"I need you to believe in me," he says, his voice oddly distorted.
She nods, utterly terrified. She cringes as the ice under her feet cracks again under her skates. In a matter of seconds, he has pulled her away from the breaking ice of the lake, but now he is standing over it himself. Neither of them notices until it gives way with a sound like a gunshot and he disappeared before her eyes.
"JACK!" she screams. Wiping away the barely-there dusting of snow on the ice, she looks desperately for him underneath.
She sees what she has seen a hundred times before: her brother being dragged deeper into the pond by his heavy cloak. And like the other hundred times, there is nothing she can do.
She jerks awake with a shrill scream that brings her mother to her bedside in a second.
"Jenny? It's all right, darling, I'm here." Her mother has aged at least ten years since the day it happened and she looks so tired.
Jenny wraps her arms around her mother's neck and sobs. This has become almost a nightly ritual for the two of them. Nearly every night, Jenny has that horrible nightmare in which she has to watch her brother die repeatedly, as if the first time wasn't enough. She hates it; it only makes living without him worse. Knowing that he died saving her makes it almost unbearable. She feels if only it had been her…
"I love you, Jenny darling," her mother says suddenly.
Jenny sniffles violently, but her shaking stops. She turns her face into her mother's neck and whispers, "I love you too, Mommy."
Eventually, Jenny falls back to sleep with her mother stroking her hair. The nightmare does not come again that night, but it will return eventually.
After the death of his son, Jacob White was not home a lot of the time. He left before dawn and came back after dark had descended. He was devastated. With the help of other men from the village, he dredged the whole pond after breaking all the ice looking for his son's body, but he never found it. No one was ever able to explain this. It took many years for Jacob White to heal.
Mrs. Abigale White grieved even longer than her husband. She had almost lost her baby son when he was born, but God had spared him, allowed him to grow into a strapping, respectful, fun-loving young man whom everyone adored. She had thought he would grow into a man, get married, have children, and be happy and smiling his wonderful smile forever. That dream was never meant to be. He was saved for her when he was a baby, but not when he was a young man. The day he died, something inside her died as well. Just before she passed away, Abigale White gripped her daughter's hand tightly and whispered her son's name; then she followed him… wherever he had gone.
Jenny White never forgot her beloved brother. Within a year after his death, even though she still had nightmares, she was able to think of him without sobbing. She could remember him the way he had been until the end: kind and fun. She tried hard to mimic him in those aspects and she managed it quite nicely. She was loved by all her friends once they got over pitying her for her brother's untimely death. When she was nineteen, she married a handsome young man who loved her more than anything. Two years later, she gave birth to a son whom they named Jack, after the uncle he would never have the privilege of meeting. They couple had other children, but Jack always held a special place in Jenny's heart, especially when he grew up and looked almost exactly like his uncle: messy brown hair, kind brown eyes, cunning smile.
When he grew up, little Jack Bence got married and had his own children. Each child listened to Grandma Jenny's story of how uncle, great-uncle, and great-great-uncle Jack saved her that day. The story traveled down the family for many years, never ending even when Jenny White Bence died and was not there to tell it anymore. Her son Jack took up the torch and told the story over and over again until he died also. His eldest daughter followed in his footsteps, as did at least one child in the White family tree.
Two hundred and eighty-nine years after Jack White saved his sister's life, a baby boy was born to Josh and Marie Bennet. Marie was a descendant of Jenny White Bence, and had heard the story of Jack White's bravery when she was a little girl. She knew she would tell her new son when he was old enough, and when she had a daughter six years later, she knew she would tell her too. What she didn't know was that her son would know the part of the story that no one else knew. Three hundred years after the death of Jack White, his story finally got a happy ending, even if nobody knew it but him.
At eleven-years-old, Jamie Bennet met his great-great-great-great-uncle Jack White. Jamie knows him by another name, however.
To Jamie, and to all the children of the world, his name is Jack Frost.