Song of a Fallen Kingdom

by Nina Windia

'A girl who cannot become a princess is doomed to become a witch.'

-Revolutionary Girl Utena

Sown from sparkling snowflakes, the snow blankets the land like a death shroud.

In her impenetrable ice palace on the mountain, Elsa sits on her frozen throne surveying her cold kingdom. Her gown is spun out of crystalline cobwebs; her hair, studded with snowflakes, hangs free. For the first time in her life, she is free.

This blizzard will suffocate her kingdom, she knows. She does not care. Let it, she thinks, wildly. Let it bury them all. She mourns none but one.

The name escapes from her lips into the cold air in a cloud of vapour.

"Anna."

Elsa's hands feel heavy. They hurt. Her father had these cuffs made, especially for her, for when her powers first became out of control. But that was several years ago. Now, the metal bites, tight around her wrists. It chafes her skin red raw when she shifts. The cuffs are so tight she has no choice but to curl her fingers into her palms, so tight the nails dig in.

Elsa is dreaming. Whenever she dreams, she ends up here, back in her cell. And there is always the same visitor.

Keys jangle. And the heavy reinforced door keens open.

Two weeks. Two weeks she's spent deciding what to say to him. Her confusion becoming anger, finally becoming fury: as hot as a white-hot flame in the base of her stomach.

Yet, when she sees her father's face, all Elsa can feel is a kind of desperate relief.

"Father! You're here." She stands; the chains pull; the cuffs dig into her wrists. She bites down the pain.

Words, in her mouth feel like cotton wool after a fortnight of silence, her tongue unwieldy and swollen. They tumble from her mouth: "Where have you been? I've waited. I knew something must have happened to you, but the guards wouldn't talk to me. They didn't get the order to let me go. I told them I had my powers under control. I know you wouldn't just disappear, father. Father."

Something is wrong. The King sits beside her. He's far too calm.

Her powers are becoming uncontrollable, he tells her.

She's becoming too dangerous, he tells her.

From now on, he and the Queen have decided she's to stay here. For her own good. This is what he tells her.

"H-here? Forgive me, Father, I don't understand…"

"We've told the staff you'll be leaving on a trip to the Summer Isles. So you can stay here, safe and protected."

"But…"

"It's only until you learn to control it, Elsa. How would you feel, if you accidentally hurt one of the staff? Or Anna, again?"

Elsa swallows. Her throat is dry.

"Besides, we can make you more comfortable here… it won't be so bad."

She wants to refuse. To fight back. To tell him she can't live like this. But then the King puts his hand on Elsa's hair. Human touch. How long has it been since someone touched her? And all she can do is lean into his embrace.

"Okay," she whispers.

"Good girl Elsa."

He asks her, is there anything she wants? New books? A new dress?

"I want…"

What does she want? More than anything?

"I want to see Anna."

It's no good. She knows its no good before the words leave her lips.

She won't be able to see Anna ever again.

For her own good. Her own good.

She digs her nails, deeper, into her palms.

When Elsa wakes, tangled up in sheets spun from ice like a sailor in a hammock, she's drawn blood.

They come, as Elsa knew they would. The little matchstick men with their wooden weapons, their cries of, "Witch!", "Monster!" echoing up the mountainside. Here to stuff her back into her cage. Or maybe this time, they'll kill her. In the books she read with Anna as children, that's what you did with monsters.

With one sweep of her hand, she blows them off the mountainside.

If they want a monster, let her show them one!

When Elsa descends the icy stairs to the parlour, she finds someone collapsed on the ground.

Another assassin, sent to kill the witch.

A jagged spike of ice bursts from her hand. Gripping it tight, she approaches the girl. She grabs her cloak and pulls, twisting her onto her back. She raises the spike, to plunge it into her heart.

It falls from her hand. Clinks onto the ground.

The girl is her sister, Anna.

How many years has it been since I last saw your face?

On a bed of ice, she lays. Face ashen, lips bloodless. The sister she thought she'd never see again.

Elsa fumbles with the sticks she's collected. Whatever she does, she can't get it to burn. There is a technique. Anna showed her once, when they were children. But now, it's long forgotten, buried, like everything else, by ice and snow.

"Elsa?" The voice is a murmur of leaves in the forest. Elsa's head darts up. Anna is gazing at her. Blue quivering lips. "Is that really you?"

"Anna…"

"They said you'd died, Elsa. That you'd come down with a fever. We had a funeral and everything."

"I… died?" says Elsa.

"Years ago. But they never let anyone see your body. When everything froze over, people started to say it was your ghost. That you'd come back to curse us…. I had to see for myself. You're not a ghost… are you Elsa?"

Is she? In her dress of ice, with her white hair and pale skin, she must look half a ghost.

In her empty ice palace filled only with echoes, is that all she really is?

Something touches her hand. Anna. Elsa's first instinct is to pull away. But for a half-frozen girl, Anna has a strong grip.

"You've no idea how much I've missed you."

Elsa recounts what truly happened; the years in her cell, their father's visits becoming less frequent, until they stopped altogether; years of solitude. Until she couldn't take it anymore. Anna grips her hand tighter.

"This has all been a terrible mistake. But Elsa, Mama and Papa are gone now. We can put things right. You can lift the winter, and we'll return to Arendelle. Together."

"Anna… I can't."

The storm is a part of her as much she is of it. It's her anger, her bitterness. Things that cannot be so easily erased.

"You can't?"

More firmly. "I can't."

"Then… I'll stay with you."

"What?" says Elsa.

"I won't leave you alone again. So I'll stay with you."

Something shifts under Elsa's skin. The first sign of life for so many years. A stirring of a frozen heart.

Anna's eyes move to the fire Elsa failed to start. A quirk of a smile.

"You need to move your hands down. And do it faster."

What was it she use dot call her little sister? A million years ago? That's right.

"Show-off."

At first, a kind of distance. The sisters watch one another; wary, observing. What kind of person is she? They wonder. Anna wanted to speak to Elsa, but was worried about getting in her way. Elsa wanted to speak to Anna, but she had no idea how.

Elsa spends her days creating new rooms for the palace, filling them with icy furniture and marvellous sculptures. She does this, obsessively, room after room, till the palace devours the mountainside.

And Anna explores. Room after room. The palace seemed never-ending. She wanders through drawing rooms, complete with ice armchairs and bookcases with no books, through ballrooms with frozen buffets and sparkling chandeliers. At the end of the hall, a bathroom with claw-footed ice tub. All immaculate, shining, pointless. Anna explores Elsa's doll house with a cold wonder in her heart.

The huge loneliness; the long empty halls. There is a kind of comfort in it.

Out the window, snow falls unceasingly. The clouds close the sky like a casket.

That evening, Anna asks her, "Will you stop the blizzard?"

Elsa replies: "I can't."

Now she has a guest, Elsa creates servants. Living creatures, carved out of ice and snow. Anna thinks they look like the snowman they made as children, Olaf. However, they do not speak, because they do not have mouths.

The servants descend into the valley and return with human necessities: blankets, warm clothes, food.

Let me know, Elsa says, if you need anything else.

"A warm bath would be great," says Anna.

Dutifully, the servants leave once gain. They return with buckets and buckets of hot water from the geysers. They even find an old tin bath. Anna watches as they prepare it for her. In a way, they remind her of the servants from home.

She starts to undo the buttons on her gown, and fumbles. Her fingers, Elsa sees, are shaking. The palace is too cold for her warm-blooded sister, she realises.

"Let me help," she says.

Anna lets her, and Elsa works her way down the buttons on the back of her dress. Perhaps she did this before, in another life. Anna slips the dress from her shoulders; lets it puddle around her feet. She steps out of it, and Elsa gazes at her; pale and naked, flecked with copper freckles like she's been flicked with a paintbrush. She shivers, and quickly now, Elsa helps her into the steaming water.

"Ah… that's better," Anna's voice is a warm, sated caress.

She sinks down into the silky water. Elsa watches. A kind of fascination.

Anna turns round in the bath, arms propped up on the side.

"Would you… help me wash my hair?"

Elsa nods.

She kneels at the head of the bath on a cushion of snow, her hands in Anna's hair. The smell of strawberry shampoo.

Perhaps she did this before, too. There's so much she's forgotten. Like human touch. Or kindness.

Elsa still creates rooms for the palace. She's made seven reading rooms already, even though they don't have any books.

Now, though, she has a visitor.

Sometimes, Anna stops wandering, comes to watch her sister. Elsa doesn't like to be disturbed, she's learning. Eventually, her endless twittering stops and she watches in silence. Words are losing their meaning.

Time is being lost.

Anna wonders what the day is, or even what month it is. But eventually, she forgets about this thing called 'time' altogether.

Every night, like clockwork she asks the same question: "Will you stop the blizzard?"

Always the same answer: "I can't."

Everything vanishes under the storm: towns; cities; memory.

Anna wanders the palace. It's hard to remember the life she led before she came here, if she even led one. Elsa builds more rooms. Anna watches. They speak without words. Elsa washes Anna's hair. She runs her hands across her scalp, leaving trails of stardust tingles. The world disappears.

And Anna tries to shake the feeling from her like a coating of snow. There was, after all, something she came here to do…

"Anna."

They need no more words than this. By the bathtub, Anna turns to let Elsa unbutton the back of her dress.

"Elsa?"

Her head down in concentration, unbuttoning. "Hm?"

"There's no way, is there, you can stop the blizzard." It's no longer even a question. Slowly, Elsa shakes her head. Heaven knows she's tried. Heaven knows.

"I thought not."

But now, something new happens. Before Elsa has finished, her dress half-hanging off, Anna turns. And she pulls Elsa into an embrace.

Elsa hesitates, and puts her arms around her sister. She's so warm. She holds her tight. She's reminded of when they were children, all the good times, when things shined.

Anna's warm breath against her neck. Something wet hits her shoulder.

"I'm so sorry Elsa."

And Anna slides the blade through her back.

Elsa chokes on her own blood. She slips to the ground. Anna catches her. Holds her.

Neither says anything; they are beyond words. Anna simply presses her lips to Elsa's forehead: a apology; confession; eulogy.

Around them, ice splinters. Cracks drive themselves up the walls. The palace begins to crumble.

Spring begins anew. The clouds open and sunshine spills in like liquid gold. Greenery begins to poke out through the drifts of snow.

Princess Anna rides to Arendelle to greet the shivering, starving survivors, clasping hold of their furs. When they see her, however, their spirits lift. They raise their voices.

"The witch," a man calls, "what of the witch?"

Sat atop her horse, Princess Anna looks down at her people, all gazing at her with hope lighting their eyes.

"She is dead."

The people cheer. They throw their hats, high. The arch minster shakes her hand with vigour. The front of Anna's gown is streaked with blood.

Her eyes burn, but the tears will not come.

/End.