Alaia Skyhawk: Well here's the next chapter :)
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, the Guardians of Childhood, or any related characters etc. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes.
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Chapter 20: Snow Woman
For two days after recruiting Cernunnos, Jack spent his time working with Mother Nature to create a new home he could offer to the Selkies. It turned out to be a lot more work than he'd expected, although admittedly she did most of it. The only real part he did was to cast the Power of Winter into a section of glacier that edged on the ocean. What resulted was a section of ice that would never move, never change, and yet the glacier either side of it would continue to creep forward and break off into the sea as it always had.
Beyond that point, Jack's input was mainly aesthetic, as Mother Nature carved out a vast collection of interconnected caverns within that chunk of ice. Those all linked to a central, larger cavern, where an underwater tunnel gave access to the sea. After that had been created, and she'd lined all the main caves with a floor of soil and rocks, and created alpine and evergreen plants to make it less like a hole in a chunk of ice, Jack got to work on his own touches.
Holes in the ice above the caverns, which let light in but no snow from blizzards, and only the most gentle of breezes to freshen the air. He also created a large Ice Mirror at the rear of the central cavern, set within an arch of rippled ice which bore the snowflake-crest of the Winter Sanctuary at its peak. After decades of practice, he'd mastered his mirrors to the point that portals of this size were no problem to him.
Mother Nature left after that, as he created a matching portal, to link to the prospective new home for the Selkies, in another of the side-caverns in the sanctuary. He also created a handful of little homes, that any Selkies who may in time come to keep watch here when he was away, could use. It might be wishful thinking at this point, since he'd not seen nor spoken to the Selkies to make his offer, but it wouldn't hurt for him to be prepared.
And when all that preparation was done, he only had one day of Northern Winter remaining. Ariko would be starting her rounds in less than twenty-four hours, which meant if he wanted to seek out Yuki-onna before the Winter Spirit ducked into whatever place she went in the other seasons, he had to go now.
The touch of power Mother Nature had left on him, to guide him to the one he sought, hadn't yet faded to the point he could no longer use it. It led him to Japan, to the side of one of the many mountains there, to a ridge-line where a solitary figure in a tattered kimono sat perched on a rock amid snow that was just beginning to show signs of melting... Except in her immediate vicinity, that is.
Jack kept his distance, frowning a little at that. If she was radiating enough cold to offset the rise in temperature that came with the impending arrival of Northern Spring, then that would certainly contribute to her reputation. Any human who lingered close to her, would collapse from hypothermia in a matter of minutes.
He drifted lower, closer, and paused again. She had her back to him, sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her gaze seemed to be fixed on a village on the slope below, where the distant specks of people could be seen moving around. He also noted that she rocked back and forth ever-so-slightly, as if caught between the desire to go down there and try to speak to people, and the knowledge that if she did she would certainly cause them harm.
Jack's frown deepened even further, when he glided down to within a few feet of her and became close enough to hear her muttering to herself. She seemed to alternate between thinking aloud and posing questions to herself, which she then answered. By this point he might have labelled her as insane, if not for a cautious peek at her face from above, revealing she wore an expression of desperate loneliness. How long had she been like this? How long had she been left alone with no-one to talk to?
He was forced to reluctantly admit he had a pretty good idea, because even before Mother Nature had mentioned her to him, he'd heard of Yuki-onna. She had a reputation even among Immortals, for being a Legend with no true believers, yet enough partial believers to give her power enough to be very dangerous at short range. All the Immortals he'd heard about her from, had said to stay away from her. That she'd freeze him solid in the blink of an eye before running away. The lucky ones who befell that fate, were found by other immortals and thawed out within a few days. The unlucky ones had to wait for Spring.
Jack drifted to the side of her and sat down on another rock a few feet away. He wasn't afraid of being frozen, he was the cold of winter personified. But still he decided to let her notice him on her own, rather than startle her by speaking.
As it was, he startled her anyway, and far more than he'd expected. Because the instant she became aware of him, she turned her head sharply to look at him with wide eyes of the most incredibly icy-blue, gasped, and flinched backwards. The combination of her fright and the flinching, then triggered a relatively feeble, by his standards, wave of power. It swept over the ground between them, and over him, coating both with a thick layer of ice. By this point, most immortals would be rather a predicament, but he wasn't 'most immortals'.
Jack shrugged, shaking himself somewhat in the fashion of a dog shaking water from its fur, and the ice that coated him cracked apart and fell away in tiny pieces. He then yawned, not concerned in the slightest by the incident, and glanced at her.
Yuki-onna stared at him from behind a veil of tangled black hair, her eyes widening further if that were even possible.
"The Spirit of Winter!"
She jumped to her feet and tried to flee, her powers freezing solid everything around the two of them, but Jack grabbed her. He was starting to understand now why she was so dangerous, but it wasn't her fault. He could feel it, that her powers were shaped not by her own will, but by the stories that humans told of her. They called her a demon of the snow, a woman of ice who meant death to any who went near her. Their stories had shaped her, shaped her power, and created a Winter Spirit with no real control of her own abilities... And she'd been like this for over a thousand years?
Jack kept hold of her, which was no small feat given that despite her own slender build and short stature, he was just a slender and only four inches taller than her. The feat became harder still, when he had to set part of his attention to creating an Ice Mirror back to the sanctuary, but once he had it made and the portal opened, he dragged her through it and shattered it from the other side.
Yuki-onna went utterly still once they were in the central cavern of the Winter Sanctuary, like a deer caught in a light and too frightened to move. She could probably guess where she was, but had no idea how to get out of here. She was trapped in the heart of his domain.
Jack let go of her, to which she dropped to her knees and cowered on the icy floor babbling in terror.
"Please don't hurt me! I didn't mean to try freeze you, I swear! Just let me go! I promise, I won't trouble anyone ever again! I'll find a cave, and stay in it, and never come out! Just please let me go!"
She continued on along that general thread, her arms clasped over her head as if to hide from his gaze, while she shook as of overcome by a violent bout of shivering. She was so terrified that he had no doubt she'd be deaf to any words of reason he could try, which left him a bit of a problem. How to calm her down enough to talk to her?
He got his answer in a flicker of movement to his left, one of the Winter Sprites peering around a stalagmite in curiosity. Winter Sprites were about as threatening as a baby rabbit, and far more adorable. Not to mention, they were as immune to being harmed by ice, as he was.
He walked over to the sprite and picked it up, his sudden movement causing Yuki-onna to flinch when he came back at the same businesslike speed. And when she threw her arms up in front of herself as if to ward off an attack, instead she got a furry little creature pushed into her grasp.
Her fingers closed on white fur and gripped the sprite in reflex, leaving her staring into the intent and intrigued gaze of the little creature. The sprite then decided that it liked her, and grinned at her in the most adorable fashion before starting to chatter excitedly in whatever language it was that the sprites used.
Jack took advantage of her distraction, to quietly call over around a dozen more sprites and send them over to her. For someone who had been alone and unwanted for so long, the cheerful attention of the Winter Sprites filled a need that had been left untended to for far too long.
He slipped away when a snowball fight broke out among half of the sprites around her, while the rest jostled with each other for the chance to sit on her lap and be petted by her. By the Winter Spirit who was now starting to wear the most hesitant and yet happy of smiles.
Jack flew off to the Winter Garden, and perched in a tree above where Cernunnos had settled himself down for a rest.
The stag glanced up at him, tilting his head.
"So you brought her to the Winter Sanctuary... Was that wise? She is notorious for striking first and apologising later."
Above him, Jack frowned disapprovingly.
"And I think you've been listening to too many tales from other immortals. Do you want to know what I saw, when I first tracked her down, and after I brought her here? I saw what can become of a Legend when they lack the will to be able to define their story for themselves. She is a victim of the stories told about her by humans. They paint her as a demon that kills with a touch, who dooms any who go near her... She is a desperately lonely person, craving contact with others, and yet cursed in a way that has prevented that."
Cernunnos winced at the circumstances Jack had described, but still remained cautious.
"And leaving her alone in the sanctuary is supposed to fix that?"
Jack snorted.
"She's not alone... I left her with a dozen or so Winter Sprites, and you know how cute they can be. They're immune to being harmed by cold, so she can't hurt them, and to be frank one of their favourite games is to be coated in ice so they can be pushed around like a sliding ball. She was terrified of me, but once she had a sprite in her arms she was charmed by it in an instant. As I said, she craves company, and right now she has a lot of it... Once she becomes my Lieutenant, I'll be able to put a restraint on the destructive side of her abilities, so she can't unintentionally freeze people anymore."
Cernunnos went quiet, thoughtful.
"Do you think she will accept, given that she is so frightened of you?"
Jack smiled, and nodded.
"All she needs is time to calm down, and someone to be with her. The sprites will do that, while I go speak to the Selkies. but, if you're willing, could you keep a discrete eye on them while I'm out? I'll only be a few hours."
The stag gave him a long look, before rising to his feet and starting to stroll in the direction of the main cavern.
"Go make your proposition to the Selkies. I should think there will be no problems so long as you return as soon as you can. It's not like they're going to turn your offer down. There isn't a Tribe of Myth anywhere, that would refuse a home under the protection of a Spirit of the Seasons."
Jack floated up into the air, looking rather wry.
"That may be, but I'm not going to make assumptions. I'll let you know how the first talk went, when I get back."
He flew out through the hole that let light into the Winter Garden, and Cernunnos snorted to himself before walking through the tunnel to the main cavern. In that chamber, he could see Winter Sprites scurrying around from several directions, all homing in on one area where their giggling and chatter seemed to be coming from.
Cernunnos found a vantage point, in the shape of one of the platforms Jack had made and extended ice-slides from. Seated there, the stag then watched a rather curious sight... Yuki-onna, the 'Snow Woman', the one portrayed by so many as being dangerous, surrounded by chattering and playing Winter Sprites.
And she was smiling.
He watched as she fussed over them. She petted them and figured out where they liked to be scratched, which was under their chin close to their ears. In the meantime three or four of them had taken it upon themselves to use a comb, which they'd likely purloined from the Ice Palace, to comb the tangles out of her hair.
That little group then began to put it in several braids, after they couldn't agree on which of them could put it in one braid, and then those braids were pinned into loops around her head and decorated with lengths of white ribbon... Where that had come from, Cernunnos could only guess, but then sprites of any season were notorious for bringing home things they found in their wanderings. The ribbon was probably a 'treasure' belonging to one of them, which made them giving it up to her a clear sign they liked her.
As if them all massing around her with grins on their faces, wasn't an indication enough.
Jack returned after four hours, his smile alone telling Cernunnos that the Selkies had said yes to his offer. Further questions revealed that they would move into Sea Caverns in a week, to give them time to pack up everything their owned. Other arrangements, such as creating portals to remote places to farm certain crops, or to places they could barter for other supplies such as cloth, leather, and tools, would be sorted out after the transfer of their settlement.
And when the official business was done, Jack glanced at Yuki-onna and the mass of sprites.
"She suits her hair like that. Put a couple of ice-lillies in her hair, and give her a new kimono, and you'd have a hard time recognising her as the 'demon of winter'." He patted Cernunnos on the shoulder. "You can go back to your garden now. The sprites will bring her to me when she's ready for it."
Jack headed into the Ice Palace, choosing to walk rather than fly. In truth he wasn't as cheerful right now as he'd made out. The Selkies had turned out to be in as desperate need as Yuki-onna, which in turn was very depressing. He could have helped them years ago, if he'd not been distracted by Emily and his family. But he knew that Emily would have scolded him for thinking that way, and told him that the past was past and he should think about the future.
He retreated to one of the newer rooms he'd added to the palace, his 'library'. It wasn't really much of one, he only had one full-length set of shelves and a hundred or so books. The sprites knew he enjoyed reading, and with books becoming cheaper and cheaper to produce, more and more humans of the wealthier humans were discarding books they didn't want anymore. If a sprite found a book that had been abandoned in that way, they picked it up and brought it home as a 'present' for him.
For that reason he'd ended up with duplicates of some books, but then he simply gave those to Ombric who was more than pleased to receive them. As a result the two of them had worked out a barter system, whereby Jack gave Ombric books that he didn't have in his collection, and in return he could ask for certain things. Like the bookshelf, and the reading chair and table beside it, and Jack was about to request something else.
A white and blue kimono, for a woman the same build as him but who was four inches shorter.
Jack sent the letter of request through the small Ice Mirror he kept in the library, and then grabbed the book he'd presently been working his way through at a controlled and steady pace, unlike the rapid devouring of books he'd done when first learning to read. It was the third volume of 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry', published three years prior, and the set of three books had rapidly become quiet popular. Just not with the high-classes snob who had left them outdoors for a week with nothing but the shelter of a garden awning to protect them from the snow. The spites had taken them when the damp had started to mark the covers, and Jack hadn't scolded them for it. The books would have been unreadable by the time that snob even remembered they were left outside, if they remembered.
Jack walked through to his Hall of Mirrors and perched on his spire, listening to the gossip the winds brought him about the world's weather, and Ariko's run around the North of the World bringing Northern Spring. But that gossip was boring, so he paid it little heed as he began to work through and study the remainder of the one-hundred-and-eighty ballads that the three volumes of 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry' contained.
He was still perusing the tome two days later, when a mass of Winter Sprites came scampering into the Hall of Mirrors.
Jack heard Yuki-onna's gasp of wonder, at the sight of the dawn/day/dusk/night views that the sphere of Ice Mirrors showed. She didn't immediately notice him watching her from his spire, but when she did he set aside his book and flew down to her.
When he landed in the space the sprites cleared for him, just a few feet away from her, she averted her gaze and stared down at her feet uncertainly. In response to that, he smiled reassuringly.
"Hey now, there's no need to be nervous. I never had any intention of harming you, it was just that you panicked... My sprites like you, and they're a good judge of character. Welcome to the Winter Sanctuary, Yuki-onna."
She raised her head to regard him, still uncertain.
"Why did you bring me here?"
Jack balanced his staff on his shoulder, and sighed.
"I was told about someone, so terribly lonely, who kept harming people by accident in her desperation for contact with others... You're an Immortal, and nothing can change that. The kind of contact you seem to want with humans, hasn't been possible for you... But that doesn't mean you have to be alone." He closed the distance between them, and put a hand on her shoulder before she had time to flinch away from him. "I can put some control on your power to freeze things, so that it no longer slips free when you don't mean for it to. I can also offer you a home here."
Yuki-onna stared at him, in surprise and barest hope.
"You'd do that for me?"
Jack nodded, his expression wry.
"I've even thought of a job for you... My Winter Sprites like to go exploring the snowy places of the world, riding on the winds to get there, but they also have a habit of not returning when they should. They like you, and I can see that you like them, so how about it? Would you like to serve me as a Lieutenant, and help me by making sure the sprites return here for the times between Southern and Northern Winters?"
She was looking at him with such hope, such fearful yearning, that for a moment it seemed impossible that she was more than a thousand years older than him. She then dropped to her knees, in the middle of the group of sprites who crooned at her in concern and patted her on the arms to comfort her. A few of them were even looking at her hopefully, bounding up and down chattering in a fashion that could only be interpreted as 'Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea se say yes!'
She noticed their excitement and eagerness, her gaze flicking between then and Jack, who was still watching her.
"Do you really mean it? This isn't some cruel joke, to taunt me like so many other Immortals have done?"
Jack held out his staff, to touch the tip of it to her shoulder.
"Swear to serve me as a Lieutenant of Winter, and find out."
Yuki-onna looked into his eyes, as he regarded her unwaveringly, and then she took a deep and shuddering breath.
"I... I swear to serve you, the Spirit of Winter, as your Lieutenant."
Jack smiled warmly.
"Then I accept your vow, Lady Yuki."
He threaded a strand of the Power of Winter into her, simultaneously putting a firm leash on the destructive side of her abilities so that only if she deliberately reached for them, would they come forth. In return he got no noticeable power boost from her, since she had no true believers, but he didn't care about that.
She, however, did feel an immediate difference. A sense of surety in her power, like she at last had real control.
"I..." She looked at him, breathless due to the surge of hope in her, realising something. "You called me 'Lady Yuki'. But, that's not my name."
Jack chuckled.
"You act more like a young girl than a 'woman', so 'snow woman' didn't really seem a fitting name for you... Lady Yuki, 'Lady Snow', fits much better." He pulled her to her feet. "You're a Lieutenant of Winter now, which means you can 'reinvent' yourself. It's a fresh start, and a chance to be free of the chains that your Legend had become. Now you can teach people to believe in the new you, the you that can guide travellers to safety in blizzards, without fearing that being close to them will only hasten their end."
Yuki remained where she was, still breathless with hope and now smiling with utter joy. Around her and Jack, the sprites were dashing about chattering in excitement, and he shooed them out of the palace after asking her to keep them entertained while he sorted out somewhere for her to stay.
Once they'd gone off, to show her around the sanctuary, Jack got to work. He didn't want to keep adding random rooms to his palace, and at the same time decided that he wanted his Lieutenants, but present and future, to have some place that was theirs.
He forged a new building out of ice, a short distance from his palace, in the heart of a distinctive collection of stalagmites and stalactites. It was basic, consisting of a large communal chamber which he could add personal rooms to the edges of, but with time his Lieutenants could fill it with whatever items they themselves wanted.
Jack made a room for Cernunnos, despite knowing it would probably never be used. Then he made a room for Yuki, and decorated the walls with frost-patterns of bamboo and flowers before creating a snow-bed to serve as a temporary sleeping arrangement until she decided to keep it or change it for something else.
And by the time he took her to see her new permanent home in the Winter Sanctuary, he'd also collected a package from Ombric that contained the replacement for her tattered kimono. The room had her laughing in delight, yet the new kimono had her hugging him in utter joy. And when she started crying in sheer happiness, Jack shoved another Winter Sprite into her grasp.
She stared at it for a moment, then at him, and burst out laughing. He knew then that, in matters of Lieutenants and allies, he had made a very good start.
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Alaia Skyhawk: Well, I hope you guys like Yuki. With her, I asked myself 'what would it be like for an Immortal, if their legend described them as being something opposite their true wants and personality? Would they be trapped by that?'
I thought the legend of Yuki-onna would be perfect for that, since most stories about her portray her as being bad, and even the one sort-of good version still has her threatening death. In my version, she's actually just very misunderstood, and Jack helps her change that :)