All is found, p.1
All Is Found, page 1
Copyright © 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
For information address Disney Press, 1200 Grand Central Avenue, Glendale, California 91201.
First Edition, November 2023
Hardcover ISBN 978-1-368-09248-7
eBook ISBN 978-1-368-10669-6
Illustrations by Lee Shih Hsuan and Vivien Wu
Design by Winnie Ho
Composition by Susan Gerber
Visit disneybooks.com
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Anna of Arendelle and the Silver Skates
By Diana Peterfreund
Engaging Anna and Kristoff
By Jen Calonita
Cold Secrets Deep Down
By Delilah S. Dawson
A Midsummer’s Song and Dance
By Lou Anders
Anna and the King
By Lorie Langdon
Wandering Oaken and the Not-So-Hygge Day
By Carey Corp
Elsa and the Frost Monster
By Vera Strange
Call of the Cuckoo
By Karen Anne Buljo
The Next Right Things
By Tiffany Schmidt
Coronation Day
By Mari Mancusi
Contributors
INTRODUCTION
Dry Banana Hippy Hat!
(Or… Happy Birthday, Frozen!)
It’s still hard to believe it’s been ten years since Queen Elsa fled Arendelle, throwing her crown into the snow and accidentally creating an eternal winter (and bonus ice palace!). I’ll never forget watching that scene in theaters for the first time, mesmerized by the music and lyrics as well as the empowering message on the importance of accepting ourselves for who we are, despite whether others will understand. The film was packed with action, adventure, and snowmen, both scary… and silly. And, to top it all off, an unexpected fairy-tale ending where the love of two sisters could thaw a frozen heart.
Frozen fever was real, and we all caught it that winter of 2013. Soon store shelves were as barren of Frozen merchandise as Oaken’s Trading Post and Sauna was of winter apparel. Families would stand in line over six hours at the theme parks for a chance to meet the two sisters in person. And the music began to feel like a soundtrack to our lives, playing wherever we went—often sung by enthusiastic children dressed as their favorite magical Snow Queen or her feisty younger sister.
No one, it seemed, was able to “let it go.”
And this was just the beginning. Over the years the film spawned several animated shorts and a feature animation sequel that broke box office records. Olaf kept us laughing on Instagram through the depths of the pandemic; and books, comics, and even video games and virtual reality deepened the lore, introducing new characters and entertaining us with side stories set in our favorite Frozen ’verse. And now we have a third feature film to look forward to!
In the meantime, to celebrate the original film’s tenth birthday, we’ve put together a brand-new anthology for you to enjoy. Ten original stories, one for each year, written by ten talented authors (who are also Frozen fans). You’ll enjoy sweet, nostalgic, never-before-told stories of Anna’s and Elsa’s childhoods and brand-new adventures taking place after the events of Frozen 2. You’ll spend time with beloved side characters (Mattias! Oaken!) and learn a new Northuldra legend. You’ll encounter deadly beasts of Nordic folklore and get to relive Elsa’s coronation day—with a rather unexpected time-slippery twist.
Some stories may make you laugh. Others may make you cry. But we hope all of them will remind you of why Frozen has remained so close to our hearts for these last ten years. And why it will continue to do so as we journey “into the unknown” for the next decade to come.
With the warmest of hugs,
Mari Mancusi
Author of Dangerous Secrets:
The Story of Iduna and Agnarr
and Polar Nights: Cast Into Darkness
The first freeze in Arendelle was a beautiful and terrible thing. Princess Elsa could always sense it coming. Her fingers would tingle, and a deep, starving something would cry out in her heart.
She couldn’t seem to silence it. Something inside her yearned to go out into the frigid air, to cast her magic down into the snow and up into the crisp wintry sky. Those nights, she’d bury her fingers into her covers, trying to hide the cold that would inevitably burst forth, turning her pillows and bedsheets as frosty by morning as the ground outside.
It was proof that she hadn’t yet learned to control her magic, as Grand Pabbie had long ago advised. It was proof that she was still unprepared to enter Arendelle society. And the reason that the castle gates remained shut and she remained locked inside.
And then, by midmorning at the latest, would come the worst part of all—the inevitable soft knock on her chamber door.
“Elsa?” Anna’s voice, plaintive and filled with an unquenchable hope. It had been years, and yet her little sister never gave up. “Do you want to build a snowman?”
Elsa sat on the richly brocaded chair in her richly furnished chamber, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap. Outside, the ice called to her. At the door, her little sister did the same.
“It doesn’t have to be a snowman,” Anna went on, wheedling. “We could go sledding. Or… skating?”
Elsa winced. In the Before Times, she and Anna had loved to build snowmen, and sled, and even skate. They’d wake up in the middle of the night and sneak down into the Great Hall of the castle. Elsa would use her magic to freeze the floor and send big drifts of snow up against the columns and corners of the room, and they’d have their own winter wonderland.
Anna didn’t remember any of that anymore. The troll had seen to that. All she knew was that she and Elsa would play in the ice and snow together.
He should have erased her memories entirely, and maybe Elsa’s, too, for good measure. That way, they wouldn’t miss each other so much. If only Elsa could learn to control her powers! Then she could play with her sister again. They could even build snowmen or go ice-skating.
“Elsa?” Anna tried again, always hopeful.
Elsa bit her lip. Inside her gloves, the frost spread.
“Okay,” her sister said at last, her voice filled with a sadness as deep as the fjord. “Bye.”
Long after she was gone, Elsa remained glued to her seat, worried that she’d lose her nerve and open the door.
It was a good thing that Arendelle Castle’s grounds were so expansive, or Princess Anna might have gotten bored years ago. As it was, she felt like she’d memorized every brick in the walls and each tree in the royal gardens. In the spring, she’d given names to every fluffy yellow duckling that hatched in the royal duck pond, and in the autumn, she’d watched tearfully as each duck, now grown and wearing its green-and-black plumage, flew south for the winter, on adventures Anna herself could barely imagine.
One day, perhaps she too would venture beyond these confining walls.
Now that very same duck pond was frozen solid, though, and Anna had plans.
Even if her sister once again had no interest in playing with her, it didn’t mean Anna herself had to be stuck inside all winter. She pulled on her warmest fur-lined cape and her thickest stockings and boots.
Once upon a time—Anna remembered it well—she and Elsa had run all over the castle grounds in the winter, building snowmen in the gardens, sledding off the hills near the courtyard, and, yes, skating on this duck pond. It had been years since Anna had skated, but it couldn’t be that hard to pick up again, right?
Earlier she’d heard two kitchen maids whispering about a festival the village was holding this weekend in celebration of the first frost. There would be food and games and fun, and it sounded like a total fantasy. Ice-sculpting contests and ice-skating races, a winter market and a hot chocolate stand…
Outside the castle it seemed like everyone was always having fun. She had no idea why her parents never let her go.
She also had no idea where her old skates were hidden. She doubted the ones she’d had when she was little would fit anymore, but Elsa’s probably would, and Elsa obviously wasn’t using them. Anna searched high and low to no avail. It was very strange. She knew they’d often gone skating.
But Anna had never been one to let a little adversity stop her. She grabbed a bit of twine and some smooth lengths of cloth to tie over her boots and tromped out into the snow.
The air was cold and clear, and some castle servant had helpfully shoveled the walk down to the duck pond. The ice over the surface was frosty but clear, and it seemed thick enough to hold her weight, especially if she stayed near the edges of the pond. Fortunately, the servants had also swept the frozen pond clean of snow that might have blown or fallen on the ice, keeping the surface as flat as glass. She sat down on a rock and began to tie the cloth over her shoes. It would have been so much better if she’d had real skates. It would have been so much better if she’d had a lot of things. She cast one last look back at the castle wall, where, far up, she could see the tall windows that belonged to her sister’s chamber.
For a second, she thought she saw a shadow in the window.
“Elsa!” she called, and waved furiously.
But if that really was her sister, the shadow didn’t wave back. Typical.
Anna tied the final knot. She was so tired of waiting. She wanted to skate, even if Elsa didn’t. She nodded firmly, pushed her red braids behind her shoulders, and took a step out onto the ice.
Elsa watched from the window of her chamber, just like always. Far below, Anna was trying—and failing—to skate on the duck pond.
Elsa supposed it couldn’t properly be called skating, not really. What her little sister was doing was sliding around on a bit of cloth or something tied to her boots. Actually, what she was mostly doing was slipping a few feet on the ice, then falling. Honestly, it seemed painful, and it had been going on for over half an hour. Elsa imagined Anna’s entire backside was covered in bruises at this point, and she was probably freezing.
Any minute, her sister would give up.
Any minute.
Another half hour went by. Slip, slip, thunk. Slip, slip, whoosh. Slip, slip, bonk.
Elsa groaned. Frost crept up the glass from the ends of her frustrated fingers. She wished she could help. She knew how. Despite years of focusing solely on not using her magic, she still remembered exactly what it was like to make smooth sheets of ice, to make shapes from snow. She could magic up a set of icy blades for the bottom of her sister’s boots that would make this entire process so much easier.
She could… but she wouldn’t.
She’d promised to keep her magic secret from her sister. To control it, to not let it show.
Outside, on the ice, Anna kept trying.
Slip, slip… crash.
Elsa straightened and pressed her hands against the windowpane. The air in the room dropped twenty degrees. Down by the duck pond, all she could see of her sister was two stockinged legs waving in the air from deep in a snowbank, under a weeping willow.
Frantically, Elsa checked the area around the pond, but she saw no servants, no stable hands. No one to help her sister.
No one… but her.
Elsa couldn’t take it anymore. She went over to her closet, pushing aside the fancy fur coats she never wore, the warm velvet cloaks she found stifling both inside and outdoors.
Far in the back was a trunk. It had once been her mother’s, back when Queen Iduna was nothing more than a common girl in love with a king. Inside were plenty of plain, simple clothes. Anna probably didn’t remember it now, but the girls had used to play dress-up with them.
In the old days. When they’d played.
Elsa dug through the stack of rough-knit sweaters and thick boiled-wool caps. From the very bottom, she pulled out a pair of skates.
They were fancier than most of the stuff in her mother’s trunk, with sharp silver blades. A gift, the queen had said, from someone who should have known better at the time.
And then she’d always smiled that goofy grin at their father. The one that made the girls blush and groan.
Elsa hadn’t ever used the skates, and neither had Anna. Why bother, when she could have just magicked up a set of ice blades and gone careening around the ballroom?
But that was then. And this? This was now.
There was just one problem. She could never let Anna know.
Anna dug her body out of the snowdrift, feeling something very akin to despair. This was impossible!
Around her, the wind blew cold and harsh. Her skin stung where her clothes were soaked through. She could hardly even feel her fingers anymore. All this time, all this work, and she’d barely even made it a few feet across the ice.
How had it been so much easier when she was a child? So much easier… with Elsa?
Out of nowhere, something cold and soft and wet smacked her right in the back of her head. A snowball!
Stunned, Anna whirled around, her hand going by instinct to her head. Bits of fresh snow encrusted her braids. Someone had thrown a snowball at her!
But there was no one lurking by the trunk of the willow tree, or hiding behind its drooping branches. In fact, all she saw was a glint of…
Wait, what was that? Anna’s eyes narrowed as she peered more closely.
There, resting in a tangle of willow branches Anna could have sworn had not existed a second ago, was a pair of ice skates. Bright white ice skates, with silver blades.
She squealed with delight and went closer.
To the touch, the skates were ice cold, which was probably not surprising given they were out in this freezing weather. She pulled them down from the branches, still looking to see where they could have come from.
But there was no one around. There was never anyone around. And the skates were here, in her castle courtyard. Could they be meant for her?
“Hello?” she asked the winter wind. “Anyone there?”
There was no answer.
In fairy tales, princesses had fairy godmothers. Maybe that was what this was.
Or a troll. Could always be a troll, right?
Before she could talk herself out of it, Anna untied the cloths from her shoes, pulled off her boots, and slipped her feet inside the skates. They fit perfectly.
The blades cut firmly but minutely into the ice at her feet as she took her first steps out onto the duck pond. She wasn’t slipping! She felt… powerful.
She pushed off, arms held out for balance, expecting at any moment for her feet to slide out from beneath her as they had so many times before.
But they didn’t! The skates slid through the ice with a satisfying schewp-schewp sound.
That was the problem! That was it the whole time. She hadn’t forgotten how to skate. She just needed real skates. Beautiful ones, like these.
She circled the pond, tentatively at first, and then—as she got the feel for the blades, for the ice, for the wind on her face—with far more confidence.
Schewp schewp schewp.
Anna grinned from ear to ear. Could she go faster?
Oh, yes, she could.
Elsa slammed the door to her bedroom behind her, panting. That was close! She was sure that Anna might have seen her, lurking beyond the willow.
She felt hot all over, her face flushed, probably from running through the castle and sprinting across the grounds.
It had been years since she’d thrown a snowball. She was afraid she’d forgotten how. But even without the magic, the snow obeyed her perfectly, smacking her sister right in the back of the head.
Elsa hoped it had worked.
Tentatively, she approached the window, her gloved hands covering her face. Somehow, Elsa felt as if peeking through her gloved fingers made it just the tiniest bit better. She wasn’t supposed to go near Anna until she learned how to control her magic. She certainly shouldn’t have played in the snow. But she’d done it, for her sister.
Elsa looked.
Down on the duck pond, Anna skated around on their mother’s old ice skates. She shouted for joy, her red braids flying out behind her like a streak as she went faster and faster with every loop.
And Elsa had done that, too.
The next time Anna approached Elsa’s door, she was hopeful in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. She knocked, as usual, and waited to see if her sister would open the door.
Of course, she did not.
“Want to go skating?” she asked the door’s painted panels. “Come on, Elsa, the weather is perfect. Remember how much we used to like skating together? The duck pond isn’t far.…”
No answer.
She took a breath.
“Okay,” she continued, her voice a bit lower. “But listen, I have a secret. I found these skates, out by the pond. I’ve been skating on them every day. They’re amazing, Elsa. So smooth, so fast, so beautiful. And skating on them—wow, it’s just like magic!”
Was that a noise? Had Elsa made some kind of sound there on the other side of the door?
Anna pressed her forehead against the door. It was cool to the touch—no, cold, even. How very strange.
“Elsa,” she wheedled. “Please? Please at least come watch me skate? You won’t believe how fast I am! I’ve only been practicing a few days.…”
Sometimes, Anna wondered if Elsa was really in there at all. They saw each other at formal events, of course, nodded to one another across a lavish dinner table or from a castle balcony. Her sister was so tall and elegant now, so distant. So silent.
