A Snow Queen's Tale- a Frozen Fanfiction

Chapter 89: Close Call

🌨Elsa's Pov🌨
Anna ran up the wooden steps with me right behind her. The noise had come from this way; Anna was sure of it. That meant that whatever had arranged the food in the old dining room and the clothes in the storage room was also that way.
Up and up she ran. The staircase was absurdly tall, held up by wooden scaffolding bolted into the walls at intervals, and had clearly been intended as a temporary solution, perhaps for some long ago maintenance problem. Anna hadn't realized how deep we had gone into the castle basements and how high the castle walls must be, for the two of us just kept climbing and climbing as the stairs went back and forth and up and up between the walls.
"Anna..." I said between panting breaths as we climbed, "maybe... maybe we should just head back down. There has to be a better way out than this!"
Anna was also exhausted, and she gasped as she spoke. "Maybe...maybe there is... but we have to reach the top soon—"
As she said soon, her foot hit a rotted plank on the stairs and-crack!- it gave way beneath her.
"Anna!" I cried out. "Hold on!"
Anna was holding on. She had fallen through the stair riser and was wedged into the broken plank at waist level, dangling above a drop that probably stretched all the way back down to the castle basement.
"Why," she managed to say as she struggled not to fall, "do people always tell you to hold on when you're obviously going to hold on already? Holding on is the obvious choice!"
I grabbed at Anna's arm, trying to haul her up. "It's meant to be encouraging!"
Anna's feet kicked uselessly in the air. "It's...erg... very encouraging! Could you also use your powers to maybe—"
I shook my head quickly. "The stairs are already unstable! The extra weight could crumble—"
I was cut off by a loud crumbling noise, and we both looked down. The staircase was falling apart from the basement up!
Anna felt herself slipping. "Hurry!"
I pulled with all my might, and suddenly, Anna was free, clambering to her feet on the stairs.
"Run!" Anna yelled.
"Now who's pointing out the obvious?" I yelled in return as I ran.
We scrambled, the staircase collapsing behind us. For a moment, Anna felt like we were running on free floating planks that gravity simply hadn't caught up with. And then, before we could fall, our feet touched stone. It was a small landing jutting out of the castle wall near the very top. It extended for only a handful of feet, and from there, another rickety staircase descended. Or at least, it had. Both staircases appeared to have crumbled at the same time.
In other words, Anna and I were precariously perched on a five-foot-long, three-foot-wide stone ledge. A ledge that was icy cold despite me having avoided using my freezing powers.
And yet the ghost was nowhere to be found.
That was when the laughing began again, echoing off the stone walls that surrounded us.