Do You Want to Hide a Body? by Peter E (online e book reading txt) 📖

“See, this is perfect!” Anna squealed, gesturing to the edge of the roof. “Nothing could survive that fall, and the river flows past on this side, meaning that the body wouldn’t be found until it was far out to sea.”

Elsa had to admit that her little sister was right. This side of the royal palace looked across the river and into the mountains, and the river’s flow, while sluggish this close to the sea, was enough to remove the evidence before it could be found. There was a single problem, though. “Isn’t there a shore down there?”

Anna made a ‘really?’ gesture to the sky. “Like it really matters. What difference could it make?” she guffawed. “This is obviously the perfect place to hide a body.”

“It does matter,” insisted Elsa. This was her first interaction with Anna in years, so she had to bear it out to the bitter end. “A shoreline could make this the very worst place to dispose of a body, as it’s very difficult to get up here without being spotted,” they had made it by sending servants running with MAMA, “and there are no windows a person might fall out of on this side of the castle.” A stiff gust of wind caught in the back of her skirt, and Elsa nearly overbalanced on the slick tiles, letting out a tiny ‘eep’ of panic.

Anna gave a comically heavy sigh. “Fine. If you want to be so specific, check.” She sounded long-suffering, as if the two sisters had arguments like this on a daily basis. To Elsa, it already seemed as if no gap had formed in their relationship, no matter how much she was painfully aware of the cloth of her gloves whenever they touched.

Very carefully, clutching her skirts with gloves soaked in nervous sweat, Elsa edged to the border of the roof, leaning very slightly over the edge for a good view of the palace foundation. The granite blocks of the palace plunged into the river, which was so deep and full of silt that there was no way to see the bottom. It looked very dangerous and highly deadly, a sheer drop of at least a hundred feet.

“You’re right, Anna,” Elsa admitted, irrationally proud of her sister for finding the perfect murder location. “This is a good place. Now let’s go inside before we catch co-“

As seemed to be habit today, she was interrupted by Anna. “Good,” the princess said in a toneless voice. Elsa turned to face her sister, whose face was set in a grim frown. Something was amiss.

“MAMA, now!” roared Anna. Before Elsa could so much as think about moving, the warped creation scuttled across the roof, surprisingly agile when on four limbs rather than two, and barrelled into Elsa at waist height. Already on the edge of the roof, the crown princess teetered momentarily, MAMA gripping her chest with all four of its grotesquely deformed limbs, before she toppled over the edge of the roof with a wail.

Tumbling head over heels, Elsa reached out on pure instinct and somehow grasped a gutter a few inches below the roof’s edge. As she stopped abruptly, MAMA lost its grip on the princess’s midriff, beginning to fall before miraculously catching itself by landing, froglike, on a window ledge the width of a finger about ten feet below. Elsa saw it slowly turn its head to stare up at her before she swivelled her body and reached desperately to grab the gutter with both hands.

Elsa hung there, her fingers sliding in her gloves with every passing second, scarcely daring to breathe. She was still far above the dark, frigid waters below – not a survivable fall.

Her hands, busily and irritatingly dousing her gloves with panicked sweat, slipped suddenly so Elsa was holding on with only her fingertips, and a hiss escaped from the princess. Now, when her icy curse might be useful, she had to be wearing her gloves! If only she could freeze the sweat, she would fall no further.

Within fractions of a second from thinking this, Elsa’s hands were coated in glorious cold, and she saw tendrils of frost reaching through the woven surface of her gloves. She calmed slightly, her mind slowing as the panic ran down, and considered her options. If her powers could even reach through her gloves the tiniest bit, she could stick one hand to the gutter and use it as leverage to pull herself up, though she had no certainty that she was strong enough to.

Staring up at the threads of ice, hope rushing through her body, Elsa noticed a female figure come into view, framed by the sun high in the sky behind her.

“Just let it go, Elsa,” Anna said soothingly, leaning down fearlessly to pry the fingers of one of Elsa’s hands from the now freezing metal. “Oh dear, your hands are cold,” she gasped rubbing the fingers between her own hands. “We can’t have that, can we? I just want you to be comfortable, dear, so very close to your death. Your fingers and much more will be freezing very soon, not least of which is your solid frozen heart, if you still have one after abandoning me.”

She let go of the hand she was holding, and it dropped to Elsa’s side, pain flaring as it went numb. The other hand loosened slightly, almost sympathetically, and Elsa hissed in fear.

Rallying her bravado, Elsa chose to stare straight up at her erstwhile sister, whose face and hair were still flecked with MAMA’s blood. “You think I have a frozen heart?” she hissed. “You are the truly frozen one here, Anna.”

Anna smiled benignly, as if she had received a compliment, before she stood up again. Raising her foot, she said, “Goodbye, princess,” the picture of mild sweetness. Then she stamped down hard on the glove still gripping the gutter.

Muscles spasming in pain, Elsa lost her grip. Her hand slipped from the glove with a slight crackling feeling as the ice broke, and she fell like an anvil, reaching in vain for her sister with her bare hand until she made unceremonious contact with MAMA on her way past the window.

Anna watched her sister fall, crashing into MAMA on her way down. The two girls fell together, Elsa on top of MAMA, until they went under the surface of the river together, disappearing into the depths with a huge splash. As Elsa had said, no one could survive that, and the current would take them far from here before anyone realised the princess was missing (except Anna, and she didn’t really count, did she).

Had she had the time and forethought, she really should have been able to produce a more poetic execution for her foolish sister. Perhaps tying an anvil to her and throwing her in, or burying her alive in a huge pile of snowballs. Or stowing her away on a boat to a tiny nation far away called Sealand.

Now, she considered, walking leisurely across the roof to the hatch, she would have the attention she deserved. The palace gates would open, sympathy for the distraught younger princess (far too young to experience such tragedy) would pour in, and the king and queen would love her as their only remaining daughter as they lovingly raised her to be queen.

It was almost worthy of a song. In fact, Anna was struck with inspiration (she was on a roll with inspiring herself today), and sang to the cold rising wind.

“Thanks, you helped me hide a body.

Too bad it turned out to be yours.

So sleep well with the fishes there,

I doubt our parents care.

I’ll take what’s ours!”

(She laughed with fierce joy there)

“The queenship, all attention here.

The king, queen, and staff

All will be loyal to me! 

Because you helped me hide a body.

Because you helped me hide your body.”

Anna hummed the last few notes happily to herself as she descended back into the palace, where the alarm would soon be raised concerning the missing princess. And where would she be? She could hurry down to the kitchens to make cookies again, or hide away in her room with what had been Elsa’s alchemy book. She could even go and play with the anvil in the forge.

Yes, she decided, she would say that she had spent all day poring over the book, having forgotten what day of the week it was in her excitement. If a servant should refute her (more than enough of them spotted MAMA and her this morning), well, there had to be a ritual to erase memory or cause pain somewhere in there (preferably pain, as memories made it obvious that someone had shut their trap).

Deep in the river, Elsa floated at an equilibrium, stunned and angry.

MAMA had hit the water just below Elsa, and had broken the surface tension of the water so Elsa had survived the impact, though she thought her tailbone might never be the same again. Her hand, freed from its glove and magic dampener, had drawn a hollow cylinder of ice through the water, which Elsa had stuck in her mouth and blown through to prevent herself from drowning.

The water around her was swiftly cooling under her influence, and Elsa marvelled at the power she wielded. No longer was it a curse; in fact, it would have been better to rid the world of Anna when they were children. Next time, there would be no hesitation.

And there would be a next time, Elsa was sure. She would wait, grow stronger, and return to take revenge for this breach of trust.

It was time for the gloves to come off.

Publication Date: 08-03-2014

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Dedication:
Dedicated to someone I choose to refer to as the Fangirl, a good friend of mine who introduced me to "Do You Want to Hide a Body?" the inspiration for this oneshot.