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For several hours after the young boy had left him standing in the street, Jack pondered his meaning. What had he meant to say when he said he was wrong about him, the ice wielder wondered. If the boy thought he did not love playing with ice, then he certainly was wrong – but the way he had made the statement made it seem like more than that. Regardless, the white-haired spirit knew one thing with absolute certainty. He could not afford to care too much about the child.
It was inevitable, and Jack was slowly coming to accept that fact. Even thinking about the eventual death of the young boy's belief in him caused him to feel a great melancholy. As he wandered about the streets of the small town, he let his staff trail behind him, ice flowing from its tip where it connected with the pavement. The cool air spread the frigid temperature to the yards adjoining the street. Not concerned with the lack of warmth himself, he spared little thought for the vegetation frosting over in his wake.
A sound he had long thought forgotten echoed through the streets. He rose into the air, following the noise back to its source to find Conall's older brother carrying freshly chopped wood back into their small home while his mother wiped sweat from her forehead in a brief moment of respite. Her brow cleared, the woman resumed swinging the large axe at the long log lying over the leveled stump resting in her yard. Hovering closer, he noticed the woman shivering but took no note of the frost spreading over the surface of the stump until her axe neared it.
The blade connected with the frost, slipping from the wood towards the woman's leg. Without a single thought to consequence, Jack froze the axe in the air, keeping it from completing the path on which its momentum would have taken it. Her shriek roused the rest of her household. Jack glanced to the windows facing the back of the house to find Conall staring out at him, his face an amalgam of anger and disappointment. The ice wielder hung his head thinking he had somehow managed to kill the belief of this small child and called the wind to carry him away once more.
Bunnymund had continued complaining for several hours following Toothiana's landing at the palace. His irate grumblings had tapered off into muttered utterances of "Rabbits are meant to be on the ground!" and "If I'd been meant to fly, I'd've been given wings instead of fur!" Sandy had been rolling his eyes at the fussing, and Tooth had simply ignored him. As the hours wound on, however, North's temper frayed.
"Dostatochno!" The rabbit stopped in the middle of his latest tirade. "I know you are upset, tovarisch, but there is no more need to scream about it."
Completely deflated, the lagomorph dropped into a crouch sullenly, allowing his weight to rest on his hind legs. The fluttering of Tooth's wings, a steady sound since she had literally dropped the large hare onto the palace floor when they arrived, stopped suddenly. She peeked out from behind the large apparatus she had been constructing.
"Did something happen to Bunny? It got quiet." The guardian in question gave a wry smile as North indulged a hearty laugh at his expense. Tooth shrugged, going back to her work. "And – done!"
Sandy formed a glittering golden question mark in the air in front of the contraption.
Calling to her fairies, her hummingbird wings cut through the dream sand seemingly without notice. A fleet of her miniature versions came soaring into the room carrying tubes of teeth. She went through them swiftly, picking out the ones the group would need to view. Each tooth that she touched lit up, and each tube containing one was slipped into a slot. As the tube slid into place, an image became visible in front of them. Sandy's jaw dropped as he watched the dream sand the memory guardian had asked for begin to display the experiences of the children.
Bunny's ears perked up. "Say now, sheila, that's some trick!"
North's eyes were large and round, trying to take in the full wonder of what he was seeing. "How delightful! Sandy, did you know your dream sand could...?" The dream guardian was shaking his head slowly, the images on the screen changing as Toothiana continued to choose teeth with memories they needed to view.
Their amazement continued to grow as the images shifted around, taking the shape of a map of England. Though the images continued to diminish in size, the memories still played clearly. Several areas of the map became thick with overlap, scenes of Easter egg hunts playing alongside May Day celebrations. Ceremonies for V-E Day were exhibited beside festivals for Saint George. Within an hour of beginning, Tooth had finished. The map displayed in front of the guardians took their breath away, save the fairy who was bustling about as she had not taken the time to view the results of her efforts.
"All the teeth in then? Good." She spun around, finally taking a moment to see the great feat she had accomplished. Her gasp echoed through the tower, fairies coming from the darkest crevices to make certain that their mistress was uninjured. "How... Sandy, did you know?" Once again, the dream weaver shook his head, taking advantage of the opportunity to point to an area of the map that had gotten his attention. "Yes, that is suspicious. What could have caused that?"
Bunny and North both leaned in towards the spot displaying the least memories. Shortly after Easter, the children in central England had stopped leaving their teeth to be collected. The fairy's brow furrowed in puzzlement as she studied the sparsely covered section.
Using his dream sand to form a tooth, Sandy caused the tooth to dissolve, forming a question mark directly afterward.
"You're right, my friend. The teeth can't have simply vanished."
"What could keep the children from leaving their teeth under their pillows so abruptly? Disbelief usually spreads through an area over time, not all at once like this." Toothiana tapped her chin thoughtfully, her wings creating a strong breeze as she flapped them furiously.
"It gives us a place to start." Bunnymund's Australian drawl summed up their situation neatly. North turned to him with a mischievous grin as he rolled one of his magical orbs between his palms. "Oh, no, mate. Not again!" A lasso of dream sand caught his foot just as he had prepared to thump the floor, keeping him from calling a ground tunnel as his transport. He whimpered lightly as the tell-tale whoosh of air announced the opening of North's tunnel. Shaking his foot, he frowned at the most physically diminutive of the guardians. "I don't need a leash, mate." With a chagrined shrug, Sandy let the lasso dissolve, freeing the rabbit. The hare stood tall as he strode into the tunnel, shuddering at the change in temperature before he emerged on the opposite end.
"This is the outermost edge of the voided area," Tooth announced.
"We work our way in, then?"
Sandy gave a thumbs up, forming a car from his dream sand and motioning for the others to join him. The lagomorph graced him with a skeptical look, tenderly testing the stability of the vehicle with his feet before settling himself into the back seat. Swinging himself into the passenger seat beside the dream guardian, North gave his old friend a conspiratorial wink. Sandy was quick to smile in acknowledgment, pushing his foot downward and leaning back into the seat.
Bunnymund laughed. "Right-o. Like this is a real – ah!" His sentence went unfinished as the dream car vaulted forward, driving the group inland quickly. Toothiana chuckled, flying along in their wake.
The winter guardian had ridden along with the breeze over a great distance, feeling the melancholy of his mood settle into his bones. While he had been floating along, he had not noticed the gradual changes in the surrounding landscape. As the wind set him down, though, he could no longer blithely ignore the devastation around him.
Despite the advanced stage of the year, the land appeared completely barren. No crops were growing, the trees sprouted no leaves, and no flowers bloomed. Listening carefully, Jack realized he could not hear any birds chirping. The twilight which had come too quickly the night before seemed to hang as a shroud over the place the wind had deposited him. He looked about, entirely uncertain of what could be responsible for such decay.
Gripping his staff tightly, Jack began walking slowly though the village. The wind blew quickly, its icy quality causing even the guardian to shiver as it passed by. Looking down to his feet, he noticed the dusting of snow that the gust caused to swirl about his ankles. For the first time since arriving in England, he took full stock of the area around him. The street beneath his feet was a shiny black, often associated with freshly poured asphalt. Kneeling down to touch the surface, he discovered the pavement was in fact a solid sheet of ice.
For three centuries he had been finely attuned to the winter weather. It was a certainty that Jack had always been able to count on, regardless of what other matters he might find himself considering. He was always able to flit to any part of the world and revel in snow and ice, creating mischief and showing all of the children a good time – even when they could not see him. His antics might have been a source of aggravation among the other guardians at times, but there were very few places on the planet which caused any type of issue with his internal thermometer.
Looking up to the sky to try to track the path of the sun, he was surprised to find it next to the horizon ready to set for the day. Certain that the sun had only risen a few hours earlier, Jack did not attempt to conceal his confusion.
"Not as though anyone's going to notice, anyway," he muttered softly.
"Notice what, dearie?"
Jack spun quickly, certainly surprised to have received a response to his musing. A haggard looking woman with stringy white hair was standing directly in front of him. Her black robes blended into the darkness, lending a very ethereal quality to her blue-tinged skin. The tarnished teeth smiling at him through the blackness of the night nearly made the ice wielder cringe. He managed to suppress the impulse as he brandished his staff towards the strange woman.
"Who're you?" His staff glowed blue with the flow of his power. "How can you see me? No adults can see me."
Her laughter sounded eerily hollow. It could not be classified as a cackle, but it clearly lacked the warmth he expected from such a sound. Her mirthless chuckle sent shivers of despair reverberating along his spine.
"You assume a great deal, boy."
"Boy?"
"At my age, yes, you are nothing more than a boy." Jack's eyes narrowed at the declaration. "Oh, don't take offense. When you make it to the millennium mark, you'll have a reason to glare at me askance like that." The young guardian was not appeased and made no attempt to hide the fact. She allowed her smile to broaden at his obvious disdain for her treatment of him, revealing her elongated canines.
Leaping backwards, the white-haired guardian unleashed a blast of ice in her direction. She did cackle at that action.
"Oh, such a delightfully impertinent boy!" Taken aback by her reaction, Jack ceased his attack, unsure how to gauge her response. "Tell me, child." She stepped forward as she spoke, leaving the shadows and allowing the moon to illuminate her face. "How do you greet your friends? I only ask because that is certainly an inhospitable way to treat a stranger." Her long fingernails glinted in the celestial light, reaching for the cloth keeping her face partially concealed.
Jack's eyes widened as her hood fell back. His horror was etched clearly on his face as he took in her visage, one eye no more than a hollow hole. His composure completely abandoned him, the wind lifting him from the ground and away from her at a mere gesture.
"Oh, come now. A disfigured old hag frightens you so? You're not a wee human. Surely you aren't so superstitious as to shy away from a woman merely because she happens to be crippled?"
Though he was still suspicious of her, Jack lowered himself to the ground. He maintained his distance, allowing her to determine the extent of his distrust.
"Well, it's a step in the right direction." She raised her hood once more. "Does that make you more comfortable?"
The guardian shrugged, not entirely certain how much he wished to reveal to her as he had no idea as to her identity. "How is it that you can see me?"
"I'm a spirit, much like you."
Jack considered carefully how he should proceed. He was curious as to her abilities, and given that she was able to withstand an arctic blast from his staff, one thing the young guardian was certain of was that he had no desire to test her strength. He had learned his lesson with revealing the full extent of his powers after Sandy's apparent demise in his second encounter with Pitch.
"What exactly do you mean?"
She shrugged, relaxing her stance. "The children lose their faith in me, just as easily as they do you."
"But they can see you now?"
Nodding, she let a smile stretch over her face again. "Oh, yes. The winter time is when I have the greatest power, especially at night."
Jack let his confusion show clearly. "But it's June. It's not winter season for England."
"Yet here it is, with snow and ice lining the ground, and the sun setting at – as you say – an unseasonably early hour."
The ice wielder feared his brow might become permanently furrowed at the rate of this woman's cryptic statements. "Are you saying you brought on this long winter?"
"That would be a lovely thing, wouldn't it?" Stepping onto the sheet of ice that was serving the town as a street, she let the moon illuminate her smile once again. "After all, it would certainly keep me in their thoughts, at the forefront of their minds."
"Wouldn't it be exhausting after a time?" Jack hardly realized he had spoken aloud until she chuckled and returned her gaze to him.
"Ah, but it is worth it, boy. Any amount of effort is worth it." She turned from him, stretching her arms from her body as she whirled in the snowy dust kicked up by the gentle wind flitting about her. "This, my dear boy, this glorious cold, this glorious night. This cancels out the hurt."