Chapter 2

How the Silence Beckons

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North gestured wildly, almost knocking the train toy that one of the yetis, Alphonse, was working on. That chair was too small for that yeti, I could tell you that.

"Again on the naughty list, Jack. Again." He walked past the rows of frantic yetis and over elves to what I still called his 'playroom'. "I thought we'd talked about this. You're a Guardian now. You have to be—nice!"

I rolled my eyes behind his back, balancing my staff on one finger as I followed him. It was cold to the touch and little sparks flew where I held it. Ready to be used.

I wonder how Santa there would like for winter to come inside.

"And what was that whole nonsense with that cold front? Snow in South America?"

Yeah, that was one of my best moments. "Just trying to bring the Christmas spirit, North." I leaned on the top of my staff. "What's so naughty about that?"

He frowned, and considering he was mostly eyebrows and beard, it made him look quite scary.

"It caused accidents, Jack! And it delayed my assistants," he huffed. "We have a lot of work to do before Christmas comes, you know that." Oh, here we went. "We have to make sure the children get put in the Nice or Naughty list, find out if they've moved, where they've moved, their ages—we have to know if there are new children in the families!"

I opened my mouth, hoping that would stop his speech. No such luck.

"What, do you think those little glinting lights appear on the globe by themselves? I wish! We can't afford to leave a child out, Jack. And thanks to your little stunt, we might not have enough time to cover all of South America."

It was like the jolliest man on earth had eaten three bags of sour patches all at the same time. I sighed and hung my head. "Look, Santa, I didn't mean to interfere with your little spy party—I just wanted the kids to have some fun. They're always asking for snow down there, you know."

That seemed to soften him a bit. Talking about the kids always seemed to make North easier to handle, calmer. They were his—our priority.

His frown returned only for a second. "Well, don't do it again during Christmas."

I nodded and smirked. "What about Easter?"

North smiled back, more naughty than nice himself just then. "Not my department."

He turned to his toys after a pause, messing with this little wooden ball that he seemed to be trying to disassemble. He'd been going at it for the past week, but it didn't look like he was making any progress to me.

I was about to ask why he didn't just smash it when something else occurred to me. A face.

"Hey, North."

He made a sound like he'd heard me but couldn't be bothered to speak. So loving, this Father Christmas.

"Have you ever…" I trailed off, suddenly not so sure I even knew what I was asking. I buried my hands in the pockets of my hoodie. "Do you know of any adults that can still see us?"

He made another indecipherable sound.

"You know, like a teenager or something?"

He tinkered with the wooden ball a little more before answering. "That's not possible, Jack." He grunted, trying to pull the ball apart as if it had two pieces, but it was just one. "Adults, even the younger ones, stop believing in us at one point or another. Once they do that, they can't see us anymore."

"But why? What about the kids that have seen us? How can they stop believing?"

North turned to me then, his attention ripped away from the ball. "They explain us away—they think they know more than when they were kids. They think we're nice childhood memories, but not real. And so their belief fades until its not there anymore."

I shivered, but it wasn't from the cold.

An elf came jingling into the room, holding a stack of papers bigger than himself. How he was balancing all that was more magic than mystery.

North took the stack of papers from him with a smile. "Thank you, Ram."

The elf shook his hat in response and left.

"Why do you ask, Jack?"

His question jolted me. "What?"

"About adults. Do you think someone older actually saw you?"

Yes? No? I wasn't sure anymore. I might have imagined it, that girl might have been looking at someone behind me. Except I'd been so sure, she'd said my name—but then she'd laughed like it was a joke, with that look of people who get hit by my snowballs and then go, oh, it couldn't possibly be.

Maybe I'd just misunderstood the whole thing.

"No," I said to North, slouching like I didn't care. "I was just curious. Aren't you the one always going on about curiosity, after all?"

He smiled that jolly grin of Christmas cards. "Fine, fine thing curiosity is, yes."

When he turned back to his wooden thing I figured I'd been dismissed.

Staff on my shoulders, I wandered back into the toyshop where the yetis were. They seemed to keep this place afloat, their big, hairy hulks of creature hunched over delicate ballerinas or airplane machines or table games.

I went to the desk of a yeti I recognized and jumped on it, crouching to be at his level. He was putting together these tiny orange trucks, the size of Baby Teeth. I couldn't imagine what kind of kid would want to play with something so small—unless it exploded or something. That would be cool.

"Hey, Phil."

He made a series of sounds that I took to mean, 'How are you?'

I shrugged. "Alright. North just gave me a lecture about that thing in South America. Sorry about the extra work for you guys."

He grunted away, and I was almost sure I heard a laugh somewhere in there.

At the end, though, I was pretty certain he'd said something along the lines of, 'Not my division.'

I guess North was rubbing off on them.

The great thing about having the wind as a friend was that you could get from place to place in no time. The other great thing was, well, flying.

I soared over mountains, scaring flocks of birds as I flew.

Sometimes I just wanted to go fast enough to circle the world; other times I'd rather just float around, swaying until the wind left me somewhere. This time, though, I wanted neither of those things.

I careened around clouds, getting wet every time I went through one of them, zigzagging until I passed the sun and the sky turned dark.

I was floating over Burgess in no time, almost all the lights of my hometown turned off as the people slept. From where I was, I could only see two windows with lights still on. One of them was a hotel room and the other was a bar—almost like how this place used to be when I was alive.

I lay down on the lake—The Lake—, its cold surface barely affecting my equally cold skin.

The stars where so bright here, so few lights obscuring the night sky. So silent.

"Hey, Pippa. You'll never guess what I did today."

There wasn't an answer, but I could almost see a childish face looking back from the stars, hear a voice prompting me to continue. A voice I liked to pretend sounded like my sister's.

"North summoned me to his base because he missed my face." Sort of. "And before I left I made this gigantic snowman in his room."

I let out a laugh and imagined I wasn't laughing alone.

"I hope he's in a good mood when he sees it, because it's going to be half melted." I smiled. That had been a darn good snowman, best I'd ever made, I thought. I blew air out of my mouth and it puffed like fog over my face. "What did you do today?"

Silence.

I guess that was the end of that conversation. Like always.

A buzzing sound came from my right and, before I could sit up, I had a hummingbird-like creature whizzing right in front of my face. One of the Baby Teeth.

"Hi there."

She was tiny and moving so fast I could barely see her, but I could hear her distinct chirping and chiming. She wanted me to come to Toothiana's palace.

I was getting really good at understanding creatures that didn't even speak my language.

Too good, if you asked me.

"Is everything alright?"

She nodded her little head frantically and then motioned for me to follow her in distress. Well, those were some mixed signals right there.

I was about to go off with her when there was a rumble from the bushes around the lake. Shuffling, and then two laughing teenagers burst through, holding each other like they were drunk.

I stood still for a second, Baby Tooth pulling at my sleeve.

The teenagers plunked down inches by the lake and proceeded to giggle-convulse like they'd heard the funniest joke, even though neither of them had said anything. They couldn't see us.

I turned to Baby Tooth. "Ok, ok," I said, which made her stop trying to pull my weight forward. "I'm following."

She dashed away and I called the wind to go after her, leaving those two kids to their own hallucinations.

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A/N: Chapter 2, ladies and gentleman. Pretty fast if you consider my track record lol So, yes, from Jack's perspective-this might happen again in the future but, as of now, I'm not planning on writing each chapter with alternating perspectives.

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the previous chapter.

Anyway, what did you think?