Princess Soapfish

>Anna looked over the paintings leaning against the walls of the drawing room. All of the beloved artworks destroyed by the ice bursting from the castle walls at the end of the three-day winter stood before her as if new.

 

>"This is amazing, Rapuh-uh, your Highness." Anna smiled up at her cousin and corrected herself in her expression of gratitude toward the Princess of Corona. "Where did you to paint so well?" Anna asked.

 

>"I got up every morning at 7 A.M. and fought as hard as I could. That's all it takes." Rapunzel smiled broadly and rested her hands on her hips.

 

>"Elsa's going to be so happy. She felt terrible when I told her all my "childhood friends" got hurt by the ice. She thought I was talking about people, until I brought her into the great hall and showed her all the broken frames and torn canvases." Anna sighed, and smiled back at Rapunzel. "Let's go find her."

 

>Anna and Rapunzel set off down the hall to the sitting room to find Elsa, Kristoff, and Prince Fitzherbert of Corona sitting quietly opposite each other on a loveseat and a couple of chairs.

 

>"Did someone die?" Rapunzel asked.

 

>"My parents" said each in sequence, and then looked around at the last sadly.

 

>"Uh... oh." Rapunzel pursed her lips.

 

>"Well Blondie, we got to talking about our childhoods and found out we all had something in common." Eugene explained.

 

>"Oh, I'm sorry. About... all that." Rapunzel whispered. The urge to brighten the mood of the night struck her and she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. "My Queen, the Prince and I are famished. Might we retire to dinner?" Rapunzel asked Elsa.

 

>Elsa looked up at the clock on the mantlepiece. "It's a bit late for the kitchen staff to still be here. I'll have Kai and Gerda bring us something." Elsa rang a small silver bell and Kai appeared in a moment.

 

>"Yes, your majesty?" He bowed and awaited his orders.

 

>"Would you bring a sampling of foods from the cold pantry, and a bottle of spirits? My guests are famished." Elsa requested.

 

>"At once, your majesty" Kai responded, and withdrew himself to the kitchen.

 

>"He shouldn't be a minute" Elsa said to her cousin.

 

>Rapunzel sat beside her husband and clutched his hand in her lap. "Eugene and I just love it here, Queen Elsa. We were thinking of staying until fall rolls around."

 

>"Fall?" Anna said before Elsa could react. "That's great! We can have Oktoberfest, you can show me how to do my hair, we can make those salty bread things you guys brought..."

 

>"Pretzels, Anna." Elsa interrupted her sister and turned her attention towards Rapunzel and asked her with barely perceptible panic "You're staying until fall? Won't you get bored just hanging around here?"

 

>Eugene piped up amicably. "Oh, not with you and Anna to visit. It's a lot comfier around here in summer than Corona, anyway, your majesty, especially with the snow. Makes for good stay-in-bed-all-day weather, if you know what I mean." He turned and smiled at Rapunzel. "Right, blondie?"

 

>"Yes... the servants tell me you were quite happy to stick out the cold in our warm beds... even the royal bedchamber." Elsa smiled back at them.

 

>"Oh, we're sorry about that again, Elsa. Aren't we, Eugene?" Rapunzel said as she squeezed her husband's hand.

 

>"Deeply sorry, your majesty. All the rooms in the castle are so nice we really couldn't tell which one was which." Eugene cocked his head and contorted his face until his cheeks stuck out and his lips were drawn back against his teeth.

 

>Elsa stared at him curiously until he brought his face back to normal and felt around his mouth as if missing something. Eugene leaned in to his wife's ear and whispered. "Doesn't the smolder ever work on you royal types?"

 

>"Sorry to keep you waiting, your Majesty," said Kai as he came back into the room with a tray of jar and dishes of food. He set it on the table amidst their seats and made to alight when Elsa called out to him again.

 

>"Kai, would you mind also bringing us a jar of Lutefisk?" she asked.

 

>"Of course, majesty," said Kai. He turned about and left, and chuckled to himself once out of earshot.

 

>Rapunzel opened a jar of preserved fruit and speared a few pieces with a fork onto her plate, and then a can of corned, beef. "Anna," she asked her cousin, "What's lootafisk?"

 

>Anna swallowed the olive she chewed and smiled at her cousin, black bits stuck in her teeth. "You've never had lutefisk before? It's all people eat around here in the wintertime." She bit loudly into an apple and swallowed the chunk all at once. "Kristoff and I were living on it for days when we were looking for Elsa".

 

>"Is it good?" Eugene asked. "What is it?"

 

>"Fish." said Kristoff in between bites of a very salty ham. He poured himself a glass of acquavit. Eugene gestured to him to pour another two for himself and Rapunzel.

 

>"Just fish?" Eugene said, then inhaled the herbal scented potion and took a hearty gulp. He wheezed and coughed as the strongest liquor he'd tasted in his life stung at his throat, and turned to Rapunzel to caution her against drinking it, too late. The Princess of Corona sipped hers politely and nodded in admiration.

 

>"Is that licorice?" Rapunzel asked. Eugene stared at her and wondered how she'd taken it so much better than himself.

 

>"Licorice and Fennel" Elsa answered her, and bit into the corned beef at the point of her golden fork.

 

>Kai returned with a domed silver tray in his hands. "The lutefisk, your majesty" he said as he placed the tray aside the other and lifted away the dome. Inside, on a glass-covered dish, lie the pile of preserved fish, amidst a plate of small squares of bread and pasted cheeses.

 

>"Thank you, Kai. That will be all for tonight." Elsa excused him and the servant departed with a bow of his head.

 

>"Well Kristoff, you're closest, would you do the honor of serving our guests?" Elsa asked.

 

>"Sure, Elsa." Kristoff removed the lid from the dish of fish and set it aside the tray.

 

>"Oh ye gods what is that?" asked Eugene.

 

>"That's lutefisk, Eugene. Please have some. Kristoff, if you would..." she beckoned to Kristoff to serve the Prince a slice.

 

>"Oh, sure, Elsa," Kristoff said. He spread some of the pale, pasted, cheese on a slice of bread and slapped a chunk of the white fish on top of it. He handed the plate to Eugene.

 

>Elsa smiled broadly at him as he drew it back before him. "Enjoy it, Eugene. It's our best." she said.

 

>"Uh, I think I'll just have some of that corned be - Ow!" he yelped as Rapunzel jabbed her elbow into his ribs. He gulped and looked down at the fish in front of him. "Is it supposed to smell like that?" he asked.

 

>"Hmm, like what? Anna asked him as she leaned over and fixed herself a helping topped with lingonberry jam. "Mmm, yummy," she said, and took the morsel into her mouth.

 

>"Like, uhh..." Eugene met the Queen's gaze, looking down on the lutefisk in front of him, and grimly shoved it into his mouth. He wanted to cry as the smell wafted up from within to tickle the back of his nose and chewed in horror.

 

>Kristoff gave the queen herself a piece of the jellied fish, and watched in amazement as she took a bite with gusto.

 

>Beside him, Rapunzel made a portion for herself. Eugene swallowed as hard as the could on the half-chewed plug of north atlantic cod and gulped down another stinging blast of acquavit. "Blondie, don't!" he cried out, again too late to prevent his wife taking the Arendellers' bizzare food into her mouth. She chewed it gleefully and had a further sip of her own glass of liquor.

 

>"How did you do that?" he asked his companion. Around him, Anna, Kristoff, and the Queen all tucked into a second slice.

 

>Rapunzel turned her head to his ear and whispered: "I stopped breathing through my nose. You do the same, Herbert. Don't screw this vacation up for me." The smell of lutefisk wafted from her open mouth into his nose.

 

>"Queen Elsa", he asked, "how often will we be served this... this, delightful food, if we extend our stay?

 

>"In keeping with the best hospitality of Arendelle, it would be my pleasure to ensure you three servings of Lutefisk a day - breakfast, lunch, and dinner." Elsa chopped the air, marking off the meals. "And for snacks, too. Whenever you want something from the kitchen I'll be sure there's plenty of lutefisk available for you." Elsa grinned and awaited his assent.

 

>"Well, Eugene?" Rapunzel asked him, the overpowering odor of the fish flowed out of her mouth and grabbed him the nose.

 

>"Blondie, please," he whispered to her, "these people are crazy."

 

>"Heck, Eugene, if you guys are going to stay that long I can take you up into the mountains, show you how to harvest ice." Kristoff patted him on the shoulder.

 

>"And Rapunzel, I simply must know how you intended to stay so long without leave from Aunt and Uncle. I'd have to send them a messenger were you to be gone so long, along with an invoice... for the food and lodgings. Arendelle is so much poorer a kingdom, you know," Elsa cheerfully reminded her.

 

>"But we'll have lots of free time together, too!" Anna chimed in. "Now that all the paintings are fixed I can introduce you to Joan and the others."

 

>Rapunzel and Eugene looked at each other with terror in their eyes.

 

>"On second thought, Queen Elsa, maybe we have stayed long enough. I'm sure you could use some time with just your sister; patch things up without us getting in the way" Rapunzel said in hope of excusing herself as rapidly as possible from another two months of lutefisk meals.

 

>"Sorry to tempt your hospitality, Snowflake, Strawberry, Bigfoot, but the girl's right. We need to be going sooner rather than later." Eugene rose from his seat. "In fact I think I'll go back right now!"

 

>He bolted from the room and and rushed down the hall to the water closet, and finding it empty, retched the unwanted dinner into the ceramic receptacle. With a pull of the chain, only the memory of the gelatinous staple remained. Eugene sighed in relief.

>Eugene ran the corner sink full of water and cupped his hands beneath the surface to splash some onto his face. He rinsed his mouth free of the Neptunian nightmare and drained the sink clear, and stared at his unhappy expression in the mirror. Angry knocking sounded from the door before he'd had the chance to recover fully.

 

>"Eugene, are you done in there?" his Princess curtly called out to him. He opened the door to find Rapunzel holding her chin up regally.

 

>"Sure, blon... die," he responded as she rushed past him and hacked her own stomach into the toilet. Eugene grimaced at the sound of her guts turning themselves inside out to extinguish the nose-searing stench of Arendelle's native produce. She washed her own mouth out and coughed in relief.

 

>"How can they eat like this?" Rapunzel said.

 

>"Blondie, please, don't remind me so soon" Eugene begged her.

 

>"We're not leaving." Rapunzel continued.

 

>"What? After what she just said? You want to go through this three times a day?" Eugene asked.

 

>"Eugene, it's humid back in Corona. Sticky. Pascal may enjoy it but my hair doesn't. Think of the hair, Eugene. I haven't frizzed up once since we got here." Rapunzel turned and gazed determinedly into his eyes. "If she wants us to leave she's going to have to throw us out."

 

>"Well, I'm staying if you're staying" Eugene replied.

 

>Elsa laid back in her easy-chair and smiled. "That'll teach them to fool around in my bed," she said out loud. Kristoff and Anna laughed at the weakness of the Coronan's consitutitions.

 

>The next day broke to find the castle abuzz with carpenters and other tradesmen. Repairs to the damaged walls continued; new furniture was turned out only feet from where it would sit.

 

>Rapunzel and Eugene debated coming downstairs for their breakfast.

 

>"Are you sure we can't just go out to town and eat there? I saw a really nice waffle house out there a couple days ago." Eugene's stomach churned in anticipation of Elsa's pledged lutefisk.

 

>"Eugene, we're her guests. Even if she's trying to get rid of us, snubbing her hospitality would be rude. It's called etiquette, you should know this stuff, I gave you that book to read before we even left." Rapunzel chided her impertinent husband.

 

>"I'm not making any promises, Blondie," Eugene complained, "and if we sit down to more of that garbage fish I'm taking the first mermaid taxi home."

 

>"Mermaid taxi?" Rapunzel began to ask him as they approached the door to the royal dining room. The guards opened if for them and Rapunzel and Eugene walked into the midst of a pitched argument.

 

>"What do you mean we don't have any blackberries?" Anna asked with particular emphasis on the word "mean". I always have blackberries with my porridge."

 

>"I'm sorry, your highness, but your sister has given us our orders. The berry stores are not to be eaten." Gerda explained to Anna, only exacerbating her unamusement. "We still have several pounds of raisins, though," she said, and touched her chin in concern.

 

>"Raisins? Shriveled up little grapes? Oh, she is going to hear about this..." Anna got up from the table, leaving her unfinished porridge and storming past Rapunzel and Eugene.

 

>The two of them sat down at their places, marked with royal placemats of Corona. Gerda approached them and bowed her head.

 

>"Your highness, what may our kitchen staff prepare in your honor?" the housewoman asked.

 

>Rapunzel and Eugene looked at each other for a moment and considered their luck.

 

>"Was she kidding last night?" Eugene whispered.

 

>"I don't know." Rapunzel whispered back.

 

>"Uh, a steak and some eggs would be nice." Eugene said to Gerda.

 

>"And for mildady?" she asked Rapunzel

 

>"Sausage quiche?" Rapunzel dared to request in defiance of Elsa's orders.

 

>"Very well your highness, it will be but a moment." Gerda disappeared behind the kitchen door.

 

>"Well that was easy" Eugene said with a broad smile across the table corner. "I guess we're staying after all."

 

>Gerda returned after a quarter of an hour with their orders. With no lutefisk in sight, Rapunzel and Eugene silently thanked their good fortune and tucked into their breakfasts. Before they finished, Anna returned, still deep in the huff in which she'd departed.

 

>"I'll take the raisins, Gerda," Anna said as she sat back at her seat and stirred her porridge, now quite cold. The housemaid slipped back into the kitchen and returned with a crock. Anna stirred a handfull of small black fruits into her bowl and reluctantly spooned the porridge into her mouth.

 

>"Hey, strawberry, why don't you come and join us?" Eugene beckoned to Princess Anna. She looked up and nodded in acknowledgement, then rose from her seat and took one beside Rapunzel at the 12-setting table.

 

>"Heh. Strawberry." Anna said to Eugene as she sat down. "Nobody's going to be eating strawberries around here any time soon. Or blackberries, or raspberries. Might as well write off the whole fruit kingdom." Anna gave a depressed sigh as she spooned another raisin-strewn dollop of barley porridge into her mouth. "These things don't pop at all. They're not squishy," she said once her mouth was empty again.

 

>"What happened, Anna?" Rapunzel asked. "Is Elsa telling everybody except the two of us what they can eat now?" she waved her index finger back and forth between herself and Eugene to indicate the strange reversal of roles in subject to Elsa's seeming dietetic tyranny.

 

>"I don't know. She's talking to the farm guy and she seems really mad about something. No berries for anyone until she gets everything sorted out, she said." Anna sighed forced herself to chew another spoonful of the punishingly raisin-studded grain mush before it got any colder.

 

>"You want some of my steak, red? That orphan-chow doesn't look too good from here." Eugene asked her, remembering his own unhappy childhood - three meals a day of mushy orphanage cereal - rarely had they included fresh fruit - only on holidays.

 

>"Here you go, kid." Eugene shoved her his plate with its unfinished portion of his steak, strewn with hard, yellow, clumps of yolk and creamy bernaise sauce.

 

>"Mmm, steak for breakfast. Wish I'd thought of that," Anna said.

 

>The finely tenderized meat cleaved apart like so much clotted cream under the edge of her spoon. Anna took a chunk of the beef into her mouth. She closed her eyes to savor the sensation of the fibers melting apart against her tongue and hummed in satisfaction.

 

>"You two didn't get the lutefisk?" Anna said, mouth half-full of puddingy steak. "Elsa must really be distracted." she took the last of Eugene's breakfast up from the plate and set her spoon down beside it. Gerda appeared in a moment to clear their places. She scowled at Anna's half-full porridge, studded with nearly as many raisins as she'd added in the first place, before she carried their dishes away.

 

>"What were you two going to do today?" Anna asked her cousin. "I was going to go down to the market and buy some flowers and some new books."

 

>"That sounds great. Maybe they'll have the ones I used to read. I think I could teach you a lot more about art if we had some imprints for you to study," Rapunzel said. "And Eugene, you could find that waffle house you were so eager to see.'

 

>"Maybe. I wouldn't want to intrude on girl time. Where's the beastmaster? He must be doing something already if he's not here with you, red" Eugene shifted in his seat to look out the castle windows down onto the harbor.

 

>"Oh, Elsa sent him off to hand out ice already. I know it's his job and everything but sometimes I wish she would just do wave her hands out the window and do it herself" Anna lolled her head around. "It's like we're both dating him sometimes with how much she has him carting around her ice." I wish we could take a vacation somewhere warm, like Corona."

 

>As she was speaking the last of her request, Elsa came in from the hall.

 

>"We might have to move there permanently; Anna." Elsa said.

 

>"To Corona? Why?" Anna said.

 

>"I need to speak to Rapunzel about that. Princess," Elsa said, beckoning to her cousin, "I must ask you to come with me to the courtroom."

 

>"Of course, your majesty. Sorry Eugene, Anna. Why don't you two go into town together?" Rapunzel said as she rose from her seat.

 

>"Thank you, Eugene." Elsa said. Rapunzel waved at her husband before she whisked the two of them away.

 

>Anna looked across the table at Eugene and raised her eyebrows at him. "Really? You want to?"

 

>"Sure, Strawberry. You can show me all the little places the Queen doesn't want visitors to see."

 

>"Let's go!" Anna said.

 

>Eugene offered Anna his arm and the Princess of Arendelle set out from the keep, for the first time with a royal escort.

 

>Meanwhile, Rapunzel and Elsa met Arendelle's minister of agriculture in the antechamber of her courtroom. He recounted for the two of them the figures he'd collected in the previous weeks

 

>"As I have told her majesty, the kingdom will be quite impoverished of perishable food supplies in short order. The early frost damaged the berry crop in particular, which was nearing the end of its harvest. That which had not already been eaten was to be preserved for seed, but this is now impossible. As it stands today, outside the palace gardens, Arendelle will be absent fresh fruit of any kind within a week's time."

 

>Elsa was the first to break the silence. She turned to face Rapunzel and squeezed her hand while she plead.

 

>"Rapunzel, I need your help with this. With Weselton cut off, Corona is the closest trading partner we have. We would need food imports at three times the rate we have now, until next year. Arendelle just doesn't have the means."

 

>Rapunzel took a curious look at Elsa for a moment and considered her plea.

 

>"I'm sure father would be happy to send you all the food you need if I asked him. But he might not be able to appreciate only getting lutefisk in return, Elsa."

 

>Elsa glumly cast her eyes carpetward.

 

>"About that. I'm sorry for trying to see you both off so disrespectfully. You're welcome to stay as long as we can keep you... as long as we can feed you, anyway."

 

>"I may be able to help with your harvest problem, as well,"

 

>Rapunzel turned to the Minister.

 

>"You said the castle garden was intact? I'd like to see for myself."

 

>He led the two of them out into the castle's back yard. There beneath the shade trees lay the well-kept brambles and berrycanes of the Queen's preserve. Rapunzel tested their resilience and then that of the berries themselves. The black and blue berries sprung back healthily at her touch. The rasp and logan and boysens less well. In the corner of the garden, beneath a tree carved with numerous sigils of love, arrow-crossed hearts and other devices, Rapunzel found a thicket of white fruits.

 

>"They don't seem to have suffered from the frost at all. Do you even eat these?"

 

>Elsa looked quizzically at the minister.

 

>"No, my lady, it's kept for its looks. I believe them to be mistletoe."

 

>"Mistletoes don't have thorns..."

 

>Rapunzel reached out and carefully took a clump of the fruits in her hand. A thorn around the back side of the branch nicked her finger.

 

>"Ah!" cried Rapunzel as she drew hand back.

 

>A tiny spot of blood showed where the plant had pricked her. Before Rapunzel's eyes the white fruits turned pink. The wound on her thumb sealed over in a moment. Elsa rushed over with the minister. The fruits of the mistletoe darkened from pink into red.

 

>"What happened? You were just looking at them." Elsa said.

 

>A strange stillness came over Rapunzel as she looked at the fruits. They'd taken a speckled pattern now, with darker red spots over the pink, that seemed strangely familiar to her. Taken with the oddity of it, she thought to try something she'd not done for the last two years.

 

>She sang; and the familiar glow of her magical hair streaked across the thicket's branches. The fruits now glowed, golden, in the shade.

 

>Anna and Eugene strode down the main street of Arendelle toward the dock. People called out to the princess as they passed. Eugene's smoldering looks left the womenfolk hushing each other in admiring gasps.

 

>"People seem to have gotten over the winter pretty well, eh, red?"

 

>Anna waved to some children chasing a chicken around the butcher's shop and sighed.

 

>"They love it whenever we come out of the castle. I think they wonder what we're doing in there all the time. I used to wonder what they did out here all the time. Since they opened the gates I've been coming out every day and saying hello to everyone. It's silly but, I think seeing us makes them feel better about everything.

 

>"Rapunzel's parents don't really care much for mingling with the masses. I'm still glad they let a guy like me marry her. Speaking of which, you getting serious with the beastmaster yet?"

 

>"Kristoff?" Anna cupped her hands over one another and looked down at the pavement. "He's the first man I've ever met who actually loves me."

 

>"Things didn't work out with Prince Westergard?"

 

>"Who?" Anna said.

 

>"The prettyboy with the white coat and no personality. He chatted us up at the Coronation ball like we were your parents, scrounging around for secrets."

 

>"Oh, Hans. His name was Westergard?"

 

>Anna's face crinkled into a dismissive frown and shook her head.

 

>"Glad I dodged that arrow."

 

>Finally they arrived at the bookseller's. He greeted them happily and ran off to the back of his shop to fetch something. Anna spotted a collection of poems.

 

>"The Ugly Duckling, The Nightingale, The Angel, The Sweethearts. Hmm. By Hans Chris - eww, why are Hanses everywhere I go?" She put the book back on the counter display for the next customer.

 

>The bookseller returned from the back with a brown paper package.

 

>"Princess, pleae see that your sister gets this as a gift from me? I was so happy to see her stop by the other week. I'm sure she'll enjoy this one, it's the latest Dickens."

 

>"Oh, sure."

 

>Anna took the package under her arm and set to looking around the shop. Finding nothing new in the genre of courtly romance she'd enjoyed using to help Kristoff brush up on his reading in the last weeks, she sighed and awaited Eugene at the counter.

 

>"The Queen certainly loves her reading doesn't she? One wonders where she finds the time." the bookseller said.

 

>"Oh she still spends most of her time by herself, except now she's always in the study or the library, or the..."

 

>Behind the bookseller, tucked between two journals standing upright against the cashbox Anna spied a letter bearing the wax seal of the court of the Southern Isles. She immediately hushed herself and made a show of something on the shelves opposite the counter catching her eye.

 

>"That one there, what's that about? Princes?"

 

>The bookseller turned to see which she meant.

 

>"Which book, your highness?"

 

>"That big one with the red cover."

 

>While his back was turned Anna snatched the letter away, then wedged it between her arm and the package.

 

>"The Principia Mathematica, your highness? no, I'm afraid it's more a textbook, not something one of your station would appreciate, I'm sure."

 

>"Oh, too bad."

 

>Eugene came back to the counter, his hands full of tomes.

 

>"Blondie's going to love this. How much for the stack, my good man?"

 

>The bookseller quickly added them up in his head.

 

>"Hmm, ten kroner."

 

>Eugene looked askance at Anna.

 

>"Strawberry, do you think you could get this one, we didn't bring that much coin wth us."

 

>Anna reached into her pocket and retrieved a coinpurse with her free hand and set it on the counter.

 

>"Oh, Princess Anna, I couldn't take your money. I will simply add this expense to the yearly bill"

 

>"Hmm, okay," Anna said and took her purse back.

 

>The bookseller stuffed all of Eugene's books into a sack and tied it shut neatly.

 

>Once they'd left the shop and were outside, Anna quickly tore open the letter from the Southern Isles.

>>59858611

>Anna stared at the paper in front of her. Her eyes flew over the letters as greedily as a pack of carrion birds.

 

>"Wait, what!?" Anna cried, almost too loud to go unnoticed.

 

>"What you got there, red?" Eugene said.

 

>Anna turned to see if the bookseller pursued them.

 

>"It's a letter from the Southern Isles. It was in the bookstore, and this is their royal seal."

 

>"How did you get it?"

 

>"I got him to look the other way and then I grabbed it."

 

>"You stole it? Right in front of him?"

 

>She looked up at him, face flush with embarassment.

 

>"Oh no, I did!

 

>Anna clutched her hands against her face. The paper crinkled in her hands.

 

>"What should I do? Should I give it back? Or, or, throw it away?"

 

>Eugene laughed quietly and patted Anna on the shoulder with his free hand.

 

>"Oh, don't worry. You're the Queen's sister, aren't you?"

 

>"But what if Elsa finds out? She could do anything. She could lock me up this time!"

 

>"If it ends up like that, strawberry, you can come back to Corona with blondie and me. I could use a nimble little thief like you if I ever put the band back together. The boys would love having you around."

 

>Anna looked up at him with the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

 

>"A thief? Huh. I guess I am. But anyway, look. I can't read any of this. Can you?"

 

>Eugene scanned the page trying to find any words he knew, but was stymied.

 

>"Sorry strawberry, I don't know. I think it's in some kind of secret code, but that doesn't explain why a bookseller be getting letters from the king of the Southern Isles."

 

>"He must be a spy!" Anna gasped stuffed the down the front of her vest.

 

>Eugene snapped his fingers and pointed at the air in front of him.

 

>"That makes perfect sense, red. He's the only guy in town who knows what everyone else knows. He even knows what you know."

 

>"We have to tell Elsa!" Anna shouted.

 

>Eugene caught the scent of the waffle house he'd admired on first disembarking on Coronation day.

 

>"Sure, red, right after lunch."