A/N: Sorry for the long delay. I (Kira/Saph) have been pulling really long hours at work due to staffing problems and am moving into a new apartment. This chapter's also reeeaaally long and took a lot of work. Updates will still happen but for a while, we're probably not going to be able to keep to a weekly schedule until life lets up. P.S. We enjoyed your tears from the last chapter. We had a wonderful late-night tipple drinking them.
Fjord Mustang: Yessss, we are a big fan of plotty stuff. We like to work the emotional aspects and (sometimes) romance in but for us, the things we love writing the most are stories that have a bit of everything (much like the original canons do), with plot, solid character arcs, and so on. "The idea that Jökull Frósti would be a former Viking berserker makes perfect sense given the Norse origins of the Jack Frost winter spirit legends." Yep yep. We decided to treat the youthful folk figure and the Norse figure as two separate entities. "Something about it reminds me of a darker version of 'The Snow Queen' where young Kay is... I wonder if there will be a character with a Gerda-like role in this story." Hahaha, no comment. Read and seeee...
RedKetchup: He still has his eyes, yes. The hollowed part is referring to how sunken in Jack's eyes look - which was even worse after him getting all messed up like that.
terracanon876: That's the plan! Original flavor fic is our usual go-to when writing fanfic. We want this to feel like a natural continuation of the story. And Jack won't keep himself blind, but only out of necessity. It's hard to run for your life when you're not watching where you're going, after all.
As for all you folks that were reminded of the Ice King, if that's how you're picturing Old Man Winter... you're doing it right. That's a little bit how we see him, just as a much more sinister figure.
The King of Cold Mountain
by Anders, Kaylin, and Saph
Chapter 4
It took them longer to get to the North Pole than it would have with the sleigh. Sandy was powerful, but he wasn't usually carrying the rest of the Guardians, and they weren't usually fleeing with their tails between their legs.
Bunny was the first off the cloud like he couldn't get away from them all fast enough, chasing shadows down halls that looked worn and splintery to Jack's new vision. He returned with scratchy woolen blankets, garishly colored and hideously patterned. Jack and Tooth stepped off next, then Sandy, and North staggered down before the sandcloud could drop him off in a chair.
North groaned as he landed, favoring his shoulder as Bunny draped one of the blankets around him. "Ah, thank you Bunny," he said, shivering. "Probably safe to say, this will not go down in record as our most triumphant of battles, am I right?" He chuckled, but the chuckle turned into a wince of pain and he clutched at his shoulder. He pulled his coat and shirt away to take a look.
"Already healed over, but still, I cannot move my arm."
A horde of yetis and elves thundered over. The elves skittered around like jangly cockroaches and Jack turned his face away from the sight. A jolt of pain shot through his head as the shards in his eyes dug in deeper, and Jack pressed his palms to his face, groaning over the garbled yeti-speak and North's boisterous attempts to reassure his workers. The jolts of pain spread to his neck and his pulse thundered loudly in his ears. He reached for his staff. Not only was everything hideous, it was loud and grating. He had to get away.
"Jack," Bunny dropped a blanket next to him. "You should -"
"I should have what?" Jack exploded. "Called for help? I did, but he made the wind keep them from hearing my voice. I should have not run ahead? Guess what, I wasn't the one that ran ahead without thinking - the others did." His chest rose and fell rapidly as he ran through his tirade. "I watched everyone's backs, even though I didn't know who the heck we were going up against - thanks for that, by the way." He waved at the group. "Considering you're on me all the time about knowing what's what for the mission? Way to go. Really. Thanks for letting me know what we were getting into before I got stabbed in the eyes."
He rounded on Bunny again, his fist raised, but still held himself back. "So you can take your complaint about how badly I handled myself and stuff it right into your Easter basket, because I did everything I was supposed to."
The group responded with silence, all eyes looking from Bunny to Jack.
"- You should let us get a look at your eyes," Bunny continued, picking up from where he'd left off. "I was gonna say."
Jack exhaled sharply, turning away from him. "Well not you," he growled.
"Jack, let me," said Tooth. He turned to her with dread, not wanting to see her through his sharded eyes.
The elves were keen to help, bringing over a basin of warm water and a clean cloth. Tooth sat Jack down in a chair and tilted his face towards her. He immediately shut his eyes.
"I need you to open your eyes. I need to see how bad the damage is."
Jack shook his head furiously, eyes still closed. "I'd really rather not..."
"Rather not what?" He felt Tooth's fingertips trace over the edge of his ear, a gentle gesture he knew was meant to comfort him. "I don't care how it makes me look to you, Jack. We need to make sure you're okay."
Jack finally blinked his eyes open. He looked into violet eyes filled with concern, and at a nose that looked just as beaky as it always did. The shards sharpened everything they could - trying to turn her into something ferocious, threatening, a caricature of how she must have appeared time and again to enemies who'd dared to harm children on her watch - but that was all they managed to remind Jack of. That Tooth was fierce to people who were bad enough to deserve it, and that she cared enough about the children to tap into that ferocity. There was only so far the shards could twist her image when there was so much about her that was beautiful.
She looked carefully into his eyes. "They're already healed over," she said.
"They're still in there," said Jack. "I can feel them digging in." They did just that, piercing his eyes a little deeper, and Tooth's image jumped again. Jack gasped in pain.
Tooth touched his jawline gently. "Let's get your face cleaned up." She dipped her cloth into the warm water and wiped his face gently, melting away the bloody ice that caked cheeks and chin. Despite the care she took, the cloth felt painfully coarse, like it was sloughing off skin as well as ice. The water stung like something far more acidic.
"There you are," she said softly as the ice began to clear.
"What are these things?" Jack asked, as she wrung out the cloth. "These shards - they looked like pieces of glass -"
"I've never seen anything like them before," Tooth admitted. "Old Man Winter had nothing like this last time we fought -"
Sandy floated next to Tooth, an image of a crowned woman over his head. Even in the small scale of a sand pictogram, her eyes were narrowed with flashing malice. Tooth frowned at the image in confusion, and Sandy replaced it with a snowflake wearing the woman's tiara. The snowflake sprouted arms and lifted a hand-mirror in one.
Understanding flooded Tooth's expression. "The Snow Queen," she said. "But she's been almost powerless for centuries. Her mirror was broken ages ago -"
Sandy shook his finger. Almost powerless was not powerless, after all -
"Except she's dead now, whoever she was," Jack grunted. "Old Man Winter ate her heart. I heard him crowing about it. Does that get us any closer to fixing me and North, or -?"
Tooth pressed her lips together, looking resolved. She lifted the cloth to continue cleaning Jack's eyes. He winced at the burn of the warm water and the scrape of the white cloth on his skin.
"At least now we know what happened to your eyes and North's shoulder. The Snow Queen had a mirror that reflected only the evil in everything that looked into it. Long ago it broke, and the shards scattered across the world. She must have been gathering them when Old Man Winter caught up to her and picked up what she'd already started."
"So, how do we get them out? There isn't a guardian of eye surgery that I don't know about, is there?" Jack jibed.
Tooth glanced at Sandy, who shrugged.
"It doesn't really work that way," she said, as gently as possible, still wiping the frozen blood from Jack's face. "Unfortunately, we're not sure exactly how it works. There are a few stories about the shards getting into peoples' eyes, but -"
She trailed off, and Jack thought he could hear the "none of them end well" that she wasn't adding.
"So, what happens next?"
"What happens next is we go looking for a cure," Bunny spoke up, "and I know just where to start asking if it's stories we're after."
Anansi. Jack groaned. "Just what my day needs. Another guy who's good at twisting everything into being my fault."
The soft buzzing of fairy wings caught Jack's attention and he looked up to see a few of Tooth's fairies zipping through the skylight, looking like little flying spearheads. Baby Tooth zipped to Tooth, chirping animatedly with news.
"The weather's too bad for the fairies to make it to most of the children," said Tooth, her face falling. Baby Tooth continued chirping. "But the children blame it on the weather, so none of them have lost their belief. It's a mixed blessing, but it frees me up to concentrate on Old Man Winter."
"On eliminating him, right?" Bunny cut in, perking up from his position at the edge of the discussion, where he'd been absentmindedly twirling his one remaining boomerang in thought. "He's too much of a threat to just leave sleeping. This time, I say we find a way to take him out for good."
"I agree." Tooth stood up, gesturing to the elves for a clean cloth. The one she held in hand was soaked through with Jack's blood. "He's a threat to the children, not to mention the rest of the world. We can't risk him running free anymore. North?"
They looked to North, but in a rare moment of un-jolliness, he was clutching his shoulder and looking silently at the ground with his eyes closed against the pain. It was a strange, crystallizing moment - the leader of the Guardians sitting silently, absorbed in his injury, while the others called the shots. The sight hammered home how dire their situation was. As bad as the shards in his eyes were, getting stabbed in the shoulder had to be more dangerous, and Jack was filled with concern for the old man.
Sandy hovered at North's side, but he looked up to join the discussion. He shook his finger in a gentle 'hold on' to Tooth and Bunny, and an image of a human man, wild-haired but with a noble profile, appeared over his head. He pointed to it with a raised eyebrow.
Bunny scoffed, "Yeah, Old Man Winter will be chomping at the bit to take the Enkidu Oath after the beating we gave him."
Sandy kept his finger in the air, as if to say, "still."
"Does anyone want to tell me what the Enkidu Oath even is?" Jack groused. "I forgot to ask after that mission in Africa."
"Words are powerful, Jack," Tooth explained. "They make up the stories that we need in order for children to believe in us. A long time ago, one of our kind discovered that words between us - between myths - held power over us. There's a special oath that we can take and if it's broken, the one who breaks it dies."
"What," Jack raised his eyebrows. "Just like that?"
Sandy snapped his fingers, to say, "just like that," and a skull and crossbones appeared over his head.
"And in three hundred years I've never heard of this because...?" Oh wait, he knew the answer to that one. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and finished the thought himself, "...Because I hardly ever talked to anyone. Not exactly something that'd come up in casual conversation. 'Hey, so are there any magical instant death oaths I should know about?'"
"It's a waste of time," Bunny insisted, his tone dark. "Old Man Winter would never take the Oath."
Tooth glanced at him with the frustrated resignation that said she agreed, even though she was going to say otherwise. "The Enkidu Oath is what we usually offer enemies like this," she said, almost as if she was reminding herself as much as Bunny. "But only a few have been willing to take it. Others like Pitch and Old Man Winter, who aren't willing to stop hurting the children, usually refuse."
"Then it is settled," North declared, rising, still draped in the scratchy green blanket. "We will deliver to Old Man Winter the oath, as is only right - but prepare for battle, as we expect. First, a cure is of the utmost importance - we are in no condition to battle anyone, much less a foe so great. Still!" His merry face still beamed as he stood, seeming to find new vigor in their plan. "Is simple enough. We will go in search of the story fellow at once, find a cure, then face Jokul Frosti again."
"Think I could take a look around, see if you've got anything I can replace a weapon with?" Bunny cut in. "I lost a boomerang in that fight." He grinned, and Jack couldn't tell if the edge on his appearance – the decidedly vicious edge – was the shards warping his vision, or if Bunny just really got that much of a kick out of breaking a weapon on an enemy's skull. "Couldn't've come up with a better way for it to go. That was a good crack I got on the old ratbag."
Something about the satisfaction in his voice grated on Jack's ears as much as - frankly - the sight of the rabbit grated on Jack's eyes.
"And I'm the selfish, irresponsible one?"
Jack's voice cut through the elder four's rising moods. They looked at him with concern as Jack sat back from Tooth and snarled at Bunny.
"Speaking of things I didn't do wrong this time, what exactly happened to not running off? Or better yet, to taking the group with you when there's something big to deal with?
"Honestly, Jack, is not much I could have done against avalanche –" North put in, and his attempt to placate Jack did nothing but fuel his anger.
"Well there's plenty I could have done!" he snapped.
Bunny, to his surprise, offered no counterpoint, and that angered him too.
"You left us, just like you yelled at me for doing on the Africa mission, and now you're bragging about getting one in on Old Man Winter? How about how much we could have used someone getting a good one in on him, oh, before this happened?" he pointed to his eyes with one hand, and North's sharded shoulder with the other.
Bunny still said nothing, crossing his arms and looking away. But he didn't get angry.
Jack almost laughed at the irony. All the times he hadn't wanted Bunny to get angry at him, he had, and now the one time he was just itching to expend some anger, the rabbit just wouldn't give him any to work with.
"Jack," said Tooth, "There's no way to know Old Man Winter wouldn't still –"
"Why are you all defending him?" Jack rounded on Tooth. "I get that you've had hundreds of years to be friends, but while you were having tea parties and talking about your feelings, did you know how he was treating me the whole time? How he still treats me? He's always on my back for doing exactly what he just did – so why, when he does it, does he get a free pass?" He turned back to Bunny. "So which is it? Does it turn out the great Easter Bunny is fallible after all, or is a mistake only a mistake when I do it?"
"Jack," Bunny said, his voice as placating as he could make it, "You're not yourself right now. When you don't have the shards -"
"You wouldn't know!" Jack exploded. "How would you know when I'm myself? You never knew me at all! You had more than three hundred years to know me, and you still thought I'd be selfish enough to hurt people just for the sake of making a good hard winter. You always assumed the worst of me, so why are you letting a little thing like these -" he pointed to his eyes - "get in the way of your judgment? They've changed my eyes, not my heart. I really am this mad at you, and I'd still be this mad without them!"
Bunny looked away from Jack, still without anger. He crossed his arms, as if he didn't want to hear what was being said, but was steeling himself to endure hearing it.
No. He had to be getting indignant. He was just stuffing it down because of the shards.
"Jack -" Tooth started, lifting her hand to try to calm him down but he held his up to stop her and stood up, walking slowly towards Bunny.
"Why so quiet?" he asked, his voice an angry rasp. "You have to be itching to to tell me to shut up and stop being a stupid kid who doesn't know what he's talking about. That running off is only okay when you're the mighty Easter Bunny -" he held up his hands in a 'ooh, big and important' gesture "- who knows all and magically never makes a mistake, even when he leaves his teammates alone to get beaten and injured? How I'll never do anything right, how deep down, maybe I don't want to get things right, because secretly I want to make the world one big iceberg like Old Man Winter? "
"I'm not doing this," Bunny insisted, but he finally uncrossed his arms, his voice touched with unspent anger. "I'm not having this conversation when you're like this."
"Well I am. You thought I was behind those storms," Jack spat, bile rising again, a cold knot in his throat. "Did you always think I was like that? That I'd kill people for fun? Have you just been dying for for me to prove you right? You're looking forward to killing Old Man Winter. When you thought I was the one behind the storms, were you looking forward to killing me, too?"
"That's enough!" Bunny finally inhaled, his temper raised. He clenched his paws in fists, looking Jack directly in his sharded eye. "That is not what I thought. You and Old Man Winter are completely different stories."
"Well you know what he's trying to do, right?" Jack shot back. "He's trying to make us the same story." He pointed to his eyes. "You know why he's done this to me, right? What he's already done to me?"
The Guardians looked at him blankly, and he shook his head. "He's changing my belief. He told me so. He's making the kids think all this bad stuff is me." He shot another glare at Bunny. "Maybe he should team up with you, since he wouldn't have to convince you I'm the worst. So hey, you'll get what you want after all - a winter spirit to blame for everything that goes wrong. It just won't be me. Because I'll be dead."
"That will never happen," Bunny insisted, and Jack was almost gratified that through his anger, he sounded shaken.
"Yes it will. He's going to make the world think we're the same person. And then he's going to eat my heart."
"Jack," Tooth cut in, her eyes wide and horrified.
"What?" he snapped at her. Then, feeling guilty for it, he repeated more calmly, "What?"
She pointed at him. The others were also staring with wide, horrified eyes – minus Bunny, anyway. He'd walked away and was leaning against a wall, his back to the group, only his heaving shoulders showing that he was breathing very deeply. Satisfaction flooded through Jack, cold and bitter, at having gotten the rabbit angry after all.
Tooth fluttered a little closer. "Are you doing that on purpose?"
Jack heard a crisp, quiet sound – the kind the snow made when it was freshly fallen and settling. He looked down at himself, only to find that his entire body was covered with frost. It had spread over his skin in a thin layer, and icicles hung from his clothes.
He touched his hair. Ice had settled there too, and as he touched it, the ice spread, pulling his hair to hang in icicles over his face.
He exhaled a puff of ice-cold air, visible in the warmth of the workshop. More little clouds puffed from his lips as he breathed quicker, panicked breaths.
"What's happening to me?" he asked in a hushed, quaking voice.
"Your heart is growing cold." North stood and walked over to Jack, still touching his shoulder. "I can feel it, too. This is the danger of the Snow Queen's mirror – the shards are always able to freeze a heart, no matter where they entered the body. In your case, with your eyes, you are vulnerable – they make you see only evil in the world, and when one sees only evil, the heart is more open to the cold."
North placed a gentle hand on Jack's shoulder, but even that light touch seemed heavy-handed, and North's face was still shadowed by the ferocity that head shocked Jack during his fight with Old Man Winter.
"If we let it, our hearts will be frozen, Jack. We must both fight this to remain ourselves."
The weight of North's warning sank into him, and as fear filled Jack, more ice creaked to life on his body. He was losing himself. He was losing his heart.
He was just starting to absorb the weight of that when he saw, past north, Bunny's ears suddenly twitch, and the rabbit looked up.
"Cover!" Bunny yelled suddenly. He spun and rushed at the others – "Take cover!"
They barely had time to yell before the ground opened up beneath them. The elves, yetis, and North fell through, and Bunny tackled Tooth and Sandy directly into the tunnel. Jack grabbed his staff, spinning in the air beside him, and whipped it into place to fly out of the tunnel when from behind them came the noise of an explosion, and a rush of cold wind that froze the frost already building on his face.
Ice shot through the tunnel after them. Jack whipped his staff at the oncoming attack, redirecting it into the wall of ice they were tunneling through. The tunnel echoed with groans as pressure built behind the obstructed ice, but it held. Jack skimmed down the tunnel to catch up with the others, and emerged amidst the Guardians, yetis, and elves in the sleigh room.
"Everyone accounted for?" Jack asked. The sleigh cavern groaned as above them, the workshop sustained another impact.
Bunny stamped another tunnel open, but didn't tackle anyone into it. "The elves and yetis can evacuate through that but we have to hurry. Old Man Winter's struck again," he announced. The elves immediately scurried into the tunnel, leaping into it like a slide, little jangly shrieks of panic (or possibly excitement) echoing through the cavern.
The yetis weren't so quick to evacuate, looking to North for orders.
"Phil, you are coming with me to mail room. Execute emergency plan Tinsel Cocoa Gingerbread Bravo. The rest, evacuation plan number three - you know your assignments. Make sure entire pole is clear. Sandy, Tooth, is dangerous, but Old Man Winter must be distracted until Pole is clear."
"On it!" said Tooth. Sandy nodded grimly, and the two zipped off to do the near-impossible.
"Jack, you must stay here and guard our exit while others evacuate. Is vital Old Man Winter does not get you as he wants. Bunny, stay with Jack. If the rest of us fall, protect him with your life."
Bunny, fully prepared to rush out with Tooth and Sandy to face Old Man Winter, stared at North in disbelief. "North, what?"
"You can't fly," North reminded him, "and if Old Man Winter gets Jack, he becomes unstoppable. Please," he said, the sudden gentleness in his voice contrasting against the urgency of the situation. "Clear my home. Make for certain they are safe."
The younger yetis were shepherding some of the older ones through the tunnel first, but the panicking elves slipped them up like marbles underfoot. North held Bunny's gaze for just a moment, his expression strangely soft.
Bunny held North's gaze back, then nodded silently, resheathing his boomerang. North departed, leaning heavily on Phil for support, leaving Jack and Bunny and a river of evacuees pouring through the tunnels.
"Listen up, mates!" Bunny shouted over the noise of the evacuation. "I want a line for yetis and a line for elves, opposite sides, same tunnel! Yetis, you're on my side. Elves, to Jack."
"I'm not working with you," Jack said, his voice almost shrill.
"Yeah you are," Bunny responded, as the elves, confused, stopped mid-flood to Jack, looking back and forth between him and Bunny. "This isn't about us for now, it's about them." he pointed to the elves, who all looked at each other, and completed their flood to Jack, swarming around his feet and tumbling over the edge of the tunnel. His expression to Jack was entreating.
Jack sighed. In this case, at least, Bunny was right. "Okay, listen up guys, keep moving, try not to knock each other over."
The elves were pretty bad at the not-knocking-each-other-over thing, but fortunately their line wasn't really as crucial to maintain as the yetis. So long as the elves went sliding out on their side of the tunnel, they were so lightweight that none of them could really hurt each other in the jostle. With Jack and Bunny each directing a respective side, it wasn't long before the last yeti went sliding down the tunnel, to the last sound of a jingling elf-bell.
The eerie silence that settled in the sleigh launch was broken only by the sounds of Sandy and Tooth fighting Old Man Winter outside. Jack stood silently as Bunny leaned into the tunnel that lead from the workshop to the sleigh launch, listening intently. "North and Phil made it to the mailroom," he said, a second before Jack heard a distant hum of machinery. But Bunny was still leaning into the tunnel, his ears twitching back and forth.
"We have to do a sweep," he said suddenly, turning to Jack. "One of the elves got left behind. C'mon."
"Oh, so I'm still the only one orders apply to?" Jack snarled. Bunny stopped halfway up the tunnel.
"Didn't you hear me? One of the elves got stuck. North and Phil won't hear it in time. If we don't get it, no one else will know to."
"Why should I c -"
Jack stopped, looking down at himself as the ice thickened on his body.
He'd almost just said he didn't care about one of the elves. Annoying as they were and as much as he enjoyed freezing them, they didn't deserve real harm. They were innocents, with minds like children themselves, and they were always kind to Jack every time he visited the Pole, making him cocoa and cookies and treating him as if he belonged there.
North said he had to fight it. As angry as he was at Bunny, he couldn't let those negative feelings fuel the - well, "fire" wasn't really the appropriate metaphor here, was it.
Jack flew after Bunny, breaking the ice off his hair and clothes. "Where's the noise coming from?"
"Upper workshop. He musta gotten iced in one of the early blasts." Bunny took the tunnel as quickly as Jack could follow. They emerged into the main room of the workshop, and the full devastation was clear to them now. The wooden tiers of the levels creaked and groaned dangerously, and ice bulged through the broken wood like tumors. Jack could hear the elf now - the faintest tinkling of a bell cutting through the groan of growing ice.
Bunny leaped up the tiers to one of the jagged ice floes. An elf was half trapped in it, shaking his belled head frantically as if Jack and Bunny hadn't arrived yet.
"I know you don't do the un-freezing, but now's a good time to have another go," Bunny said, as the workshop groaned under another blast. The windows across from them cracked, and the sound of Sandy's lashing whips and Tooth's battle cries filtered through.
Jack pointed his staff at the ice and focused, all his will bent on making it do the opposite of what he usually asked ice to do - but no dice. He let out an inarticulate noise of frustration and smashed his staff against the ice.
"It's not working!"
Bunny whipped out his boomerang and joined Jack in smashing the ice. The workshop groaned as more of Old Man Winter's attacks made it past Tooth and Sandy, punching new holes in the walls. The ice holding the elf in place fractured slowly, but finally the elf came away, still covered with chunks of ice. Bunny pressed the half-frozen elf into the thick ruff of fur at his chest, where it clung, shivering as it nestled deeper into the warm fur.
"Jack! Bunny!" North's voice reached them from the bottom of the workshop hall. He and Phil looked at them with disbelief. "You left tunnel!"
Bunny leaped to the bottom floor, flashing North a glimpse of the thawing elf as he landed. North's expression cleared and he nodded, and Jack was surprised by a sudden, sick burst of disappointment. He'd almost - not almost, he'd definitely wanted to see Bunny get yelled at for disobeying orders. It was about time somebody who wasn't him did.
The sound of shattering glass filled the air. Sandy fell through a broken skylight, regaining consciousness just in time to put a puffy cloud of sand between himself and a hard landing. Tooth fell through another window - one that hadn't already been broken. Shattered glass spun around her as she fell, faster than Sandy had.
"Tooth!" Jack cried out. She wouldn't be able to stop herself before she hit the ground. He shot upward and caught her with his free arm, but her momentum would have sent him crashing into the hard floor if Sandy hadn't cushioned their landing with a puffy cloud.
Old Man Winter dropped through one of the broken windows, floating towards them in sick fluttering movements like a huge, misshapen snowflake.
"The Big Five isn't much of an improvement over the Big Three," he said, as he landed heavily. He locked his gaze on Jack and Tooth, his smile curling sinisterly as he advanced on them. "Nothing worse than a lukewarm debut, unless it's a lame sequel. I would know. I watched The Deadening I andII: Revenge of the Deadener."
Bunny leaped over the downed pair and stood in front of them, his lone boomerang at the ready.
Old Man Winter paused mid-step, glancing at the boomerang, then at the elf still clinging to Bunny's chest fur. His smile turned patronizing. "Nice accessory, bunny rabbit. You gonna start throwing elves when you run out of fancy sticks?"
The elf squeaked in terror, but clung paralyzed where it was. Bunny hefted the boomerang, defiant, and Old Man Winter's smile gave way to a glare - the sort of glare an old, seasoned warrior gave to a young one whose defiance had finally ceased to be more amusing than it was annoying.
"You got a good one in on me behind my back," Old Man Winter said. "Real good going there, Rabbit. You won't be so lucky face to face."
Bunny drew in a ragged, furious breath. "Try me."
He shifted into a fighting stance in front of the downed Guardians. Old Man Winter drew back his hand, an ice spear forming in his grip.
The ground shook beneath them like an angry beast.
"What the -?" Old Man Winter tensed as the workshop floor opened behind him. Something huge and noisy, thrumming with a noise like an angry swarm of bees, rose out of the chasm.
Jack's eyes widened. A massive wooden face rose behind Old Man Winter, jaws clacking with ferocity. It was a nutcracker, a massive nutcracker about thirty feet tall, painted in bright reds and whites and blues. Jack recognized it as the nutcracker from the mailroom, the one that had been attached to the wall, with all the mail to Santa spewing out of its mouth to be sorted by the elves. Apparently, it hadn't been as attached to the wall as Jack had thought.
"How is it doing that?" Jack called out.
"Plan Tinsel Cocoa Gingerbread Bravo," said North. "Did you really think I would build giant nutcracker to just have it stand against wall in mailroom? Pah."
The nutcracker swiped a massive hand at Old Man Winter, who darted out of the way. Bunny, still in his fighting stance, moved only to tap his back foot on the ground. The floor fell open beneath them and they slid down the mossy green path out of danger.
Jack heard Old Man Winter's enraged yell - but didn't get to see Bunny's triumphant grin at the winter spirit, prompting it, just before he stepped backwards into the tunnel after the other four.
The children tried to play in the snow. It was fun, at first, but then the air grew too cold and the snow fell down just a little too hard. It stuck to their hats and gloves, numbing their faces. They could barely feel their fingers anymore under their gloves and mittens.
"Guys, I think we should go in," said Pippa, looking up as the snow turned to sleet. The wind only reinforced her judgement, blowing so hard it knocked Monty over.
Jamie hadn't partaken in much of the play. He'd been looking worriedly into the sky, in what he was fairly sure was a northerly direction, the way Jack had flown off from his room.
"Why is Jack doing this?" asked Monty as he tried to wipe the snow from his glasses. "This isn't fun anymore."
"It's not Jack," Jamie said, tightening his scarf around his face. "He said something was wrong. He said the other Guardians needed him."
"If it's not Jack, who is it?" said Claude, as he and his brother turned towards their home, shivering.
"I don't know who it is," Jamie said pensively, looking at the roiling, grey clouds, "but it's not Jack."
The wreckage of the giant mecha nutcracker lay smoking in the snow. Old Man Winter, impressed by the fight it had put up, refrained from spitting on its remains.
"All things considered, Wilhelm, that was the best fight anything's put up since I got back in business," he said to his shadowy companion. He'd taken to calling it Wilhelm. It seemed to fit the creature somehow. "You know - minus the Big Three. Oh I give them crap, but they're always good for a scrap or two. Don't ever tell them I said that. But - giant mechanical nutcracker. That was an unexpected treat. Way less disappointing than the Frost kid."
He lifted his hand, power gathering around his frostbitten fingers as he drew from the ice around him, and fired one final blast at the workshop. The last of the shattered wreckage of Santa's workshop crumbled, and fell into the canyon below.
Old Man Winter laughed as the snow cleared. "Good show, Wilhelm, good show. Now go get 'em boy."
The lanky, shadowy creature whined in protest.
"What? Whaddaya mean there's no trail? There's always a trail. Okay, maybe it's an underground trail, but it still exists, right? Wilhelm, I know you're new at this subordinate thing, but around here we don't just give up when the going gets hard, okay? We don't double up, we double down.'
Wilhelm growled.
"Yeah I'll give you that one, it sounded better in my head." Old Man Winter looked across the snowy plains, unbroken by any sort of footsteps and dusted with lightly falling snow. "Okay, so there's no trail. Well in that case, let's go find one. You take the western hemisphere, I'll take the eastern."
Old Man Winter and the creature called Wilhelm streaked off in opposite directions - one in close pursuit of the Guardians as they fled underground, though neither knew it yet.
The tunnel out of the Pole opened up in Canada, where the yetis and elves were waiting in a snowy forest overshadowed in the west by the Rocky mountains. North quickly ordered them off, and they departed in small teams of two and three, mostly to the north and into the mountains. The yetis were toymakers by trade, but they were still well suited to the wild lands.
"You okay?" Jack asked Tooth when they finally arrived at their journey's end. As they'd slid through the tunnels, he hadn't let go of her waist.
"I'm fine. Just a little banged up." She stood, shaky, but on her own two feet. Jack, suddenly self-conscious as his hand brushed over her hip, let go and turned to Sandy. The little man looked just as wobbly.
"How about you? You okay, Sandy?"
Sandy nodded, still wincing.
"Sasquatch sightings going to be big this year," North mused, his smile tinged with regret as the last of the yetis faded into the forest, with the last of the elves clinging to its fur (it was the elf that Jack and Bunny had rescued from the ice, and it had been very reluctant to let go of its grip on Bunny's fur - so reluctant that it had taken a handful of downy undercoat with it).
"We'll help rebuild the workshop, mate," said Bunny, as he crouched next to North. "We get this wrapped up before Easter and I've got a whole offseason to help you out."
"We all will," said Tooth, Sandy nodding in agreement as they hovered near to North. "I might not be able to help as often as Bunny, but I'll keep the fairies on shifts at the pole."
"I'll help whenever he's not around," groused Jack, jerking his thumb at Bunny. He felt a little more ice settle on him as Bunny winced and he failed to care.
"Thank you, friends," said North, treating them all to a smile that, while tinged with regret, was still bright and genuine. "But before we are counting chickens, perhaps is best we focus on matter at hand. We need safe place to rest, and way to find this friend of yours -" he nodded to Bunny. "Safe place should preferably be warm," he added, shivering harder as a cold wind blew through the forest, rustling the pines and picking up stray snowflakes.
Warmth made Jack think of the Warren, which was never below balmy. All that green wasn't an appealing thought, but he could hardly think of a place farther from Old Man Winter's sight. "If His Stuffiness over here isn't afraid of everyone else seeing his million self-portraits, we could thaw out in the Warren -"
"Oh no," Bunny protested. "Nobody's going anywhere near the Warren with Old Man Winter on our tails. I will not draw his eye there."
The shards sliced a little into Jack's eyes, and he snorted even as he winced in pain. "So we can risk North's home but not yours. Good to know."
"No, he's right," Tooth corrected. "If Old Man Winter set his sights on the Warren, the consequences would be much greater than the destruction of the pole. "
Jack glanced at North to see how he was taking that barb, but judging by his calm composure, he seemed to agree.
"The Warren goes, spring goes," Bunny elaborated. "I won't risk that." He hefted his only remaining boomerang, looking displeased with his lack of weaponry. "Not even to resupply. If we hide out anywhere, it has to be somewhere nobody would think to associate with us. Africa fits the bill. I say we head there, hole Jack and North up somewhere warm, and keep an eye out for Anansi."
Tooth and Sandy glanced at Jack and North. "We need to stabilize North's arm and thaw them out a little, if we can," said Tooth, as North shivered violently. "That's a long journey to make with his injury."
Bunny nodded. "I'll get a fire going."
Under other circumstances, Jack might have been interested in watching the process. Bunny could make a fire out of an ice cube - literally. Jack had seen him start a fire on the mission with North and the wendigo using a chunk of ice as a lense, like a kid would use a magnifying glass to focus the sun. On the mission before that, he'd even had Jack help with something called a firesaw. To Jack, who was used to icing wood down instead of setting it alight, that had been utterly novel - the process of sawing one stick across another, watching nothing happen, then smoke, then a smoldering bundle of embers that Bunny breathed into a flame. It was the most magical of the mundane things Jack had ever helped do. He'd laughed, delighted to bring something that was so not what he did naturally into being, and Bunny had smiled, too, as if at Jack's delight - that same smile he'd given him the day in the Warren, before Easter, when Sophie was just falling asleep.
"Not bad yourself, mate."
But the smile had said something else - that he'd drawn some conclusion about Jack that had less to do with not bad and more to do with downright good, a rare new impression, after all their years of hassling each other over the seasons.
Jack couldn't even picture that smile anymore.
Maybe it was because it had never existed in the first place. Maybe he'd only wanted to see it so badly that he'd imagined it, longing for someone, anyone - even someone who had disliked him from the get-go - to like him.
Maybe the shards hadn't warped his vision in Bunny's case. Maybe they'd just taken the scales from his eyes.
Bunny built the fire without asking for help, then loped to the edge of the firelight. Only then, did Jack take a seat by the fire next to North. The old cossack - looking older now than Jack had ever seen him - looked over at him and smiled sadly.
"Would take the ice from your eyes for Christmas," he said, raising his uninjured arm and making as if to flick something small and irritating from his fingers. "Phsst! No one should have to see world like that."
Jack didn't smile, but he did edge closer to North. In the light of the fire - and in the light of his usual kindness - the image of him as something harsh and dangerous was fading.
"It's not just the splinters," Jack said slowly. "I can feel their belief in me changing."
"In your belly."
"Yeah. In my belly. It makes me want to be sick."
North put his hand on Jack's shoulder.
"This..." the old man began, and then broke off with a sigh. "I will not lie to you, Jack. This is not something I have experienced. Not this. Poison, yes, I have seen poison in water, maybe that is the best way to think of this." He stroked his beard and shivered, moving closer to the fire. "Poison needs an antidote because we cannot stop drinking the water. For without it, we will only die sooner."
"Maybe it's better this way," Jack said darkly, drawing his knees up to his chin. "Better than getting their hopes up and letting them down. Maybe I've gotten better over time - even if Bunny can't see it - but there's always a chance of me messing up again like I did in Africa. If he thinks I'm going to mess up again, maybe I am. Maybe I'm just that terrible."
An icicle dangled from his nose and he broke it off, wiping at his nose afterward.
"No, not terrible," North said firmly. "Just young. And no more of that 'better this way' talk, is not productive and is not good for you. If you give up, the Old Man will have already won, and neither of us are dead yet!"
"And what a ray of sunshine that thought is." Jack rolled his eyes.
"Besides, bad mission is not the end of world, Jack. Bunny has not been fair to you over what happened there."
"Oh no, it wasn't the end of the world. It was just almost the end of my life, Bunny's life, Anansi's life..."
And that kid, had he risked that kid? He'd caught the roof in time, hadn't he? But what if he hadn't?
"Tell me one thing, and this is very important," said North, "did you learn from it?"
Jack looked into the fire and pursed his lips. 'Fools can learn,' Anansi had said, and when you got right down to it, he was right. Jack had figured a few things out about himself that he hadn't even realized were a thing before going into that mission. He'd stumbled over fears he hadn't known were there, caused by hurts he'd long since ignored - largely out of a complete incapacity to do anything about them in the past.
He could do something about them now and since then, he'd learned even more.
"I learned a lot from it, actually," Jack admitted. "It's more putting it into action that's been hard to figure out sometimes. I've been trying."
"It always is," said North. "Just learning, though, is very good start. But what you must take from all this is that this judgment of you says more about Bunny than it says about you. On this mission, with Old Man Winter, you were not the one that made mistake. We were. We were the ones that ran ahead. Even if it seemed you were with us because of the shadow of the snowman Jokul left in your place, we should not have let you get so far out of sight that we believed it was you. You saved us, and yet you were the one that paid the price for our mistake."
Jack just kept looking in the fire. "He made it look like I was still with you?"
"Yes. A shape that looked like you, fighting in the snow behind us. When it was knocked over, I went to help, only to find it wasn't you. A doppleganger!"
"I thought -"
"You thought what?"
"I thought you'd just went off without me," Jack admitted. "Without looking back."
"Never. But we still put you in harm's way. And now we will do all we can to fix this."
"Would you all kindly stop talking, and pretend it's not because I asked you to, please," said Bunny, suddenly, so very politely that North actually fell silent out of surprise.
" – and I said, that's not a lateral incisor, that's his mother," Tooth trailed off as if at the end of a story to Sandy. The only sound now was of the wind in the pine trees, and Bunny sniffing the air intently. He loped into Jack's view, ears tense at attention, whipping back and forth to catch some sound the others couldn't hear.
Jack stared through the embers of the rising fire, the sparks dancing against the dark firs. It was a good while before he realized two of those sparks - large, yellow, and glowing in the dark, dense underbrush - were not moving.
"Everyone get ready to duck into the tunnel," Bunny said, in the same soft, conversational tone, shifting his weight to one foot.
There was a shape, suddenly, around the burning eyes. A red tongue tasted the air. Yellowed fangs gleamed, ugly, but sharp, in the firelight.
"Why," Jack said, as the stationary embers flashed out, then back into view in the darkness, "is the bunny rabbit afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
"No."
A growl cut the cold night air like a saw on the back of Jack's neck. It reached deep down into his brain - to the part that remembered the long nights of winter when you had to worry that something would be hungry enough to walk in range of musket fire to steal a baby from a cradle, or catch a man out late on the road, or wait outside your door until you simply couldn't survive inside, alone, any longer – and squeezed.
"That's not the Big Bad Wolf, and I'm afraid of it," Bunny admitted. "Get ready."
He stamped the ground. The forest floor groaned, but didn't open.
"What's going on?"
"The ground is frozen," Bunny announced, an edge of panic creeping into his voice. "It's frozen solid - it won't open for me!"
It charged at them into the firelight - a wolf starved so near to death that Jack could count every bone in its spine. Its tongue lolled and its eyes rolled, so starved that absolutely no fear of musket – or sword – or boomerang – could be stronger than its hunger.
Bunny struck it with his boomerang, slowing it down long enough for Tooth to yank one of North's swords from his scabbard and charge in. The wolf dodged her slashes and snapped at her with a noise like a safe door slamming shut, each bite just narrowly missing wounding the her. Jack reached for his staff, but whips lashed around his and North's waists, pulling them onto a cloud of sand.
"No!" Jack yelled as he struggled off the sand-cloud. "Sandy, I'm hurt, not dead! I can still fight!"
"One arm I cannot use, so what? I have been blessed with a spare!" North pulled his remaining sword and jumped, landing at Jack's side.
Sandy looked at them with a skeptical wince, but snapped his whips in preparation for battle. The three of them charged to Bunny and Tooth's aid, but the wolf was already backing up, flanked by the two warriors, growling.
It inhaled, its concave flanks and bony ribs expanding like a balloon. The gale it blew out sent them tumbling into the trees.
Jack slammed against a spruce, falling to the ground with a wrist-twisting thud. Beside him, North groaned, having been flung against a tree on his good arm. The entire forest glittered with a light dusting of dreamsand.
North snapped to attention. "Sandy!"
A few particles rose unsteadily, as if on a breeze, and resolved themselves into wiggly letters - "I'm OK."
The rest of the glowing gold sand began to collect until it again formed a round little man. Sandy stumbled in mid-air as he finished reassembling himself, still woozy from the force of the gale. North caught him with his good arm.
Tooth groaned from up ahead. Jack spotted her crumpled against a tree, just in time to see the lone, starving wolf leap on her before she did.
"NO!" he shouted, throwing ice spears to intercept the wolf, but he was too late. Tooth screamed as the wolf dug its teeth into her, but the wolf screamed as she bit back, slashing a bloody arc in its ragged fur with North's sword.
The wolf jumped back with a mouth full of feathers and blood. It licked its fangs and a horrible noise came out of it - a moan of delight that was unwolflike and monstrous.
White noise filled Jack's head as he threw all the ice magic he could at it. The wolf puffed up to blow him away again, and the forest was suddenly full of freezing, slashing sleet. Tooth must have managed to slash the wolf again from her vantage point because the wind cut out suddenly, the ice stuck, and then Tooth was flitting to Jack's side, her arm open and bleeding.
The ice covering the wolf cracked, then shattered as it shook its head free and howled to the sky. The howl transformed in the Guardians' ears, becoming a screech of terror that found their own fear and grabbed it by the neck and shook it. Their ears filled with the screeches of thousands of things that had died, scared, about to be eaten.
"Over here!"
Bunny's shout reached them as more of the ice covering the wolf splintered and the howl died out. He stood behind them beside an open tunnel, waving them on.
The Guardians charged for it, and skimmed down the mossy tunnel as the ice shattered with a tremendous noise behind them. The darkness of the tunnel became absolute and Bunny surged into the lead, guiding them through and into the open air again.
They emerged in what looked like the same snowy forest, before a small cave. Jack rounded on Bunny. "Exactly why aren't we farther away?"
"Vancouver Island," said Bunny. "It'll have more trouble crossing water than anything else." he turned to Tooth. "Let's have a look at that."
"And we're not on Maui right now for that very reason, why?"
Bunny didn't answer, looking at Tooth's wound. Her pretty face twisted in a wince as together they inspected it, glancing at each other like neither wanted to point out exactly how bad it was.
"Exactly how bad is this?" Jack asked, breaking the silence.
"It's - not that bad," said Tooth, but she was lying like a rug. The shards highlighted the falsehood, but Jack didn't need to have them to see that. "We'll just - clean it up for now, won't we, Bunny?"
"I'll have to go fossick for a few things, but yeah, we can get it cleaned." His half-wince said "at least."
"Clean?" Jack almost scoffed. Their wounds didn't get infected. They were myths. They healed fast.
Unless, a treacherous thought reminded him, the wounds were supernatural. Like shards of a magic mirror in a person's eyes. Or the teeth of a wolf that could huff, and puff, and blow a Sandman apart.
"Stop it," he spat, resentment building up in his chest. "Stop trying to spare me the gory details. I already see more gory details than any of you even know are here to be seen."
The elder four all looked at each other, as if jointly realizing that Jack was right.
"You called it the Big Bad Wolf," Bunny said, while Tooth cradled her scabbing-over arm. "That's what any human would call it, but it's a bit of a misnomer. Wolves that get by being big and bad have got packs to lead, moose to take down. But to a human, any wolf is Big and Bad, and that back there is the wolf that is bad to humans. It doesn't have a pack. It can't take down a moose, because that's not what lone wolves do. They take down small creatures. Slow creatures. Children. Humans."
"And now it's got my scent," said Tooth, looking at her arm.
"But we're not human, or small, or slow," Jack protested. "Why's it after us?"
"We were all human once," Tooth reminded Jack. "Or small," she added, glancing at Bunny. "Or both. We all had that fear once, even if it was just a quiet warning."
"And it has a lot of people still afraid of it," Bunny added. "Children never stop believing in the Big Bad Wolf, because no matter what happens to that one, Big Bad Wolves will actually exist - and so will desperate, starving ones."
"So it's got Tooth's scent now. All the better to follow us to the ends of the earth with," Jack said, his eyes widening just slightly in alarm.
Well, it was probably more accurate to say that it would follow just Tooth to the ends of the Earth, but that prospect was horrifying in and of itself. He tried not to think about it, tried to let the cold dull the panic, but the thought of a world without Tooth stirred the depths of the frozen pool that had collected at the center of him.
This thing wanted to rip Tooth out of the world. And she was the only thing left in the world that was still beautiful to him.
"Bunny," Tooth asked, before he could go looking for whatever he needed to clean her arm, "What happened back there with the tunnels?"
"It has to be another of Old Man Winter's effects," Bunny said. "It was like a vein of permafrost was running right underneath the forest. Once the wolf blew us beyond it I could get a tunnel open, but -"
"But we can't even rely on the tunnels anymore for a quick exit," Jack finished for him. "More good news."
"We'll just have to travel often and carefully," Bunny insisted. "Speaking of often, we need to get on the move as soon as we clean Tooth's bite up. Stay in the cave and I'll be back in a tic -"
But his ears twitched, precisely as they all heard the same sound of something landing heavily on the snow. A lumpy snow figure lurched up out of the snowbank next to them, huge and alarmingly shapeless. The Guardians launched their attacks all at once.
A sharp, shiny black leg shot out from the mass of snow, knocking Bunny's boomerang aside. Another countered Sandy's sandwhips, and four more burst through the thick coat of ice Jack blasted the snow with.
"Please stop, I'm running out of legs," Anansi quipped, looking as if he hoped no one else would throw, whip, or fire anything at him.
"Anansi!" the relief in Bunny's voice was palpable. "How'd you find us?"
"You happen to be in the middle of a story, my friend." Anansi brushed the remaining snow from himself, shaking it from his spider-like dreads and the multicolored, many striped scarf he had wound in a pile around his neck. Between the eight spider legs and the puffy blue parka he wore over his dashiki, it was easy to see how a thick covering of snow would make him indistinguishable from another of Old Man Winter's snow monsters. "And that story happens to involve me." He bared his even white teeth in a gleaming grin that made the snow around them look dull in the moonlight. "Of course I could find you."
Tooth, next to Jack, lowered her face and lifted her hand to her mouth. Jack turned and saw she was covering a very small smile - and a blush to boot. Jack looked back at Anansi, still baring his Adonis-quality teeth, and felt several foot-long icicles form on him as he inhaled an indignant breath.
He felt a rare moment of gratitude to Bunny as the Guardian of Hope blocked Tooth's view, greeting his friend. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes. We were about to go looking for you, mate. One day you'll have to tell me how you do this, even if it is a lie."
"Would you believe that now, of all times, is the time for at least one truth to come to light?" Anansi's smug smile now showed no teeth, but that didn't make Jack want to see something heavy fall on him any less. "A truth quite a long time in coming, in fact."
"Well are you going to drag the drama out until the Wolf finds us, or are you gonna get to the point first?" Bunny asked.
Anansi pouted a little. "Let me have at least a little drama. If you ask me, this is about the least thematically appropriate time to unveil this. Manny has many virtues, but even he cannot always plan a perfect story, and this is not my story, after all." Anansi spread his arms, all ten of them. "Presenting, friends, your hidden predecessor - the Guardian of Stories."
The Guardians stared at him in blank surprise - all but Bunny.
"And how long have you been sitting on that one?" he asked, his tone skeptical, but far from disbelieving.
"Since the beginning," said Anansi, directing his gleaming - charming - grin at their oldest, the Sandman. "Yes, the very beginning, little man of my dreams."
Sandy's mild expression turned slightly surprised - then he lifted his eyebrow at Anansi. A set of sand hospital scrubs appeared over his head, and he shook his finger primly as if to say that a scrub was a guy who could get no love from Sandy. Anansi sagged as if deeply disappointed.
Jack felt even more icicles grow on him. Just what he needed - another Guardian who wasn't hesitant to criticize him at the drop of a hat. Jack's relationship with Anansi had been decent after the Africa mission, when they only met up for the occasional tall tale, but their first meeting had been so contentious that any fondness he'd felt towards Anansi was crushed easily by the shards.
"So obviously you're here to singlehandedly save the day by telling us the story of how to get the shards out of North's shoulder and my eyes. How about you get on with that so you can be on your way?" Jack rolled his eyes. And take your perfect teeth with you, he added silently.
"Shards?" Anansi repeated, looking over the rims of his sunglasses at Jack. "Is that what's got you looking like a winter waterfall? Because I was wondering -"
"Why is it that Manny did not tell us of your being a Guardian?" North asked, much more skeptical than Bunny.
"Yes, thank you," Jack interjected, crossing his arms. "If you're really a Guardian, why didn't Manny tell everyone?"
"That," said Anansi, pointing at them with an approving swagger, "is a very good question. And a very long story when we have very little time to sit around talking. Especially not when the lovely queen of the Tooth Fairy armies still has a wound to be treated." He flashed his gleaming smile at Tooth again. To Jack's horror, she giggled. Jack was not at all fond of the way Tooth and Anansi seemed so familiar.
"Anansi, if it's true that you're a Guardian, you really should have told us sooner. This isn't something you can just charm your way out of." But she sounded plenty charmed, and not nearly as confused or indignant as Jack thought they all should have.
"I had a clue," Bunny inserted, dryly. "He's been dropping hints for centuries." Anansi actually looked indignant, but Bunny went on. "He's got a point though. We don't have a lot of time to throw around. What about these shards anyway, mate? Pieces of the Snow Queen's mirror - how do we go about getting rid of them?"
Anansi shrugged. "I'unno."
As one, all the Guardians went, "What?"
"Oh this better be a joke you arrogant nong, do get to the punchline."
"This isn't funny, Anansi," said Jack. "We were really counting on you to give us a straight answer."
"And counting on a trickster is always a solid plan," said Anansi, with a trace of amusement.
"You know, I think I can guess why Manny never told anyone you were a Guardian," Jack snapped, his staff creaking beneath his grip. "He must've realized right after appointing you how bad you'd be at it."
Anansi's eyes narrowed slightly. It seemed his exoskeleton wasn't without its chinks. "At least he chose me for my skill and not because of my inability to swim."
The spider myth seemed to regret his words as soon as he'd spoken them, but it was already too late. Jack's mouth dropped open in shock. He still hadn't told them he'd died. He'd insinuated he saved his sister and woken up in the pond but for all they know it had been some strange, magical transformation.
The other Guardians glared at Anansi with open-mouthed disapproval.
"Anansi." Tooth's voice was as cold and sharp as the sword in her hand. "Stop it."
Anansi lifted his hands (and his eight handless legs) in a gesture of surrender. "Yes. My bad. But to answer your question - I do not know how to fix the shards in your shoulder," he nodded to North, who was glaring stonily after Anansi's jab at Jack, "or your eyes." He turned to Jack. "Not all stories are preserved forever. Sometimes time changes them, or loses them entirely and my webs are fickle in what they catch. What I do know is this - there is one story of a child pierced by the Snow Queen's mirror shards that ends happily, but only one. A child named Gerda once saved her friend Kai, but for now, I cannot tell you how she did it. But I might know someone who can." He nodded to Tooth. "And if we go now, she can do better for that scratch than any remedy that grows on this Earth. I have spoken to the Man in the Moon, and he has spoken to her. We are assured she will come to greet us."
Bunny had already lifted his foot to stamp open a tunnel. "I need a destination here, mate."
"South," answered Anansi, just as a howl filtered faintly towards them on the wind. "and East. We go to see the Mother Whose Children are Like Fish."
The beach at Matheson Hammock Park inscribed a gentle crescent against the lake-smooth ocean. The Guardians stood at the edge of the water, where the child-sized waves lapped at the shore with a noise like a lullabye. The crisp, just-above-freezing temperature had cleared the sky of south Florida's humid haze, and the sky was unusually full of stars. A waxing gibbous moon hung over the blue water, its reflection on the sea a long silver path that seemed to reach from the horizon all the way to the shore, where many children's footprints still imprinted the soft white sand.
Jack couldn't see any of the beauty in this, but it was there for the others to breathe out in relief over, a moment of quiet that was almost approaching warmth.
"She has a cult nearby," said Anansi, nodding his head inland, where the lights of Miami blotted out the stars. "The children of the city still know her, though many have never been taught her name. She takes them into her arms in moments of trouble, and they love her for it."
"Maybe it's the shards in my eyes, but I sure don't see any mothers." Jack shifted uncomfortably on the sand, which scraped his bare feet like sharp rocks. The stars pricked through the blanket of night like someone's very drunk attempt at needlepoint. "Or children who are like fish. We're not going swimming, are we?"
"Relax, Frost Spirit," Anansi said, peering over the water. "Enjoy the weather. Your icicles are almost melting. She'll be here. Manny said -"
"Manny sure seems to speak to you a lot," Jack groused, as the others stood silently by at the edge of the waves. "A whole lot more than he speaks to any of us."
"Maybe I'm his favorite." Anansi grinned.
Jack glowered, but before he could say anything else, the light of the moon overheard grew suddenly brighter, shining down on them like a spotlight. North stepped forward into the light.
"Manny! Your timing is impeccable. We are in dire need of your guidance. Anansi says that he is a Guardian. Is this true?"
The light focused into an even tighter circle in the sand and a group of shadows appeared in the circle, silhouettes that clearly represented the five Guardians. Another shadow appeared proudly among their number, one that was exceedingly spidery.
"So is true. How about that?" said North, raising his eyebrows.
"Maybe," put in Jack. "Maybe he just means we should team up with him for now."
The shadow of Anansi was shoved closer to the Guardians, as if to emphasize, "No, he's one of you." Jack sulked, crossing his arms and looking away.
Then the spotlight moved away and out to sea, beaming down to the point on the horizon where the moon's reflection became a long trail glittering on the water.
A figure walked towards them on the path made by the moonlight. At least, it seemed like she walked - as she drew closer, they realized she was flowing across the surface of the water. Her blue and white dress disappeared into the ocean, and seemed not to be a dress at all, but as if the water and foam had flowed up to clothe her. Her black skin gleamed, reflecting the moonlight as brightly as if she were made of polished marble. Her hair poured from her scalp like a fountain, trailing in the water, silver as the moon.
She gleamed. Even to they who had seen so much that was beautiful, so much that was majestic that mortals would never see, she was impossibly radiant.
"Yemaja Ashaba," said Anansi, his voice warm with appreciation. "So beautiful that no human can look directly upon her. How lucky we are just now not to be human "
To Jack's sharded eyes, she was merely pretty - but even that was a balm to his vision compared to how nasty everything else looked. His pained eyes drank the sight of her in.
Even so, bitterness burned in Jack's heart and the dark mood that had overtaken him twisted everything beautiful into something ugly. It damped his hope and turned it into cynicism.
"The Mother Whose Children are Like Fish, huh? Is that 'cause they're smelly like fish, or because their faces look like this?" Jack pursed his lips and sucked in his cheeks, making a fishy sort of face.
It turned respect and kindness into childish sarcasm, too, apparently.
She looked at him with indulgence in her dark eyes. When his vision met hers, for a sudden instant he was no longer in South Florida and he was no longer cold; he was in Burgess, and he was warm, and he was a small child curled in a woman's gentle arms. He saw her face, human, mortal, and somehow still illuminated with a spark of Yemaja's impossible radiance.
He saw his mother again, after three hundred years of missing her - without remembering her - and felt her love.
He bit back an awestruck sob, and realized that much of the ice on him was falling away, dripping to the sand as water. The moment he noticed, though, it froze again, but even so he was noticeably lighter than when he had first looked into Yemaja's eyes.
"A mother knows what lies behind a 'stupid expression'," she said, and even her voice reminded him of Burgess lullabies. "Little son."
She gave him one more comforting smile, the Mother whose children were, like fish, too numerous to count. The ice on Jack thawed a little more as he felt, deep down, that he was in some way one of them.
"And to you, brother Spider," she said, turning her gaze on Anansi. He grinned eagerly, like a child awaiting ice cream. "The Man in the Moon says to tell you you are not his favorite."
Some more ice trickled off Jack as he laughed; Anansi sagged - again - with disappointment.