New France was actually suffering from a blizzard similar to the one Jack had dealt with in his own village. The difference was that the people here hadn't been there for very long and suffered more losses. Jack was quite surprised to find this new colony and despaired at its condition. They'd arrived too late into Summer and hadn't had time to set up proper settlements. The makeshift shacks that they'd strung together in the Winter were no where near durable enough to last the brutal storm that was pressing down on the land now. The wind howled, trying to calm the bickering clouds, clearly overwhelmed. As he flew through the clouds, frost whipping against his face, Jack mustered his strength and forcibly willed the snow to stop and dispersed the storm system's energy along a larger area. He took quite a bit of the energy into himself and shored up his power reserves with it. Winter energy manifested itself as an eerie blue glow that Jack tethered to his staff and manipulated with ease. Pulsing with power, he sent out ripples of energy, reigning the clouds in and easing the storm into a more regular pattern. The violent snowfall gave way almost instantly to a gentle sprinkling and the wind ceased its howling. From the sky, he could see people beginning to emerge from their homes, scared, but relieved that the storm had broken.
Satisfied, Jack made his way up and down the coast to sort any remaining storms. There were quite a few of them and it took Jack longer than he'd thought it would. When he finally returned to the village, he was exhausted and the sun had begun to set. Dropping through an open window at the Bennett house, he came across his sister and her husband conversing quietly at the table. They stood to greet him with smiles across their faces that soon turned to worry as they observed Jack leaning heavily against his staff.
"Hey sis, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. I had to clear up some really stubborn clouds, but New France should be fine now." Jack stretched his limbs and noted some slight wind burn on his hands and face along with scratches that were the result of the ice crystals cutting into his skin. "I am never going to leave Winter on its own for that long ever again. I have to do Europe tomorrow. All of Europe. That's going to take forever. I'm just glad it snows less in Asia, just in the mountains where nobody lives and the storms aren't so bad. Winter in this half of the world is always tough, but this," he shook ice out of his hair, "is a nightmare. I never imagined my absence would do this to the weather. It kind of makes me wonder who the last Winter spirit was. Did he ever take sick days?"
"You went up and down the entire coast today?" Emily took one of Jack's shaking hands in hers.
"Yes, and more, though there was less to fix in the west and further down south. Enough about the weather. How was that town meeting?"
Tom, who was busy building the fire back up, stood from where he was working and smiled at him. "You won't believe it, but somehow, the whole village is convinced some kind of friendly ghost is protecting us. The local natives believe in invisible creatures that are associated with the weather, so they think you must be one of them. Your footprints in the town center are still there and the town heads have commissioned me to make an iron cast of them."
"Hey that's great! I guess they did the work for us. I doubt they'll see me or anything, but it's a start. Did you warn them about the snows?"
"Aye, I suggested to them that we should prepare for more bad weather just to be safe. They agreed easily enough."
Sighing in relief, Jack's last bit of energy drained out of him and suddenly, the room was too warm and the heat of the fire was making him sick. His knees gave way a bit and Tom and Emily caught him under each arm before he could hit the floor.
"Jack, are you alright?" Emily was slightly panicked seeing the sick expression on Jack's face.
"You need rest, Jack. Please, you should lie down." Tom was equally worried about him and supported Jack gingerly, his large arms contrasting greatly with Jack's thin frame.
Jack shook them off gently and said, "No, I'm fine. Really. I've just overspent myself today. I need to...outside...yeah snow. That'll help." Rambling, he stumbled slowly outside and collapsed in the snow, Emily and Tom following closely behind. "Yeahhh snow," he sighed as he covered himself in a thick blanket of the stuff, "I love snow. Snoooow."
Still worried, Emily and Tom shared a confused look, but decided to let Jack recover on his own. They had more news about the town meeting, but it could wait until morning. Tom went back inside, but Emily stayed to observe Jack. Emily was more unnerved than her husband seeing Jack lying there unmoving in the snow. The last time she saw him alive, Jack's face frozen in his death throes, pale and bloodless as the life drained out of him and he sunk under the darkness. Now, he lay pale and spare in the ice asleep, like a corpse despite his peaceful expression. His body frozen in time bespoke the consequences of the famine that had plagued him in life, but that was the only evidence of it. Despite the hunger pangs, she remembered her childhood being a happy one because Jack was around to make things better. When he returned from work in the fields, he would always rouse the children from their homes to play and sometimes told stories about fairies and magic around the fire. It was important to him that children be children even in the worst winter months.
Kneeling, she stuck a hand in front of his face and was relieved, even a little surprised, to find that he was breathing. Jack breathed deeply in his sleep and curled himself around his staff. Leaning close, she traced the lines of his face with her gaze and noted how childlike he looked despite all that he'd been through. Even so, he was her older brother and it still brought the warmest joy to her heart to know that he was back with her. She placed a hand over the slight swell of her abdomen. Her child would know Jack as she knew Jack in life and her child's child would know him too. The thought that he was immortal now was still completely unbelievable to her, but the evidence before her was undeniable. His body held an ethereal glow of agelessness and his face sometimes held this strange new enigmatic expression that wasn't all the way human anymore. Looking at him now, cradled in a bed of snow that didn't melt when it made contact with his skin, she got the impression that Jack was being lovingly embraced by the cold and he belonged there with it. When he wasn't paying attention, his movements took on a deliberate slowness that reminded her of the movements of clouds and such things that didn't move in the same timescale as humans. These moments were brief, however, and when that sly grin appeared on his face, she knew that he'd come back to her. Jack spent the next few weeks dealing the worrying weather problems, but always came back at the end of the day and spent time with the two of them before stumbling out into the snow to recover. The snow storms he'd warned them about passed by, each spaced out by three or four days, without incident and the villagers were well prepared for it.
One day, Jack awoke the the sensation of being prodded in the face with a tiny mittened hand.
"Hey mister," the hand's owner said, "Are you Jack Frost?"
Groggily, Jack sat up and stared at the boy who'd awoken him. At first, he thought it was a child from Santoff Claussen. He looked around. Nope, definitely not Siberia. More awake now, Jack stared with wonder at the little boy. "You can see me?" Jack stood, throwing snow everywhere.
"It's him! It's really him!" The boy yelled back at the small group of children watching them from behind a bush. A chorus of excited screams filled the clearing in front of the Bennett house as Jack was mobbed by the village children. At this point, Jack didn't care how they could see him at all. He felt the tingling sensation of belief magic hit him and fill him from head to toe with warmth as his tired limbs were fueled with renewed power. Children clinging to his limbs he spun around and revelled in their excited squeals. It was a memorable day full of snowball fights and snow forts. He felt something click inside him and found he could manage weather patterns, even the weird ones, with greater ease with his mind. Instead of flying off to the Himalayas to manage a wayward blizzard, he had the luxury of spending time with the children.
The village children were precious and few due to the harsh conditions of the land. While the soil was fertile, few ventured this far out West for fear of both the natives and the weather. The village was far from the other colonies on purpose and was full of refugees of war who came from all the colonies, but primarily the English ones. Jack remembered growing up speaking French, Danish, English, and even a little German. Now, the children he played with shouted all those languages to each other as they gleefully slung chunks of slush at each other. Laughing as he burst out of a snowman to surprise the kids in a game of hide and seek, he could hear Emily's familiar chuckle from behind him. Shaking off the snow, he padded over to her, bare feet gently crunching through the snow.
"Having fun?" Emily had a mischievous look on her face.
"Yeah, it's so weird, but so wonderful. I don't know how they see me. They believe in me. It's almost like a miracle!" He bounced up and down on his toes, looking every bit like a little boy. Emily was darning wool socks in a chair by the door to the house.
"Hmmm well someone may have told them a story or two about you." Emily looked at him expectantly.
Jack flashed her a gleaming white smile and said, "You? Really?"
"Yes, well I watch the children and teach them simple bible stories some days and we village wives work in our own stories from time to time." She winked at him, "I told them it was something that we heard from a few natives we traded with up North."
"You are quite simply the greatest sister ever." Jack gave his sister a hug that was all limbs and giggles. As the day went on, the children were called away by their parents, some saying "Come inside, we don't Jack Frost nipping at your nose". Jack was astonished.
"Hey, don't look at me," Emily said, looking up from her work, "They came up with that one on their own."
"So your powers have gotten stronger?" Tom came home from the forge and spoke companionably with Jack as he washed the black soot from his hands in water gleaned from melting snow.
"Yeah, I can control storm systems and manipulate the energy much better and from farther away. I don't have to fly all over the globe to fix things now. It's like someone lifted a veil from my eyes really."
"That's wonderful! You can spend more time with us and play with the children."
After Emily and Tom had eaten supper, they'd started talking about the village and its growth. It was still far from becoming a fully realized settlement, but the population was growing as more people moved up and out from the original Dutch settlements.
"We got a lot of cattle farmers last year," Tom said as he lit more rushlights, "The grass here is plentiful and there's plenty of room for cattle farms here. More animals to pull the plows, which means I get to make more plows and harnesses. We won't be productive enough to trade for a few years yet, but it's getting there."
Jack though contemplatively, "I noticed there were more buildings being built. I've flown around and I can definitely see more roads coming out this way, mostly post roads. You know there's a mine down South now?"
"Yes, we've had a few miners come up here for tools," Emily cut in, "but not too many. They know we don't have much to spare."
The conversation went along those lines for a few minutes. Jack's attention drifted in and out of it, half focused on new weather patterns. After he was silent for a while, Tom cocked his head and asked what was wrong. Looking troubled, Jack said, "The last snowstorm is coming," his brows furrowed in concentration, "I can't stop it."
His voice was strange and a bit monotone as if he were in a trance. His blue eyes grew dim and suddenly, he wasn't in the Bennett house anymore. In his mind's eye, he was in Mother Nature's sanctuary in the sky, standing on the clear pool of water before her throne. He left his body behind frozen at the Bennett house, Emily and Tom worriedly trying to rouse him.
"Hello, Jack." Mother Nature greeted him as a mother would her child, "Worry not, you will be back with your family before long."
"What am I doing here?" He was slightly wary of this strange meeting.
"I know you are trying to stop this storm system from dropping on your village," she said, gesturing to the translucent globe floating in the center of the sanctuary, "This storm is the tail end of a large tangle of clouds, most of which you were successful in untangling. However," she looked at him with that strange ageless look, "you cannot do anything about this last storm. The original storm was much too large. It has to come down."
"I know that," Jack said, staring down at his feet, "I just thought that maybe I could ease it up a little bit, spread it out farther."
Mother Nature softened somewhat. "You cannot suppress the natural tendencies of the weather, Jack. You can regulate, yes, and you have made great progress in stabilizing the frost and snow, but you cannot suppress it completely."
"I understand," Jack replied, trance-like again.
"Good. Now, I understand you've made progress with your powers. It is quite unexpected for a spirit as young as you to have made it this far. Might I ask how?"
"I think it might have been the children," he smiled, "Belief magic."
"I see," she breathed, smiling softly, "I am pleased, Jack. Normally, spirits of nature do not normally seek out or achieve the belief of mortals. You, however, are not one of mine, as I have said before. The Man in the Moon does silly things sometimes."
"Who is he? You never answered any of my questions when we last spoke."
With breathy chuckles, Mother Nature answered, "Hmm that is not my place to tell. When it is time, all will be revealed to you. Fret not." Jack could feel himself being pulled back into his body before he could complain.
"Jack! Can you hear me? Are you alright?" Emily was slapping him gently on the cheeks as Tom shook him.
Shaking his head, Jack looked at them and blinked rapidly. "You're back with us, then?" Tom looked at him closely.
"Yeah, sorry about that."
Emily took one of his hands, noting that they were cold and slightly frosted over. "What happened?"
"It was Mother Nature. She wanted to tell me there was nothing I could do about this next storm."
"That's grim news. How bad will it be?" Tom looked grave.
"I'm not sure. I can just feel it. It won't be as bad as the one I stopped, but you guys will be holed up for at least two or three days. The snow will be thick and the wind will make things colder. We need to warn people, make them stay inside and bring the animals in."
"The town heads believe the storms to be over," Tom replied, "Everyone has a few things stockpiled, but not nearly enough to last for as long as you say."
"I have an idea," Emily said excitedly, "The villagers have started saying that when Jack Frost nips at their noses, the snows will come."
"You're saying they'll prepare for the weather if I pinch their noses?" Jack was skeptical.
"No, that might work," said Tom, "The villagers have never been keen on superstitions, but recently, they've started taking more stock in it."
"Well yeah, but cold noses aren't going to persuade anyone. On top of that, I can't cover everyone in the village all at once. There's only one of me!"
"Give it a try?" Emily looked hopeful. Shaking his head, he conceded.
The next day, he set out trying to scare people into preparing for the storm. He flew around lowering the temperature drastically, frosting over windows, and trying to pinch the noses of every passerby he could get his hands on. None of it had any effect and nobody exhibited any sort of alarm at all. The village children saw him and one tugged on his shirtsleeve, asking him what he was doing.
"Hey kiddo," he said, squatting dejectedly in front of the little boy, the same one who'd woken him the day before.
"Why are you sad, Jack? Why are you poking peoples' noses?"
"Well there's a big snowstorm coming and I'm trying to get your parents to get ready for it."
"Why aren't they listening to you?"
"Well, grown-ups can't see me because they don't think I'm real."
Scrunching his face up in deep thought, the tiny boy who couldn't be more than 5 or 6 said, "We could tell them for you!"
Well, there was a thought. Jack considered it for a moment. "Yeah sure, kid." It probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try. The boy ran off excitedly to his friends and they huddled off together in their little throng to start their mission of grave importance.
Jack sighed and decided that he needed to think. He flew around absently on the wind's back and somehow ended up at his pond. Why would the wind bring me here? Shrugging, he sat down cross legged in the middle of the frozen water and stilled, sorting weather patterns in his head to take his mind off of the current predicament. When he opened his eyes several hours later, it was because he sensed something tiny crawling up his knees. He looked down and was surprised to find a tiny wisp of a creature like a tiny humanoid waving its arms up at him. After a while, Jack realized that it was actually waving its legs at him. The top half of it was stuck in a mound of snow. He grasped it by one...foot and plucked it out of the snow. Looking at it now, he saw that it was a featureless translucent blob shaped vaguely like a tiny person with a beacon for a head that looked left and right confusedly. It saw Jack and waved its arms around excitedly. It scuttled over to Jack's still outstretched hand gave his index finger a hug. As it hugged his finger, its head started blinking a bright blue light. Jack looked around and was surprised to find more of the little creatures appearing on the pond. The winds swirled around him and whispered to him. They are winter sprites. They have been without a master for many a century. They are happy.
The new sprites waved their arms excitedly as well. The whole congregation of sprites seemed to be expecting something. Experimentally, he dispersed a cloud of his energy, translucent blue and vibrant. Right away, he could feel the sprites tie themselves into his powers and while they still held complete independence, Jack could guide them with his thoughts. Their thoughts streamed into his own, composed of incoherent words coupled with just collective feelings. They were a hive mind that could communicate with each other with great efficiency like a colony of ants. Standing, Jack waded through the crowd of sprites, many still appearing as he led them into the village. Silently still, he instructed them to warn the villagers of the impending storm. At once, they scattered into the village and each found a villager to cling to. The effect was instant. People looked up at the sky and seemed to sense that bad weather was on its way. By supper, the town had barricaded itself safely within their homes with ample supplies to weather the storm.
The little sprites gathered into a line, beckoning excitedly to Jack, telling him to follow. He rose into the air and found that the sprites could ride the winds as well as he could. They led him to a small native settlement a few hundred miles North of them and gestured to it, conveying concern. "You want to warn them too?" Jack followed them down and was surprised to find that some of the natives could see him, or at least knew he was there. The spoke reverently to him and the sprites, guiding them to an old woman in a dark hut. She was the only one of the group who could see the sprites and spoke to Jack again in a language he didn't understand. The sprites, surprisingly, translated for him and left impressions, rather than words, in his head. She was surprised at his visit and learned through the sprites of the impending storm. She called him a name that he didn't understand and seemed to ask for some sort of blessing. It was a strange encounter. The woman couldn't see all of him and seemed only to know the general direction of where he sat. Winter Child, the winds told him. It dawned on him that the last Winter spirit to exist must have originated here.
Jack at last went to Tom's forge after the natives and several other settlements had also been warned of the impending snow storm. Tom was busily barricading his shop by nailing clapboard to the windows and doors. When he finished, he wiped his hands and turned to Jack, a wide grin plastered to his face. "You did it!" He grasped Jack by the shoulders.
"Yeah I did. You're not going to believe it." Jack held up the sprite he'd met earlier to show Tom. "I found this little guy and a bunch of his friends helped me."
Tom squinted at Jack's empty hands and shook his head. "I don't see it, Jack."
"What? Really?" Jack frowned, looking slightly forlorn. He placed the little sprite on Tom's shoulder and waited for something to happen. Tom looked from his shoulder to Jack and shrugged, still confused and unaware as ever. Jack took the sprite back and shrugged. "Maybe they're only visible to spirits. Let's go. The storm's going to roll in within the hour."
In the Bennett house, Emily was busy hauling in buckets of snow to store and extra rashes of salted meat hung from the rafters in the kitchens. Their chickens had also been brought inside. "Hey you two," she said, walking past them with a heavy looking bucket. The men relieved her of the bucket and carried inside for her, shutting the door and bolting it behind them one last time. Fire roaring, Emily and Tom snuggled into blankets at the dinner table.
"Who's your friend, Jack?" Emily poked at the sprite on Jack's shoulder.
"You can see him?" Jack was squirrely with excitement. "It's apparently a Winter sprite. I have absolutely no idea where they came from, but there are thousands of them. They're tied to me through my powers and they listen to whatever I tell them to do. Oh just look at this guy. Cute, right?"
"Slow down Jack," his sister laughed as she took the sprite from him. The little creature wrapped its spindly limbs around her finger. "I saw a few in the village while I was buying supplies. I was waiting to ask you about them."
"I think you might see it because we share blood or something."
Tom harumphed, feeling left out. "Yes, well go on. Tell us how you met them." Emily shot Tom a look and he withered, returning to his usual self. Jack told them all that happened since he left them that morning and both were astonished by his discoveries.
"The natives, huh?" Tom cupped a mug of cider contemplatively. "They don't speak much to us besides to trade, but a few of their stories reach our ears from time to time. I heard something a while back about a frost child. Nothing specific, though."
Jack nodded, "Yeah, the winds told me something similar. A child appeared out of nowhere and could do things like freeze off fingers. He helped the natives track game in the snow and then left all of a sudden on a piece of floating ice in the river...I think he might have ended himself." Jack added that last bit somberly. Emily patted his forearm comfortingly.
"So this winter spirit appeared because the natives believed in other spirits?" Tom tried to change the subject a bit.
"It sounded as if he was the natural result of all that belief magic within the tribe." Jack knitted his fingers together. "It wasn't just this one tribe of people. All of the natives I visited had some variation of this story and I guess he just spawned as a result of all those stories. The difference with me, I guess, was that I wasn't born because of stories. I was human first and the stories came after. I don't need people to believe in me to exist because I'm connected to, well, Winter."
"You lost me there, brother," Emily said confusedly, rubbing her temples slightly. Jack was lapsing into spirit talk and none of it really made sense to her.
Trying to explain it better, Jack said, "It's like this. The world is this giant ball of natural energy and the seasons make up the most of that energy. I don't have everything completely worked out, but so far I've got the sense that the seasons don't really mean specific times of the year, but the weather patterns people associate with the seasons. Even if I'm in charge of Winter, it doesn't mean I manage the Winter as in the time of year. I only manage the cold and all things attributed to it like frost and snow. Winter in India, for example, is all monsoons," Jack grimaced, "and I don't do rain. So I'm what you would call the guy who represents all of that cold energy. I don't really control the weather. I just regulate stuff that happens naturally so that no one gets hurt."
"It sounds like you're some kind of god," Emily said, "like those old gods no one really talks about anymore."
"The thing is, those might still exist somewhere," Jack shrugged, "With belief magic, anything anyone's ever told a story about might actually exist."
"That really changes everything then," Tom sounded on the verge of being afraid of whatever revelation he was having, "Our parents came here to get away from Old World religion, but if it really is as you say, there was almost no point to it. If everything exists, there's really no point in arguing about how Christianity is organized at all." Tom paused. "Christ. What if Christ exists?"
"I'll let you know if I meet him, but no promises." Jack leaned back in his chair, all this thinking messing with his head. "The point is that most belief based spirits will probably be the result of stories humans told, meaning faith is still pretty awesome if it can actually generate a real spirit."
Jack slipped out through a window when Emily and Tom retired to bed. He flew among the raging storm clouds, carefully containing the massive storm system and ensured the stages of storm went smoothly. As the ice and sleet pounded on the land below, he marvelled at the power of the storm. The massive fleets of hardy clouds moved in like an exodus of broiling energy that could be called beautiful and terrifying all the same. He fed off of the energy of the storm, losing himself in it as it played out. At the end of the three day storm, he finally descended from the sky and ushered in a soft snowfall, the kind that nobody could resist coming out to see. The winds had quieted and the winter sprites floated on their backs wantonly, blissfully enjoying the storm's residual energy. They drifted into houses and helped to coax the villagers outside. Soon enough, life returned to normal, the danger past.