“May their souls rest in peace,” said Olina, closing her eyes and tilting her face to the heavens. Others did the same.
“No,” Elsa repeated. Her whole body began to shake. Her fingers began to tingle again. She had the sudden feeling she was about to burst into a million pieces, exploding in fragments of light. Lord Peterssen reached for her, but she backed away, trying to disappear. Kai held up a thin piece of black silk. He and Gerda hung it over the portrait of her parents in the hallway.
Her parents couldn’t be…dead. They were her only family. Without them, she truly was alone. Her breath became ragged and her heart beat so fast she thought it would leap out of her chest. Every sound she heard was magnified a thousand times. “No!” Her fingers were burning now. “No!” She turned and ran, not stopping till she reached her room.
Elsa fell through the doors with such force they slammed shut behind her. She landed on the circular rug and didn’t have the strength to move. Instead, she curled up into a ball and stared at the pink wallpaper where a portrait of her as a child stared back at her. That girl was smiling and happy. She had a family.
Now she had none.
The burning sensation in her fingers was growing stronger, her heart pulsing so fast she felt like she could hear it. Tears began to stream down her face, wetting the top of her collar and reaching her hot chest. Shaking, Elsa forced herself to stand up, looking for someone—anyone—to talk to. No one was there. She had closed herself off once again. Elsa went to her hope chest. Her hand shook as she brushed the green wooden lockbox under the quilt. She rummaged around until she found what she was looking for: the small one-eyed handmade penguin she had confided in as a girl—Sir JorgenBjorgen. She held the penguin with shaking hands, but couldn’t put her thoughts into words. Mama and Papa were gone.
I might die of boredom. Wasn’t that what she’d thought earlier that day? How could she have been so selfish? She clutched Sir JorgenBjorgen so tightly she felt like he might disintegrate in her burning hands. They started to shake so badly she couldn’t hang on to him. She threw the doll across the room and he landed on her bed.
Alone. Alone. Alone.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
She closed her eyes. She felt a scream rising inside her. It was so primal she knew it would rattle the whole castle, but she didn’t care. It gurgled to the top of her throat, threatening to overtake her, until it finally did, and Elsa screamed so hard she thought she might never stop. Her hands went from hot to burning cold as they flew out in front of her. Something inside her opened, like a chasm that could never be closed again. Opening her eyes, she saw it, unbelievably, form in the air in front of her fingers.
Ice.
It shot clear across the room, hitting the opposite wall and crawling up to the ceiling. Terrified and still sobbing, Elsa jumped back in fear as the ice continued to grow. It crackled as it moved under her feet, spreading along the floor till it climbed up the other walls, too.
What was happening?
The ice was coming from inside her. It didn’t make sense, yet she knew it was true. She’d caused this to happen. What was happening?
Magic.
She’d heard Papa use that word when he and Mama had been arguing. Had they been talking about her?
Elsa sank down along the nearest wall, collapsing in grief.
Alone. Alone. Alone.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
More and more ice shot out as she choked back sobs. Was her heartbreak causing this? Had her parents known she was capable of such strange magic? Or was this something she had been born with and didn’t know she possessed? She’d never been more frightened in her entire life. Without her parents, there was no one she trusted enough even to ask. She needed them now more than ever before.
She banged her head on the wall and closed her eyes. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Papa, Mama, please don’t leave me here alone.”
Anna couldn’t remember the last time she’d crawled back into her bed when the sun was still shining. Papa and Ma had insisted she retire for a spell. She’d been up late the night before, assembling a traditional Arendelle wedding cake the Larsen family had paid her handsomely for. She rarely made that particular type of cake because it was so time-consuming—between the icing and all the layers that needed to be baked, it took hours—but the end result was worth it. Anna knew that the Larsens’ daughter, who was getting married later today, was going to love it. So it was with a grateful, sleepy sigh that she pulled up her quilt, fluffed her pillow, and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t fall asleep right away. Her mind wandered back to the cake. She pictured the Larsens raving about it to their guests. Guests who had traveled from Arendelle and would go back to the kingdom talking about Anna’s work. Soon the king and queen would hear of her baking. Maybe they’d request she bake for them at the castle. Wouldn’t her parents and Freya be proud? There was no way they’d hold her back from moving to Arendelle if they knew the king and queen were requesting her work. She could just see herself making snowman cookies for the royal family. The cookies immediately made her think of her aunt.
Anna hoped Freya would be back from her travels soon and that when she returned, she’d convince Ma and Papa to let Anna visit Arendelle. Her mother kept stressing that it wasn’t a definite. “Freya works a great deal. We have to find the right time for you to go, if you can go at all.” Her mother never stopped worrying! Neither did Papa. He talked about driving her down the mountain himself and waiting nearby in case she wanted to leave early. She couldn’t remember the last time Papa had left Harmon. She tried convincing them that they should close the shop and all go together for a few days, but Papa wouldn’t hear of it. “We don’t even know if you will be able to go,” he’d said. But Anna knew in her heart of hearts that Arendelle was in her future. She could feel it in every inch of her being.
When Anna finally drifted off, she didn’t dream of snowmen. This dream was unpleasant. Anna felt cold, like she was sitting in a block of ice, and she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Snow was swirling all around as if she were in a blizzard, but the weather didn’t seem like a regular storm. It was filled with a darkness that threatened to swallow her whole. Even worse, she sensed that someone out there desperately needed her to find them.
Anna tried to fight the weather to get to them, turning into the pelting ice and wind to search, but she couldn’t see the person. She could hear wailing, but it was so far in the distance she didn’t know where it was coming from. All she knew was that she needed to find this person before it was too late. Something told her if she followed her heart and trusted her instincts, she would.
“Is anyone there?” Anna cried over the wind, but no one answered her. She had never felt more alone. She took a step forward and plunged off the edge of a snowy cliff.
Anna woke up gasping for air. “Help! She needs help!” She clutched her chest as if it hurt. “It was just a dream,” she repeated over and over. But it hadn’t felt like a dream. It felt real.
She needed to get out of that room.
Anna threw back the covers and slid into her shoes. The sun was lower in the sky than it had been earlier. Her parents would soon be finishing up for the day. Maybe a walk would do her good.