by Mari Mancusi
“Iduna?” Mrs. Christiansen frowned. “Aren’t you going to go in?”
“Oh. Sorry. Yes.” I shook my head, turning to the door of my new place, a cottage just up the hill from Blodget’s Bakery. It was only two rooms, but it had a kitchen with a cooking top and an actual ice box for keeping food fresh. Just off the kitchen was a seating area, with a door that led to a cozy bedroom. There was even a patio in the back, big enough to put a chair out on—making it a perfect reading spot.
It was simple. Humble. But it was mine. All mine. After sleeping twelve to a room in an orphanage for years, it was a private slice of heaven.
My hand trembled as I slid the key in the lock. I knew I was moving slowly, but hoped Mrs. Christiansen didn’t notice. I just kept hoping Agnarr would appear. We had planned to do this together. Step into my new home for the first time, side by side, entering this new life together.
Where was he?
The door creaked open. I gave one last glance backward, but the street remained empty. Sighing, I stepped over the threshold, alone.
“So, what do you think?” Mrs. Christiansen asked, coming in behind me. “It’s a darling place, right? Perfect for a single girl like you.”
I flinched at the unintended jab.
“It’s wonderful,” I assured her. “Just perfect.”
And it was. Perfect.
But also very empty.
“Well, rent is due on the fifth of the month. You’re already paid up this month, so I’ll come around in thirty days. If you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to knock on my door. I’m only three houses down.” She grinned, putting out her hand. “Congratulations, Iduna. This is a big step for you. You should be very proud.”
“I am. Thank you.” I shook her hand, trying to give her a smile.
We said our goodbyes, and Mrs. Christiansen headed out, pulling the door shut behind her. Now alone, I looked around the place, poking my head into various cabinets and the closet in the back room. I tested the bed, bouncing on it a little. Seemed comfy enough.
But still, I felt restless. Unsettled.
Where was Agnarr? Was he all right? What if something had happened to him?
I rose from the bed. I needed to go find out.
I found him in the secret room. He was sitting in a chair, head in his hands. Hair mussed, eyes wild. I frowned, concern welling inside me. I’d never seen him look so ill at ease.
“Is everything all right?” I asked, worried. “I thought you were going to meet me at the house.”
He looked up, his face turning even more pale. “Oh,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot.”
He forgot? This was like the biggest thing to happen to me all year! Something was definitely wrong. Agnarr wasn’t the type to just forget.
“What’s wrong, Agnarr?” I asked gently. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
He moaned and began to pace the room, back and forth like a caged wolf, his steps eating up the distance between the walls. His eyes darted to the stone shelves, the table, the floor—anywhere other than my face.
“You’re going to hate me,” he said.
Wow. He was really upset. I walked over to him, slipping my hand in his. It was clammy and cold. “You know I could never hate you, Agnarr,” I said quietly. “Now tell me.”
He hung his head. “There will be visitors to the castle in two weeks. The king of Vassar.”
I was puzzled. “So?”
“And his…daughter. Runa.”
Oh. Ice trickled down my spine. I dropped his hand. “I see.”
Agnarr turned to me, his gaze wild. “I tried to tell Peterssen I wasn’t ready. That this wasn’t the right time! But he insisted I at least meet her.” He dragged his fingertips through his hair. “I mean, I guess it’s not a big deal, right? I meet people every day.”
I felt dizzy, a pit forming in my stomach. But Agnarr was staring at me with such desperation that I found myself nodding along. “Yes,” I said. “You meet people every day.”
But we both knew that this wasn’t just any person. This was a royal suitor. A woman the people of Arendelle might desire as a match for their king. She would be noble, genteel, well groomed.
Unlike me. An orphan. A nobody.
They may flirt with you and sully your honor, Johan mocked in my head. In the end, they only marry their own kind.
I squeezed my eyes shut. This is your own fault, I scolded myself. You knew from the start this was wrong. That this could never be anything but a flight of fancy. There was never any future for you and Agnarr. You knew that—and yet you chose to indulge in yet another lie. A lie that you knew would end in heartbreak.
This story was never going to have a happy ending for me. Agnarr would marry a princess. Father children. Raise a family inside these walls while ruling the kingdom outside.
And I would be forced to watch it all from afar, my heart ripped from my chest.
Despite my best efforts, a strangled sob escaped my throat. Agnarr grabbed me, pulling me into his arms in a hold so tight I was half convinced he’d crush me. But at the same time, I didn’t want him to let me go.
I never wanted him to let me go.
“Iduna, I love you,” he whispered, his mouth brushing against my ear, sending all-too-familiar tingles all the way to my toes. “I love you more than the stars in the sky. I love you more than the breath in my body.”
“I love you, too,” I replied. But my voice sounded older than my years. Tired.
He pulled away, cupping my face in his hands. His eyes were so green. I could never get enough of them. And yet soon—too soon—I might never see them up close again.
“I will figure this out,” he declared. “I am to be king, right? That has to mean something. If I say I won’t marry her, then that should be the end of it.”
I nodded slowly. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better. And besides, I had no strength left to argue. “If you say so.”
“I do,” he declared in a fierce voice. “Now come on. Let’s go check out your new place! I’ve been dying to see it.”
I sighed, his enthusiasm causing an ache to well in my stomach. Just an hour before, I’d been so excited to show him. So proud of the little place I’d gotten all by myself. I’d imagined inviting Agnarr over for dinner, cooking on the little stove. Probably burning the fårikål, but he wouldn’t mind. He would tell me it was delicious. The best he’d ever tasted.
But now…
“It’s really not that interesting,” I protested weakly. “Just a silly cottage.”
“Your silly cottage,” he corrected, reaching out to take my hands in his own. They were so warm, while mine were now cold as ice and trembling. “Which makes it very interesting to me,” he added, meeting my eyes. He gave me a goofy half smile, as if begging me to trust him. To believe everything would turn out okay.
And I wanted to. Oh, god, I wanted to.
“All right,” I said at last. “We can stop at Blodget’s on the way. Grab some chocolate.”
Agnarr’s grin widened. “You know the way to my heart, Iduna.”
If only that were enough….
AFTER THAT, WE HARDLY PARTED EACH other’s company. Even without saying the words, we both knew that these days together might be our last. We’d meet first thing in the morning in our favorite tree. We’d say goodbye to one another late at night outside my cottage door. We’d spend hours in the library secret room—our only truly safe haven—wrapped in one another’s arms.
It was as if we both felt the time slipping through our fingers. As if our relationship was like a vacation, with an end date looming, and we were desperate to make the most of the time we had left. We didn’t talk about it, of course. Our conversations stayed light and easy. Both of us danced around the subject of the upcoming royal visit from a certain foreign princess, which, it seemed, the rest of Arendelle was spending all their time preparing for. Cakes were being made. Ice sculptures designed. Both great halls scrubbed down wi
thin an inch of their lives and colorfully decorated for a royal ball. I was pretty sure Olina hadn’t left the kitchen in a week and certainly hadn’t gotten any sleep. She almost bit our heads off when Agnarr stole a krumkake from a towering pile.
It was wonderful. It was also terrible. And so, so wrong. Every day, I told myself that this would be the last. That I would cut this all off while I was still able to be the one to do so. Before the choice was no longer mine to make.
But then I’d see Agnarr’s hopeful smile. Feel his fingers stroking my skin. And I would once again be powerless to stop any of it. I was already too far gone. Drowning in love, with no desire to come up for air, even if it meant my doom.
And my doom it would be. The princess would be here in a week. We were running out of time.
“Let’s go on an adventure!”
I looked up from my book, across the table at Agnarr, who had been engrossed in a pile of maps he’d found on one of the shelves in the secret room. He looked back at me, a mischievous smile on his face.
“It’s been way too long,” he added. “I mean, we didn’t even get a chance to travel to the mist this year. How unfair is that?”
I nodded. Peterssen had nixed any trips to the mist due to the unusual occurrences in Arendelle. He said the village was in a state of too much unrest right now for Agnarr to wander far from town.
Which meant adventures, in general, were out.
“You know Peterssen is never going to let you go,” I reminded him.
He scowled. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” His eyes sparkled. “We can sneak out of town through that secret passageway off of the kitchen. No one will ever have to know.”
“And when they notice we’re gone?”
“We’ll be back before they do. We’ll just make it a day trip. Not far.” He reached across the table, his eyes pleading. “Come on, Iduna. You know you want to.”
His enthusiasm was catching. And I did want to. I loved our adventures. And I knew this one might very well be our last. How could I say no?
“Where are you thinking of going?” I asked.
Agnarr grinned, knowing he’d gotten his way. He swept his hand over the stack of maps. “Your choice! Pick a map, Iduna. Any map. We’ll follow it to the end. See what we’ll find.”
“All right,” I teased, making a big show of closing my eyes and waving my hands over the pile. “But if I randomly pick the map to the World’s Largest Ball of Yarn, we’re still going.”
“I couldn’t think of a better destination,” Agnarr declared. “Now pick already!”
“All right, all right.” I reached down to the table and grabbed a map at random, digging deep into the pile. Then I opened my eyes and looked at it. The map was of the mountains just outside of Arendelle. And someone had drawn a pathway through, leading to a small valley nestled between two large mountains.
“‘The Valley of the Living Rock,’” I read. Then I looked up at Agnarr. “Well, it beats the World’s Largest Ball of Yarn. Though I’m not sure by how much—”
To my surprise, Agnarr suddenly grabbed the map, turning it over in his hands. His mouth dipped to a frown, his eyebrows furrowed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Were you holding out for the ball of yarn? ’Cause truthfully, I’m not exactly sure if that really—”
Agnarr planted his finger on the map, pointing to some writing in the corner I hadn’t noticed before. It was in a language I couldn’t read.
I cocked my head. “Can you read it?” I asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “But I recognize the handwriting.” His voice had a tremble to it that made me suddenly uneasy.
“You do?”
“It’s my mother’s,” he said softly. “I’ve seen it on other papers in this room. My father must have brought all her things here, after she disappeared.”
I could hear the bitterness in his voice as he spoke. Especially on the word disappeared.”
Suddenly I really wished I had found the ball of yarn map instead.
“We can pick another one. It’s no big deal,” I tried.
“No.” He shook his head fiercely. “This is the one.”
He rose from his seat, rolling the map in his hands. I could see the pain on his face, but also a sudden spark of what looked like hope. And suddenly I knew what he was thinking. What if we followed this map and found something at the end of it? What if we found out about his mother and the reason she had vanished so many years ago…?
BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT MORNING, WHILE everyone was still asleep, we slipped out of Arendelle miraculously unseen. The air was crisp and cool as we crossed the bridge in a shroud of darkness, excitement prickling our skin. Even the horses seemed ready for an adventure, their steps light and prancing as we headed for the hills.
Once we reached the hills, Agnarr and I were playful, almost giddy, as we put the real world aside and set off on our journey, buoyed by the sense of carelessness that accompanies doing something reckless. We knew what we were doing was wrong, dangerous, and completely irresponsible. Especially for a prince. But Agnarr insisted he didn’t care. He was sick of playing by other people’s rules. Living up to other people’s expectations.
He wanted this—he needed this.
And, in a way, I did, too.
We followed the map north, deep into the mountains—on a different path from the one that led to the Enchanted Forest and the mist. On the way there, we stopped for a late lunch at a picturesque trading post and sauna, where we warmed up and attempted to haggle over some way-too-overpriced supplies. In fact, I almost got myself thrown out of the place after expressing my honest opinion on the obvious price gouging going on in the remote establishment, angering the burly redheaded teen behind the counter. But Agnarr just plunked down the money with his usual magnanimousness and gently moved me along.
As we began to climb higher into the mountains, the journey became more treacherous, with icy roads winding around steep cliffs with sheer drops. The last stretch of the journey was up a footpath, too narrow for horses. We tied them to the trees and headed for it. When we came to the top, the the sun had disappeared over the horizon, bathing the landscape in dusk, but all we encountered was an empty valley of rocks.
“Well, this is certainly less exciting than I had pictured it,” Agnarr joked as he looked around the valley. He glanced down at the map, pursing his lips. I could see the disappointment in his eyes as he looked up again. I knew how badly he was hoping for some answer about his mother. But what had he expected? For her to be at the end of the map? Like a treasure, just waiting to be found?
“Maybe there was something here once,” I said gently. “Things don’t always stay as they are, you know.” I had been familiar with movement, fluctuation, from a young age. My family had always been wanderers. Constantly on the move, following the paths of the reindeer. No map could lead you to the nomadic Northuldra.
No map could lead Agnarr to his mother.
Suddenly my ears caught a noise. I grabbed Agnarr, yanking him back behind a nearby tree, shoving my hand over his mouth to muffle his sound of surprise. We watched as a young woman came over the horizon, walking slowly down into the valley from the other side. Her hair was brown and unbraided. And she was dressed like a Northuldra in a simple undyed robe, cinched at the waist with a colorful belt.
My heart beat fast. Could it really be one of my family, escaped from the mist? I didn’t recognize her, but the Northuldra had expanded quite a bit before the day of the dam celebration. Also, it had been almost five years. People changed.
Agnarr moved my hand so he could speak. “I recognize her,” he whispered. “I think she’s one of the ice harvesters.”
My heart sank a little. That made sense. The ice harvesters were nomadic, like the Northuldra. They followed the ice throughout the winter season and came to Arendelle every summer with huge blocks that could be used to keep food fresh or could be carved into decorative sculptures for the town squares.
I closed my eyes as the woman continued to sing. Memories flooded through me with each soulful note. While I’d never heard this particular song, I’d heard similar ones growing up with the Northuldra. My mother used to tell me they were gifts to our people from the fairies and elves of the arctic lands. She would sing them to me to help me sleep—her lilting voice, melodic and sweet, lulling me into dreamland, offering a soothing sound in my head. A deep longing rose inside of me.
“It’s beautiful,” Agnarr said softly, also seeming caught up in the song. “I’ve never heard anything like—”
His words were cut off by a sudden thundering sound. Like rocks rolling downhill. The woman’s singing stopped. Curious, I peeked out from behind the tree again.
And I realized the rocks were moving.
Like actually moving.
“Whoa!” I whispered in awe as big and small boulders rolled down the hill, coming to rest at the woman’s feet. “Are you seeing this?” I asked Agnarr.
He nodded. “Is it magic?” he whispered.
I glanced over at him, wondering if it would be a problem if it was. But I saw only fascination in his eyes, not fear.
Before I could answer, the rocks suddenly popped open, revealing themselves not to be rocks at all, but rather trolls. Short, roly-poly gray rock trolls with huge ears and noses and hair made out of grass. Some even had moss growing out of their ears. They were wearing green tunics, and each one had little necklaces made of glowing crystals.
“I read about these!” I whispered in excitement. “They were in the book that had the Huldréfolk in it.”
“What are they?” Agnarr asked, his eyes not leaving the scene.
“I think they’re called trolls,” I replied. “From what I understand they’re the oldest creatures alive. They can live hundreds of years. And…this may sound weird, but evidently they’re experts in love.”
Agnarr raised an eyebrow. “Okay, that I would not have guessed.”