The King of Cold Mountain

by Anders and Saph

Chapter 3

If becoming a Guardian had brought one constant comfort to Jack's life, it was that no matter how busy Tooth was, the minifairies were always happy to see him.

Especially when he brought a toothbrush.

A line of minifairies at least a hundred long trailed around him, waiting their turn to be brushie-brushed as he sat on one of the many platforms of the Tooth Palace. The fairies loved the preening and being the focus of his affection, and Jack, much as he never would have admitted it, loved the attention.

The odd thing was that Tooth had told him the fairies weren't just linked to her, they were a part of her, even if they were their own separate little beings at the same time. It was confusing and it made him wonder about a few things. Like why when he was doting particularly on one of them, brushing until they they were squirming blissfully in his hands, Tooth, up in her control nest, would blush and avoid looking in his direction.

He knew he was causing that blush. He just didn't know what exactly the feelings behind it were, and he was terrified to ask. Pointing it out might make it awkward, and making it awkward might make Tooth put a stop to it. Jack liked his fairy time too much to risk losing it.

Another thing he wondered was what it meant when the minifairies made kissy faces at him, or nuzzled up close to his neck or – disturbingly – tried to crawl into his shirt and had to be fished out before they got too handsy. Was that their crush or hers?

Regardless, the fairies adored him, he adored them, and in a way it was like spending time with Tooth even when she was too busy to spend time with him. Combined with the time he spent with Jamie, it was helping to soothe his remaining pangs of loneliness.

"Okay, cutie, time's up," said Jack, as he floated up towards the control nest where Tooth did most of her organizing. "Time to give some other lucky fairy a - turn?"

He was surprised to see that Tooth wasn't in her control nest, calling the shots - Baby Tooth was. The gold-feathered minifairy looked up from chirping out assignments to wave at Jack, smiling hugely, and he waved back awkwardly with the hand that held the toothbrush before looking around for Tooth.

She was a few columns away, sitting at the edge of a platform, sipping tea - with Bunny.

For a second, the absurdity of the scene made Jack laugh, but as Tooth and Bunny continued to sit, chatting companionably like they took tea breaks all the time, his amusement turned to curiosity. He drifted closer, ignoring the disappointed chirps of the fairy that had flown into his hand for brushing.

It occurred to him as he landed that listening in on Bunny's conversations hadn't gone well for him the day before, but that was the point when Bunny said, "It isn't just the pranking, Tooth - he gets himself in trouble, he gets everyone elsein trouble -"

Jack was about to rally to his own defense (who else would Bunny be talking about?) when Tooth did it for him. "Now come on, that's not true anymore. He's gotten a lot better. You haven't been on every mission to see his progress. You know what I think?"

Bunny "hmm'd" around his cup.

"I think you wouldn't be here looking for an outside opinion if you were really ready to write him off completely. Am I right?"

Bunny grunted, and for a moment Jack couldn't figure out what that meant. "I thought after the fight with Pitch - he really saved my skin, convincing Jamie to keep believing in me." Jack saw Bunny's fur stand on end, and the rabbit shuddered as if remembering the feeling of being that close to fading. "But now instead of just carrying winter on late, he's breaking into my home, dropping me on alligators -"

Tooth giggled. "The snowglobe trick?"

"The snowglobe trick." Maybe it was Jack's imagination, but Bunny could have sounded a touch…amused. The amusement had faded when he spoke again. "I just thought things between us would be getting better, not worse." He stared gloomily into his tea "I can work with him - for the kids - but maybe it's just time everyone accepted that Jack Frost and I are too different to be friends."

It hurt. Jack tried to tell himself that it didn't, that he didn't care, and who wanted to be friends with some stuffy, uptight rabbit anyway?

But it hurt. Their past squabbles aside, he was actually coming to like Bunny. The rabbit could be fun, and he could be funny, when the mood was right. Jack, for all his years alone, was actually a fairly good judge of character (hence not siding with Pitch, among other reasons) and it was abundantly clear that Bunny cared immensely about the kids and the other Guardians.

That was why the comment about them being too different stung in its own way. Seeing Bunny playing with Sophie had seemed like a reflection of how he'd wanted to play with the kids himself, back when he still couldn't. If Bunny couldn't even see they had that in common, if Jack hadn't made it yet abundantly clear how deeply they cared about the same children and the same ideals – would anything Jack did ever be enough to change his opinion?

"I don't know," said Tooth, "I wouldn't say you're that different at all. Actually, I think you're a lot alike."

Bunny scoffed. "Where do you get this stuff?"

"The tea?"

"The crazy notion," Bunny explained. "Though the tea is good too. Actually, where do you get it?"

"There's a market in Delhi - but my point is, I think Jack gets on your nerves because you're more alike than you want to admit."

"Ah, you're not making any sense."

"Think about it. You're both brave -"

"Too right," Bunny agreed. Jack was somewhat heartened that Bunny at least thought he was brave.

"- hotheaded -"

"I - hey," Bunny objected.

'Hey,' Jack mouthed to himself.

"Extremely stubborn - and don't you hey me," said Tooth. "Where was I? Oh yes, a little lonely -"

"Don't start," said Bunny, and there was a vulnerability in his voice that Jack knew never would have been there if he'd had even an inkling Jack was listening. "Not after my day."

Tooth put a gentle hand on Bunny's paw, and it occurred to Jack that he'd never seen any of the other Guardians touch Bunny unexpectedly without him freezing up.

"I want to see you two getting along as much as the next Guardian," she said, her voice motherly and gentle – "but the only person you can talk to who can make a difference about this is Jack. You know he's not hostile. You know he's just trying to play with you. Why aren't you playing back?" She cracked a smile. "If even half the stories I've heard are true, Jack's not the only one whose misspent youth involved at least a little irresponsibility in the name of adventure. Am I wrong?"

Bunny heaved a sigh, not meeting her gaze. "That's just it though – nobody's luck holds like it did for us in Africa every time. He's a good kid – a good Guardian, even – but if he rushes into anything and a kid comes off the worse for it – I don't want to see him hurt over that. If I can do anything to prevent it – I mean, if I'm not hard on him now, you and North and Sandy sure won't be."

Jack's unhappiness softened a little. On the one hand, it bothered him that Bunny still assumed he was going to get someone, much less a kid, hurt. On the other, if Bunny was being so hard on him because he cared…that didn't make it any less annoying, but it did at least mean that Bunny didn't think of him as badly as his attitude suggested. That soothed the hurt a little.

"Because we've seen him grow," said Tooth, calm and reasonable. "Because the parts of ourselves we see reflected in him aren't the parts that unsettle us most."

Bunny looked at her in silence for a moment, and Jack expected him to respond angrily.

Instead, Bunny laughed. "You're not cutting me any slack today, are you Sheila?"

"Talk to him," Tooth insisted. "He can't stop crossing lines if he doesn't know they're there to be crossed at all."

"Yeah," Bunny scoffed, "I'll do that, talk about my feelings with the guy who could do with some more ammunition to mock them."

When had he mocked them? Jack wondered. Okay, so he'd played some pranks, but he was hoping Bunny would laugh and join in. And he poked a little fun at Bunny's self-absorbed self-portraits, but…

… but Bunny was one to complain about using feelings as ammunition. He sure hadn't pulled any punches with his "nobody believes in you" stuff that day Jack had been dragged in a sack to the Pole.

Maybe Jack had been a bit vindictive back at the Warren, but Bunny had been downright hostile with him for centuries. It only hurt now that Jack knew he didn't treat every new myth that way

The baby fairy cradled in his hands finally decided she'd done enough waiting, and chirped loudly for attention. Jack shushed her but it was already too late. Bunny looked around, alerted by both the chirping and the shushing.

"What the - " Bunny stood up, teacup still in hand, glaring at Jack. "How many of my private conversations are you going to eavesdrop on?"

"Relax, Bunny, he comes here all the time," Tooth said. "The fairies like his company." She waved at Jack, smiling, as the fairy in his hand chirped demandingly.

"Tooth, why didn't you tell me he was here?" Bunny asked, clearly angry that he'd been spilling his heart out in a place Jack could hear.

"Because I knew if I did, you'd tunnel off without actually confronting your problems. And isn't that convenient! Now you two can talk it out like responsible ancient myths," said Tooth. "Looks like my cue to get back to work." She drained her teacup, put it down on the tray, and zipped back into the air.

Jack and Bunny looked disbelievingly at each other, then back at Tooth.

"Hey, hang on, can't you just -"

"Maybe a neutral party would -"

"I'm sorry, is my name the Counseling Fairy?" Tooth plunked her hands on her hips, raising one feathered brow at them. She was willing to talk, clearly, but had no intention of solving their problems for them. "Let me think - no, it is not. You boys be nice now."

She zipped off. Bunny and Jack looked at each other, then rolled their eyes in opposing directions.

"You know, I came here to see the fairies, not talk feelings with you," Jack said, eyeing Bunny still with some resentment. As much as he wanted his whole strange Guardian family to get along with him, Bunny's intensely critical approach to everything Jack did was hurtful and confusing. The only way to deal with it was to open up about his feelings, and there was no way he was going to do that with Bunny.

Especially since Bunny didn't seem interested in exposing his feelings either.

The rabbit shrugged. "Yeah, well, I've got a lot of work to do anyway. Can't sit around brushing the fairies with February over."

A moment of awkward silence hung in the air before Bunny loped off to the edge of the hanging palace floor to tunnel back into the earth through one of the rock walls

Unbidden, Pitch's words returned to Jack's mind. "They'll never accept you." Well that wasn't true. Sandy, Tooth, and North had accepted him just fine.

It was just starting to look more and more like Bunny never would.

Jack settled down and the rest of the fairies gathered in a little flock around him. They cooed and chattered at him comfortingly, sensing his sour mood. Baby Tooth, relieved of her duties, flew over to join them and landed on Jack's shoulder, hopping over to nuzzle his neck and face.

"Oh, tiny tooth fairies," Jack opined. "At least you guys get me."

They all nodded eagerly, and swarmed in for a group cuddle. Unfortunately, since there were so many of them, this meant that he was pretty much covered in fairies.

"Ladies. Can't breathe," Jack said, his voice muffled by tiny winged bodies.

A giggle filtered through the fairy barrier and they parted. Tooth floated before him, wings buzzing, surrounded by a group of other mini-fairies relaying her orders.

"You're bringing it on yourself, you know," she said, smiling. "You're spoiling them rotten."

"Says the one that cuddles them constantly."

"They're mine. I'm allowed to cuddle them constantly."

"At this point, I'm pretty sure they've decided I'm theirs, so it's the same thing, just in reverse," Jack said, standing up and tucking the toothbrush in his pocket. All the fairies sighed in deep disappointment. "I'm guessing if you had to get back to work, you're too busy to go do something, huh? No chance of a day out in the field?"

"Sorry, I only had a few minutes to have tea with Bunny," Tooth said, shrugging apologetically. "It's too heavy today to leave Baby Tooth with all the responsibility."

Jack nodded ruefully, but didn't complain. He smiled at her, and that spurred Tooth to take him by the hand and float upward.

"But what I was thinking was that I still have time here and there. I know it's not the same, just hanging around while I'm working, but if you stay up in the nest with me, you can hang out with me and the fairies?"

"That's…that's fine," Jack said, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice. "I can brush the ones on their breaks while they rest."

He just wanted to be…wanted. The way she was smiling at him made him feel that way. So he floated up with her towards the nest, beaming happily at her.

"You and Bunny didn't talk, did you?" she asked.

There went the smile, gone in a flash. Jack replaced it with an eyeroll.

"There's no way I'm talking to His Stuffiness about his hurt ego when he won't even give me a fair chance. You heard him. It's like, okay, we used to butt heads constantly, but then we were okay – then I mess up on one mission and that's it." Jack waved his hand in a cutting gesture. "Every bad thing I do is worse than if someone else did it, and all the good I do isn't good enough. Why should I give him a chance to fix it if he won't give me one?"

They were in the nest now, and fairies gathered around to get instructions.

"Because the only reason you're afraid to try is because if you open up and expose yourself and he still rejects you, it'll hurt, so it's easier not to try at all."

Jack narrowed his eyes, working his jaw to figure out what to say, but she'd already turned away from him.

"Okay, ladies, I need two of you to head to Tallahassee, there's two canines, two different houses, same street, oddly enough. And get those teeth tucked away – oh wait, let me look first, I don't blame you, they're adorable – but get them tucked away before you drop them. Let's not have a repeat of 2006. It took us forever to find Amelia Jensens's molar."

When she finally turned back, he was still working his jaw.

"So I'm being stubborn about this because I'm that sensitive, huh?"

"Yep," said Tooth.

"And you, of course, know me just that well to know that."

"Yes," she said. "You're an open book, and even though I've been busy, I've gotten a lot of library time in since you joined the team, haven't I?"

That was true, Jack had to admit. Even though it was all stolen time, put it all together from the last few months (almost a year now) and it meant they'd talked endlessly.

It was weird having someone that was starting to know him better than he knew himself. That was what was throwing him. He'd never had that before.

"I'm not afraid of – of…"

"Of being alone? Of being turned away or rejected?" She turned away to relay a few instructions to the mini-fairies, leaving him posturing and puffing out his chest at the empty air.

"That's not fair," he said, frowning. "Don't talk to me, like – like –"

"Like the front you put up is as obviously fake as North pretending he doesn't have a problem with cookies?" she said, turning back.

"On that note, he's starting to worry me," Jack reflected. "It's not the health issues, since we don't have any, but you know, there's psychological dependency -"

"And there's the sarcasm." She floated right in front of him, swaying softly in the air. "Jack, you don't have to pretend you don't care about things. After seeing how hard you've been willing to fight to protect the kids, after the time you've spent with all of us, it's a pretty thin disguise, sorry to say."

Jack just stood there, staring at her, looking and feeling just a little lost.

"Stop it," he said quietly, not angry or sad, just confused.

"Stop what?" she asked.

He had to search for the words and settled on, "Knowing me."

"Does it scare you?"

"Does it scare me? It terrifies me," Jack admitted, his voice going slightly raspy. Shrugging self-consciously, he confessed, "Even if I've always wanted it."

She arched an eyebrow, the feathers of her head crest twitching in what he'd come to recognize as a sort of sardonic movement. "Get used to it. It's all part and parcel of having friends who care about you."

She was floating terribly close, swaying like she always did in the air, her feathers catching the light and shimmering with the movement. The movement was what always drew him in. That was a thing with birds, right? Movement was a way of communicating, it was a way of – of attracting other birds.

Wait, where had that thought come from?

And, holy moley, where was his movement coming from? He found himself moving in closer, his face heading straight for hers, in a movement that wasn't being guided by conscious thought but rather by something zinging up from the base of his spine. If he kept moving forward, their mouths were going to collide.

Abort! Abort! What are you doing? Tactical avoidance!

Jack ducked to the side just in time, pressing his head to her shoulder, hoping against hope that Tooth would think that was what he'd been planning all along. It seemed to be what she settled on thinking because after a half second of freezing in place, she alighted on the ground and wrapped her arms around him.

Geez, he loved hugs. Forget North and his cookies, he was the one that was starting to have a problem. Hug addiction. Being able to be close to her – uh, to someone in general - it was all he could do to keep himself from breathing her in. Sniffing someone was creepy, after all, no matter how good they smelled (the rare times he smelled her, it always seemed to be a mix of the strangely sweet smell of feathers, the dully sweet smell of nag champa, and something floral like rose or jasmine).

Not that he spent that much time thinking about how she smelled. Nope.

"I know you want him to get along with you. You just need to talk to him."

"Who?" asked a slightly dazed Jack, trying to see if he could casually sneak a nuzzle in.

"Bunny."

"Oh, right. Bunny. We were talking about Bunny."

Tooth drew back to look at him. "I know it doesn't seem like he has reasons for the way he's acted towards you, Jack, but he did." She paused. "He doesn't necessarily have them anymore, but if we're honest with ourselves, we're all a little slow to change."

"What reasons are those?" Jack asked.

She shook her head. "It's not my place to tell you."

Jack sighed and Tooth let him go, hovering back to work.

"I'll talk to him," he groused, sitting down on the floor. "Maybe. If he stops being such a – a –"

"Grumpy Gus?"

"He's the grumpiest of Guses, I'm telling you," Jack said, plopping down and grabbing the toothbrush. The off-duty fairies gathered eagerly around him as he went to work, cuddling them and scritching them all their fluffy little hearts desired.

There was a light blush on Tooth's face again, and Jack, his curiosity burning, couldn't let it lie this time.

"Tooth, if the fairies are, like, an extension of you, do you… is this something you can feel?"

"I can feel what happens to them, even if I can't see what they see or tell where they are. If they're scared. If they're happy."

"Is this making you uncomfortable or…?"

"No," she said, ducking her head and smiling, throwing herself back into her work, barking out orders like she had no time for chitchat, no sir, none at all.

Jack couldn't help but smile to himself as he brushed away at the mini-fairy chirping and squirming happily in his hand.

It was right then, in that moment of warmth, that everything went cold. The world turned to blinding white and fell out from under him. He was drowning in the pond, surrounded by cold, and yet walking out in a blizzard at the same time, the wind tearing at his cloak, whipping at his wool cap. He was gasping for breath, choking under the water, and at the same time the chill wind was stealing the air from his lungs, driving him to his knees.

The world was going dark, either way. The cold was stealing into his heart, into the very core of him and his life was leeching away. The same thought overlaid itself, an inner voice that was young and yet also very old: Please, not like this.

Then the cold was in his bones. The world went dark, and in the shadows, eyes were gleaming at him – with irises as pale grey as the sky during a blizzard.

In their gaze he felt the deepest rage he'd ever felt, the most virulent hatred possible, all directed at him.

He woke, gasping, panicked, Tooth hovering above him.

"Jack!" She was shaking him by the shoulders. "Jack, wake up!"

"What? Wha – where. I saw – he was – he was looking at me, he was - he was - and –"

"Jack, calm down. Calm down. Breathe."

Jack was lying on the floor of the control nest. Tooth's face swam into clearer focus, surrounded by Baby Tooth and the other mini-fairies, all wearing fretful expressions.

Jack breathed deeply several times. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I turned around and you were lying on the floor. Baby Tooth says you just fell over unconscious."

Jack fought to remember his dream. It was fading quickly.

"I had…a dream. A really, really weird dream. A nightmare."

"Is that something that normally happens to you? Just passing out like this?"

"No, I barely sleep. Just like the rest of you - I only sleep if I want to, or if I've gone months without it, or if I got hurt, or if something exhausting happens."

"We should go to North's and gather up the others –"

"No, no. It's not – it's not a big deal. I think I might have just nodded off."

Now that the dream was fading, it didn't feel like a big deal. The frightening feelings were drifting away on the wind, the biting cold hard to remember in the pleasantly temperate Tooth Palace.

Tooth frowned. "But you just said –"

"I know, but I haven't slept in…a while. Not since Africa."

"Jack…"

"I'm fine. I don't feel weird or anything." Jack sat up to see if it still held true when he was upright – it did. "I think I just got too comfortable and nodded off. Had a bad dream. That's all."

Tooth didn't look too convinced. "If it happens again, I want you to go to North's and have him gather all of us. We don't get sick, Jack. If you're passing out, it could mean something serious on a much deeper level than the physical."

"Alright alright. I will." Jack nodded. "I promise."

After that, Jack didn't have any other strange dreams. Still, he thought he sometimes sensed something odd in the air, like a presence that hovered nearby, but wouldn't show itself. He worried for a while that Pitch had escaped his underground prison to stalk him in the shadows, but Pitch never showed himself. No one did.

A strange feeling wasn't enough for him to seek out the other Guardians, though, when they were so busy. And oh, were they busy. New toy lines, Easter approaching, and the usual hustle and bustle of teeth and dreams.

So Jack, in his freedom, spirited Jamie out of his room a few nights a week. Sometimes they just went flying, to see what everything looked like from above. Sometimes they got up to mischief, parking up on a roof to throw snowballs at the people down below. Sometimes Jack just set Jamie down to play with other kids in another country, so he could meet people and see more of the world.

Jack never thought he'd get enough of seeing the wonder in the kid's eyes.

Like the wonder he saw as they sat on an ancient stone overlooking a beautiful desert landscape, watching the sun rise.

"How's the kebab?"

"S'really good. What's in dis?"

"Goat, maybe? I have no idea."

"I like it," Jamie said, munching away. "Can we go to India next time? I wanna try, um. That stuff. Tandoori? And Japan for sushi? I keep trying to get my mom to let us try different foods for dinner but she's not really adventurous."

Jack laughed. "I promise I'll take you on as many culinary adventures as casual theft permits. That's one of the great things about flying; international food that's actually international."

"It's waaay bigger than it looks in pictures," Jamie said of the pyramid reflecting the light of the rising sun. So's the Sphinx."

Jamie looked down at their seat. (He looked down on account of the fact that the Sphinx was what they were sitting on.)

"Just about everything looks bigger in person. It's the rule of pictures. They can't contain all the presence of the important stuff. That's why it's so great to see it all in person," Jack lay back on the stone, hands tucked behind his head, and looked out. "The world's a big place, Jamie. You can, literally, spend lifetimes exploring it and still not manage to see it all."

His kebab finished, Jamie lay down on the stone with Jack. He imitated his posture, putting his hands behind his head. The gesture made the corners of Jack's mouth tweak up.

"You might get to see it all," Jamie pointed out.

"If I live long enough to. Depends on how long people believe."

"What happens if they all stop?"

Jack glanced over to Jamie. "I fade away. Now that I'm a Guardian, that's the price we pay. We become strong from all the belief, so that we can protect the kids like we do, but if it goes away, so do we. That's why it was so important that you still believed in us when we were fighting Pitch."

Jamie's eyebrows furrowed up. "I don't like that."

"Well, you can take it up with whoever decided the metaphysical laws of our universe there, buddy."

"Well, it's just, that means you'll be okay as long as I'm alive, but I'm not sure I have faith in the future generations of the world to understand the importance of believing in things like Santa. You should see the kindergarteners these days, they have no respect at all."

Jack burst out laughing. "You know, about half the time I talk to you, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."

"I'm getting really good at it. I told mom I'm practicing for when I'm a teenager," Jamie said earnestly. "I'm serious, though. I don't like that I can't be sure you'll be here when I'm gone."

"Well, for one thing, let's not talk about when you'll be gone because I want to pretend that's just never going to happen. For another, you probably won't even believe in me when you're a grown up." Jack shrugged. "That just doesn't happen, Jamie. People always stop believing, eventually."

"I won't."

Jack side-eyed him.

"Jack, you've been taking me around the world. I'm watching the sun rise over the pyramids at Giza. This isn't exactly something I can convince myself that my parents were doing all along."

Jamie sat up and scooted closer to Jack, lying down again at his side.

"You've looked out for me and you're the funnest person I've ever met and you show me all different cool stuff," he said, leaning his head against Jack's shoulder. "As far as friendship goes, I'm in it for the long haul."

Jack looked down at him. "I don't remember them making kids so adorable back in the day," he said, reaching over to tickle Jamie's side. Jamie laughed, batting Jack's hands away. "Is that a new thing? When did they start improving the design? I hope you aren't just a fad like Furbies."

"No, stop! Ahahaha! No fair! If I try to tickle you, I'll probably get frostbite."

Jack stopped and sat up, looking at Jamie with narrowed eyes. "You're shivering."

"That's just because your hands are cold."

"That's because the desert is cold at night and you're not wearing a heavy enough jacket. I was only tickling you for two seconds." Jack stood up and grabbed his staff. "I'm gonna get you home before you get sick. It's late anyway."

"Awww, come on, can't we go to one more place?"

"Nope. You have school tomorrow."

"You could cancel it," Jamie suggested hopefully, raising his eyebrows.

"If I do it in the northern hemisphere at this time of year, Bunny will blow a blood vessel. C'mon, time to go."

He gripped Jamie firmly, hoisting him so that Jamie could keep his arms around Jack's neck as they flew. He took to the air over the desert, heading higher and higher so they could start traveling on the wind. Jack was so focused on heading up that he wasn't really focusing on what was off to the side, which was why Jamie noticed the strange shapes in the distance first.

"Hey, Jack?" he said, looking off into the desert. "What's that?"

Jack looked down, still floating upwards. "What?"

"That. See it?"

"Whoa…"

Dark clouds massed in the distance, columns of white stretching from them to the ground. There had to be at least ten of them, sweeping in dizzying paths around each other.

"Dust devils, maybe?" White clouds followed the columns. "Sand storm? Man, that's moving fast."

Jamie clung to Jack, his arms tightening around his neck. "Jack, can we go home now?"

"Yeah, let's, uh, let's try to avoid that." Jack looked upward. "Hey, Wind, can you give us a lift?"

He waited for the wind to draw them up, but it didn't. The air around them quickened, but the stray winds blew at them from the approaching storm, not the familiar lift of his old friend.

"Wind, come on, buddy, I need a ride!"

Nothing.

"Jack?" Jamie said, gaze fixed on the approaching wall of white.

"Wind! Come on! We need to get out of here!"

Nothing. Jack stared at the sky with something akin to horror on his face. "The wind's not listening to me. It's never – it's never done that before."

"Jack, it's coming really fast now," Jamie said, pointing. Jack looked and saw that he was right. The storm was fast approaching, faster than a storm should have been able to move.

And the wind that came off it was cold, far too cold for the desert.

"I don't think that's sand," Jamie added.

To Jack's amazement, the next gust of wind carried a few stray flakes of snow.

"Snow in the desert?" Jack said, in disbelief. "What is going on?"

He turned and flew towards Giza.

"Where are we going?" asked Jamie.

"Back to Giza. It's moving too fast. If the wind's not listening to me, I don't know if I can outfly it and we might get caught out in the open if I try to fly us over the desert. We need to take cover until it passes."

But the storm was gaining rapidly, the wind picking up, affecting Jack's flight. As the storm got closer, he understood why. Those columns weren't mere dust devils, they were full-on tornadoes – and they were carrying snow.

The snow tornadoes ripped closer, and suddenly, the wind was sucking them in. Jack fought against the pull but although his magic would have given him the leverage he needed on his own to slip away, that same magic was not as strong on Jamie.

The tornadoes were stronger.

The hood on Jamie's coat ripped off, and the boy was sucked from Jack's fingers into the vacuum of the tornadoes.

It was the sharpest knife of fear Jack had ever felt, jammed up right between his ribs into his heart. He shot into the heart of the tornadoes, missile-fast towards the half-falling, half-flying boy. Jamie's scream of terror wove in and out of the roar of the winds, and Jack strained with every inch of his arm, reaching for the ragged edge of Jamie's coat.

He grasped it as Jamie was nearly swallowed by a raging whirlwind. Jack whipped his staff around, catching the very momentum of the tornado that was sucking them in and riding it out of the maelstrom and into the open air. The storm plowed towards Giza as he and Jamie soared over the desert. Jamie, trembling in Jack's arms, moaned a frightened animal sound.

"Wow," said Jack, trying for lighthearted and mostly failing. "What a rush, huh Jamie? How you doing, buddy?"

"I'm f-f-freezing," said Jamie. Jack realized with alarm that he was more correct than he'd meant. The weather was much too harsh, and Jamie was much too mortal to be out in it.

"I think it's hot cocoa time for you," Jack joked, hefting Jamie into his arms again. "Save some marshmallows for me, will ya?"

He took off over the desert, not giving Jamie time to answer. Eventually he was able to use the trade winds for a boost, though it was much slower going without the Wind actively helping him. The trades carried them over the whitecapped Atlantic, but Jamie was still shaking – whether from nerves or cold – as they arrived at the Eastern seaboard. Jack dropped down towards land somewhere over Georgia, but his relief was short-lived. Another storm was coming to meet them.

A massive stormfront was dropping snow on Atlanta. Not only was Lake Allatoona frozen (again), it was frozen completely solid. They flew over snow piled on that should have been too warm from a day of balmy spring sunshine to keep the drifts frozen. The roads below were shiny with ice from snow that had melted and refrozen, but even the gleam of the ice was starting to disappear beneath a layer of freshly fallen, un-melting powder. The Atlanta traffic, always terrible, was backed up to every edge of the city – the many car crashes, smoking at various points along the icy roads, were clearly the cause.

Jamie shuddered with cold and Jack pulled the boy close on instinct, even though he knew it'd do little to help. "Almost there, kiddo," Jack said gently, as the southeastern US rolled beneath them, covered with deep and unseasonal snowdrifts.

The stormfront broke as they crossed into Virginia, making the going a little easier up into the northern states. Jamie's lips were blue and chattering when they reached his window, and Jack thrust him into his room, immediately grabbing a blanket to wrap around the younger boy.

"J-j-jack, what's g-going on?" Jamie asked, through chattering teeth, clutching the blanket around himself.

"I don't know," Jack admitted. At Jamie's worried expression, he added, "Yet."

Jamie's eyes widened as he looked at something behind Jack, and Jack turned to see the aurora borealis flashing across the stars, through the window.

Jack turned back to Jamie. "Get your winter coat out and watch the weather channel. Try to avoid doing anything that could get you stuck out in the cold." As Jamie nodded, his expression still worried, Jack said, "Don't worry. The other Guardians and I will figure this out. You just stay warm and keep an eye on things around here, okay?"

Jamie nodded again, huddling deeper under his blanket, and Jack leaped from his window directly onto the northerly wind, speeding as fast towards the pole as it would take him.

The elephants at the Memphis zoo swayed with anxiety, huddling around the space heaters set up in their enclosure. Zookeepers in puffy jackets scrambled to secure tarps to keep the warmth in, working against powerful winds that ripped the tarps from their hands. One finally tore out of its bonds entirely and went flying away in the biting wind.

In the zoo's gift shop, a frustrated docent and a harried fourth-grade teacher did their best to break the news gently to the shivering kids that their field trip was cut short. The weather was just too bad for the animals - or the children - to be out.

"Will the cold hurt the animals?" asked a dark-skinned girl in a panda bear hoodie. The docent and the teacher exchanged glances that, she thought, said it already had.

"The zookeepers are working hard to make sure all the animals have warm and safe shelters to stay in," said the docent. "Some of the warm-weather creatures are a little chilly right now, but the zoo has ways to keep them all toasty when Jack Frost is being a little brutal."

The panda-hoodied girl looked at her friends, their eyes all shining with disbelief.

"Why would Jack Frost want to hurt the animals?" one of them wondered out loud. Outside, the wind raged around the building, whistling through the trees with a sound oddly - and frighteningly - close to laughter.

The glass in the windows of the shop suddenly cracked as frost spider-webbed over it in a clawlike design. The children scrambled away from the noise and the impossibly cold draft that had flash-broken the window, yelping as the chilly air nipped at their noses.

Outside, the frost spread like a plague, snapping lines that fed electricity into the heaters warming the bird gardens and the ape habitats. Zookeepers raced to start backup generators, but stopped short in horror as they found the machines coated by thick layers of ice, barring them from starting the generators up. The sound that was almost like laughter grew louder, as the wind and the ice grew stronger with it.

Far to the north, nearly at the pole, Jack's stomach churned and a chill ran up his spine in ways it hadn't since he was alive.

For the first time, he understood what North meant when he said he could feel, in his belly, that something was wrong.