and kept going. Anna and Kristoff struggled to stand up as the ice crackled and spread under their feet as a squall seemed to draw up around them, filling the sky with snow.
Anna didn’t even realize she and Kristoff had been holding on to each other. She kept waiting for the freak storm to pass, but instead, now it was snowing. In the middle of the summer. Her heart pounded hard. What is going on in Arendelle?
Three days later, Anna was still wondering.
For the past seventy-two hours she’d watched the scene outside her window. Blinding snow and ice covered the rooftops, blanketed the ground, and piled high in snowdrifts. Ice crackled and formed giant icicles that threatened to topple off rooftops and crash to the ground.
“We stay inside,” Papa told Anna and Ma as a fierce wind blew outside their bakery door. “We keep the fire going as long as possible and we bake as much as we can. We need the food. Who knows how long this weather will continue?”
Even with a fire raging, the house felt colder than Anna remembered its ever being in winter.
“It is good you moved the chickens and the animals into the barn, but it still must be awfully cold,” Ma said, rubbing her arms to keep warm.
Anna stared out the window. The streets were deserted. Snow was drifting higher in front of doorways despite people’s best efforts to keep it from piling up. They needed a way out of their homes in an emergency, but Anna couldn’t help wondering where they would go in weather like this. They’d freeze to death.
“It’s awfully crowded now with the animals and that ice delivery boy staying in the barn with his reindeer.”
Anna looked up. “Kristoff doesn’t mind. He likes sleeping in barns,” she joked.
Ma looked at her curiously. “You two know each other?”
Anna looked out the window again and tried not to let her mother see her blush. “A little. I wish he would come inside.”
Papa threw another log onto the fire. Their pile of kindling was getting dangerously low. They’d have to go out and cut down more soon. “I asked him to, but he won’t leave his reindeer.”
“I don’t understand,” Anna said. “How could it snow like this in the middle of the summer?” Her gut told her something or someone had caused it. “Is Arendelle cursed?”
Ma and Papa looked at each other.
“There’s no such thing as curses, right?” Anna pressed. Why did she think they knew something they weren’t telling her?
There was a heavy pounding at the door, and Papa and Ma looked at each other again. Papa rushed to the window and peered out. “Let them in! Quickly!”
Ma opened the door, the snow and wind practically overtaking her as she struggled to hold the door for their visitors. Two men were bundled up from head to toe in hats, gloves, and layers of scarves. Still, they were shivering.
“The snow is getting deeper,” said Goran, unwrapping a scarf from around his face. “Soon it will cover rooftops if it keeps falling.”
“That’s impossible,” Ma said, quickly handing him a hot mug of glogg. “It has never snowed that much.”
Mr. Larsen looked grim. “I believe we are cursed.”
“See!” Anna agreed, and her parents looked awkward.
“Did you not see how it came from Arendelle and traveled up the mountain?” Mr. Larsen continued. “How else do you explain snow like this in the middle of the summer? Something happened at Princess Elsa’s coronation. I am sure of it!”
“No one from Arendelle has come to bring news of the princess or what has happened,” Goran agreed. “For all we know, we could have lost her in this weather.”
Princess Elsa was their future. Anna was pinning her hopes to her. “I’m sure she’s fine. Right, Ma?”
Ma was looking at Papa. “Surely the princess is safe. She is probably busy preparing the kingdom for this unforeseen blizzard.”
Anna looked out the window again, straining to see her beloved Arendelle, but the mountainside was covered in a sheet of ice and there were whiteout conditions. Arendelle looked as if it had disappeared.
“Then why send no word to all the villages?” Goran asked. “Wouldn’t the castle come to tell us what is happening? We can’t continue like this. We are running out of firewood. The crops we planted must surely be dead by now, and we will have nothing to store for the real winter still to come. We aren’t prepared for these conditions.”
“In a few weeks’ time, we will run out of