Jamie wasn't the first to believe in Jack Frost.
Believer
It was winter in New York.
Daniel shivered as he waited for his mother and the taxi driver to finish loading their bags. His father had gone ahead with the early shipments to make sure they made the trip from Egypt safely, so it was only him and his mother.
He had never seen snow, though he had read about it a bit in books that weren't collections of ancient Egyptian mythology. Before now, Daniel could never have imagined the biting cold, and the wind that seemed to burrow past all the layers his mother had forced on him and into his skin down to his bones. He didn't understand how the cabbie could only have a jacket and a cap.
Daniel was a desert rat, and New York was nothing like home. Finally they got into the cab, and he snuggled into the warmth of his mother. She gave the cabbie the address of their hotel, then took off Daniel's hat to ruffle his hair.
His mother teased, "It looks like Jack Frost was nipping at your nose."
Daniel asked, "Who's Jack Frost?"
And on the taxi ride to their hotel, Daniel listened to the story of the mischievous Spirit of Winter, and watched the snowflakes drift lazily down.
For a boy who grew up with animal-headed gods, who believed that the sun battled his way through the underworld every night to be reborn every morning, it was not difficult to look at the frosted trees and slick sidewalks and think it the work of a particularly playful spirit. Everything else had a god. Why not a god of winter?
It was good to know the cold was not only miserable. Just like the Egyptian sun, which could be death and life in its turn, a New York winter, if managed right, could be fun.
His mother-and his father as he joined them for dinner-told him stories of snowball fights and snow forts, snow angels and snowmen, cocoa and apple cider and fireplaces. Daniel listened, and could feel his excitement grow so much he could barely sleep that night, looking forward to the next day when he might play in the snow while his parents were working in the museum.
The hotel was in walking distance of the museum, but somehow they'd still gotten turned around. They stopped for Daniel's parents to figure out where they were, and Daniel looked around at all the children playing.
It had snowed last night, not enough to shut the city down (that took a lot of snow, Daniel would discover) but enough to give the children a day off from school. All around him were boys and girls laughing as they built snow forts and threw snowballs.
Daniel stared at a boy, older than Daniel, maybe in his mid-teens. He stood out in the way he didn't stand out at all. Whereas all the kids were wearing hats and scarves and jackets in truly eye-watering colors, the boy was in a blue hoodie and brown pants. His white hair, windblown, mimicked the new-piled snow drifts, and his eyes were the blue ice of a perfect winter sky. One pale hand wrapped around a crooked shepherd's staff, and the other rested on top of his bent knees. He blended in so well Daniel almost thought him another ornament of winter, another facet of this fascinating new season.
The boy was crouched down next to a child who was trying to lift a snow ball bigger than her head to place it on top of the half-built snowman beside her. Daniel couldn't hear what the boy was saying, but it looked like encouragement. He never reached out to the child, but his eyes were riveted and bright even from Daniel's vantage point across the street. A smile quirked the boy's lips, and the curling end of the staff occasionally bumped the girl's snow ball, after which she seemed to get a better grip on it.
The boy let out a little whoop when the girl finally lifted her snow ball into place. He looked up then, and caught Daniel's eyes. After a moment, he looked startled, and checked behind him.
Daniel turned to his mother and tugged on her jacket, meaning to ask her if he could go play with the blue-and-white boy and the little girl with the snowman. He'd never built a snowman before. But his mother barely looked up from the map. It was only a few days until the opening of the exhibit, and now that she was here, they were going to put the roof on the small temple they'd transported all the way from Egypt.
By the time Daniel looked back, the boy was gone.