the walls and covering the floor. The world waited outside her door, pounding harder to get in. The ice couldn’t have come at a worse time, but Elsa was too consumed with grief to care who saw it now.
Anna was dead. That was why her parents had hidden her sister’s existence from her. No wonder Mama had always looked so forlorn. Elsa had changed the footprint of their family forever. How could her parents forgive her for what she had done? How could the kingdom?
Wait.
Elsa stopped crying and thought of the fountain in the courtyard and their family portrait in the hallway. Both showed a family of three. Wouldn’t her parents and Mr. Ludenburg want to keep Anna’s memory alive by including her in such works of art? Wouldn’t people talk about the lost princess? Why would her parents have hidden a painting of their original family in Elsa’s lockbox? Yet no one had ever uttered a word about Anna before. In fact, Mama had always told people who asked that she couldn’t have any other children after Elsa.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Elsa said, her questions coming faster. She felt her heart quicken and heard a whooshing in her ears. She was missing something, but what? “I know people have always tried to protect me, but how could Mama and Papa make the whole kingdom forget I had a sister?”
“I don’t know,” Olaf said, toddling over. “Maybe this letter will explain it. When you dropped the painting, this was underneath it.”
Elsa looked up in surprise. “Letter?”
Olaf held a piece of parchment in his twig hand. Elsa recognized the handwriting immediately.
It was Mama’s.
“Elsa!” Lord Peterssen and Hans were both calling to her now, pounding on the door again. “Elsa, are you all right? Answer us!”
Elsa didn’t answer. Fingers trembling, she reached for the letter in Olaf’s outstretched hand just as she heard a key jingling in her door. Her heart pounding, she skimmed the letter quickly. There was no time to read it carefully. Instead, she searched for the answer she most needed to find. Her eyes passed over words and phrases like trolls, the Valley of the Living Rock, and a secret we’ve hidden for years, and she kept searching till she found what she was looking for.
We love you and your sister very much, but circumstance forced us to keep you apart.
Keep us apart? Did that mean Anna was alive?
Elsa started to laugh and cry at the same time.
She was not alone. She had a sister!
“Olaf! She’s alive! Anna’s alive!” Elsa said as the commotion outside her door increased.
Olaf’s face broke into a toothy grin. “Where is she? We have to find her!”
“I know! I know!” Elsa looked down at the letter again, prepared to actually read it this time and learn how this was possible. Our darling Elsa, if you’re reading this, we’re gone. Otherwise—
Her bedroom door flew open.
The letter slipped from Elsa’s hands as Olaf dove for the dressing area. Hans rushed into the room.
“Elsa!” he said, his face filled with fear. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine!” Elsa insisted, pushing Hans out the door as he, Lord Peterssen, Gerda, and the Duke attempted to enter. She moved into the hallway, shut the door behind her, and realized Kai and Olina were also there. Elsa wondered: were they in on the secret, too? Did they know about Anna and where she was? She had so many new questions that needed answers.
Lord Peterssen clutched his chest. “We thought you were hurt.”
“Why wouldn’t you answer us?” Hans pleaded. “We thought…”
The Duke looked sharply at Elsa over his spectacles. “We thought you were running away from Prince Hans’s proposal.”
“Proposal?” Elsa repeated, and then she remembered all at once what they had been discussing before she heard Olaf’s crash and hurried back inside her room. “I…”
She needed to read that letter. What circumstances forced her parents to separate their daughters? Why didn’t she learn about her powers until her parents’ death? Why didn’t the rest of the kingdom talk about Anna? If her sister was alive, where was she? Had Elsa frightened her away with her magic?
She needed to read the letter immediately.
“Yes, Prince Hans is waiting for an answer,” said the Duke, motioning to a confused Hans.
“I think this conversation should wait till after the coronation,” Hans said.
“Yes, we need to go to the chapel,” Lord Peterssen reminded the Duke.