Anna followed her mother’s handwriting like a hungry bird trailing crumbs. Crunching on her crackers, she read of shape-shifters who lived with herds of reindeer; talking trees; draugs; and boys who were no larger than a thumb. There were pages and pages of the unknown language, and every so often an illustration accompanied the symbols. Anna wondered if Kristoff would know anything about the runes, or if he had ever come across anything in the Valley of the Living Rock that might help. Were they runes of the mountain trolls? Or something else?
Her mother seemed to have skipped translating the pages with the more creepy-looking sketches. Anna flipped past a sketch of a man seemingly screaming in agony, then one of another man lying on a stone table as blue smoke curled from his head and a troll stood over him with its arms held high. Finally, she landed on a page that, based on its illustrations, seemed to detail the Saga of Aren.
The physical features of the legendary hero were much easier to see in this book than they had been in the portrait Elsa had uncovered. Aren had a shaggy head of yellow hair and a bright blond beard with a few skinny braids tucked into it. His face was more square than it was round, and his hooked nose put Anna in mind of an eagle. Though there were only runes on the page—no translation—Anna recognized some of his more famous exploits. In the corner was a sketch of the waterfall whom Aren had tricked into helping him breathe underwater. And just to the right of that, a sketch of the sun, each ray a delicate sword with a yellow diamond in its pommel, just like Aren’s famed Revolute Blade. And in the last corner, far right and down, lounged a scrawled dragon. Anna turned the page, and cringed.
A sketch of a wolf, so realistic that Anna half thought she could feel its hot breath blasting from the pages, snarled up at her. Her mother seemed to have only gotten to the very beginning of the page, and had translated only a single word: Nattmara. Anna frowned. Yet another one of those once-known-now-forgotten words from her childhood. In frustration, she flipped the page. She’d had enough of not knowing—and enough, as a five-year-old, of that scary recurring nightmare, thank you very much.
The next installment that made her pause her was a recipe. It was a loose page, simply tucked into the binding, but it had been neatly titled in her mother’s handwriting: MAKE DREAMS COME TRUE. There was another word scrawled in the margins in the same handwriting: SPELL? Anna’s fingers traced the word spell. Not a recipe—magic.
She had never known anyone other than Elsa to be able to use magic before, and Elsa certainly didn’t incant words or spells when she created and manipulated snow and ice. The magic was part of Elsa. It ran within her. Shortly after their reunion, Anna had asked Elsa what it felt like when she twirled her hands. Elsa had described it as an overwhelming emotion, a feeling that would eventually grow so big it had to find release in some way.
“Like when you want to cry but you hold on to it because you don’t want others to see?” Anna had asked.
“Yes,” Elsa had said, “but not just crying. Sometimes, it’s the feeling of clamping in a giant laugh in a time you’re supposed to be quiet, like in the chapel. It seems that if I listen to the feeling, to the magic, and release it, I can manage it.”
A poem in a book didn’t seem like the kind of magic Elsa possessed, but that didn’t necessarily mean these words would not hold any power. These words. This spell. Excitement trilled through Anna.
The more she looked at the words, the more certain she felt that everything they needed was right here, in their parents’ research. She just wished she knew what knowledge lay behind the untranslated sections. Anna squinted at the symbols, as though by simply staring at them she would come to understand. But no knowledge came, only heavy eyelids.
She wondered if Kristoff had found out anything helpful on his trek to the valley. She wondered if SoYun was still out in the field, trying to keep her cattle awake through the night. But most of all, she wondered what her parents would have done in this situation.
“Anna and Elsa, always lean on each other for help,” Father had said. He’d have wanted her to tell Elsa about this spell, but first, she just needed to rest her eyes. Anna’s thoughts slipped over and past each other like darting fish as her eyelids drooped lower, and lower, and lower….She needed to fix the Blight….
The court of Royaume was just as beautiful as Anna had always dreamed, and she knew she was dreaming—not only because she’d never been to Royaume, but also because everything felt too perfect and fragile to be real. Besides, Elsa would never be caught dancing in real life, and there she was, spinning on the dance floor, arms flung wide as if she were trying to embrace the chandeliered ceiling above them.
Anna grinned. “You look like a tree caught in a gale!” she shouted over the high song of violins and flutes.
“And you look like you’re dizzy,” Elsa said.
Anna shook her head. “Dizzy? Why—oh!”
Before she could finish her question, Elsa grabbed her hand and began to twirl her, her diaphanous white skirts fanning around her like a skein of sparkling snow.
Anna threw back her head and laughed, imagining what a sight they must make on the dance floor. Elsa, dressed all in white spangled with pearl seeds, was the very embodiment of winter, while Anna’s headdress and gold skirts helped her masquerade as summer.
The grand ballroom blurred around her, seeming to turn into streaks of paint. Her head began to pound, but it was so rare to see Elsa silly and carefree that she didn’t want to tell her to stop. Instead, Anna closed her eyes, trying to hold on to this moment, even if it was only pretend…but was it?
She was feeling really dizzy now. No matter how much fun Elsa was having, it was time to stop.
“Hey, Elsa? That’s enough!” Anna opened her eyes and gasped.
Her sister was no longer twirling her.
Instead, a tall stranger in coattails and a silver wolf mask stood where Elsa had been.
Anna stumbled to a halt. “Pardon me.” She removed her hand. “I need to find my sister.”
The dancer bowed, the silver wolf mask nearly tipping off his nose. “As you wish, Princess Anna.”
The blood in her veins turned to ice. Anna knew that voice. It was a voice she didn’t want to hear again. She peered uncertainly through the dark eyeholes of the mask. “Prince—Prince Hans?”
“The very same.” A diamond ring suddenly materialized in his hand. “Your sister said I should give this to you when I ask for your hand.”
“My—my hand?”
Hans grabbed her wrist and jammed the ring onto her finger. “Your hand in marriage, of course. Your sister has given her blessing. She has no use for you.”
Anna yanked her hand away. “I don’t believe that,” she said, craning her neck to see if she could spot her sister in the glittering hall. But no one was there. The decorations, the musicians, the dancers…all had vanished, leaving her completely alone with the prince of the Southern Isles—her villainous almost-husband, who had tricked her and the rest of the kingdom before Anna uncovered his awful plans to kill Elsa and take over Arendelle.
Hans laughed, an awful sound, made worse by the way it turned up into a howl at the end. As Anna watched, the silver hair of his wolf mask rippled in the draft as if it were real fur, and his nose elongated, becoming more and more snoutlike.