Okay, I managed to get another chapter up. Tricky, tricky thing. Still dealing with a bit of a writer's block, which is why I came back to fanfiction instead of working on the stories I'm planning to publish. Fanfiction's expectations are a lot more lax, so I can just WRITE, haha.
Anyway, I hope this chapter is good. I'm always a little self-conscious about my chapters, no matter how much I practice. :P And this story is haaaaaaaaaard. Especially since my traffic stats says I have Norwegian readers now. Oi... sorry! I know next to nothing about Norway. Don't hurt me! *dodges whatever the crazy readers want to give* It's okay to laugh at the ignorant American girl. I totally understand your need to do that, haha.
Hope you enjoy this chapter anyway. It was hard to write, for some reason, but I got it done today at least. ;)
Disclaimer: I do not own -coughcoughackhack- Rise of the Guardians. That still sounds so strange to me after 50-some stories of my saying that I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. Man, is that just weird, haha.
Well, that was stupid of him, not thinking to just ask his teacher about Jackson Overland. Jamie hated to admit that Cupcake had been smart about that suggestion. She wasn't always the brightest, but he dared not say that to her face.
First thing in the morning, Jamie raced through his morning routines and bolted out the door. He wanted to be the first person to show up in class so that he'd have his teacher's attention. She might be a little suspicious that there was something wrong, since Jamie normally slacked off, but he was willing to deal with that for one day, especially if he could actually get some of the information he wanted. Proving Jack was real so other people would believe in him sounded like the most awesome thing in the world.
"Jamie!" said the teacher upon seeing his entry into the classroom. "You're awfully early. Is your mother running errands today?"
"No," said Jamie. He walked to school every day anyway, so whether his mom were to run errands or not was a moot point, but he supposed letting the teacher think his mom drove him there might get her to be a little less suspicious of him. "I actually had something I wanted to ask you."
"Oh, really?" His teacher set aside the papers she'd been grading and laced her fingers together so she could listen better to Jamie. He approached her desk and rested his lunchbox on it.
"I just found out that Overland Lake is named after a guy named Jackson Overland," said Jamie in one breath. He must have sounded really stupid, but the teacher merely nodded.
"Yes," she said.
He let his breath out and began to speak more slowly. "Do you have any information on him? I-I can't find anything."
The teacher pursed her lips for a moment as she silently thought. Jamie's knees started to shake, and he reached down a hand to try to hold them in place, but that didn't work too well. "Is this a research project?" she said.
"I guess," said Jamie, though he was a little nervous about saying even that. Would he get in trouble if he was researching something without it being a school assignment?
"Did someone assign it to you?"
"No." Jamie combed through his hair, messing up the job his mother had just tried to do before he left. He couldn't help his hair always being a mess, he was too nervous. "I just-I just want to know-stuff."
The teacher chuckled and a tiny smile played on her face. Hopefully that was a good sign and not an indication that she was about to eat him. That wouldn't be a very good thing. Teachers could be kind of evil at times.
"How about this, Jamie? If I help you get information about this Jackson Overland person, you bring me a four page report on him, and I'll give you extra credit."
"Okay," said Jamie, and finally the teacher was satisfied, so she got up and left the room, gesturing for him to follow. He wasn't so sure he liked the idea of being required to do the project on Jack, but he was doing it anyway. His grades had been slipping for a while, so maybe it was a good thing. And it was the only way he knew of to get information on human Jack without it costing him his dessert.
She led him into the library, and down the aisle into the dark side of the library where no student goes without being dragged there kicking and screaming. The books were all old and boring and colorless, and the teachers all liked them for some reason. Growing up sucked.
The teacher pulled one of the old, colorless books down from a shelf and flipped through it. Jamie grimaced. She wasn't going to make him read that whole giant of a book, was she? It was like an inch wide, at least. Caleb once knocked his brother out with one of those things. They weren't pretty.
"This is the history of Burgess," said the teacher, "And the part about Jackson Overland starts on this page." She pointed to a spot where Jack's story started, then bookmarked the page, snapped the book shut, and handed the book to Jamie. If it was just one little piece of a book that only talked about Jack, then perhaps he could handle reading it. Perhaps.
She then showed him how to search through newspaper archives for a story that he wanted, which the school had apparently acquired quite a collection of newspapers, and there were indeed a couple small articles that mentioned Jackson Overland or the origins of the name of Overland Lake.
Lastly, she introduced him to something he found quite fascinating. "The county library can give you access to immigration records. I believe Jackson Overland immigrated from Norway?"
Jamie nodded, but didn't say a word. For some reason, when he'd learned that Jack was Norwegian, it hadn't crossed his mind that Jack might be really Norwegian, not just a descendant of people who had come from Norway. Jack was the people who had come from Norway, and he wasn't sure what to think of that. Jack didn't have an accent as far as he knew. Did Norwegians not have accents?
"Then go to the county library after school and ask the librarian how to look up immigration records. She'll be sure to help you find what you're looking for."
"Thank you," said Jamie, and he and his teacher hurried back to class. His head was spinning, trying to process all this stuff, and eager to dig into the information he now had. He shoved all the research materials away in his desk and tried to listen as the teacher started the class, but he found he couldn't concentrate. Something bothered him, and it just wouldn't leave him alone.
Why didn't Jack have an accent?
Tannie, mamma, and pappa were in that house crying their eyes out, and Jack was powerless to stop them. He pulled his knees up to his chest and hid his face. They didn't believe in him anymore. What could he do? How could he show them that he was alright and they should really just stop crying already?
"It was my fault! It was all my fault that Jack perished!"
"No, Tanja, do not berate yourself for this. You are but a child."
Jack snorted and refused to look up into the window to see the speakers. He'd forgotten how corny the old language sounded. Perhaps it hadn't been as corny to him back when he had talked like this, but watching the language evolve made anything old sound corny.
But mamma was right. Tannie was just a child. She shouldn't beat herself up over this. It wasn't her fault that she hadn't known what to do. Jack should have known how to handle things better and gotten them both out of that situation, but he hadn't. At least he hadn't botched things up so badly that the both of them wound up dead.
He stood back up, looked longingly at the house, and then turned and walked away. He couldn't stand to just sit there and listen to them suffer when there was nothing he could do to stop it. Well, there probably was something he could do, or why would Time have sent him here? But he didn't know what he was capable of yet, and he had to go off somewhere to think. Or sulk. One or the other.
Sitting around in the snow and thinking wasn't as appealing to him as it normally was. Jamie wasn't going to just run up to him and start talking him out of his stupor anytime soon, and somehow that knowledge just made the action of sitting and thinking so much less exciting. Jamie wasn't even alive yet. Now he had Tannie around, but not Jamie. Why did he have to switch one loved one out for another?
A squirrel darted out of nowhere, leapt through him without knowing what it had done, and scurried up a tree. Jack shook his fist at the squirrel for its obnoxious antics. He was the one who was supposed to be the one going around causing trouble, not random squirrels who ran through invisible people without apology.
He lowered his fist and sighed. Tannie would have laughed so hard if she'd been able to see all of that. She loved animals so much, and she loved how easily riled Jack would get about the stupidest things. Her laugh was similar to Jamie's in many ways, just a cute little laugh that he had lived to hear.
He grabbed a small mass of snow, then shaped it into a squirrel. If Tannie were here to see what he would do next, he could only imagine her squeals of glee at realizing what he was capable of now. He blew on the little snow squirrel, and it sprung to life. It sniffed around in Jack's hands for a couple moments, and then seemed to realize it was in the hands of a squirrel hater, and so it tore out of his hands and up the same tree the real squirrel had run up just a few moments before. A bit of cackling from up in the tree hinted to Jack that the real squirrel wasn't too fond of Jack sending ice monsters after it, and Jack winced as snowflakes fell out of the tree. Evil squirrel.
His snow critters may never have lasted long, but they did give him an idea. If it worked for Jamie, who said it wouldn't work for Tannie? But he had to come up with some clever way to dress it up so she'd know it was him. Though when he thought of "dressing it up", he just pictured animals in tuxedos, which he knew wouldn't work very well. She loved wild animals, but not when they hosted black tie events. They just had to be good old, ordinary animals.
He knew what to do, but it meant he had to wait until she went to bed. Children were usually more likely to perceive him when they were alone and sleeping in their beds. Adults were just too "realistic" about things and had the tendency to kill whatever connection they were going to form. Sitting around until she was in bed was going to be very hard, but he would do it somehow, even if it meant counting all the snowflakes at his feet to distract himself.
After he'd counted about ten thousand snowflakes, he decided he should go check on Tannie, and sure enough, she was in bed, and the parents were not in the room with her. This was perfect. He tugged on the window, but alas, it was stuck. Since when did Tannie actually lock her window? Had she gotten paranoid after he died? He couldn't get in unless there was an open window or door for him to go through.
This wasn't about to stop the great Jack Frost. Oh no. If he couldn't open the window, he'd make her open it for him. Jack reached down and grabbed a handful of snow and threw a snowball at the window. Tannie jolted upright in bed, and Jack smirked. He'd definitely gotten her attention. Now to convince her to open the window.
He arranged several snowballs in a row, and pelted them at the window in quick succession. He wouldn't stop until she opened the window, and he was pretty sure that Tannie was figuring that out about then. This was very Jack-ish behavior, and no doubt that would be the first thing she'd think of, even if she thought there was no way her pesky brother could ever throw snowballs at her ever again.
Tannie threw back her blankets, and angry little footsteps came up to the window. She threw the window open and called out, "Jack, stop it!" Jack laughed and threw one last snowball, which hit her in the face and made her tumble backward onto the floor. He hopped up through her window and landed softly beside her.
Her hands covered her face, and her shoulders rose and fell. She was crying. Jack wasn't sure why if she had known he was out there. She shouldn't be grieving over a brother who wasn't dead, so what was she doing? He placed his hand on her shoulder. "Did I hit you too hard, Tannie?"
She shivered, but that was the only response he got from her. He removed his hand from her shoulder, and she stopped shivering, except for when a wind gust came in through the window. She wasn't moving to close that, and she didn't have a surplus of heat to just release to the world like the people two hundred years into the future. That wasn't very smart of her to just waste what heat she had. Jack went and closed Tannie's window for her, and Tannie looked up at the window, startled about something.
Jack stood looking at her for a solid minute, then waved his hand in front of her face. "Tannie? Hello? Is anybody home?" No reaction. Jack leaned back against the wall and sighed. So Tannie really didn't believe in him at all. He had hoped she would believe at least a little bit since she had known him personally in his previous lifetime, but it seemed that was just too big of a stretch for her little mind to comprehend without a little help.
"Alright, Tannie, sit back and watch the show." Jack thrust his staff against the floor, causing the whole floor to frost over within seconds. Tannie shrieked and jumped up onto the bed, but continued to watch what was happening. Jack couldn't make out whether she was scared or fascinated, but he could work with whatever he had.
One by one, animals of various sorts popped out of the frost over the floor. A squirrel hopped up onto Tannie's bed and rubbed against her hand, which made her jerk her hand away. The squirrel had to have felt pretty cold to her. A rabbit hopped around the room, looking for snow carrots. A doe came up and licked Tannie's hair, which made her giggle and fall back onto her bed. Jack smiled. He'd thought he'd never be able to hear that laugh again. Coming back in time like this was worth it just for that.
"For you, my little dabba dabba dove." Jack stretched his palms out toward Tannie, and a snow dove formed in them, then took flight and sailed toward Tannie. She excitedly reached out to grab it, only to draw her hand back once she was reminded of how cold it was. It seemed she kept forgetting, since she wasn't accustomed to being visited by a winter sprite who could just make these things look real.
The dove landed on Tannie's shoulder. "Now for the real magic," said Jack, and he touched the dove with his staff and began humming the tune to the lullaby he had always sung to her. The dove took the tune and projected it through itself as though it was singing to the girl itself, even though its life force was only on loan from Jack. Tannie's face froze into an expression that was difficult to read. Was it fear she was feeling, or something else?
She lasted through the verse twice before she lost control and tore out of her bedroom, leaving a baffled Jack to follow her. What was the matter with his sister? That song hadn't suddenly gotten scary to her, had it?
"Mamma! Pappa!" She ran and knocked on her parents' door furiously. "I think I've seen an apparition. What do I do?"
Jack sighed and leaned against a wall and stared sadly at the girl. He'd quite forgotten the way people acted back in this day and age, freaking out over the slightest things. Had he been that bad? He really hoped he hadn't been, but he probably had. Most people from this time period were easily spooked.
Pappa came out of the room with a candle in his hand, and he led mamma by the hand. "Where did you see this apparition, Tanja?"
"In my room." She led them back to the bedroom and pointed at the floor. "See? The floor is frozen over."
Mamma covered her mouth with her hand to cover the shock. "Marcus..."
"Camilla, take Tanja and get out." He thrust his hand to the door. "Now."
She looked like she was about to protest, but then thought better of it and nodded. "Of course, Marcus. Come, Tanja. Put on your winter clothes."
"But mamma..."
"Do as your father says!"
That allowed no room for objection, but all this fuss annoyed Jack. He had only wanted to get through to his sister. He hadn't suspected that she might run off and drag their parents into the whole thing before he could even get through to her. They were bound to be strong disbelievers in this sort of thing, especially pappa. He had a reputation to uphold.
It only took a few minutes for the women to dress for the cold weather, and then they were out the door. Jack took one last look at his pappa frantically searching through the room and trying to figure out what was going on, then he rolled his eyes and followed after the two women. They would be much easier to get through to than the hard-headed man of the family.
Jack eavesdropped on the two for a couple minutes and realized that mamma had the intention of going straight to the priest and begging for help. He sighed angrily. This was unnecessary. He was only trying to communicate with his family in any way he could, which unfortunately had to involve cold and ice. He had no other way to interact with the physical realm in a way humans could understand, but he had to find a way to stop them from seeking the priest, or he'd really have no chance of getting through to them.
He swirled his staff in the air a few times, and within minutes he had conjured up a strong enough storm to stop most people in their tracks. Mamma continued to try and push through it for a few minutes, but she soon realized that there was no way to get through this. Jack had seen to it that no one would be able to find their way to anywhere through this haze. If they couldn't get anywhere, they couldn't get to the priest's house.
Mamma dropped to her knees and clutched Tannie and began to cry helplessly. This was not the right reaction. Jack wanted to kick himself. How was he to get through to these two without terrifying them? First things first, he had to get them out of the storm so no harm would come to them. He reached out and grabbed an arm on each of them, then launched himself into the sky, carrying both of them with him.
The two were surprisingly quiet while in the air, too amazed at what was happening to make useless noises. Jack was grateful for that reaction, but it wouldn't do him much good in terms of communication. He set them down gently on a hill outside of town, then landed behind them. The storm was still raging in the town, but out here, the wind was nothing more than a slight breeze. He hadn't felt like creating a huge storm just to stop them from going somewhere.
Fear showed on mamma's face, but she held her own strongly, probably for Tannie's sake, so as not to let her suffer more than she'd already suffered since Jack died. This was all a bit much, and Jack was only making it worse, which made him feel terrible.
"Thank the Lord, we are safe." Mamma dropped to her knees, trembling, and Tannie placed a hand on her shoulder to attempt to reassure her. It hardly seemed to work, but Jack couldn't fault little Tannie for trying to help her mamma to feel better.
"How did that happen, mamma?" She knelt down next to mamma so she could see her better. "How did we fly out here? Did we get saved by an angel?"
"That is probably what happened, dear one." Mamma took Tannie's hands in her own. "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them."
So now Jack was an angel. This was getting interesting. First he was a ghost, then he was an apparition, and now he was an angel. It seemed people had no shortage of supernatural labels to slap onto him. He was going to be called the devil next, at this rate.
"Why do you suppose that storm came up so suddenly?" asked Tannie.
"The devil did not want us to seek out the help of God."
Yep, he was the devil now too.
There was no point in waiting for them to sort out precisely which supernatural forces were at work here when all their guesses were wrong. His hand got bored waiting around for something to happen, and it decided to do something to make things get more interesting. Before his head realized what his hand was doing, a snowball had been launched at both Tannie and mamma, hitting each of them squarely in the back of the head.
"Jackson, that is quite enough!"
"Mamma..."
The two of them now stared at each other intensely while occasionally glancing sideways to try and identify the source of the ominous snowballs. Not finding the source, Tannie leaned forward and said, "Mamma, why did you call for Jack?"
Mamma covered her face with her hands. She looked ashamed of herself for having let her tongue slip like that. "I do not-It was a habit, Tanja. Jackson always tried to annoy us with snowballs."
"I know," said Tannie. "Someone threw snowballs at my window tonight, and I thought it was Jack too." She turned and looked around, and squinted when she looked at the area where Jack stood. Did Tannie see him? He waved excitedly, but she turned away and looked back at mamma. "Can Jack still throw snowballs at us?"
"No, Tanja." Mamma shook her head. "Jackson is gone. He is not coming back."
"I know, mamma, what could he be the angel that just saved us? He did become an angel, did he not?"
Well, that was new. At least Tannie was getting closer to the truth than she had been all night. She might be able to see him before too long if she kept it up, so long as he could keep their crazy parents from freaking out and going to the priest at the first opportunity before they even took the time to listen.
Mamma patted Tannie on the knee. "He may have been our guardian angel tonight. You could be right, Tanja."
Tannie didn't miss a beat. "Then couldn't he still throw snowballs at us?"
The look on mamma's face was hilarious. Her eyebrows were at different levels of height, and she looked like she was trying to figure out whether Tannie was hallucinating from eating a rotten batch of fish. "Why would he want to continue to throw snowballs at us?"
"To say hellooooooo!" Jack lobbed another snowball at mamma, but missed her that time. His aim was getting off. He must have been getting too emotional and losing his concentration.
Tannie blinked a couple times, then turned to mamma and said, "To say hello?"
Jack's knees gave way, and he fell down into the snow. Had Tannie heard him just then? Was he finally getting through?
"Tannie! Tannie! Can you hear me?" He waved his hands in front of her face and danced around her like a lunatic. Anything that would garner attention was worth the effort. "Can you see me? Do you notice anything?"
A slight chuckle escaped from Tannie, and mamma raised an eyebrow at her, ensuring that Tannie would have to explain that little chuckle, lest she be punished for it later. "Ah, I was just-It felt like Jack was dancing around us just now, being silly."
"Yes!" Jack pumped his fist. It may have been only a minor victory, but a victory was a victory. Tannie had at least called what he'd been doing accurately. She must have been starting to believe.
"Jackson may indeed still be with us, Tanja." She pulled Tannie close and rubbed her head. "If he is, he would not like to see you crying over him. If he is with us now, you must cease your tears, or he may leave."
"I will not shed a single tear! I promise, mamma!" She sat up and rubbed at her eyes as though to make sure there wasn't any chance that any tears could sneak up and betray her.
Jack sighed and knelt down next to Tannie. "I won't leave you if you cry, Tannie. Mamma's just being mean. I'll stay right by your side forever. Heaven knows I have nowhere else to go for the next two hundred years."
Tannie sighed happily, while made Jack smile. She may not realize all that she was picking up from Jack, but she was doing a pretty good job. Another questioning glance from mamma, so Tannie had to speak her mind again. How was Tannie going to explain what she had just picked up? Maybe he shouldn't say so much to her when mamma was around, but it was just so hard to resist when she was actually responding somewhat.
"Mamma, I think it was Jack who visited me in my room tonight. There was a snow dove that materialized and sang to me 'Dabba Dabba Dove'."
"You believe it was Jackson singing you one last lullaby," said mamma. Jack looked at her, slightly nervous that she wanted to tear Tannie down for what she was starting to believe, but mamma was smiling. He smiled too. This was good. Things were going slower than he wanted them to, but they were still going. He was getting through. He was reuniting with his family.
"Let us go home, Tanja." Mamma got on her feet. "The storm has died down by now."
Jack smacked himself for forgetting to keep the storm going, but at least mamma had said she wanted to go home rather than go back to the priest. She must have been starting to believe too.
He followed them home, watched them explain what happened to pappa, who wasn't pleased over the situation but accepted it, and then followed Tannie back into her bedroom.
As soon as she was comfortably in bed, he knelt beside her and said, "Tannie, can you hear me?"
"Mmmm," she said in her sleepy voice, "a little."
Jack grinned from ear to ear. That was a direct response, the first he'd had from her all day. Maybe come this time the next day, she would be able to see him just as well as Jamie did. He reached over and pet her head. "I want to tell you a story, Tannie, about a person named Jack Frost."
A yawn, and then, "Alright."
Jack smiled and leaned closer. This had better work. It had to.
There's the chapter. Hope you liked it, but feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. I try to keep a sort of "open door" policy with my readers. If they have suggestions, I listen, and will incorporate some of their suggestions when they seem usable. So if you have ideas, or criticism, or even just want to chat, feel free to review, PM me, or even tweet me. I'm liz_ashford there, so go ahead and seek me out. I respond to most tweets directed at me. :)
Anyway, I'll get to working on the next chapter soon. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you back here soon!