It was Jackie's third Winter Solstice meeting, so she was a little more used to how things went at the Pole.
At this time of year there were always toys to avoid as the Yetis frantically prepared for Christmas. It wasn't just the flying ones either, toys were often thrown across the Workshop to get them to where they needed to be, but done so that they didn't break upon landing. The bulkier and more delicate toys were carried, and that meant ducking under them to avoid getting clocked on the head.
Taboo was still getting used to changing size quickly enough to avoid all the toys, so after her tail had clipped a couple of the toys and Yetis yelled at her in gibberish, she jumped into Jackie's hoodie and sulked.
"It was one hit!" she whined, "It's not like I broke it!"
Christmas is only a few days away, the Yeti's are stressed. Jackie smirked slightly at Taboo's behaviour as she ducked under a massive ladder that was over one Yeti's shoulder.
Taboo grumbled, but jumped out of Jackie's hoodie as they entered the Guardian's informal meeting room. Jackie sat down on the blue sofa while Taboo lay down at her feet, and they waited for everyone else to arrive.
The Guardians all talked amongst themselves as the meeting wrapped up, and Jackie was chatting with Jack as she packed up her notes, while watching North out of the corner of her eye. She had been hoping to ask him about something, but preferably out of Jack's earshot. Not to mention at this time of year he seemed a little less overly enthusiastic as he worked hard to get Christmas ready on time. So, maybe she would be able to take his energy.
Finally Jackie noticed that North was about to disappear, so made her excuses to Jack and went to catch the Guardian of Wonder.
"North? Are you busy?" she asked, getting North to turn around with his usual broad, albeit now slightly tired, grin.
"A little my friend," he started, and Jackie found it odd he called her that, they barely knew each other! Although, that just seemed to be how the old Russian talked. "But, how can I help you?"
Jackie lowered her voice slightly, even though she could hear that was Jack loudly bantering with Bunnymund. "Has Jack asked you guys about Nightlight, at all?"
North didn't have to think.
"Ah yes, he brought it up a month or so ago, got a little upset actually, but, the truth had never crossed our minds," North's smile went a little sad as he looked at Jackie, "I hear you were the one who told him, no?"
"I did, I only recently learnt about it myself, and Jack came across me when I was trying to get used to what came with that, and I couldn't get him off my back," Jackie shrugged and North waved it off with his hand.
"Do not worry my friend, it would have come up sooner or later, although why bring it up with me?" North's eyes narrowed in mock suspicion, curiosity sparkling in the brilliant blue. "What are you planning my friend?"
Jackie opened her mouth to deflect the question with a simple lie, that she wasn't planning anything, then stopped as an odd feeling hit her. The feeling that she just couldn't lie to North. It wasn't the first time, but the sensation always took her off guard.
Instead she deflected with the truth.
"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?"
North's grin widened for a second before bursting into booming laughter, making Jackie jump. "I look forward to hearing what you have in store when it's finished my friend!" he clapped a hand to Jackie's shoulder, ignoring or not noticing the flinch from the heat.
North's laughter was infectious however, and Jackie was left the meeting smiling, not faltering when Taboo mentioned the stupid grin on Jackie's face.
When Jackie got back to the lake, she stood at the edge, her mind whirring. Both Jackson Overland and Nightlight fell into the same lake, the one she was standing at. Jack Frost had come out, with his staff, Twinetender. However, he had found that staff on the lake's surface after he'd come out.
Meaning Nightlight's staff was still unaccounted for.
It might not be here, Nightlight might have dropped it in his fall and it could have landed almost anywhere else in the area. However, Jackie felt like she should at least look.
The only problem was, even at 29 years old, she had no idea how to swim. She wasn't sure if she'd ever put her head underwater before. After all, when you freeze water when you touch it, what's the point in learning?
Taboo sat by as Jackie took a deep, steadying breath, she was nervous, maybe even scared, about doing this. Not that had never stopped her before.
She drew her arms up from her sides in a circular movement, creating a large ball of ice around her. It was large enough for her to only just be able to touch the sides with her arms fully extended, and would hopefully contain enough air for her to do this.
She rolled the ball with her inside it towards the lake, where it began to float. She rolled it out to the middle, where with some concentration, she forced it down below the water's surface.
As the water went over her head, Jackie felt fear start to claw its way up her throat and she froze in place, the ice ball bobbing up and down in the water.
It's fine, it's fine. Jackie thought, there was no reason for her to panic, her ice sphere was solid, airtight. She wasn't going to drown!
With a growl of irritation, she forcibly shoved the fear to one side. Nothing was going to go wrong. She wasn't going to drown.
With that in mind, she continued to sink.
The moon's light lit up the first part of the lake as she sank, but after a while the light faded and was replaced with murk. Jackie switched on her flashlight and shone it around, trying to get some kind of bearing, but the light refracted through the ice and barely made a dent in the darkness. She was doing this more or less blind.
She let out a sigh, which echoed in the sphere of ice as she continued to sink. Some panic began to stir anew in her gut. Now that she couldn't see, how did she know that she was still going down? Had she started to go sideways without realising? Would she ever reach the bottom? Would she start to run out of air?
Thankfully, the ball of ice thudded against the bottom of the lake, sending up silt as Jackie let out a sigh of relief. That answered all those questions.
Although she still couldn't see. She pressed her flashlight right up against the side of the ball of ice without tipping it and squinted. She could just about see.
Jackie sighed, it was going to have to do.
She began to roll the ball slowly across the lake bed, trying to find anything that didn't belong down there.
After an hour, she began to run out of air, so surfaced, but she had found nothing.
The pattern repeated itself into the New Year, until finally, finally, she found something.
A long, straight piece of wood. Not uncommon down here, but there were two things that made it stand out. One, it clearly been split in two, second, one end was curled into a tight spiral.
There were few references to Nightlight's staff, but that spiral was always in those references.
Jackie held a hand out, and tried to frost the potential bit of spear without freezing the lake. It didn't quite work, as the large amount of freezable material reacted to the frost, and water several centimetres around the wood froze solid.
Jackie grabbed the ice in her mental grip and allowed the ice bubble to rise, trying to make sure more of the lake didn't freeze. Once she broke the surface she mentally pulled the frozen wood out of the wood and put it on the shore by Taboo before rolling over and melting the ice ball.
When her feet met solid ground she strode over to Taboo, who was sniffing the almost metre long block of ice that Jackie was slowly melting to try and avoid damage to the wood.
Once it melted, it revealed a stick of wood that was warped, dark and rotting from water damage, almost falling apart from exposure to the air. Jackie quickly froze it again to keep the wood together, but felt some disappoint building.
"Well, you were looking for a wooden staff that had been missing for 300 years, I'm surprised it's lasted this long. If this is what you've been looking for."
"I know it was a shot in the dark," Jackie sighed, sitting on the ground next to the ruined, broken and half frozen spear shaft. "I was really hoping to find the dagger part as well."
"That could be anywhere and you know it," Taboo countered. "Plus, 300 years? It'll have been buried by now."
"Thank you Captain Sunshine," Jackie raised her eyebrows, even if she did agree with Taboo. This whole thing had been a stubborn, badly thought out waste of time.
"There's one thing you haven't tried though," Taboo brought up, and Jackie knew what she was talking about.
"No, I haven't done that, and that sounds like a very dangerous idea."
"I can drag you out of the water, it's fine," Taboo barely paused at Jackie's unamused look. "It'll be a good way to make sure it's not buried in the substrate or the lake walls."
"Fine." Jackie sighed, mostly to get her to shut up. "But not to tonight,"
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Jackie sighed the next night, standing the edge of the lake.
"Neither can I," Jamie responded, having heard what Jackie was planning and insisting on coming in case something went wrong. "This is mad."
"I know, but if I don't find anything tonight, I'll stop, okay?"
"I'll hold you to that," Jamie had his arms folded as he leaned against a tree. Jackie sent him a reassuring smile before forming her ice ball, and sinking below the water's surface.
Once she hit the bottom she took a deep breath, probably using up too much of her precious air to be safe, and called upon Nightlight's power.
She tried to relax has she began to glow, trying to slowly focus that power to one spot without it exploding in her face, as it always did.
She felt the power building too much, and that her concentrating on Nightlight's power was weakening the ice ball.
She heard a loud crack and felt water drip in and freeze on her head, so she quickly let go of Nightlight's power, making it go back to softly glowing her whole body and repaired the damage to the ice ball.
So, she couldn't safely concentrate both powers down here. That was a point to work on.
She sighed and looked down at her body, before frowning. Was it her imagination, or was her right glowing slightly more intensely than the rest of her?
She extended her right arm out to her side, and the glow increased in intensity, if only slightly.
Hope began to rise, maybe, just maybe, it really was down here.
Jackie began to walk and roll the ball slowly to the right, using the glow in her hand as a guide. As she walked the glow slowly became brighter and brighter, until she was right up against the wall of the lake. At this point she felt a slight tugging sensation, like whatever was making her hand glow a little more was trying to pull her towards it.
Now she was there, Jackie tried again. She attempted to brighten the glow in her right hand, while using her left the stop the ball from cracking. The effort made her head ache, but she kept going, until she realised too late that Nightlight's power was about to explode, and that the ball was cracking anyway.
She tried to pull it back, but she hadn't noticed in time to stop it. There was a muffled boom and silvery white light rippled through the lake. The ice ball shattered and Jackie was flung back into the water, which quickly began to freeze around her.
Jackie herself was only vaguely aware of what was happening, although thankfully not unconscious, so was holding her breath. Something shone out of the corner of her eye, and she thought she saw something glitter in the lake wall before something smashed the ice around and hooked under her armpits to pull her back up to the surface.
Jackie gasped for air as they broke the surface, the shock of air making her cough and splutter as awareness came back to her. The water one her froze in sheets, and she began to try and kick her legs in panic, before realising that someone was holding her and swimming backwards.
Jamie swam back to shore with her, Taboo swimming alongside and didn't stop until Jackie was safely on shore, breathing heavily and shaking the ice off of her.
"What, the, hell, were, you, thinking?" gasped Jamie, starting to shiver in the cold air as he all but collapsed into a sitting position.
"I really, tried, to not, let it, explode," Jackie gasped in return, coughing again, half lying down and half sitting up.
"Don't you, dare, go back down," Jamie had recovered his breathing to speak more clearly. "You almost died!"
"I felt something though," Jackie defended, sitting up properly. "The dagger is down there."
"Why are you even obsessing over this?" Jamie asked, leaning back on his hands as he tried to ignore how much he was shivering.
"I thought, I thought it would be good for the Guardians. Nightlight disappeared without a trace, maybe it would give them some closure."
Jamie shot her a look that made it clear he knew that wasn't the whole story.
"It also has to do with Jack, part of him used to be Nightlight, and I know it's rattled him," Jackie sighed. "Maybe getting the spear back, especially the dagger, would help."
"F-for g-goodness s-sake J-Jackie," Jamie's teeth were beginning to chatter. "I-I k-know y-you w-were t-t-trying t-t-to something n-n-nice, b-b-but d-don't k-kill y-yourself o-over it!"
Jackie finally noticed Jamie's condition, and began to panic. "Jamie, you're freezing!"
Jamie grinned, despite the fact his lips were turning blue and his whole body was shaking. "S-s-says y-you."
"This isn't funny!" Jackie snapped, and she quickly removed the ice stuck to her hands before hauling Jamie to his feet, who stumbled slightly. "We're going home!"
Jackie rushed Jamie back to the apartment as quickly as she could, ignoring the stares that the half frozen couple got as they marched through town and taking the elevator for once to quicken the process. Once back in Jackie cranked up the thermostat and helped Jamie get the wet stuff off. She quickly got towels and blankets and made him sit in the lounge with a hot drink while all wrapped up.
Colour returned to his lips and he stopped shivering, while Jackie sat on the other side of the room in a t shirt and shorts with a frost layer on her skin in a attempt to not over heat.
"How you feeling Lancelot?" she asked, holding a glass of cold milk.
"Better Ice Cube, better," Jamie assured, sipping his coffee. He then frowned, "Where did Taboo get to?"
I can thank Sandy for this one, as the idea for this came to me in a dream. There was something about looking for pieces of shattered moonstone, then I found Nightlight's spear, yeah like all dreams is was pretty weird.
I'm honestly a little nervous about this one, as I have no idea if William Joyce is going to cover this in last GOC chapter book (which he is finally working on) and I don't usually like to stray too far from canon. However, I don't remember what happened to the staff in in the picture book, if that's ever mentioned in text or artwork.
Also, a quick explanation on what's happening with the diamond dagger. It was in fact buried underground in the Burgess area, not in the lake at all. When Jackie started practising with Nightlight's power, it was slowly drawn to the surface, as the moonbeam recognised that light from it's "Nightlight Boy". However, it never reached the surface, as Jackie forays into that power were always brief and explosive, so it never had long to gravitate towards it.
However, now that Jackie used that power for a longer period of time, it could really lock on and move towards her, helped by the fact that she was trying to get closer to it as well. The moonbeam was dragging the diamond dagger through the earth to get to what it thought was Nightlight. Imagine it's disappointment when it finally emerges and it's most definitely not Nightlight who's there, and it's pretty much exhausted at that point anyway.
That will make more sense come the next part, tomorrow.
As for what remains of the staff, that's probably only about half of it, as the staff most likely broke somewhere along the way when Nightlight fell. Whether in the actual attack or from colliding with the ground, that's up in the air. The silt would have partially preserved it, hence why it's still there, but being in the water for that long would not be good for any piece of wood.
Finally, yes, Twinetender is the official name of Jack's staff. Not sure I ever brought that up.