprise in the defiant girl's icy eyes, and then an almost horrified feeling as her feet slide toward the headboard to grab the book, returning as quickly as lightning to put it back in Anna's hands.
"Thank you," she says, though the girl probably doesn't deserve it. The look of shock and despair on her face is something she's witnessed on the faces of many transformed people, like a warm shock.
If she were still capable of producing tears, the maid would probably be crying.
Anna hummed as she ran her fingers across the old pages. It was a book from the old days, when Mom and Dad were still alive and read to her. Princes, princesses, dragons: it had everything. Although Elsa told her countless times that she was too old for that kind of story, she couldn't let them go, like an unnamed comfort in her existence. One of the few things that allowed her to fondly remember past times that should already be forgotten.
"Oh, here it is," she hums, holding up the image for everyone to see. It's one of her favorite illustrations in the book: the princess being shown for the first time, as the prince approaches the castle.
The princess in the illustration had dark red hair, similar in intensity to Anna's, though less so in color, as the illustration was truly red while hers was closer to brown. The clothes were made of white linen, and the diamond crown was perfectly placed among her dark waves of hair, eyes bright blue.
"Bring me the tiara," Anna said, tracing the raised details of the ornament in the illustration with her index finger. Old age was already beginning to show in the folds of the page; perhaps she could ask her sister to go to the kingdom's stationery shop to get another one when she turned fifteen. If Elsa allowed it, of course.
She felt something on her forehead and looked in the mirror only to see the girl's hands placing the greenish ice ornament on her head, and she smiled. A gift from her sister. One of her favorites.
"Do I look beautiful?" she asks again
"Yes, it is," Freja replied.
Anna jumped to her feet, leaving the book behind and marching to the closet. It was gigantic, obviously, full of old and new dresses. Her hand glided over the fabrics: some were hers from childhood, remodeled by Elsa's frozen artisans to fit her grown-up fourteen-year-old body, knowing that she preferred casual pieces. While other pieces were so exquisite and perfect that they seemed sculpted by the hands of gods — made by Elsa’s magic, obviously. Anna picked one up: it was a simple, plain dress, off-the-shoulder, as green as spring and with tiny snow flowers embedded in the skirts. Perfect in her mind, she imagined.
Further inside, Anna kept her mother's belongings. Elsa had wanted to burn them when they were little—like everything related to their parents—but Anna had been clever enough to keep them inside her own wardrobe, hidden among several other snow chests. After so many years, they still remained there, less untouched than it would be expected.
"I'll wear that one over there," she pointed to a brown outfit with a black bodice, which would blend in well anywhere else. Not in an ice castle, though.
She folded and stored away the sky-green dress alongside other magnificent garments, feeling the icy hands of the statues beginning to loosen the laces of her nightgown. She cast one last fleeting glance at the trunk where her hand's clothes were hidden before being blinded by the fabric.
— — —
Living in a frozen paradise was an interesting experience; one that Anna quickly learned to get used to, and which now became almost part of her senses, like an inseparable existence.
She remembered the early years, when was still so afraid of her sister that she could barely exist in a room with her without bursting into tears. It was worse because, she supposed now, being older, Elsa was probably also terrified of what had been done and of the people outside, but, as could be remembered at the time, seeing nothing but an expression too icy for an eleven-year-old girl on her face. A deadly expression.
The cold had also been terrible at first, although both she and Elsa had adapted to it — more so she, obviously, since her sister didn't fear the cold and never had. Elsa's magic was volatile and easily manipulated; while covering the kingdom in snow and ice (To prevent bad people from getting here. From doing what they did, she said in that breathless, overly mature voice) and the frozen bodies of the souls of former servants to serve them in their protected fortress.
Anna remembered spending days trembling in a single room, her head buried in her knees as shivers ran through a hungry, tiny body, along with the memories. The memories had always been terrible; and even now, years later, after she had often said she had overcome them, they still came crashing down on her mind, definitive enough to take her breath away and make her double over.
She slipped like an awkward swan through a pair of gleaming windows; behind her, she caught a glimpse of two of the enormous ice monsters guarding them with gleaming clubs. These were everywhere: around the structure, guarding secret passages, roaming the kingdom and catching unruly citizens to be punished by her sister, searching for threats through the city gates. Anna had two particular ones she had nicknamed Hammer and Bow, who, when she had slipped away, were not present at that moment.
Interesting, thought. She figured maybe they were handling the situation with Elsa. Her sister always needed help with the punishments that she did as queen.
She lightly touched the shoulders of two statues — two men and women, a brother and sister, whose eyes widened in alarm as the princess approached. Anna smiled amicably. These particular statues were scattered along part of the hallway, pressed against the walls in twin poses — hands clasped in front of their bodies — and with specific commands to remain that way. Elsa had made them specifically for her sister some years ago; she noticed that Anna was too lonely due to the lack of stimulation, and instead of putting the statues on display to alert her family, she had started placing them there as company for her. She loved it, and had named each one and given them their own stories.
Statues were better listeners than paintings frozen on the walls, and if you asked them, they could answer you according to what you asked.
"Ah, good morning, Lady Liv and Lord Magnus," she said, embracing Miss Merillo lightly and wrapping her arm around her neck.
These were two of the oldest ones, which Elsa had made when they were still figuring out how to survive. Walter wore the royal guard uniform, beautiful and gleaming, crystallized in ice, and his sword rose in an almost slashing motion. Anna had it in her head that he was a glorious war hero, and had placed one of the ornaments given to her by Elsa on his head, pretending it was a crown of golden laurels to honor him. Walter was his expectant wife.
The two didn't answer, nor could they, because Anna was running late — she could feel it from the cold coming through the windows. Elsa is going to be furious with me. The thought of her angry older sister sent a shiver down her spine. However, she wouldn't still meet her for a while; there had somewhere she needed to be.
“See you later!”, Anna says goodbye, humming to the statues, passing by their platforms in a silence broken only by the sounds of the monsters moving outside.
— — —
It was a route she had grown accustomed to, but one she silently didn't want to take. A shortcut to reach the coronation hall, where Elsa was located, although, being longer, it was situated at the far end of both points mentioned. Anna was almost certain her sister had placed it there on purpose.
Her bare feet made no sound as she approached the small atrocity—why would they?—but her heart raced. I should just let it go.It's a stupid idea.Why let it go? Her sister certainly wouldn't, nor would the kingdom itself, which clung to the consequences of it. However, a part of her seemed hesitant. Stupid Anna, she thinks, this echoing with her sister's voice.
The idea gives her such a lighthearted sense of nonchalance that it almost makes her float —I wish I could float, Anna thinks. I wonder if Elsa can do that too?— and she approaches the end of the small corridor. It was a shortcut to the coronation room, the old one. Her fingers gently push open the door that used to be used by servants, until she enters the room.
It's large and exquisite, remarkably so. Anna blinks and glances twice. It shouldn't haunt her so much, but being in an environment not completely covered in snow was always a surreal prospect. There were only small layers scattered across the floor and walls— the result of her sister's furious powers.
She took a step forward. Though still regal and tasteful, reserved only for royalty, it was, at best, in ruins. The windows had been boarded up with good, old wood that was slowly rotting, held together only by ice latches made by Elsa (no murderer can enter from here.) The walls were dripping, and the tables had cockroaches and rats swarming across them, gnawing at the old fabric of tablecloths from other kingdoms. The thrones — besides her parents', the most untouched thing in the room — were still beautiful, but dust had gathered on the seats.
Anna had tried to clean it all up. Once. About a year ago. She had enlisted the help of two statue-servants, two young offenders who had been caught in the act of stealing and brought to the palace and frozen, and were in the middle of the process when Elsa appeared. Anna had seen her older sibling furious before; several times, in fact, but the fury displayed there seemed unspeakable, filled with something else as well that she was unable to name. Resentment? Horror? Fear? A movement of Elsa's arm caused the ice servants to transform into small shards of snow, which horrified Anna. For the first time, it seemed, she realized that these were real humans. Like her and her sister. Like real consciousnesses, however threatening they might be.
She managed to calm her sister before she destroyed the statue of their mother and father, reassuring her that she would never do such a thing again. And she never did. She left the room to decay, only cleaning the remaining ice from the servant-statues to bury them in the back, and her attempts at cleaning were relegated to that single, fateful day.
She approached her parents, jumping as Anna tended to do. The two were in a position she had imitated many times before, seen in dreams and in real life to the point of instinctively replicating it: they seemed confused, slightly, but also gripped by anger and fear and a pang of guilt. It was a profoundly interesting mix. Her father had his sword drawn and an expression of pain and determination and surprise on his face, captured in that unparalleled snowy expression; her mother seemed more hesitant, hidden behind her father, although that cold determination was also shown on the face.
Anna kissed them both on their cold cheeks. Sometimes she wondered what their lives would have been like if their parents hadn't betrayed Elsa, hadn't betrayed her, if they hadn't been left in that icy labyrinth, forever shrouded in fear. She probably would never have known. She probably would never have been aware. She probably would always have to live with the nightmares and the memories.
"I can't hate you," she whispered to them. Sometimes Anna feared her sister could hear her prayers through the icy air. "Not like Elsa hates you."
Then she turned away, daring to give them one last kiss, and ran out the other, larger door. Elsa's new main hall had been one of the few construction projects her sister had undertaken after… that, and the largest one, if Anna discounted the closing of the kingdom's drainage gates. It had been a disconcerting experience: sliding, like a little girl, between the enormous feet of humanoid ice giants while they busied themselves building it. But she hadn't said anything to Elsa; she was still too afraid to speak to her during such times.
Anna opened the door—it was a solid arch of ice, with arabesques inlaid into its surface— and stepped into the new place. It was basically the same as her parents' room, only more circular, much colder, and noticeably less comfortable. Sometimes Anna wondered why her sister hadn't simply kept the old throne room instead of going to the trouble of building another one, before remembering that the queen probably wouldn't have wanted the task of removing the statues of their father and mother from there.
Anna crept in. There were several guards there, as was usual on execution days. In addition to some statue-like figures, whose eyes were frozen, they stared at everything as if condemned to relive horrors beyond human comprehension. Was able to recognize this well.
She smoothed the hem of her dress and closed the door, hoping they wouldn't notice her. She'd always been clumsy, of course, but existing in an ice castle— even if it is an unbreakable ice castle — it ended up sharpening her perspectives on handling certain things. Honing them, so to speak. So the door didn't slip from her hands, as it would have when she was little. And she was able to dance unnoticed among the crowd of icy bodies.
There were many, actually. Too many guards for a situation like this. Could something have happened?, she wondered. Something more serious than some of the offenders. Because the number of solid bodies there was abnormal for the demands usually made by her sister.
Anna hurried forward, trying to catch a glimpse of Elsa above (her throne was too large. She remembered being fascinated by the size difference between it and hers, especially when both were still kids) and managed to see only the tips of her shoes: heels made of pure ice, gleaming with applied magic.
She squeezed between the statues and managed to make her way up. She hadn't caught a glimpse of the accused; only had been able to hear Elsa's voice coming out cold amidst the noise of the ice giants patrolling outside. But now she could listen to it clearly. She climbed the small steps to her own throne — considerably smaller than her sister's — and settled in, the familiar coldness of the seat comforting.
"How many are?" Elsa asked. Her voice came out so sharp, so inevitable, so free thatAnna, shrinking back, wondered how she had been unable to listen to her before. It seemed impossible not to hear the voices in her own head. "Say it now or I'll make you wish you'd never been born."
There's only one person down there. A young woman, older than both of them, though not by much. In a way, she reminds Anna of the newly created ice-girl—the same reckless fire in her eyes. But, in appearance, she's quite different: she has dark hair and a long face, not often seen in Arendelle. She's also wearing expensive clothes: really expensive clothes.
Anna straightened up in her seat. Yes, they were: the same style of attire she remembered seeing nobles wearing when she was little, during dinners shared by her, her parents, Elsa, and visitors. Although considerably more fashionable. But she recognized the sign of nobility in the gold adornments, shimmering purples, and shocking reds: money. Riches. Glory. Like the princess in the illustrations that she had.
The intruder looked up with that unstoppable fire in her eyes.
“Look at her. I was starting to think it was something her sister had made up”, a harsh laugh.
“But she is alive, it seems.”
Anna was so unaccustomed to hearing people talking directly to her like this, other than her sister or the frozen voices of statue-servants. You didn't even notice the content. Her body leaned forward until she felt someone's hand on her shoulder, pushing her back again. He was one of the statue guards.
"Don't speak to my sister," Elsa retorted hissingly. "I'll ask you one more time: Where did you come from?”
Anna turned her face upward. Elsa was still a few feet above the hall, the sharp points of the throne made of ice spikes pointing towards the ceiling. But she could see her. Her expression was frozen, cold, and she wore a soft white dress made of snowflakes. The white hair flowed over her shoulders, loose and styled in a way Anna's could never achieve, a solid monstrosity on top. The crown. Elsa was only a few years older than her sister, Anna thought — but still, especially in these moments, she seemed infinitely more.
The punished woman laughed. Anna's eyes widened. It was a new sound, almost alien, too loud in the nearly empty room. She glanced at Elsa. Her sister remained motionless above, though every muscle in her body seemed tense in a way that only Anna had learned to recognize after years and years of being the only constant human presence in her life.
“You don't know what awaits you. Tell me where they are!”
The walls of the room trembled slightly at the comment. The prey stopped laughing, adopting a noble posture, so familiar and yet so distant. Anna felt a wave of embarrassment, lightly touching the dirt under her fingernails.
“I won't say anything to any of you. Not even if you kill me. Not even if you torture me. Not even if you freeze me and do to me what you did to your people and your parents. I am more resilient than any of your tricks. Know that, no matter how hard y'all try to hide, fight and flee, they will come. They will come, destroy that gate and kill you and your sister. Without any fear, because we have no fear of monsters, and never have had.”
Silence. Anna looked nervously at the girl on the floor, so impetuous, so full of herself, so regal — as if she were used to gliding through crowded corridors, dancing with princes, and laughing side by side with duchesses. She didn't feel the fear those words should have instilled; as she had felt with the other. Oh, no, Anna felt pity. Pity because that impetuous spirit would shatter as easily as glass very soon.
Shouldn't have challenged Elsa, she thinks silently, watching her sister descend the steps. She never hurried, like Anna. She was in control of everything. Elsa always had time to spare to do whatever she wanted. And even if didn't, she created her own time to waste. No, you shouldn't.
The sister approached the figure on the ground. She was beautiful. One of her hands was raised —thin, almost too thin to be possible — and the guards holding the prisoner released her, loosening their grip. She knelt beside her. One of the fingers gripped her neck, pressing her nails there.
The prisoner grunted. Elsa grinned with all her teeth.
"Oh, you're not afraid, are you?" she said in a melodious voice, like fragments of ice meeting one another.
It began as it always began. No one in the room — except Elsa, by habit, and Anna, by instinctive recognition — knew when it truly started. The prisoner's eyes suddenly widened, and slowly but surely, she began to struggle in Elsa's hands. A push first. Her sister's nails pierced the flesh of her cheeks with even more force. She squealed loudly, scratching the floor and trying to reach Elsa, who remained proud, kneeling, in front of the writhing figure.
Anna waited for the second part, tense. The prisoner's hair began to take on a white hue. A strand here. Another strand there. The same shade as Elsa's hair, but less natural because it was imposed. Suddenly, her entire scalp was covered in bleached strands. Her body also began to change. Layers of ice, thin, brittle, and sharp, appeared on her skin. Anna felt something inside her — it took her a second to realize it was terror.
She had forgotten, after so many sessions of diverting her attention from what had happened and getting caught up in her own thoughts, how staring at those frozen souls frightened her.
The ice covered her from head to toe, intensifying minute by minute. Solid and bluish like crystals. Anna twisted her fingers in her lap. That unknown fire of rebellion that had filled her was trapped inside the ice, motionless in something frightened, while the cold layer finished covering her.
Elsa smiled slightly as her magic finished its work, releasing the offender with a thud. The statue fell to its knees, in the position it had been frozen in. Its eyes still functioned partially, and the mouth too, though only if Elsa commanded it — everything Elsa commanded, the queen she and her nondescript friends planned to kill, would now be law.
Anna felt pity seeing the confusion mixed with fear in her crystallized eyes. Pure and simple pity. Although it was probably a danger to Elsa's safety and her own, she was unable to stifle the fear that came from watching a living spirit extinguished so easily.
"Stand up," Elsa ordered. Her voice broke the silence like a sword.
Anna saw her frozen expression struggle for a slight movement, then shift to horror as she realized her own body was moving against its will.Because it's no longer hers.Anna thinks, separated.It's ours.
"You said you needed a new statue for decoration, Anna," Elsa says suddenly. Anna jumps from her chair, startled. The queen is downstairs, her eyes still fixed on the ice figure, though she smiles at her younger sister. "I'll give you this one after I interrogate her."
Anna opens her mouth and then closes it. Something inside her stirs — is it discomfort? Fear?—before she nods and forces a smile at her sister, who watches with placid, overly clear blue eyes.
"Maybe," she says. Then forces a smile. It comes out awkwardly. What happened? Where did this come from? In the morning, this would be the best gift I could receive!
Elsa understands something, perhaps. Of course she notices. Nothing went unnoticed in her palace. But makes no comment, turning back to the foreign offender.
"Take her away from here," the queen says, addressing the other employee-statues stationed around the rooms.
Their inert postures moved with the dexterity that only ice molds could possess, and they took steps forward, grasping the newest decoration by the arms— Anna recalled that the statues were unable to move at first, still trying to adjust to their new solid ice bodies and lack of autonomy. Seeing the offender's face as she was dragged, Anna was certain that, if she could cry, she would be sobbing now.
I am more resilient than any of your tricks. Anna leaped from her throne as the other creatures began to leave the place in specific group marches.
In the end, she wasn't. Nobody is.
Elsa remained in her usual spot, still like one of the stones she turned her enemies into, eyes and fingers closed as if she were thinking. Or perhaps still absorbing the lingering warmth of the offender's soul.
Anna approached. Her sister would certainly like to talk to her. Elsa always liked to talk to her after a punishment. Only this time, why Anna who wouldn't want to talk when they were so anxious?
"Thank you for the gift," she said, skipping and smiling. She was trembling, the edges of her lips uncertain. She didn't know why.
It took Elsa two seconds to open her eyes. Her features were similar to Anna's (she remembered, as a child, hearing her mother murmur nostalgic in her sleep that they looked like twins, they were so alike) but much more mature, sharp, almost cruel. She had a haughtiness and posture that intimidated anyone, gleaming in these always icy clothes and sharp tiara.
Anna remembered, again, that, in the early years after the event, she was perpetually terrified of her sister. Even after falling in love with her again, she was still always intimidated by the sibling's presence. There was something... an imbalance within her that was frightening.
Elsa went back to Anna. She was taller; not by much, and it was more a difference in perspective, but she always seemed much taller. When she was younger, Anna used to stand on tiptoe when approaching her, until the sister herself scolded her for the habit.
"She's nervous." It wasn't a question. Elsa frowned slightly. "I scared you."
Anna took a step forward. It was hard, but usual. Every fiber of her body trembled slightly, begging her to move away. She didn't move away.
Was she afraid, though?
"Of course not, Elsa," she replies in the same tone, raising an eyebrow as if to say: Why would I think something so absurd? “It's been a while since I've been here. And I was late too, as you well know. Seeing your power like this was rather dazzling, as usual.”
Half-truths. Living only with each other had taught Anna certain delicate aspects of her sister's personality, who, behind her almost entirely icy upbringing, had small openings that she had learned to explore carefully.
The sister took her words as genuine and turned her attention to something else.
It shouldn't have taken so long.
Anna drags the tip of her shoe across the ice. She wishes it weren't so slippery, so it would leave a mark.
"I'm always late," she replies simply. "I can do that."
Elsa's expression shifts slightly. There's something profound there. Although her sibling's features were more mature and cold, Anna had noticed, as they matured within those icy walls, that her temperament was not. Some of her attitudes seemed to come from a more childish, less polished, more resentful corner of her mind. A corner that forcefully propelled its existence. As if part of her had been frozen during… that.
“I don't mind if you waste as much time as you want in the palace corridors, Anna. What I don't want is for you to go there.”
A sharp breeze passed through the edges of the door and filled the room with that word. Anna didn't flinch.
"Yes, I can go," she says calmly. Always calm. Not cold, though. A warm, profoundly human calmness that drove Elsa crazy. "You yourself said I could. When we were little. Or have you forgotten?"
Her sister's eyes deepened slightly, her expression irritated, as she tried to remember. Anna remembered very well; vividly recalled every memory from their early years. She was still afraid of her after what had happened, though not afraid enough to sneak out. Elsa had told her, but Anna wanted to escape, and—though she hadn't admitted it aloud then, nor would she now—she felt an innate desire to thwart her older sister's wishes. She wanted to open such a gigantic exit into Elsa's domain that it would defeat her; leave her devastated.
Anna remembered running into the room, trying to remain hidden among the aligned shadows of the frozen hell statues. She was wearing the same dress from the incident, red hair still braided in loose pigtails, trembling slightly. But her determination and genuine despair were stronger. She was unable to stop, and, even more so, she didn't want to stop.
She pushed the door open with her smaller shoulder. It was still open, abandoned. Anna thought of a crime scene; she, one of the witnesses returning to the place, mentally trapped in the event like a ghost. She entered the room. To the untrained eye, it seemed the same as before — perhaps slightly dustier, but nothing apparent. Nothing remarkable.
Anna stared at the center of the place, where the statues of her parents had stood back then, surrounded by uneven crusts of ice on the floor and walls. She hurried over, feeling something in her heart — a relief, a fear, a longing that would kill her — hugging them both tightly. She remembered nothing but the cold and the fact that, in that desolate darkness, her parents seemed like nothing less than beacons.
The moment it stopped, however, was still fresh in her memory. Elsa came at some point. Anna remembered shrinking back, feeling a wave of pure primal terror that always gripped her whenever her sister appeared in those early years, no matter what Elsa did.
The sister looked like a ghost, or an icy specter, her skin as placid as the ice that had formed her parents. She looked at the scene — Anna, the documented crime, the appearance of the two, what was happening — with the expression of someone existing, floating in a nightmare. Then, something took over her expression slightly. A kind of furious, mad urgency.
“Anna”, she had said. The voice had sounded almost like a death sentence to Anna's paranoid ears. “Get out of there.”
She didn't leave. She didn't move an inch. Her eyes—dry from hours of crying—still found enough liquid in the tear ducts to produce a few more. She squeezed her parents even tighter.
Remember that Elsa had hesitated for the first time? Now Anna recalled the situation with relative maturity, seeming to be the slightly older little girl she was back then, and not the witch she had so strongly envisioned. She looked at her parents again and shuddered violently.
“Anna, come here. Now.”
Her voice trembled. Anna didn't move.
Elsa sighed, exasperated. The atmosphere, she vaguely remembered, had grown cold. She looked at her parents, their statues, almost on the verge of tears—not of sadness, however, but rather of frustration.
“Anna,” she repeated. Her voice was a tone or two lower. But cold, as always. “If you come back to the room with me, I promise I’ll let you come here.”hey For them. Two or three minutes. Indefinitely. Just… come outside.
Nowadays, she couldn't say what had compelled younger Anna — the Anna who trembled from head to toe and struggled in fear every time her sister touched her — to go. She only knew that she went, deliberately staying a few meters ahead as she returned, half-crying, half-asleep, to her room. Her memory ended in a pile of old blankets, which left her skin cold and itchy.
Elsa had forgotten and broken the promise several times over the years. But she always kept it after being reminded of its existence. And this time, as they argued lightly, it would be no different. Her sister's eyebrows—dark in contrast to the white of her hair, something that had always fascinated her — weighed down on her face.
She didn't question her anymore. Anna remained grateful.
"At least make sure you get here earlier during punishments," she reiterated, walking away. Elsa was a paradox that never ceased to be interesting: although she sometimes acted rashly, bordering on a distorted version of childishness, more often her personality was close and appeared like a cold mother. "Especially when we're talking about people like her."
Anna suddenly remembered the words of the punished woman.They will come, destroy that gate, and kill you and your sister. A wave of fear washed over her.
"Are we in danger?" she whispered, frightened. It was the ultimate fear of their lives, hanging over both their minds like a deadly disease: the possibility of foreign kingdoms breaching Elsa's frozen ethereal barriers, entering the castle, and somehow killing them.
Elsa didn't act the way she expected her to. One of her hands landed on Anna's hair, touching it gently. It was a touch that used to be familiar, when they were both younger and always seemed to seek each other's presence, but it had become ominous as her sister dedicated herself body and soul to her duties as ruler of ice. The sensation of her long, gentle nails against her scalp was familiar and pleasant.
Elsa gazed at her with tenderness and depth, embracing her. Anna hugged back. Tightly. Afraid.
"I don't want them to kill you," she murmured, head pressed against Elsa's shoulder.
"They won't," she replies. There's such unwavering certainty in her voice that Anna's fear almost vanishes. "She was trying to scare us; nothing will happen to us. Ever."
Anna hugged her tighter. Her sister was right. There was no reason to fear. Elsa had everything she needed to keep them safe: skills, strength, intensity; and, unlike Anna, she had no scruples.
She pressed herself even closer to her. Elsa didn't let go or push her back this time; contenting herself with stroking her hair in soft, rhythmic waves, just as their mother had done when they were younger. The silence after the guards left was loud enough to leave sounds echoing; Anna's heart, beating with loving, human strength; Elsa's, forever solid in something indistinguishable from childhood.
— — —
Sometimes, Anna would curse her memory.
She wished she couldn't remember things as they used to be.of that.She wished her mind would look to the world ahead, that it wouldn't be so trapped in the unchanging past. She wished she could exist fully in their safe castle, always by Elsa's side, living with nothing but a vague and uncomfortable memory of bygone times, and being fulfilled like someone whose only life was that within the solid walls.
But no; of course not.
Anna remembered things before they fell apart. She remembered the lavish parties organized among the nobles; she remembered the open gates, the streets—thawed, made of solid, ancient stone, and crowded with people.live— looking so colorful and shiny that they made her head spin. She remembered her parents' goodnight kiss, Gerda's scolding when she braided her red hair incorrectly or slipped away to play with the third noble visitor her age who seemed nice. She remembered thesunShe remembered the wonderful sensation of the warmth tingling on her bare, rosy skin, while her mother laughed and pinched her cheeks and her father stroked her fragrant hair, always with a sweet and intelligent remark on the tip of his tongue. She remembered everything that had happened back then; the warm, almost sweet sensations, in contrast to the slight chill that had taken over the end of her childhood and entered her pre-adolescence.
One thing that she didn't remember, however, was Elsa.
Not due to memory lapses—or at least that's what she wanted to believe—but rather due to simple and pure reasons.absence.Elsa seemed not to exist in her life, at least not being present in anything beyond fervent murmurs and vague assertions. Her older sister (four years older, if her parents' claims were true) was nothing more than a myth. A ghostly presence that Anna occasionally saw, in passing, walking away down the long corridors in black and white robes, with nothing that her restless eyes could clearly see besides her unusual white hair—noblondesnot evenpale...but the exact same shade as the premature blizzard that was ravaging the kingdom. She hadn't even seen her face.
Anna, at that age, surprisingly never wanted to ask about her older sister, what she did, how she existed, and why she couldn't see her. Elsa, at that time, existed in her childish psyche, full of people, colors, and life, like a ghost in the confines of her mind. A concept. Something she could categorize, but it wasn't truly alive or it could hurt her. Anna's life was wonderful and so full of pulse and fairytale-like wonder that the absence of something didn't disturb her; she had her mother, father, employees, and friends as her remaining family. A non-existent older sister didn't particularly bother her.
And if, at times, she heard hysterical, low cries a few doors down from the room while she fell asleep, or if she saw her parents whispering fervently to each other with fear in their ever-regal expressions—fear and murmurs that faded the second he stepped inside—or saw the thin layers of ice and snow that occasionally covered the hallways… well, it all escaped her colorful child's mind. Small inconveniences meant to make her dream even more magical.
(Oh, how hasty she was! How she should have paid more attention! How spoiled and clueless she was! How stupid she was!)
The magic ended on a Tuesday. Anna knew what day of the week it was because she remembered seeing a strawberry cart wandering through the courtyard, a man's shrill voice announcing the prices with perfect articulation. She smiled to herself. Strawberries. It was summer too, she assumed, because vaguely remembered that strawberries only grew in Arendelle during the summer before. Also wanted to remember the day of the month.
She was gliding happily through the half-empty corridors. She didn't remember why they were empty. Not specifically. Although Elsa would later clarify it for her, Anna sometimes tried to recall the excuse her parents probably gave her for most of the staff, excluding Gerda, Kai, and a handful of others, having disappeared.
She skipped along, humming a song she had learned from the foreign princess who had befriended her the other day. She was famished; her mouth watered at the thought of strawberries.I'll buy enough for myself, Mom, Dad, and some for Gerda and Kai too."Oh," she thought to herself, imagining the fruit. She hoped they would be ripe. Mom hated overcooked food, and it was already difficult to get her to eat it casually. But Anna trusted that vendor. Last year, she had bought from him for the first time, and she had never seen strawberries so beautiful and delicious. She ate them, along with her family, for weeks on end, until everyone was too sick to continue…
“No.”
Anna stopped abruptly. She pressed her lips together, trapping the cheerful melody within her mouth as if it might escape and affect that frightened tone. It was a girl's voice, young, somewhat high-pitched and completely unfamiliar. She leaned against the wall, trying to catch the sound. It was coming from the door next door, the one where the throne room was and where her parents now resided. It was partially open.
“No, no, no.”
Anna felt her stomach sink. She made out the voice better: it was a few years older than her, perhaps around eleven, although it sounded much younger because of the sheer fear it contained. Fear and betrayal. A mixture of both.Who could it be? What was happening?
"Don't do that," the voice pleaded. It was shrill, weak, and sounded like it was in shock.
Anna felt every fiber of her being shrink as she heard the words.Who? Who? Who? Who?
"Ah, Elsa," came a voice: feminine, maternal, low, sad and deep. A voice accustomed to murmuring sweet stories and singing happy ballads. Now it was so resolute, so cold, that Anna felt something inside her die slightly. Mommy? “We have to do this.”
"It's for your own good, my dear," another voice came. Masculine, authoritative, wise. Anna's father seemed like a ghost from the other side. She felt a shiver at the trembling certainty that shook his voice. "We're doing it for the kingdom."
Anna could no longer contain herself. Waiting. There should have been more conversation — a conversation that, years later, she would fervently insist Elsa share with her (she needed to torture herself with the knowledge of her parents' last words), to which she responded with one of the coldest and most absent looks the queen had ever given anyone, and nothing more.
Her tiny feet revealed her before the open door, the scene before her eyes paralyzing her for seconds that would remain in her mind forever. A girl—much younger than her prediction from the voice had said, six years old—was kneeling on the cold floor, arms crossed over herself and crawling backward like a wounded animal. She had snow-white hair, colorless skin, and the coldest, saddest eyes Anna had ever seen. Her arms were injured, and she was crying—but not in a tragic way that would elicit pity, or in a dignified way that would give contemplation—no: her crying was ugly, snotty, sobbing, and mad. There was a certainty in that expression, in that face, that Anna would never be able to forget.
The parents both stood before the unknown girl. Anna felt the faint shadow of excitement that always came over her when she gazed at them—both dressed in velvet robes, both wearing the crowns of rulers and the heavy jewels they occasionally gave her to play with—which vanished and was replaced by horror at what they were doing. The father had his sword drawn, and he held it in an attacking position, high above the girl's head, ready to behead her.
"Ah", Anna squealed.
One second. She would never forget it. The three of them looked in her direction. She was only focused on her parents—she would never be able to remember how Elsa had reacted to seeing her younger sister so close for the first time. Her father's eyes clouded over completely, confused, then shifted to understanding and a remorse that still made Anna's heart ache years later. Her mother seemed surprised, then lost and horrified, as if she realized—she clung tightly to this vision—that what they were about to do was wrong and wished to stop it. Her lips even seemed to move for a second, and then…
Anna felt such a strong wave of cold that she fell to her knees.Where did this come from?"Why?" every instinct in her body asked, trembling incessantly. Her eyes instantly searched for her parents.Heat. Heat…
A scream escaped her mouth. A scream so loud, so shrill, so horrified that it still caught her by surprise every time she recalled it in detail. She stood up, agitated, trembling—from both effects—and ran toward them.
Her parents had been turned to solid ice, paralyzed in the attack position they had been in before. Anna murmured her mother's name repeatedly as she hugged her. She felt the touch so cold it was almost burning; she didn't care. Her world, she remembered, seemed to be collapsing, the magenta ink of the fairy tale dissolving into a surreal and unbelievable reality.
The crying prevented her from seeing properly. Cold. Anna remembered her body protesting. She moved away from her parents—with a complaint, she didn't want to—taking a step back. A chill ran through her shoulders; her knees trembled violently. She felt the ice seeping into her bones, solid and sharp, and wished she would perish.
A light touch on her spine made her jump. She recoiled hysterically, running behind her mother and hugging her waist to get away from the girl. She remembered finding her terrifying, her touch so devoid of warmth that it made her tremble inside, her shocked expression covered in a layer of ice (now, years later, Anna wondered if she hadn't cried, the ice being the solid moisture on her skin, after having solidified her parents forever). There was something frightened in her eyes; something deformed, like an animal that, at the moment of slaughter, had simply risen to run and escape without knowing that this was possible.
Four-year-old Anna, however, had been unable to grasp the nuance, and only saw the monstrosity before her eyes as something alive and real. This monstrosity—this vivid, personal fear of Elsa's presence—would remain in her psyche for all time afterward. Years and years passed before she allowed her sister to touch her even once.
“Monster” She remembered whispering, filled with fear and remorse. “Aberration.”
The insults caused the sister to take her eyes off her parents, where they were focused on a distressing spell that seemed never to end, and stare at her younger sister. Anna shrank back, hugging her mother's hip tighter. Elsa looked surprised, analyzing the sister she had rarely seen attentively—the messy red hair, the prominent freckles, the blue eyes that were twins to hers, only more vivid and fiercer, the flushed skin—and whose introduction had probably been killing their parents.
Elsa shook her head and looked out the window, beginning to tremble. Anna looked too, simply because she didn't want the monster to finish off the rest of the family. Shouts echoed in the courtyard. Snow. It was snowing. The sky, so promising, blue and shimmering as it had seemed before, had now become a gray and somber mass, as dark as the night itself. Anna watched as the ripe strawberries of before were spoiled, the snow filling the cart.
The monster—that's how she referred to Elsa in her head during that absurd moment—clenched her fingers, as if to stop the trembling. She turned to Anna, taking a step forward, to grab her.
Anna took a sharp step back, clutching her mother and father even tighter.I won't let her take me. I won't. If you want to do something to me, freeze me for yourself.
Elsa paused, analyzing the situation—Anna's fear of her, the snow, the people, her frozen parents—as if in a dream. She pressed her lips together, glancing one last small glance at the courtyard before running toward the door. Anna remembered the people down below and considered following her, before feeling something at her feet.
She looked down. It was a solid block of ice, like the one her parents were made of now. She began to tremble. She tried to move her legs from side to side. Nothing. She was trapped, eternally placed in that space next to her parents. Anna began to cry. The situation was terrible, ridiculous, and… terrifying.
She cried like that, embraced by the solid bodies of her parents and listening to the action unfold around the world, for long enough to lose touch with reality and, without any ceremony, fall asleep. She woke up in a dusty bed in a guest room, feeling warm for the first time in hours, with the first statue-like servant she would see — Kai, transformed by the touch of her sister — tending to her hypothermia.
He saw her with her eyes open—frightened, trembling, confused—and something passed over his frozen brow. At that time, Elsa's magic, which hadn't even left childhood yet, wasn't so definitive, so statue-creatures could still interact. That's what Kai did, setting aside the warm compress and caressing the face of a frightened Anna.
The ice didn't seem so oppressive at first; perhaps because it was someone caring. Kai smiled sadly.
"Good morning, Princess Anna," was the first thing she heard in the morning after.
— — —
“Princess, would you like to wear this today?”
Vantaksova held in her stiff fingers a golden robe that had belonged to Anna's mother, Iduna, some time ago. One of the disadvantages of growing up in an isolated environment surrounded by snow was the lack of resources regarding clothing, which was limited. For a long time, she had been content to use the clothes already available in the palace—the abundant dresses, the ruffled skirts, the bright colors—while she went through childhood.
Those fabrics were her companions for a long and confusing time, serving as costumes throughout her life. Before or after.
The real problem arose when childhood ended, and Anna began to grow. To grow incredibly fast, as if she were kicked from one stage of life to another without a parachute. And her clothes began to look increasingly distant, like doll's artifacts.
Elsa gave her two solutions to the problem: she asked the statue-servants who usually performed household chores to use the discarded fabrics to make new, more suitable clothes, or she offered to create outfits made of snow that would work for Anna. She refused the second, except as gifts — the clothes her sister made for her always seemed extravagant and too cold, causing sores on her skin — but she had to make do with the first, gliding through the palace in dresses that looked like patchwork shells for the first few years of adolescence.
Eventually, she began venturing into her mother's closets, finding the clothes made by servants ugly and unsuitable for her increasingly bipolar teenage tastes. Her mother's clothes fit her greatly — though perhaps she was a little thinner than the queen at the time — and their textures were far more beautiful and worthy of taste, as well as comfortable. Slowly, trying not to irritate her sister, she began moving her parents' things into her own room and trying them on. Elsa never noticed; or, if she did, she didn't care — Anna also made a point of not wearing anything in front of her.
“Lady?”
She blinked slightly. The statue of Vantaksova stood there, still holding up her robe before her tired eyes. She had been lost in thought — a mundane occurrence when her interaction with the outside world was so limited.
"Yes, I'll use them," she said, raising her arms so they could remove her clothes. They did so with the efficiency that came from years of work, their frozen fingers so accustomed they barely touched her skin. The still-frightened maid seemed to have adjusted herself, now hurrying to obey like the other two.
Meanwhile, Anna stared at the new acquisition in the servants' catalog in the room. The sassy girl two — couldn't stop referring to her, in her thoughts, as girl, although she knew it was factually incorrect from the moment Elsa solidified her soul — still had a shocked expression on her face, trying to fight the spell, as if she could break it with willpower alone.
Anna helped her.
"What did you think of my room?" she asked, as the three of them tied ribbons on the back of the robe. It was excessively elaborate, the kind of garment that would only have belonged to a queen long ago. "Come on, come on. Don't be silent like a bird without a tongue. I hate it when people clearly have a lot to say and don't say it for no reason."
She stared at her with a look that oscillated between indignation and pure surprise, feeling her lips, now molded from ice, capable of moving. For a moment, a spark flashed in her eyes — a spark of violence, and Anna thought she would try to leap up and strangle her — but it vanished easily. Instead, the new statue straightened up, testing the weight of her new tongue.
“You and that… that one monster— she spat the word — they have no idea what awaits them. Troops full of men, raising weapons, in formation…. All coming towards Arendelle, all led by my father and my brothers, kings and princes. They will end this winter and free the people from the curse your sister placed here, and then… they will flay you like the creature you are.”
The sentence was uttered with surprising breathlessness. The statue-maid straightened up and fell silent, her jaw returning to its place with a characteristic creaking sound of solid ice.
Anna stood still for a moment, feeling the weight of the words. She visualized the images for a moment, like an apprehensive painting, feeling a sliver of the same panic that had gripped her in the throne room. But the last sentence caught her by surprise with even greater intensity.
“My sister certainly isn't one of those creatures. She's kind and loving," she said calmly. Almost too calmly. She no longer felt the shocks of the frozen hands against her skin. Her robe was already tied. "And nothing you do will change that."
The girl — princess, supposedly from a kingdom that possessed enough weaponry to pose a threat against Anna's sister — looked at her with profound shock. She is kind and loving to those who deserve it, Anna thinks, believing she should have added it. Then recalls her parents — their solid demonstrations in the middle of a room eternally displaying sins—and nods.
She does not allow the other to continue, however.
“My sister would never let anything attack us,” she says, jumping out of bed. It was true. Elsa prioritized their external safety with such intensity that ignored everything else. “So I would fear for your family instead. And don't say anything anymore to no one.”
She didn't mind listening to the darkly satisfying sound of the other's jaw closing, ice narrowing against ice. Instead, she asked the other frozen maids to return to their corners, like dolls pressed against the wall, and lay down.
She pulled the blankets up to her chin, settling into the warmth. It was comfortable there. A miracle in that frozen, yet existing, universe.
Elsa had done it, just as she had done with most of the palace rooms, which began to freeze during the first days of turmoil. Occasionally, Anna wondered how her sister had managed to get through such moments: the witch hunt, the death of their parents, the testing of her own powers, all alone, because her younger sister and the rest of the world were terrified or trying to destroy her. Sometimes she forgot that her sister was just over seven years old when… the accident had happened, and somehow, incredibly, they had emerged triumphant, with a kingdom of hiding for both of them where no one could find them and hurt themselves or Anna.
How did he feel about mom and dad?, Anna wondered, already falling asleep. Unlike her in the first months and years, she had never seen Elsa circling the throne room in the same way she did. And, as let very clear earlier, disliked the ritual that the younger sister did in seeing them all the time.
She had probably put her staunch philosophy into practice from quite early on: pretending they didn't exist, and whenever she mentioned them—that Anna, full of unspoken words and with an anguish in her chest that threatened to consume her every time.
She felt the touch of death once again when falling asleep.