In The Dark

The moon breathed a sigh of relief when Jack and Pitch parted ways, but it could not help also feeling disappointment. Wind rushed through fantastic black ice sculptures, howling. It had been a windy All Hallows Eve, many years ago. A small boy sat at the entrance to a graveyard and counted.

"Ninety-six, ninety-seven—"

There was a horrible rattling in the trees, but after a pause the boy kept counting. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what had made the noise.

"Ninety-eight, ninety-nine…" The wind seemed to be muttering sinister things in his ears, and he almost shouted out that he didn't want to play anymore. Instead he gulped and said "one hundred."

He opened his eyes. The wind kept whispering, and the fog made shapes that approached and dissolved.

"All right, I'm going to find you," he said.

"Christopher!" Someone hissed behind him.

He turned and was certain he actually saw a pale being flicker past him. He ran after it and looked behind the pillar supporting the gate. No one was hiding there. He checked behind one headstone, then another, then a third and—

The dead leaves around the grave erupted, something rose up and grabbed him, he screamed. And then he was clutching his sides laughing, unable to stop.

Peter Black stood before Christopher wearing a coat and trousers that had been patched not with cloth, but leaves. There were brightly colored leaves tangled in his hair, and an entire branch sticking up from his collar to obscure his face. He tried to blow these out of the way to speak, which made Christopher laugh all the harder.

"Christopher," the whisper came again, this time from Christopher's own brother, wearing a white dress. Laughter filled the graveyard as everyone left their hiding spots.

Henry slid out of the trees, making the dreadful rattle again. It was Peter Black's favorite time of year. What could be better than these few days when everyone realized that lurking shadows were so often only hidden friends? If only they could always see that you didn't fight the dark by eradicating it. You had to explore it, tease out the light that was in it all along.

And that was how he explained it to his mother when she asked why he told such bloodthirsty tales by the fire.

"Give us something happy Peter, there's enough misery as it is."

She didn't understand that a story wasn't truly happy if you expected it all along. It had lost its vitality. And you could only trust a thing if you had to work for it. How he made them work for a happy ending!

She would not hear any of it, and Peter was banned from the next night's festival so he could 'get those horrible ideas out of his head' and 'learn to behave properly.'

The festival began with a solemn rite, and Peter's young friends fidgeted with impatience. The Beadle had just started reading a very long text when a noise and a light rent the air. No one could breathe for a moment. Strange, ominous shapes burned in the sky and the noise of the fireworks was shocking, relentless. The shapes dissolved, the night was quiet, and you could see the beauty of the glowing specks that fell towards the ground and vanished.

That was what the moon never forgot. It held on to that beauty even after the humans forgot it, horrified by the fire, the terrible accident caused by the last rocket Peter had set off. Moonlight poured over everything that had burned, gave the ashes life again. And Peter was dead, but Pitch lived.

The moon was disappointed because in Jack Frost there was a chance. There was mischief in his Fun. And in North, too, there was a little fear—because his Wonder was directed at the great, the awe-inspiring. There is always the moment before you understand the spectacle, when all that you register is that this unknown is indeed powerful and immense. That was Pitch's center, the moment just before Jack's Fun, before the warmth of North's Wonder. It was Thrill.

The Moon had hoped Jack would help him remember, but Pitch remained ignorant.

You see, the problem with Thrill is that it comes and goes quick as a bolt of lightning, and it seemed Pitch had forgotten everything but the dark that came between flashes.