Lady in White: Legacy

Chapter One

Mythology

"How am I supposed to do this? I can't . . . I can't live forever, knowing that everyone I love, everyone I let myself get close to is going to eventually die while I . . . while I keep existing . . ."

"I'm always going to be with you, Elsa. You'll never be able to get away from me. Ever!"

"Promise?"

"Promise . . ."

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

"Mmmhph!"

Anna Reinhart stretched out her fingers, her hand fumbling about as she reached for her cell phone on the bedside table. Eyes shut, her mind stubbornly refusing to exit the realm of sleep, she finally, at long last, managed to silence the damnable alarm emanating from her phone. "Uhh . . ." she groaned, willing her eyes to open against their will. "Just . . . five more . . . five more minutes . . ."

She stared blearily at her phone, disheveled light brown hair cascading over her brow as she yawned. Rubbing her eyes, she glanced at the clock in the top right corner of the device's display: 8:31 a.m.

"That . . . That's nice . . ." Anna mumbled, her eyes closing once more as her head tried its best to disappear into the comfortable recesses of her pillow.

"What?!"

Anna sat up, suddenly wide awake, her turquoise eyes no longer filled with the vestiges of sleep, but now wide, panic-filled. "Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no! Not again! Not today! Not today!"

The young woman felt her heart plummet to her stomach as she realized what had happened. She had set her alarm the night before, all right. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that she had inadvertently set it to her usual Saturday wake-up time. And the even bigger problem, Anna realized, was that it most certainly wasn't Saturday.

"Aaagggh!"

Stumbling out of bed, Anna raced to the bathroom. "Come on, Anna!" she told herself as she stood before the mirror above the sink, horrified by how exhausted her reflection appeared. "Class starts in 45 minutes! You can do this! You can do this!"

She showered faster than she had ever showered before, the adrenaline and the cold water—Great! Now the water heater's acting up again!—waking her faster than coffee ever could. Toweling herself off, she sprinted to her closet, throwing on the first combination of sort-of-matching dress clothes she could find. Toothbrush lodged in her cheek, she hopped about, struggling in vain to force her feet into a pair of heels that, if she were honest with herself, didn't really go with her outfit at all. Maybe Dr. Andersen won't notice?

Having applied her makeup and styled her hair in record time, Anna stood before her bathroom mirror, analyzing her appearance. The light blue, striped blouse she wore most definitely clashed with the pair of yellow and polka dot pants she had selected, and the pink scarf she had hastily tied about her throat was doing nothing to hide the discrepancy. Maybe . . . Maybe if I just—

She glanced at her phone, hoping against hope it wasn't as late as she thought it was. 9:10 a.m.

"Oh, no!"

Too panicked to even come close to thinking straight, Anna grabbed her bag from among the piles of papers and books upon the piece of furniture that could only be described as a table in the loosest sense of the word. She hurriedly glanced at her bag, making certain her laptop was inside, along with the presentation notes she had stayed up until two o'clock the night before preparing.

"I can make it," she whispered to herself, trying her best to sound more confident than she actually felt. "I can make it!"

Flying out the door of her small apartment, Anna took the stairs to the lobby three at a time. "Sorry!" she apologized hastily as she plowed past person after person. "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!"

The young woman staggered out onto the street, the late March sunlight blinding her momentarily. Fortunately, she reminded herself, the university was only a few blocks away. I can make it! she repeated to herself again and again as she walked as quickly as the increasingly uncomfortable heels of her shoes would allow. I can make it!

As she reached the crosswalk, she paused, noting that she was standing in a rather large puddle, that the entire street still contained the remnants of the rainstorm she had heard outside her apartment window in the wee hours of the morning. The light before her was red. Come on! Come on!

A large delivery truck turned right onto the street she was trying to cross, its massive tires sending the contents of the puddle that had formed in the night splashing up onto her. Every single inch of her, from her head to her toes, was now thoroughly drenched.

The young woman stood in stunned disbelief, water dripping from her now-disheveled hair into her eyes as onlookers chuckled quietly at her situation in spite of themselves. "Great!" she cried out to no one in particular, her eyes turned upward toward the now ever-so-blue skies of Arendelle. "Just . . . Just great!"

"Thank you, Mr. Svenson, for that . . . illuminating presentation."

Dr. Jan Andersen, professor of history and mythology at the University of Arendelle, rubbed his eyes, his horn-rimmed glasses moving upward onto his brow. The professor scribbled notes onto the pad of paper before him, notes he had no intention of actually reading when he assigned his students their grades for the assignment. God help me, he thought to himself, a sense of frustration and despair washing over him, however fleetingly. If this is the best the world's supposed brightest can do, I've wasted my entire career.

Glancing up, Andersen noticed that Svenson had returned to his seat, the young man already on his cell phone, his thumbs rapidly moving about the screen. No doubt he's texting someone that he "crushed" the assignment, Andersen grumbled to himself. Arrogant little son of a—

Rising, Andersen looked over the class, his fingers stroking his graying beard as he beheld the apathetic stares of dozens of young men and women, none of which appeared to display any interest in the course whatsoever, other than doing the bare minimum required to pass the class. "All right, then," the professor said, doing his best to conceal the growing disappointment he felt toward his students' utter and total lack of imagination and academic curiosity. "Who would like to go next?"

To Andersen's absolute lack of surprise, no one volunteered. Sighing, the professor walked to the front of the lecture hall, shaking his head. "I realize, ladies and gentlemen, that this is merely a 100-level course. Be that as it may, I would greatly appreciate it if you would refrain from using text speak, slang, and . . ." He grimaced in disgust. "And emojis in your slides from now on." He inhaled slowly. "Believe me, however much you despise my standards for academic excellence, rest assured my colleagues in this department have even higher standards once you progress to their courses. If you progress to them, that is, which, I must say, based on what I have seen so far this semester from most of you, is a very big 'if' indeed. And for God's sake, spellcheck has been a thing for the past 30 years! Use it, or so help me, I will simply toss your papers into the wastebasket and—"

The lecture hall door burst open. Andersen and the entire class turned their eyes toward the source of the disturbance. The professor shook his head. "Ah, Miss Reinhart. So nice of you to finally join us. I shudder to imagine what sort of lofty activity you've had to put on hold in order to deign to descend to our level, and . . ." He paused, staring incredulously as the young woman hastily sprinted to the front of the hall, taking in her disaster of an outfit, made worse by the fact that she was still sopping wet. Of course, Miss Reinhart. Why am I not surprised?

"Sorry, Dr. Andersen!"

Anna quickly slid into the first available seat, the young woman seated next to her taking great pains to move several chairs to her right to avoid the steady drip-drip-drip from Anna's sleeve. "I . . . I sort of overslept, and then . . ." She laughed nervously. "Well, it's been quite a morning, let me tell you!"

Andersen's face betrayed no reaction whatsoever. "Fascinating." The professor clasped his hands together. "Well, Miss Reinhart. Seeing as how your colleagues are reluctant to volunteer to present next, congratulations! You're up."

Anna looked at the professor, her breathing still coming in ragged gasps from the dead sprint she had undertaken to get to the lecture hall. "But . . . But I . . . just sat down—"

Andersen rolled his eyes. "Today, Miss Reinhart! Today!" He pointed to his watch. "Tick tock, tick tock. Come on, young lady!"

Anna stood, walking toward the front of the lecture hall with as much dignity as she could muster in her condition. Ignoring the snickers from her classmates as they realized she wasn't wearing shoes, having discarded them somewhere between the crosswalk and the history building in the name of getting to class as quickly as possible, she retrieved her laptop from her bag. To her relief, the computer hadn't been ruined when she had gotten wet. Plugging it into the projection system, she reached for her notes in her bag. Her foot slipped on the puddle that had formed beneath her while she had been setting up her laptop. "Whoops!"

The entire class was laughing at her now, Andersen's face buried in his hands in disappointment and despair for the future of Western civilization, as Anna fumbled about the floor, trying to quickly retrieve her papers without looking like a bigger disaster than she already felt she was. Papers clutched firmly within her grasp, she stood, forcing a confident expression onto her face. "Okay. I'm . . . I'm ready."

"Lovely," Andersen said, his voice flat. "All right, Miss Reinhart. Wow us."

She inhaled, closing her eyes momentarily as she calmed herself down. Opening them, she faced the class. "I . . . I would like to talk today about the North Forest."

The rest of the class stared blankly at her. Ignoring them, Anna continued. "That's right. The . . . The North Forest. The assignment was to . . . to research a myth, any myth at all, and analyze where it might have come from, why it was created, and what purpose it served the civilization that created it." She swallowed, bracing herself. This is it, she told herself. You believe this. Don't chicken out now.

"When we . . . When we think of myths, we tend to think of ancient civilizations. Greece. Rome. Egypt. The Celts." She paused in what she hoped was dramatic fashion. "But . . . But what we don't realize at times is that much more recent civilizations have their own mythology. Take . . . Take Arendelle, for example."

She smiled slightly as she saw her fellow students were no longer laughing, but rather were leaning forward interestedly. "Now, as an American studying abroad," she continued, "I admit I don't have the appreciation those of you in this class who are actually from Arendelle have for your local culture, and I want to be clear: I don't mean to offend any of you."

She looked Andersen in the eye, crossing her fingers behind her back. "But as Dr. Andersen himself believes, I think the legends of this city are true. Every single one of them."

The students murmured among themselves, turning toward the back of the lecture hall to face Andersen, their faces filled with interest.

Andersen's face had paled slightly, his eyes dark as he regarded Anna. "I must stop you right here, Miss Reinhart," he said. "I don't know what you are getting at or what sort of lies you are trying to tell about me, but I assure you, I in no way believe—"

Anna held up a stapled packet. "But . . . But Dr. Andersen, you . . . you wrote this, didn't you?"

The lecture hall fell completely silent. The students' eyes darted back and forth between Anna and Andersen, eager to see the unexpected direction the conversation was heading.

Andersen rose slowly, walking to the front of the lecture hall. Taking the packet from Anna's hand, he stared at it intently, his hand trembling for the briefest of moments. "Where . . . Where did you get this?" His voice was little more than a whisper.

Anna suddenly felt very, very uncomfortable. "I . . . I found it in the online inter-university archives. It . . . It wasn't easy to find for some reason, but . . ." She looked at Andersen expectantly. "I . . . I think it's fascinating, sir. The legends about how almost two hundred years ago, back when Arendelle was a monarchy, there was a queen who could control ice and snow. Who . . . Who simply disappeared one day. How the North Forest is home to . . . to the Lady in—"

Andersen crumpled the papers, hurling them across the hall. "Enough, Miss Reinhart!" he shouted. Facing the rest of the class, his face beet red, he pointed to the door. "Class dismissed!"

As the other students filed out of the lecture hall uncomfortably, Andersen turned back to Anna. "My office! Now!"

As Andersen stormed out of the hall, slamming the door as loudly as he could behind him, Anna stood silently in the lecture hall. Her confidence now completely gone, she shook her head, water cascading all about from her still soaking clothing. Great . . . Just great!

AN: I have never written a "modern" fic before, but I think I have something to contribute to the genre. Although it is not necessary to do so, I would suggest that readers first read my one-shot "Lady in White," as this story will build upon themes established in that story. More to come!