Forest of Shadows Read online

  Olaf teetered forward into the room. “Oooh, more books! Secret books!”

  “Secret books…” Anna mused, and her initial excitement dimmed. She knew she should have been more excited at the discovery of the secret room, but something about the secretness of it all pinched, leaving her feeling slightly bruised. She slowly made her way to the shelves. She wondered who had used this room. Arendelle’s royal family had lived in the castle for decades—ever since her grandfather King Runeard had overseen its construction when her father was just a boy. Perhaps this room had been a place of solace for a long-ago aunt or uncle.

  Anna skimmed the titles. Some were written in languages that she didn’t know but recognized from her research for the grand tour. Others were in indecipherable symbols. But the ones that she could read made her heart backflip: Hulda’s Hideout; Scrolls of Trolls; Of Nightmares and Nixies; Quests of Yore; Sorcerer’s Craft and Games; Legends of Magic; Deciphering Magic…

  Magic. Anna’s thoughts pulsed with the thump of her heart. Magic. Magic. Magic!

  Magic was not unknown in Arendelle. After all, Elsa had magical abilities that no one in the kingdom had ever seen before. Or at least, no one alive had ever seen. In some of the old stories that were favorites of Queen Iduna’s, magic abounded. She’d told tales about tablecloths that could produce banquet-sized feasts in the blink of an eye, and boots that could travel seven leagues in a single step—of shape-shifters who lived in an enchanted forest, and stones that could turn lead into gold…but those were made up. Make believe. Pretend.

  However, in the last three years, Anna had seen incredible things, impossible things, come to be. A sister who could be one with the earth and sky and build ice palaces with a few breaths and some nimble flicks of her wrist. A queen who could harness the cold. If Elsa could exist, as Anna very much knew she did, then why couldn’t other impossibilities exist as well?

  Why couldn’t there be a spell of sorts, or an enchantment, that could fix whatever was happening with the Blight? Sure, Anna was hoping to find something in this room to help with the problem at hand, but after that, who knew? Maybe there was knowledge somewhere in there that could stop horseshoes from ever rusting, bread from ever going stale, or candles from ever melting down to stubs and going out. She’d be a hero.

  “Aha.” Anna pulled a thick volume from a shelf and plopped it down onto a bare worktable in the center of the room alongside the candle. “This one might have something helpful.” She tapped at the title and read it out loud to Olaf. “‘The Alchemist’s Almanac: A Guide to the Care and Keeping of Fields, Accurate Accounting of the Weather, and Wheat.’”

  Olaf looked down his pair of ice spectacles at Anna. “Not exactly my genre.”

  Anna smiled.

  “Ooh, this one seems cryptic and dense!” Olaf said, tugging out another thick book. “Here! You might like it, too!” He held it up for Anna to see. Its cover was a beautiful brown with black lettering. The title wasn’t written in an alphabet Anna recognized, but as she squinted at the book, a forgotten memory—more of an impression of sound and color, really—coalesced: The soft fabric of her mother’s dress beneath her cheek as Anna snuggled into her lap. A warm pressure at her side—Elsa, who’d climbed up to join. Words, low and gentle and hazy as her mother read out loud from a book, its cover the color of Anna’s new riding boots. Lullabies about secret white rivers and Earth Giants and lost legends of yore…Could it be?

  Setting the almanac back on the shelf, Anna cracked open the new book and saw the title again written in runes. Someone had written next to them, in pencil, the words Secrets of the Magic Makers.

  Anna’s breath caught.

  It was her mother’s handwriting.

  Anna would know it anywhere.

  This book. This room: her mother had known about it; she had been here. These books and objects about magic were hers. Suddenly, Anna’s chest felt too small for her heart. Or maybe her heart was too big for her chest. Secrets. This castle was full of secrets she had not known—was not allowed to know. Questions rattled through her: Why was Anna always shut out? Why had her mother collected all these books about magic? And…did Elsa already know about this room? Like when they were children, was Anna the last to know again?

  “Anna?” She felt a gentle pat on her shoulder. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

  At Olaf’s words, Anna felt her ribcage loosen, just a tad, but it was enough that she could breathe again. Olaf had been the friend of both sisters; he was a little bit of Elsa and a little bit of Anna, created by them together. And looking around, Anna didn’t think Elsa knew about this secret room. After all, Elsa had been so good about filling Anna in on everything she had missed during the time when her head had been under the troll’s persuasion, when she’d been made to forget Elsa’s magic even existed. Elsa didn’t keep things from Anna, not anymore.

  “I’m not, Olaf.” Anna flung back a braid. “This book…it was my mother’s.”

  “Oh.” Olaf peered down through his spectacles. “Her reading selection appears to have been very specific. I’d rather check out this book.” He waved a slender black volume in his hand. “It’s about dangerous shape-shifters living in a cursed forest.”

  “Why don’t you give it a read?” Anna asked. “Who knows—maybe it’ll mention cursed animals, too.”

  “Holler if you need me!” Olaf plopped down at the worktable to page through it.

  Meanwhile, Anna’s eyes prickled. Her mother’s book. She flipped through the rest of the thick pages. The runes looked like meaningless constellations, but the translations next to them had been made by her mother, and she would follow her mother’s footprints, or fingerprints, as they were, anywhere.

  Secrets of the Magic Makers seemed to be a book of old tales, brief histories, and maps showing the way to the Valley of the Living Rock, but also a glossary of sorts, naming all kinds of creatures that only existed in lore. Spirits of wind, water, and fire. Earth Giants. Nattmara. Huldrefólk. They all sounded so familiar, but it was like Anna was trying to stare through a bedsheet hung out to dry. At some point in her life, she’d known what these bedtime-story words had meant in crystal-clear detail, but now she could not make out any more than the slightest shape. Sadness crept over her.

  Mother would have known. Anna hadn’t just lost her mother when the ship sank beneath the Southern Sea’s waves. The world had lost Queen Iduna’s stories and lullabies, and there was no way to recover them. Or was there? Anna kept turning the pages. There were too many emotions at war within her to settle on any one page, on any one definition. Faster and faster she flipped through the book until fragile pages slipped out and flitted to the floor.

  Anna froze. As carefully as she could, she picked up the papers to realize with relief that they weren’t pages from Secrets of the Magic Makers at all, but scraps of research that had not yet been bound in. One page displayed some familiar-looking blueprints: it was Arendelle Castle. Anna squinted at the page. She, like Gerda, already knew all the secret passages and places that were marked, except for one that drew her attention now and the one she was currently in.

  Below the castle, something called the Earth Giant’s Passage seemed to run from somewhere beneath the ice room next to the kitchen and then turn south, under the waters of Arenfjord, to…to somewhere. Anna couldn’t tell. The black ink ran off the page, unfinished. But instructions had been printed in the margins. Three flagstones in, two across.

  “Fascinating,” Anna whispered and set aside the blueprints. As soon as she found something to help the animals, she would definitely be taking a trip to the ice room. She shuffled to the next piece of paper. It was a map of Arendelle and the land that surrounded it. Markings circled a black sandy beach and a place called the Dark Sea, and scrawled across it in that same clean flourish that distinguished her mother’s handwriting was one of her father’s many sayings.

  The past has a way of returning.

  It was underlined twice, as if it meant
something important. Anna squinted at the words, trying to make sense of them. But she was confused. The past was the past, so how could it ever come back? And why would her mother have written it on a map…a map that was stored in this particular book in this secret room? Was it supposed to mean something?

  Anna yawned. Maybe the words didn’t mean anything special at all. Most likely, she was only looking for meaning because she so badly wanted meaning to exist. And because she dearly missed her mother and, for a moment, had felt close to her again as she read her book. Or maybe it was because she was tired. So very, very tired.

  Anna had no idea how much time had passed since she and Olaf had entered the secret room, and with no window, it was impossible to tell. Tucking the map back inside the tome, she looked up to find Olaf balancing on a dusty wooden chair as he pulled a snow globe from a shelf.

  “Hey, look what I found!” Olaf called. “Snow that can exist in summer—just like me!” He plopped a kiss on the globe. “Hello, little pocket flurry.” Giving it a shake, he sent the glittering snow swirling around a miniature of Arendelle Castle carved from a seashell. It was pretty, and Anna had definitely seen that snow globe before: not the actual snow globe, but a sketch of it in her father’s sketchbook she still kept in a place of honor on her dressing table.

  “I think my father also knew about this secret room,” Anna said, “which means that there’s only one family member who might not know about it yet.” She snapped Secrets of the Magic Makers shut. “We have to go tell Elsa!”

  “Tell me what?”

  ELSA HAD RETURNED.

  And though Anna knew her sister had been up since way before her, had held a meeting for the villagers, visited a farm, scoured the library, then visited another farm, she was still crisp and clean, her blond braid a streak of sunshine against the burgundy of their mother’s cozy scarf, which was now wrapped around her shoulders. Elsa stood still, her mouth open, staring in what could only be called astonishment at Anna and Olaf inside the secret room.

  “H-how? I mean, did you…” Elsa sputtered. “What is this place?”

  Happiness and relief washed over Anna. From the expression on Elsa’s face and the way her voice shook, Anna knew—the same way she knew that ice was cold and fire was hot—that Elsa had not known about this particular secret. For once, Anna had not been the last to know.

  “We found a clandestine room,” Olaf said. “Clandestine means secret. But I guess now it’s not so clandestine. Unless you can keep a…what’s the noun form of clandestine? Keep a clandestiny?” He still held the snow globe in his hands. “Do you mind if I show this to Sven?” And before the sisters could reply, he skipped out of the room.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Anna said in reply to Elsa’s question. “But isn’t it wonderful?” She gestured to the secret room’s shelves and fought the urge to giggle as Elsa took a few steps into the room and looked around, her eyes wide, taking in the dried herbs, the gleaming copper spyglass, and the creamy swirl of what appeared to be a narwhal tusk. Elsa moved closer to the shelves.

  “How did you find this place?” Elsa asked.

  “Olaf,” Anna said. She filled Elsa in on the items, the map, the notes, and the book she felt could hold the answers to their problems. At the mention of their parents having been in this room, Elsa gasped.

  “And so,” Anna concluded, “I bet we can find something in here about the Blight.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Elsa said. “But whatever is affecting SoYun’s cows is also affecting the Westens’ goats. I couldn’t wake them up. I tried everything.”

  “I mean, look at this title!” Anna plucked the Alchemist’s Almanac from the shelf and turned back to Elsa, but Elsa’s attention seemed to have snagged elsewhere, onto an old golden frame that had been carefully leaning against a wall. The painting inside of it was muddied by grime, but Anna thought she could just make out a pair of eyes and a strong jaw: a portrait.

  Picking it up, Elsa blew, and a puff of dust ballooned into the air, settling on Anna’s face. Anna sneezed while Elsa held out the painting at arm’s length and squinted. “I think this is supposed to be Aren of Arendelle. The painting is so dirty, though, it’s hard to tell.”

  Anna placed the almanac back on the shelf and peered over Elsa’s shoulder. “What makes you think it’s Aren?”

  Aren was a legendary leader from times of old—the very, very old, before the last ice age, even. So old, in fact, that it was most likely the famous warrior had never even existed.

  “See that?” Elsa pointed at a dark smudge. “I think that’s supposed to be Revolute, his sword with a ‘yellow diamond, bright as an eye.’”

  Anna stared at her sister. “Are you…quoting something?”

  “Yeah,” Elsa admitted. “That’s a line from the Saga of Aren, written by an unknown poet whom some claimed was actually Aren’s true love.”

  It sounded kind of familiar to Anna. While she knew everything that there was to know about Arendelle, there were still some things, like these fine details, that she knew she’d once known but had forgotten. The things that she’d forgotten were usually stories her parents had shared. Embarrassment crept through her. She hated when she forgot things!

  She tried to remember everything she could about Aren. There were endless stories and epic poems about his brave deeds—from helping the Huldrefólk hide their tails to journeying under the sea to sing with mermaids or questing to mountaintops to meet the sun. According to that particular story, Anna recalled, the sun had been so impressed with Aren that she’d given him a sword called the Revolute Blade. With the sun’s sword in his hand, Aren had carved the fjord between the mountains. And not just any fjord, but this fjord: Arenfjord, the backbone of the kingdom of Arendelle.

  “Is that the one that goes, ‘Revolving moon and spinning sun, forged a crescent blade,’ and…something, something, something, ‘May the flags of Arendelle ever wave’?” Anna asked.

  Elsa nodded. “Exactly.” Anna’s embarrassment subsided as Elsa pointed a little above the smudge to a blur. “I think that might be the yellow diamond in the pommel, and then there”—she moved her hand—“see how the blade curves? According to myth, the curve is where the sword first struck the earth. That’s how the sword got its name. ‘Revolute’ means ‘curved.’”

  “Magic swords are nice and all,” Anna said, tilting her head and fanning herself with her hand. It was getting hot in the windowless room. “But I don’t really see why it would be helpful to be able to make cuts into the earth.”

  Elsa fiddled with her braid as she looked at the painting. “Apparently, the sun bestowed Revolute with great powers, and with the sword in his hand, Aren became known as the protector of the people, unifying them against a dark fright. He was a great leader.” A strange expression settled on Elsa’s face. “History seems to be full of great leaders.”

  Anna glanced at her sister. For some reason she did not quite understand, Elsa seemed to have left the room, even though she hadn’t physically gone anywhere. She no longer looked at Anna. Instead, her gaze was fixed on a shelf full of books, bottles, and jars.

  “Why were they studying magic? And why did they seal off the room and never tell us about it?” Elsa asked, her voice so soft that Anna wondered if she’d meant to say anything at all. Elsa stood there, with her back impossibly straight, standing the way a queen should. But at that exact moment, Anna didn’t see Elsa, queen of Arendelle. She saw Elsa the lonely child, who’d spent her days alone in her room with only patterns of frost to keep her company.

  Anna reached out to touch Elsa’s arm. Her sister was stiff, as if she didn’t just wield cold and snow, but were made of it. “I have the same question,” Anna admitted, glad they were in this together. “But think about it: why do people study art?” she asked. “Why does Baker Blodget spend her entire life in pursuit of baking the best butter biscuits in the world? Why does Kristoff keep trying to sing?”

  Elsa remained silent, so Anna an
swered for her, reaching down to pick up Secrets of the Magic Makers. “Because talents are worth exploring. Because butter biscuits are delicious, singing is fun, and your magic is beautiful, Elsa. Maybe they wanted to know more about it.”

  She slipped a hand in Elsa’s, and waited. A few seconds later, Elsa squeezed her fingers, and Anna squeezed back. Without meeting Anna’s eye, Elsa moved away from her and toward the exit.

  “I need to go.” Elsa’s voice was quiet. “This place creeps me out.”

  “What do you mean?” Anna didn’t think she had ever been in a more beautiful room with still so much to explore. The possibilities were endless!

  “It’s all these things in jars.” Elsa waved her hands. “Contained and locked away.”

  “Well,” Anna said, tucking Secrets of the Magic Makers under her arm, “maybe that just means it’s time for them all to be brought to the light of day.” Excitement again rose within her. “The answers to how to stop the Blight could be in here! Maybe there’s even more magic out there, magic that can actually help us!”

  Elsa flinched.

  “I—I didn’t mean it like that,” Anna said. “Your magic is really helpful. Just not in this situation.”

  Elsa took a step back. “I need to help the livestock before we can start really delving into this room, okay?” Elsa said. “There’s no time to waste. I…I have to go.”

  “Of course. But—but we…I can stay here and keep looking for clues,” Anna suggested. “We may be able to find the answers to what’s happening to—”

  Elsa shook her head. “I really think we should leave this place alone for now.”

  “Hold on,” Anna said, desperate to keep her plan in place, desperate to help. “There’s so much we haven’t uncovered! The books might have the answers!”

  “I have to go now.” Elsa’s voice was sharp as an icicle.

  “But we—”

  “We should leave this room in the past. There has to be a reason Mother and Father wanted to keep it secret. Besides,” she said as she gestured toward the door, “the answers to our problems are out there.”