This is useless. Anna felt as though she'd spent the best part of, well, forever, trying to saw the bedpost in half. The cuff at her ankle was chained to it, and with what she'd considered a stroke of genius- an hour ago, that is- she'd realised Ada had left the cutlery she'd brought with her earlier. However, the serrated edge of the knife had now been worn down until it was almost blunt, and all Anna was left with was a pathetic looking inch-deep cut in the bedpost. And an aching wrist.

In frustration, she threw the dinner knife down. There's no way this is going to work. She slumped down, face forward on the bed like a starfish, nursing her aching wrist and generally feeling sorry for herself.

After Ada left this morning (left, thought Anna, a generous word, considering the girl had fled in tears after the things Anna said to her) she'd heard the guards outside her room chatting for a while. She'd even heard the jangle of keys and thought someone was going to come in, but after an almighty crash it'd suddenly gone silent. For the last few hours, she'd heard nothing. Not the chatter of the guards. Not footfalls of anyone passing. Zilch.

It was almost an unnatural quiet. Even the birds outside had stopped twittering.

She regretted yelling at Ada. It'd felt good at the time… until the door closed and Anna realised she'd lost the last person willing to help her. It hadn't been a lot of help, but, still.

Anna peeled herself off the bed. There has to be another angle to approach this from.

Thus, lying underneath the bed, staring up at the springs, Anna spied the screws connecting the bedpost to the frame. She grabbed the knife and using the rounded end of it, begun the long and frustrating task of unfastening the lag bolts from the nuts. Difficult, since a dinner knife was definitely not the tool built for the job and kept slipping out, but finally the final screw hit the wooden floor with a clink. Anna wanted to cheer aloud.

Until the whole bed collapsed at one end with a loud crash.

Anna's hands flew to cover her mouth. Anyone half a mile from here must have heard that! She pulled the bedpost loose, still chained to her ankle, and held it out awkwardly as though brandishing a sword.

But there was no frantic jangle of keys. The door wasn't knocked down. Huh, thought Anna, as she lowered the bedpost. Tentatively she approached the door and peered through the keyhole. The sight this yielded her was however just a particularly nice key-hole sized piece of rosemaling. Fully expecting it to be locked, Anna tried the handle. She nearly dropped her bedpost when it opened.

When no guards pounced on her, she opened it a crack further and peered out. The corridor was empty. And weirdly, there was a ring of keys hanging form the lock and an upturned tray on the floor. Water from a metal jug soaked into the carpet and the remainder of what was presumably to be her dinner was decorating the floor. But whoever was carrying it was long gone, as though they'd just up and vanished.

Raising her makeshift weapon again, Anna crept quietly through the palace, and found anomaly after anomaly like the one before. A mop and bucket, abandoned in the corridor. A set of fine china in pieces on the floor of the solarium. A set of dentures abandoned in a glass of water.

And likewise: their owners were no-where to be found. The palace was completely and inexplicably, empty.

Without the normal hustle and bustle, it felt strangely eerie.

Anna looked first for Elsa in her room, but in truth knew it wasn't her bedroom where she'd find her. Today was the winter solstice, and it was with trepidation she descended the long winding staircase to the subterranean chamber.

Anna knew something was different as soon as her first heavy footfall echoed off the flagstone stairs. She ran her fingers along the wall, carved from roughly hewn rock. The strange runes that crawled over the surface were frozen, hung suspended. As she approached the bottom there was an odd brightness coming from the chamber. Anna hurried the last few steps, footfalls slapping against the flagstones, and found herself blinking in the sudden sunlight.

The chamber was gone. The cuff around her ankle was gone. Anna looked up from her feet to set eyes on the largest tree she'd ever seen.

A hundred men stood hand in hand could not cover the circumference of the trunk. The roots, knotted and gnarled, measured a mile. Anna cricked her neck trying to see the top of it. It seemed to go on forever.

Whoa. Anna stood for a minute in the sun-speckled silence, watching the heavy boughs creak in the breeze, leaves crinkling like tinfoil. She was so enraptured in awe that when she heard the bracken crack beside her, the surprise was like a punch to the gut.

There was a woman, only a few feet from her, crouched before the roots of the massive tree. She must have been there the whole time, and Anna had not noticed.

She flushed. "I'm sorry! I didn't see you there. I—"

The rest of her apology petered off when she realised the woman was crying. Urr. This is awkward.

Her eyes fixed on the outlandish outfit the woman was wearing. She looked like she'd stepped out of a painting. She wore a shining breastplate over her wool-skin tunic, a white wolf's pelt over her shoulders. An impressive looking sword hung at her hip, the silver blade shimmering with runes that skipped like dragonflies on water. She covered her eyes with her hands and she cried as though her heart was breaking.

Anna hesitated another second, teetering uncertainly, and then squatted down beside her. "Are you okay?" she asked. Dumb question, thought Anna, since the woman was sobbing her heart out. "Is— is there anything I can do?" she asked instead. The woman didn't respond, and Anna reached out a tentative hand for the woman's shoulder.

She felt a cold chill when it phased right through her.

"You can't comfort her, Anna. Her grief has long since passed. Now, like the rest of the Vanir, she sleeps eternal."

Anna's head whipped round at the voice, clutching her hand to her chest. A girl stood over her, perhaps a year or so younger than herself. Her voice, however, was not a girl's voice. It rumbled with a dozen timbres, echoing like a choir inside the confines of a stone-walled church. Her dress was made of a shimmering, reflective material, cinched at the waist with a leather belt. She wore a long waistcoat, studded with snowflakes, flaring behind her on the grass like a trail. Her hair was bronze, and she wore a circlet of gold. Her face was long, mouth small, eyes dark and sad.

She looked half familiar, though at the same time Anna felt a certainty she'd never met this girl before in her life. But she said my name. "Do I know you?" she asked.

"In a way," said the girl. "You met the part of me that was known as Ada."

"Ada?" Anna stood, brushing away the dirt and bracken from her dress. "But you…" You look nothing like Ada, she meant to say, before she recalled the conversation they'd had. I can see heart's desire. And when people look at me, they see their own. "This… is what you really look like?" she asked.

Ada nodded. Anna glanced up, taking the light stencilled through the leaves of the humongous tree. The woman in armour knelt, still crying. "Uh. Do you have any idea what's going on here?"

"These are my memories," Ada said.

"Your memories?" Anna was sure her eyebrows must be saying hello to her hair right now.

"There's a lot to explain, and I thought it would be quicker, and easier, if I just showed you."

"But that woman is dressed like she lived in… like the 11th century or something," Anna protested.

"It was more like the 7th, actually. She's Freyja, one of the goddesses of the Vanir. Her brother-husband Freyr has just died, fighting in the war against the Aesir. She's come to mourn him, here, at Yggdrasil."

Anna's protests were becoming weaker. "But those are myths. I learnt about them as a child. They're just stories."

"Didn't you once think that magic was the same? As you put it, a story?"

Fair point, thought Anna, before she shut her mouth. Possibly Ada had the best idea and she should just let her show her.

"I brought you back here because I need your help, Anna. And this story can't have an ending unless you first know the beginning." There was an eeriness to the echo of Ada's voice. Something about it sounded metallic, inhuman. A hundred voices spoke together as she said: "This is the story of my birth."

Ada directed her eyes to the goddess Freyja. Her tears fell like rain upon the earth. But they weren't ordinary tears. They hit the soil and rolled, like beads of mercury. Tear after tear fell, and the tendrils stretched together, pooling into a reflective surface.

A mirror.

Freyja wiped the tears from her eyes and looked on in wonder. She picked up the mirror and stared into it. For it wasn't her reflection that stared back.

"Freyr!" the goddess exclaimed. "Freyr, you've come back to me. Beloved brother!"

The goddess pressed her forehead to the mirror, the solidification of her grief, her longing, and her tears ran freely once gain, sliding down the surface like raindrops.

And then the sunlight dimmed, as though clouds had smothered the sun. A bloodthirsty cheer went up as two opposing armies clashed together, steel biting steel and flesh. Anna stumbled back, eyes wide at the brutality, clutching onto the root of the great tree. She closed her eyes against the carnage, and when she opened them, the world had turned to ash. Crows picked at the bones of the bodies. A smog of smoke hugged the battlefield, the world burned. The root she clutched at crumbled in her hands and Anna turned to look at the blackened husk that was once Yggdrasil.

"W-what happened here?" Anna managed to ask Ada, who stood impassively by the side of her.

"In the confusion of Ragnarok, Freyja's mirror was lost from Folkvang and fell into mortal hands. Human beings fought wars over it. Shed blood, killed kin, all for the glimpse the mirror provided. And in bloodying the mirror, strengthened it with all the souls of the lost."

"Please," said Anna, squeezing her eyes closed tight against the horrible site of the battlefield. "I've seen enough."

"Very well."

Anna peeked open an eyes, and was relieved to see the bodies gone, replaced with the glittering surface of a lake, hedged by ancient woodland that sprawled over the valley.

"Eventually the surviving members of the Vanir-Aesir war realised what was happening the mortal world, and what Freyja's mirror had done. When they saw what had happened to Yggdrasil, they sought to seal its power away forever."

Several figures stood by the lakeside. Among them Anna recognised from her story books the winged helm of Odin, and one of the Jötunn, the frost giantess Skadi, towering above the other men. By their feet the Mirror was laid, wrapped with chains of ivory and bone.

"Odin, this is my property!" shouted Freyja, bristling with anger. "I will seal it away from mortal hands. But I beseech you, do not take my brother away from me."

Odin replied kindly, but firmly: "Freyja, I do this for your sake as well as for those of the mortal lands. Some things are not meant to be. You linger on what cannot be, and have stopped seeing what is."

Freyja stormed away, and the other gods continued binding the Mirror, before Skadi heaved it up and threw it far into the lake, burying it to sleep among the silt forever.

"But it didn't," said Anna, looking to her companion. "Queen Matilda must have dredged the lake."

"She pieced together clues about the Mirror and its disappearance in history, using the remaining fragments of poems and myths," Ada said. When Anna looked back from her, the idyllic lakeside scene had changed. It was recognisably the same place, though a village now nestled on the valleyside. And, the water was gone from lake. The sun set above mounds of chalky soil, piled around the pit, the water siphoned into a another lake dug beside the original.

"Your Majesty, please, this way," said the foreman. He was guiding Queen Matilda down into the lake-bed using hastily erected wooden gang-walks. Her hair was still grey, but her back was no longer bent. Her walk was steadier. Her eyes shone bright with eagerness and impatience. "Let me help you, your Majesty. Your dress—"

"My dress will survive some mud," the Queen snapped, ignoring the foreman's offered hand and taking a long stride over the space between two muddy pieces of gang-walk. Anna and Ada followed them down into the lake bed, sticky with algae and smelling of pond-scum. "Now show me what you've found."

The foreman guided her to where two excavators were crouched at work. "Yes, yes. This is it. It's exactly as Tonnessen's journal describes," said the Queen, voice jubilant. The two men were hard at work with brushes and trowels, clearing away the centuries of mulch and silt from the clouded surface of the Mirror.

"It's very strange, your Majesty," said the foreman. "The chains seem to be made of ivory. And bone."

"Cut them away immediately," the Queen commanded. A bolt cutter was fetched, the chains cut away. As soon as the link was severed, the chains fell into dust. The surface of the Mirror begun to shimmer, shining beneath the mud and imperfections. The men backed away, but the Queen stepped forward.

She peered into the depths of the glass and her mouth tightened. Her eyes filled with tears and she gasped, "Cecilia." Her palms went to the glass, as though she could crawl inside. Tears ran down her wrinkled face, and splashed onto the Mirror.

The moment the teardrop hit the surface, the Mirror began to hum. It hummed like the sound of a glass struck with a fork, increasing in pitch until Anna was forced to shove her hands over her ears. Even then, the noise tried to wriggle into her eardrums. The workers stumbled back, and the Queen shouted, "No!"

The Mirror had begun to crack. It split from the centre where the teardrop had fallen and cracked into hundreds of pieces. Still the sound intensified, Anna ramming her fingers into her ears. Only Ada, stood beside her, was disaffected, watching the scene with the air of someone viewing a play they've watched a dozen times over.

It wasn't over. The Mirror glowed white hot, the foreman grabbing the immobilised Queen and throwing them both back into the mud as it exploded. The shards were scattered in every direction, streaking through the sky like shooting stars, luminescent and brilliant.

The light was so bright it stung her eyes. Anna closed them, and when she dared next to take a peep, her mouth dropped open.

They were stood in her and Elsa's childhood bedroom. The midnight shadows were thrown long, a cool draft blowing. Anna looked to see where it was coming from, and found Elsa knelt in the window seat, the shutters flung open and elbows propped up on the windowsill. She was no more than three or four, wiggling her toes under her blue nightgown, hair spilling out of its loose braid. Her eyes were wide with wonder, reflecting the streaking lights of a meteor shower, the night sky bright with hundreds of seeming shooting stars.

Elsa spoke breathlessly, trying—and failing— to keep up with the streak of stars. "—And I wish we can go to the seaside this year. And I wish I could get a new doll. And that Anna could hurry up and grow up so she can play with me. And—" Elsa gasped as a bright star blazed past the castle, and fell down somewhere in the courtyard below, past the pond.

"It fell! The shooting star! It fell in our garden!" Elsa shouted in excitement, whipping round as though she wished she could tell someone. Her eyes passed over Anna without seeing her. Elsa stood on the cushioned window seat, craning out for a closer look. When she still couldn't see the star, she clambered up onto the windowsill, teetering.

Although she knew it was only a memory, Anna still screamed as Elsa overbalanced, seemed to right herself for a moment, and then slipped from the window.

The word was ripped deep from her chest: "Elsa!"

Anna's hands slammed against the windowsill, but she'd heard it: a sickening crunch. Her eyes were wide as she stared down at the shadowed garden, illuminated by the flickering light of the meteor shower. Elsa's tiny body laid on the grass, unmoving, a puddle of something dark pooling by her head.

No… this isn't possible. Ada said this is supposed to be a memory, so how…?

Anna stood in darkness. An eternal darkness. Their bedroom was gone. She couldn't even see her hands in front of her. It wasn't a blackness, because the dark wasn't a colour. It was the absence of colour. An absence of everything.

Elsa sat in that absence, wrapped into a ball, hands curled around her knees. She was sobbing softly. Her cries did not echo. Instead, they were swallowed by the darkness.

Why are you crying?

Elsa looked up when she heard the voice. A strange voice, resonating with the timbre of many. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and asked, "Who's there?"

Why are you crying? said the voice once again.

"I'm s-scared," Elsa sniffled. "I'm lonely. I don't want to die."

The voice asked, Why?

"When Ivar, Mr Coates's dog died, he went away and I never saw him again. I don't want to go away. I want to see Mama and Papa again. I want to play with my new sister."

Why? Asked the voice.

"Why? Because if I went away, I'd miss them."

Miss them?

"Don't… you have a Mama or a Papa?" Elsa asked.

No.

"Or a sister?"

No.

"What about friends?"

No.

"Oh… that must feel lonely."

What is 'lonely?'

"It's when… when you feel sad. Because there's nobody around to play with."

When you feel sad… repeated the voice.

"I can be your friend, if you like. Maybe being dead won't be so bad, then. Um. Are— are you an angel?"

What if you could not be dead? If you could go back? Would that make you less sad?

Elsa clasped her small hands together. "Yes! I could see Anna again. And tell Mama and Papa about the shooting stars. Even though they'll be angry at me. It's my fault for playing by the window after they told me not to…"

Light pierced the darkness. A shard from the Mirror streaked through the dark, bright enough to scar the image into the back of her retinas. Elsa stood and raised her hands, and she caught the shooting star as it fell. Bright as a miniature star, she cupped it between her tiny hands, eyes reflecting electric sparks.

Make a contract with me.

"A contract?" Elsa asked.

Make another wish, the voice said. Let me be your heart. Let me experience happiness, sadness, loneliness. This time, for myself.

To be continued.