Frostbite (On Hold Until Further Notice)

Chapter Two

I watched Jamie and Sophie go inside, then jumped up onto the telephone pole from earlier. As I walked on the wire below me like it was a tightrope, the wind started to call to me.

A stray breeze blew through my hair, making the snow-white (and I’m not exaggerating about the color) tufts blow. I really wish I could bother to get a haircut, and maybe get some gel to destroy the little pieces that always stick up in the wrong directions…

But whatever. I’ll deal with it later, as I say about pretty much everything in my life except the ones that really matter. Like the weird dreams I’ve been having lately. There was a girl. The only things I really remember was that her eyes looked like the sky when you see it through icicles, and that her hair was almost as white as mine, but with a little more blond in it.

And that she was beautiful.

I kept the clearest picture of her I had stuck in my head. Then the wind started pulling at me harder, and I stuck my arms out, yelling, “Wind, take me home!”

A gust suddenly blew up behind me, but I was expecting it. As I said – or wrote, I have got to remember that this is on paper – before, I can ride the wind places. I would’ve gone to St. Petersburg to unleash a snowstorm, but it was kind of late. Not that late means anything to me, but I was hoping I would dream about the girl again. There was something about her, something that made me want to know more about her, and the best way to do that was to sleep on it, literally.

I slid down the wind like it was a snowy mountain and I was a snowboarder, with my magical stick (that sounded very lame, but it’s true) as the snowboard. And then, pulling a jump like one of those winter sports pros that eventually win Olympic medals, I landed.

My home is actually the place where I died. Depressing, right? Well, it’s complicated, but I’ll try to explain it.

For about three hundred years (yeah, that long) I lived here, before I found out that it was actually where I passed away. The way I found out was complicated too. Pitch Black, the guy we defeated, had beaten me and broken my stick-staff-thing in two. I thought it was the source of my powers, and that I couldn’t channel them properly anymore, or call on the wind.

I ended up falling into a deep chasm in the Appalachians, with only a fairy, one of Tooth’s helpers, to keep me company. I was feeling pretty depressed, because I had just betrayed the Guardians to get a little box full of my memories and old baby teeth.

Yeah, to make something clear about the teeth… Have you ever wondered why the Tooth Fairy comes for your baby teeth when you lose them? It’s because they have memories stored deep inside them, the most important ones of you childhood. And when people need to remember something important about their childhood, the fairies help them using the teeth.

Baby Tooth, the fairy that was with me that I had nicknamed, unlocked the little box, and I saw my past. I saw myself fooling around for most of them, which wasn’t unexpected. Then I found out that I had a little sister, which really blew me away. She looked a lot like me. In the memories I had brown hair and eyes, which was really different. The longest and last memory I saw was my sister and I about to go ice-skating.

“Be careful,” my mom said, standing in the doorframe of a small house. My house. I turned around, my skates slung over my shoulder.

Laughing, I told her, “We will!”

Then it fast-forwarded a bit, and I saw my sister, wearing her skates, standing on a patch of thin ice, which was cracking beneath her. She wasn’t moving an inch, fear in her eyes.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said quietly. “Don’t look down, just look at me.” I was bent down a yard or two around her, in my bare feet. I guess I had taken off my skates before the flashback started.

“Jack, I’m scared!” she said. She wasn’t trembling, probably because something inside her knew that the ice would crack and she would fall into the freezing water below if she did, but the trembling was in her voice.

The ice began to fracture around her. “I know, I know.” I got up and tried to step towards her, but the ice cracked under me, too. “You’re gonna be all right, you’re not gonna fall in. Uh, we’re going to have a little fun instead!”

“No, we’re not!” she cried out, her voice rising.

“I won’t trick you!” I tried to look reassuring.

“Yes, you always play tricks!”

“No, well, not – not this time. I promise, I promise you’re gonna be fine. You have to believe in me!”

Her eyes went big, and I could see that she did. At the time I didn’t think so, but now I know that belief is incredibly precious. “You wanna play a game? We’re gonna play hopscotch, like we do every day. It’s as easy as one…”

Even though the ice cracked some more below me, I had to keep looking like I had it under control. I just had to save her. I did a grandiose impression of stumbling, and she laughed. She was forgetting the danger she was in and having fun! It was working!

“Two, three!” I hoped onto the safe, thicker ice, and crouched down, grabbing a crook-like stick I had noticed earlier. “All right. Now it’s your turn.”

Her eyes went big again. I held the stick at the ready. My sister was small, and she would fit perfectly inside the half-moon shape of it.

“One…” I said, and she took a step. The ice cracked menacing under her skates, and she gasped loudly.

“That’s it. Two…” She took one more step, and that was all I needed. I grabbed onto her and threw her behind me and to safety. But the force behind the throw of some seventy-five pounds threw me back to where she had been standing.

She looked up, and smiled. I smiled back, but then the ice collapsed underneath me. “Jack!” she yelled, but it was too late. I had sunk too deep to get out again.

I remember that, strangely enough, the moon was right over the patch of collapsed ice, and I could see it. Even though I was running out of air, it was comforting to me that the moon was watching over me as I died.

Then I got the illusion that it grew bigger, and as I sunk, and blacked out, all I remembered was its gentle beams washing over my face with the cold, cold water.

But even after I found out that I had died there, in the frozen river that fed into a pond, I was still okay with staying there. It felt like it was a part of me was there, you know? It was because it’s where I found out what my center was: I use fun to help people. My center is what makes me a Guardian.

Wow, I have officially become the Snow King of rambling! I guess I suddenly have way too much to say for one little brown notebook I took from a card shop. So I’m going to try to stop talking too much… and most likely fail. Back to the story.

I slid around on the ice until I came to a full stop, then I sat down on the snowy banks of the pond, and I put my head in my hands. As I calmed down (I was pretty hyper after that ride) I began to think about that girl again.

I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I was asleep, and dreaming.

*Note that little bit of foreshadowing when I write 'Snow King'... lol and I think you can probably guess who the girl is!*