THE FIFTH

by Nina Windia

Black lace and silk, Anna covers her face. It would feel cruel and unnatural to display her youth- face as fresh and vital as it was on her 21st birthday- when Kristoff's own has been eroded and worn away by the years. Lucky me, he'd say, when she pecked his wrinkled cheek- yet it feels less like luck, but destiny, as fierce and unforgiving as the glacier rivers that sweep down from the mountain springs.

It's been fifty years since Anna walked down this very chapel aisle in a wedding dress. Today, they bring her husband out in a casket. The black lace was a good idea; she does not need to still her tears. Her daughter, her son and his children stand by her side: she has to be strong for them. Anna puts a hand around her granddaughter as she hiccoughs a sob. That same dull ache in her chest: the fear that one day, it'll be her funeral Anna wears black lace for, for her daughter, and her daughter after that.

She feels Elsa's presence before she feels her hand, slipping into Anna's own. Her other half; the other side of the bridge.

Elsa always knows what to say. She doesn't tell Anna it'll be okay, or that Kristoff was a good man, or any other useless, pretty things. She instead says, "I'll always be here," punctuating it with a firm squeeze of her hand. You can feel her heartbeat through her palm.

She is a balm to the terrors of your immortality, soothing the loneliness that looms in the future, as time picks away at those you love.

"I know, Elsa," Anna says.

"You've done your duty here, you know," Elsa says.

Anna squeezes a smile. "Thought the job was for life?"

"We have many lives to live," Elsa tells her. "It's okay to pass the baton."

Elsa's eyes are as clear as Ahtohallan, and in them Anna feels the call of those waters. Tides drawn to the moon, her sister has her own gravity. She casts her own light. She asks a question without speaking the words.

It takes physical effort for Anna to pull away from that gravity. "I can't," she says. "Not yet, anyway."

Arendelle needs her; as do her children, and their children too. Time marches on without kindness, as a new century dawns, promising progress, new invention, new danger. Olaf leaves Arendelle, moving into the ice palace on the mountain.

"I'm grown up now, and I need my own place," he tells her. "Don't cry, okay?"

Anna cries, anyway.

Elsa's visits are less frequent. Hair paler than snow, eyes deeper than deepest water, Anna envies her detachment. Perhaps it's easier to remain separate, to not feel blow after blow as those you love slip through your fingers like sand.

"You could come back with me," Elsa says.

"I could," says Anna. She doesn't have to say the words: but I won't.

As much as Ahtohallan's waters call to Anna, they frighten her as well. To come with Elsa would be an admission; the act of leaving her mortal life behind.

Deft fingers, Gerda tightens the stays of Anna's gown. She allows her fingers to trace down her silhouette; nothing has shifted or slipped or sagged. Today is the 70th anniversary of her coronation.

"Thank you, Gerda," she says, and Gerda coughs.

"Your Majesty… it's Wilma," the young woman says.

"Oh. Right. Thank you Wilma."

It'd slipped her mind; Gerda had passed away thirty years past.

One spring morning, Anna's grandson drives his new motorcar up the drive to the castle gates. "Made in Switzerland, goes up to 40 miles per hour," Anna could hear him boast, from across the garden. Ifun was always about his new toys. He waves her across the hedge.

"Nana, want to go for a ride? It's quite safe."

She eyes the metal horsecarriage in suspicion. "Are you sure?"

"I just drove her back from Stockholm. I'm sure."

He zooms down the bumpy carriage track, and Anna can feel every rock and pit underneath. Her great granddaughter Iduna, pulls at her sleeve. "You look green, Nana Anna. Are you ok?"

"A horse has better suspension than this," Anna mutters.

Iduna leans up to the front seat. "Can we go visit Auntie Elsa?"

Up they go; up the steep paths to the once-enchanted forest of the Northuldra. This is Elsa's land, and although she does not rule as queen, the Northuldra give her the reverence due to her. They invoke her name as they invoke the name of the four spirits, give thanks to her in their songs.

Not a monarch; a goddess.

She is everywhere in these woods; her protection strung like gossamer thread from every tree. Her magic has a heartbeat, and the forest is alive.

Yet the Northuldra have not seen Elsa for over a year.

"The Fifth keeps to herself, as of late," they tell Anna.

Waiting, they tell her. Though for what- for who- they cannot, or do not say.

That night, as they settle down inside their hosts hut, under warm furs, Anna cannot sleep. She can feel her sister's loneliness as keenly as her own; an ice cold arrow to the heart.

She throws off the furs, and sets out. She does not have to travel far to find her. As the Northuldra said, Elsa has been waiting.

In the moonlit glade, her sister combs her fingers through the Nokk's mane. She is so white that she glows. She casts her own light.

Something furious catches in Anna's throat. "You gave me this duty," she says.

You were the one who went away.

You were supposed to stay with me.

You left me, again.

Elsa hears it all. She dips her head, in remorse. Her hair shines like starlight.

"You had Kristoff. You were happy together," she says.

"But you could have given me a choice."

Elsa does not speak. Her fingers glide through water, combing the Nokk's watery mane.

"Forget it. Let's not fight." The words are thick in her throat. That wasn't what Anna had come here for. She'd come here, because-

"It was a selfish decision, I know," says Elsa. "Giving the kingdom to you. But Anna, I couldn't predict- I couldn't know we'd be-"

Spirits- or two parts of one spirit, Anna was never entirely sure.

"And you do have a choice. I'm giving you it right now; come to Ahtohallan, with me. Pass the baton."

She erases the distance between them, extends a hand. Anna wants so much to take it; to dive into those deep waters, no matter what dangers lurk beneath.

"You gave me a duty," she says, stubbornly.

"And that duty is over. Anna." She reaches for her sister, but Anna sets her back to her.

"I can't ," she says, as the stalks away through the forest, the trees casting long dark twisting shadows behind them.

One hundred years have passed since she danced with Elsa here, at the harvest festival. So much has changed; the buildings, the lights, lit with a phospherence that stings her eyes. Yet the stone beneath Anna's feet remains, remembers. The echo of her laughter still lingers, even when all else has faded, like the paint peeling off the eaves...

Some things never change, but so much else does.

Iduna finds you, long after the festival has finished. Last year, she came of age. She's made of memories; with Kristoff's hair, Agnar's chin, and her namesake's eyes. All the people Anna has loved lives on inside her. When she speaks, sometimes Anna hears them speaking with her.

"What are you thinking about, Nana Anna?" she asks.

That I don't want to watch you die, Anna thinks, although it seems prudent not to say it.

"That pumpkin pie and ice cream. I could just swim in it," she says instead.

"Oh, I could too!" says Iduna. She's definitely inherited her sweet tooth. But her smile fades. "You were looking terribly serious for someone thinking about ice cream."

"Well. Just the past. Nothing interesting."

"I don't believe that at all. When you're as old as you, Nana Anna, the past has to be interesting. Oh, not that you're old , old. I mean-" she flusters. Anna laughs, puts her hand over hers. In Iduna she sees a lot of herself.

"It's fine. I am totally old old. And I was just thinking about Elsa."

Iduna's eyes flare with curiosity. It'd become nearly a legend in Arendelle: the queen who'd frozen the kingdom solid. "Do you think she'll come visit Arendelle again soon?"

"No," says Anna. "I don't think she will."

"Oh. How come?"

"She's waiting," Anna says. She looks past the harbour; the fjord; past Arendelle itself. She thinks of a little girl, knocking on a door. Only, she's on the other side, this time.

"You don't need to watch over us anymore, you know," says Iduna. She speaks quietly, but her words pull Anna back.

"What?"

Iduna crinkles a smile. "Arendelle will be fine. You taught us all well. Elsa's waiting for you, right?"

She never realised it: that she'd been waiting for those words.

Elsa is waiting.

She stands, pulling on her cloak.

"Nana?"

She kisses Iduna on both cheeks.

"You'll make a wonderful queen, Iduna."

"Nana!"

She heads to the castle stables in quick strides, her heart beating fast. Iduna follows her in, breathing hard, as Anna equips the saddle. How long has it been since she'd last ridden?

"Nana, at least take the motorcar," Iduna breathes, exasperated.

"I'll pass. I'm a little old fashioned like this," she says, swinging her leg over the saddle.

Anna musses Iduna's hair with fondness, and spurs her horse on. Old memories stir in her like the smell of the soil rising from the earth after the rains; wind through her hair and the chestnut mare's powerful muscles under her thighs. Her hair tumbles out of its braid, catches like a lick of fire as Gale swoops up and around her, its laughter in Anna's ears.

"Gale! Tell Elsa I'm coming!"

The forest opens up to welcome Anna in. Trees in her path shift; the earth moves. Gale is at her back, pushing her further, faster.

Elsa is waiting for her, here, on the shore.

"Elsa! Elsa!"

She stumbles through the sand and shale, and into her sister's arms.

"I'm here, I'm here."

Elsa peels back to look at her. She hasn't smiled so brightly in one hundred years. It transforms her; glows out of every part of her. "You're here."

"I'm sorry I made you wait," says Anna.

"I'm sorry I made you choose."

Anna pulls her close. "Don't be. It wouldn't have been fair."

She presses a kiss to her sister's lips.

She'd loved Kristoff, but Elsa is a part of her in a way that has always both terrified and enthralled her.

She has served her kingdom. She has done her duty. Now she lets her mortal fears unspool behind her like a kite let loose. She's holding Iduna's small hand as they let the thread loose; the kite catches the updraft and soars. The sky and sea are one endless blue as the Nokk's hooves thunder over unbroken water. Together, they ride in Ahtohallan's halls.

/END