Forest of Shadows

by Kamilla Benko

  But before she could shoot past the Hulder and plummet into the vast void, two pairs of hands grabbed her ankles from above. Kristoff! Elsa!

  She lurched to a stop, face to face with the little cat-eyed Hulder, who was still mostly in shadow, and who, if Anna had to wager a guess, looked terrified of her.

  “Hi,” Anna said, trying hard to iron out the quiver in her voice. “My name is Anna, and I’m not going to hurt you.” She offered out her hand. “Come with me!”

  The Hulder hesitated a moment, then gripped Anna’s palm. The child’s skin was smooth and dry, like one of the little lizards Anna had read about that populated the Chatho deserts. But even with the Hulder so close to her, it was hard to see them properly. It was almost as though the child had been made of shadow or carved from a mirror. Trying to make out the details was a little like trying to hold tight to a bar of soap: the harder one squeezed, the quicker the soap slid away; the harder one looked, the quicker the Hulder seemed to vanish.

  Gripping the child with all her strength, Anna called, “Pull us up!”

  There was a grunt, and then Anna and the Hulder rose to safety, just as the little ledge deteriorated into nothingness. She and the child were dragged back onto solid rock. Before Anna had a chance to release the Hulder, Elsa and Kristoff wrapped Anna into a tight hug, and she leaned into their warmth.

  “Anna,” Elsa said, voice tight. “I couldn’t…I mean, you almost—”

  “Key word: almost,” Kristoff cut in with a wink.

  Anna smiled at him. He always seemed to understand her, to know that if she thought too much about what had just almost happened, she would sit there forever and turn into a fossil.

  “I’m here,” Anna said. She could have stayed there forever in their arms, but for the wiggling Hulder she held.

  The child pushed out of the group and plopped onto the floor—still far enough away that all Anna could really make out was a pointy elbow, but in more detail than before. Now Anna could see that the Hulder’s skin was the exact color of the bluish rock that filled the mines. Anna frowned. When she’d first spotted the Hulder, she’d thought the child’s skin was a smoky white, similar to the crystal the Hulder had been sitting on. A funny, tickling idea crawled into Anna’s mind: she’d been right both times. The Hulder had been smoky white and then a bluish gray. The Hulder’s body had first looked smooth, then as rough as the stone wall. Maybe the Huldrefólk were like octopuses in the deeps of the Southern Sea, able to change not only their color but also their texture.

  “Wow,” Anna said, trying to collect herself even as a stream of rapid thoughts dashed through her mind. First thought: This is so cool! She was thrilled to learn about this wonderful trait of the Huldrefólk. The second thought came fast on the heels of the first: if Anna could change color and texture, she’d head to the portrait gallery, stand in front of all her favorite paintings, and feel what it was like to be Lieutenant Mattias, her father’s old official Arendellian guard, for an afternoon. And finally, her third thought: the last time she’d been in the castle, she’d seen the wolf, and everything had changed. A shudder ran down her spine.

  Elsa knelt before the child. “Hi there, little one. I’m Elsa. What’s your name?”

  The little Hulder burst into tears that sparkled like gems.

  “Oh, no.” Elsa jerked back. “Here!” She conjured a snowflake and presented it.

  “Elsa,” Anna hissed. “No magic, remember?”

  The snowflake burst into water droplets. Elsa’s cheeks turned pink and her hands clenched at her sides. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I forgot.” It was sad that Elsa had spent most of her life trying to suppress her magic. It truly seemed a part of her, as natural as breathing and blinking. Having to refrain from using it again was probably taking some getting used to.

  Anna felt sorry about it. She took a deep breath. They had to get out of there. They had to find Revolute and defeat the Nattmara, not only for Arendelle, but for her sister. She couldn’t let Elsa shut herself away again.

  “Ow!” Elsa yelped.

  Looking down, Anna saw her sister’s thick braid held tight in a chubby fist.

  “Ow-ow!” the little Hulder repeated, and gave another pull, as if Elsa’s braid were a rope.

  “Owowowow!” Elsa unwound her hair from the child’s fists. “I’m not a horse.”

  “Horse!” the little Hulder said. “Horse! Horse! Horse!”

  Elsa sighed while Anna covered her mouth to hide a giggle. She understood the Hulder’s fascination with Elsa’s braid. When she’d been little, she, too, had pretended Elsa was a racehorse and had ordered her sister to charge up and down the castle hallways. Once, she’d even gotten Elsa to neigh.

  The little Hulder let go of Elsa’s hair and toddled over to Kristoff. “Horse!” the child proclaimed.

  “Hey,” Kristoff protested as the Hulder ran around him. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” the little Hulder said. “Talk, talk, talk!” Though the Hulder was running in circles around Kristoff, the child ran sideways, long gallops, keeping their back to the wall at all times.

  To hide the tail! Anna realized with delight. Maybe she would finally be able to find out the answer to her childhood question about whether they all had tails.

  “They’re a bit…hyper?” Elsa tugged her cloak so that it would hang neatly again.

  “No more than any other child,” Anna said, thinking of the children she’d often run into in the village. “But most children wouldn’t know how to get around a cave, while this little one might be able to lead us to the older Huldrefólk who can help us.”

  Tucking strands of hair back into her braid, Elsa looked doubtful. “Maybe?”

  Taking note of what had happened to Elsa, Anna pushed her own hair back to make sure it wasn’t easily accessible before getting on her hands and knees. “Hi,” she said. “Do you remember my name?”

  “Anna! Anna! Anna!” the Hulder screeched.

  Anna blinked. She hadn’t been expecting quite so much enthusiasm. “Yes, that’s right. What’s your name?”

  “What’s your name?” the Hulder repeated.

  “Anna,” Anna said.

  “Anna,” the Hulder repeated.

  “Wait.” Anna rubbed her forehead. “Your name is Anna, too?”

  “Wait.” The Hulder mimicked her again. “Your name is Anna, too!”

  “Like I said,” Elsa said, her lips twitching, “hyper.”

  “I might be wrong,” Kristoff observed, “but I think they’re just repeating everything you say.”

  “Hyper! Everything you say!” the Hulder echoed back.

  Taking a deep breath, Anna spoke as quickly as she could, giving the Hulder no chance to repeat her words until she was done. “Hi, I’m Anna! My home is Arendelle, like you, but above the ground.”

  The Hulder looked at her in complete astonishment. “Home?”

  Anna nodded. “Yes, home. Where do you live? We’d like to meet your family.”

  The Hulder looked at Anna, then nodded. “Home!” And then the Hulder was off—running backward as easily as if they had eyes in the back of their head. And maybe they did. After all, as Anna knew from old bedtime stories, no one had ever seen a Hulder’s back.

  “Come on!” Anna shot to her feet. “We have to follow!”

  The Hulder ran impossibly fast—and unlike Anna and the others, the Hulder was short enough to avoid low-hanging rocks, while Kristoff had to run at a crouch. Up, down, and down again, they sprinted through seemingly endless corridors of crystals and sparkling rocks. Anna couldn’t understand how the Hulder—Dash, as she mentally nicknamed them, taking a page from Olaf’s book—was able to tell the difference between the tunnels. Maybe it was some special Huldrefólk trick. After all, Huldrefólk could always find lost things. Maybe it meant they could never become lost themselves.

  A strange thought crossed her mind, and she wondered if that meant the Huldrefólk always knew what they should d
o next. How fantastic would that be? Maybe that’s how Dash had found them so quickly. Or maybe Dash had found them because Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff were the lost things.

  Anna shook her head. She had so many questions, and there was so little time to attend to them all.

  But there was one thing she could do. “Kristoff? Elsa?” Anna waited until they both looked at her, and then said, “I think I know what happened to the missing trolls. I read in Sorenson’s tower that they always flee the land when a Nattmara appears.”

  Anna heard Kristoff let out a great sigh of relief. “Good,” he said. “Then that means they’re safe.”

  Soon enough, another sound began to play under the staccato of their footsteps. A strange, shuffling, creaking sound.

  “Do you hear that?” Anna called back between breaths.

  “Yeah,” Kristoff said. “Do you think—?”

  “Maybe,” Anna replied, slowing to a walk. She didn’t need him to finish his sentence to know what he was thinking: Nattmara.

  “We should stop,” Elsa said. “Take a moment to scout out what’s happening. Huldrefólk can be mischievous…especially if they think we’re here to take something that doesn’t belong to us.”

  “But if we stop,” Anna said, “we’ll lose Dash!”

  The corners of Elsa’s eyes crinkled in confusion as she navigated around a large boulder that Anna had simply scrambled over. “Dash?” she asked.

  “The Hulder,” Anna explained. She turned back to see if Kristoff needed any help with the boulder, but he’d simply shoved it to the side, clearing the way.

  “It’s too late,” he said. “We already lost them.”

  In the two seconds Anna had taken her eyes off Dash, the child had sped out of sight. “No,” Anna breathed. “We have to keep up!” She broke into a run again, fresh fear giving her newfound speed. “Dash doesn’t know about the Nattmara!”

  But as Anna rounded the final bend, she saw where the sound had been coming from: an underground city carved out of the rock itself.

  The secret home of the Huldrefólk.

  Just as the world above, so was the world below. Cozy homes were carved into the blue-gray stone, and orange light spilled out from them, as welcoming as a smile. The pebble-lined streets were alight with glowworms, so it was easy to see what various mine carts pulled: one held a pile of stalactites bundled like firewood, another was filled to the brim with glowing mushrooms the size of sun hats, and another was heaped with water-clear rocks that Anna thought might be large diamonds.

  And the Huldrefólk. The adults appeared to be tall, built more like sapling trees than people, with long limbs and long necks. And similar to Dash, they were hard to see in the light of the underneath realm.

  The glow-light wasn’t the same as sunlight, bright and revealing, but the kind of soft glow that Anna associated with romantic candlelit dinners. It illuminated at the same time as it concealed, casting shadows that again helped to obscure the Huldrefólk. Still, even in the dimness, Anna could tell that they camouflaged into whatever it was that they were standing near, from onyx black to marble white and every shade in between. Some of the Huldrefólk looked as though they could be purple, others orange and green with sparkling, black-veined skin. The Huldrefólk—the hidden folk—could blend into any surrounding.

  Which was great, Anna thought, but most important, they were real. Real creatures who would have real answers to where they could find the real lost sword of Aren. The thing of myth they needed to save the day.

  “Wow,” Elsa whispered. “How beautiful. And peaceful.”

  “If Sven were here,” Kristoff said, “I bet he’d eat all those mushrooms, and then his teeth would probably glow for a week.”

  Sven. Anna wished the reindeer were with them. The way down to the village looked steep, and Sven was always good about finding the surest path down a craggy mountain. She scanned the side of the rock, looking for a pathway to the dwellings. Somewhere below, she was sure they would find the answers to how to set things right and heal Sven, and the rest of Arendelle, from the Nattmara’s influence.

  As she leaned forward to see better, Anna felt a sharp something prod her back.

  “Kristoff,” she said, swiping a hand behind her, “stop that. I’m just trying to see.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” Kristoff said, standing to her left, a few feet away from easy poking distance.

  The back of Anna’s neck prickled.

  Elsa stood to her right, her face pensive as she took in the city below them.

  Suddenly, Anna became very aware of the feeling that someone was watching her.

  Maybe even a few someones.

  “Oh,” she heard Elsa squeak.

  Anna turned, only to come nose-to-nose with a spear. And not just one spear.

  Many spears.

  WHILE ANNA, ELSA, AND KRISTOFF had been taking in the sights of the village below, it seemed as though a storm cloud had gathered around them.

  Though, of course, storm clouds didn’t exist in the belly of the mines, nor were they capable of holding a spear to one’s throat. No. The roiling, shifting dark shapes gathering around them were none other than Huldrefólk warriors.

  Like the littler Dash, these ones, too, stuck to the shadows. In the glow, Anna could only make out the glint of an eye here, and the back of a hand there. But she didn’t need to be able to see their faces to sense how they felt about three human trespassers in their secret city: they were not very happy at all.

  “H-h-hi,” Anna stuttered to the spear tips, trying to remember the etiquette of meeting a new group of people. It wasn’t the exact same as meeting the prime minister of Torres, but she knew that dignitaries were sensitive, so polite manners seemed the safest bet.

  Step one: Introduce yourself, and announce you are a friend.

  She dipped into a curtsy. “My name is Anna of Arendelle, and this is my sis—”

  A spearpoint jabbed closer to her, and Anna went silent.

  “Stop,” a Hulder hissed. “Say no more, thief.”

  “I-I think there’s been a mistake,” Anna said, forcing a cheerful smile on her face. “We’ve come to ask for help. We’re not here to take anything—”

  “Take,” the same Hulder spoke again, repeating Anna. “Take, take, take!”

  “No,” Kristoff said, his back against Anna’s. “We’re not here to take anything. We followed a little one—”

  “Take little one,” the Hulder repeated, and Anna could hear fury swell in the Hulder’s voice. “Take little one!” The cry was repeated by another Hulder, and then another, until the entire shifting mass of spear-wielding warriors took up the chant.

  Anna had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

  “I think that they’re accusing us of trying to steal Dash,” she whispered.

  “Ah,” Kristoff said in a low voice, “well, that’s not accurate.”

  “Wait!” Anna told the Huldrefólk, holding up her hand. “We weren’t trying to kidnap anyone!”

  The Huldrefólk’s chant changed. “Liar, liar, every word!”

  Anna shook her head, trying to make sense of them.

  “We’re not,” Elsa spoke up, her voice smooth as ice, though Anna could hear the friction beneath the surface. “The little one found us. We were singing, and then my sister rescued the child from falling into a dark abyss—”

  “The abyss!” another Hulder with a higher voice interrupted. “The abyss! Take to abyss! Take to abyss! Liar, liar, every word!”

  Uh-oh.

  “Um,” Anna said with a gulp. “I think they want to—”

  “Drop us off in the abyss?” Kristoff finished. “Yeah. I got that, too.”

  “Wait!” Anna tried again. “There’s a giant wolf out there that’ll be here before you know—” Anna’s sentence was cut short as a warrior rushed forward and tied what felt like a handkerchief around Anna’s mouth, making it impossible for her to shout.

  But even if she could, would it help? The
y were so far underground, and the villagers who were still awake were far away, likely and hopefully already onboard Elsa’s royal ship. Sorenson was gone, having been left to face the Nattmara. And next to her, Elsa and Kristoff were also being gagged. Hard roots pressed into the soft skin of Anna’s wrists as her hands were pulled behind her back and bound.

  After checking to make sure the knot was tight, the Hulder who had bound her nodded. “March.”

  Single file, they walked in front of the Huldrefólk. Anna kept her eye on Elsa’s braid as it swung, and was grateful when Kristoff accidentally stepped on her heel. It made her feel better knowing they were both there. At least they were all in this mess together.

  Anna thought the Huldrefólk would take them away from their hidden city, back to the abyss from which they’d saved Dash, but instead, the warriors marched them down a narrow path, away from the abyss and the swarm of glowworms and fluorescent gardens. Anna’s bad feeling only grew more insistent the longer they walked away from the city. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her ribcage felt too tight as she breathed in the stale and stuffy air.

  How far underground were they? Then the smell of rotten eggs punched her nose, and her eyes watered. It was the smell of sulfur, or else the Huldrefólk had some major issues with their plumbing. The air grew hotter still until it almost seemed to take on a rosy glow. A red light danced along the walls ahead of them, an unusual color that typically could only be found in the most spectacular summer sunsets, or in Tuva and Ada’s forge, or…no. Anna’s heart flipped.

  Or in the center of an active volcano. Liar, liar, every word plus abyss apparently equaled throwing the group of human trespassers from Arendelle into molten rock.

  The red glow grew brighter, and while the Huldrefólk seemed as cool as ice cream in the middle of an eternal winter, sweat now drenched Anna. She imagined that if it got any hotter, her eyebrows would slide right off her face. Even if Elsa could use her magic here—even if it wouldn’t draw the Nattmara straight to them—what chance did winter’s cold have against the melting powers of red-hot magma?