As she raised the candle higher, the sphere of light widened to reveal the rest of what they had found: a windowless room filled from flagstone floor to vaulted ceiling with sparkling shelves.
The shelves had been carved into the stone walls, and unlike the rest of the castle, these walls hadn’t been papered or painted over or decorated with rosemaling. They were left bare, and the tiny crystals embedded in the rock seemed to wink a friendly greeting as the candle’s light passed over them. It wasn’t just the rock that glittered underneath a layer of dust, but also the many strange and wondrous objects that sat on the shelves: a gleaming pair of silver scales, schematics of what looked like a dam, glass beakers and bottles filled with fascinating specimens of flora and fauna suspended in brackish water.
And there were books. They spiraled upward into the rafters of the ceiling, the only surface that had been painted and resembled a sky alive with the northern lights along with familiar constellations: Ulf the Wolf, Frigg the Fisherman, and many others. There were wide books with thick leather spines, tall books with thin spines, books with yellow pages, books with ragged pages, squat books, medium-sized books, and tiny books no bigger than a thumb. Anna’s mouth dropped open. No matter how different they looked, each book had the possibility of containing the answers that she so desperately needed.
Olaf teetered forward into the room. “Oooh, more books! Secret books!”
“Secret books…” Anna mused, and her initial excitement dimmed. She knew she should have been more excited at the discovery of the secret room, but something about the secretness of it all pinched, leaving her feeling slightly bruised. She slowly made her way to the shelves. She wondered who had used this room. Arendelle’s royal family had lived in the castle for decades—ever since her grandfather King Runeard had overseen its construction when her father was just a boy. Perhaps this room had been a place of solace for a long-ago aunt or uncle.
Anna skimmed the titles. Some were written in languages that she didn’t know but recognized from her research for the grand tour. Others were in indecipherable symbols. But the ones that she could read made her heart backflip: Hulda’s Hideout; Scrolls of Trolls; Of Nightmares and Nixies; Quests of Yore; Sorcerer’s Craft and Games; Legends of Magic; Deciphering Magic…
Magic. Anna’s thoughts pulsed with the thump of her heart. Magic. Magic. Magic!
Magic was not unknown in Arendelle. After all, Elsa had magical abilities that no one in the kingdom had ever seen before. Or at least, no one alive had ever seen. In some of the old stories that were favorites of Queen Iduna’s, magic abounded. She’d told tales about tablecloths that could produce banquet-sized feasts in the blink of an eye, and boots that could travel seven leagues in a single step—of shape-shifters who lived in an enchanted forest, and stones that could turn lead into gold…but those were made up. Make believe. Pretend.
However, in the last three years, Anna had seen incredible things, impossible things, come to be. A sister who could be one with the earth and sky and build ice palaces with a few breaths and some nimble flicks of her wrist. A queen who could harness the cold. If Elsa could exist, as Anna very much knew she did, then why couldn’t other impossibilities exist as well?
Why couldn’t there be a spell of sorts, or an enchantment, that could fix whatever was happening with the Blight? Sure, Anna was hoping to find something in this room to help with the problem at hand, but after that, who knew? Maybe there was knowledge somewhere in there that could stop horseshoes from ever rusting, bread from ever going stale, or candles from ever melting down to stubs and going out. She’d be a hero.
“Aha.” Anna pulled a thick volume from a shelf and plopped it down onto a bare worktable in the center of the room alongside the candle. “This one might have something helpful.” She tapped at the title and read it out loud to Olaf. “‘The Alchemist’s Almanac: A Guide to the Care and Keeping of Fields, Accurate Accounting of the Weather, and Wheat.’”
Olaf looked down his pair of ice spectacles at Anna. “Not exactly my genre.”
Anna smiled.
“Ooh, this one seems cryptic and dense!” Olaf said, tugging out another thick book. “Here! You might like it, too!” He held it up for Anna to see. Its cover was a beautiful brown with black lettering. The title wasn’t written in an alphabet Anna recognized, but as she squinted at the book, a forgotten memory—more of an impression of sound and color, really—coalesced: The soft fabric of her mother’s dress beneath her cheek as Anna snuggled into her lap. A warm pressure at her side—Elsa, who’d climbed up to join. Words, low and gentle and hazy as her mother read out loud from a book, its cover the color of Anna’s new riding boots. Lullabies about secret white rivers and Earth Giants and lost legends of yore…Could it be?
Setting the almanac back on the shelf, Anna cracked open the new book and saw the title again written in runes. Someone had written next to them, in pencil, the words Secrets of the Magic Makers.
Anna’s breath caught.
It was her mother’s handwriting.
Anna would know it anywhere.
This book. This room: her mother had known about it; she had been here. These books and objects about magic were hers. Suddenly, Anna’s chest felt too small for her heart. Or maybe her heart was too big for her chest. Secrets. This castle was full of secrets she had not known—was not allowed to know. Questions rattled through her: Why was Anna always shut out? Why had her mother collected all these books about magic? And…did Elsa already know about this room? Like when they were children, was Anna the last to know again?
“Anna?” She felt a gentle pat on her shoulder. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
At Olaf’s words, Anna felt her ribcage loosen, just a tad, but it was enough that she could breathe again. Olaf had been the friend of both sisters; he was a little bit of Elsa and a little bit of Anna, created by them together. And looking around, Anna didn’t think Elsa knew about this secret room. After all, Elsa had been so good about filling Anna in on everything she had missed during the time when her head had been under the troll’s persuasion, when she’d been made to forget Elsa’s magic even existed. Elsa didn’t keep things from Anna, not anymore.
“I’m not, Olaf.” Anna flung back a braid. “This book…it was my mother’s.”
“Oh.” Olaf peered down through his spectacles. “Her reading selection appears to have been very specific. I’d rather check out this book.” He waved a slender black volume in his hand. “It’s about dangerous shape-shifters living in a cursed forest.”
“Why don’t you give it a read?” Anna asked. “Who knows—maybe it’ll mention cursed animals, too.”
“Holler if you need me!” Olaf plopped down at the worktable to page through it.
Meanwhile, Anna’s eyes prickled. Her mother’s book. She flipped through the rest of the thick pages. The runes looked like meaningless constellations, but the translations next to them had been made by her mother, and she would follow her mother’s footprints, or fingerprints, as they were, anywhere.
Secrets of the Magic Makers seemed to be a book of old tales, brief histories, and maps showing the way to the Valley of the Living Rock, but also a glossary of sorts, naming all kinds of creatures that only existed in lore. Spirits of wind, water, and fire. Earth Giants. Nattmara. Huldrefólk. They all sounded so familiar, but it was like Anna was trying to stare through a bedsheet hung out to dry. At some point in her life, she’d known what these bedtime-story words had meant in crystal-clear detail, but now she could not make out any more than the slightest shape. Sadness crept over her.