by Amy Wilson
‘Maybe it’ll be good for them,’ I try. ‘Maybe they’ll realize how much they miss each other, and he’ll come back and they’ll be happier.’
‘D’you think?’ She looks up at me with all this hope in her tear-filled eyes, and I feel mean, because it’s not likely, is it? And now she’ll feel even worse if it doesn’t happen.
‘Well, it’s a trial separation,’ I say, to convince us both. ‘I mean, that’s just the same as taking a break from someone. The point is to miss them, and realize how good you’ve got it, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ she says. ‘I didn’t really think of it like that. It seemed more like they were doing it to get rid of each other.’
‘Well, we can hope,’ I say firmly, because there doesn’t seem anything else to say. I pull my hat down further over my head, shivering and hoping I’m not about to start turning blue all over.
‘Conor said he saw you talking to Alberic earlier,’ Mallory says with a sidelong look and a bit of a smirk.
‘Oh, yeah. That was weird.’
‘What were you talking about?’
‘He asked why you were upset, and I told him “personal reasons”. Then he just sort of stared at me really . . .’
‘He’s really got a thing for you!’ she says.
‘O-o-oh, I don’t know,’ I stammer.
‘Ha, you’re blushing! It’s like love at first sight, Owl!’
‘No, it isn’t. You don’t believe in things like that, anyway.’
‘Yeah, but you’re a bit more receptive, aren’t you? And anyway, he’s not that bad. Just keeps to himself, from what I can see. And he’s quite . . . dramatic-looking.’
‘How about Justin?’ I ask, to change the subject.
‘Dunno,’ she says, suddenly all moody again. ‘He’s all with the looks, but, you know, he’s still with Daisy. Not right, is it?’
‘There’s always Conor, you know . . .’
‘Owl!’
‘Well, it’s true!’
She makes a vomiting sound and we both grin, and then we’re in the lane and nearly home and all the laughter goes out of her eyes.
‘I’ll text you later,’ I say, giving her a quick hug. ‘Hope it’s all right tonight, Mall.’
‘I’ll get through it,’ she says, blowing her cheeks out with a big sigh. ‘See you tomorrow.’
She trails away from me, her footsteps getting slower and slower as she draws closer to her house. It’s a nice house – one of those old terraces, with big bay windows. Her mum works from home, translating legal documents from German to English. There’s usually baking going on, and amazing cakes, and cookies to raid from the tin. I wonder if she’ll have done any baking today. I imagine walking into the house to find it just a bit quieter and colder, everything the same as yesterday except not, not at all.
I like her mum and dad. They’re not exactly gushing. They feel a bit prim compared to my mum, everything neat and tidy and well organized; their smiles a bit distracted while they check out the mud on your shoes. But they’re nice enough.
Poor Mallory.
I’ve made a new decision.
I don’t know quite where it came from, but something about today has made everything turn in my head. Like if anything can happen, then maybe I should be trying to make the things I want to happen. I think of Alberic, stirring up the wind, telling me we have something in common. The frost in my hair, and the rush of autumn leaves – he knows far more than I do about it all. And then I think of Mallory, who has no control in what’s going on at home. And honestly, none of it makes sense. My normal day was about as far as you can get from normal. So, I’ve eaten my leftover daal like a good girl tonight, and Mum’s got half an eye on me but most of her mind is with her work, and I’ve told her I’m going to revise for the maths test next week, when really I’m doing some research.
Yep. I’m googling Jack Frost.
There’s a film, where he’s a boy, a guardian of the world. And then there are loads of images of him as an old man, laying his hands on the outspread leaves of winter trees, drawing icicles out of guttering, sealing windows with a touch.
When does frost actually appear? Is it really all down to one person? How could one person cover the whole of the world? Because it’s always winter somewhere, isn’t it? I get lost in my research, and find out more than I ever thought I’d know about frost. It’s water vapour, basically, which condenses as ice on things like grass and rooftops. But none of it helps me to work out why I’m prone to breaking out in my own private weather storm. And it doesn’t help me to control it either. It’s happened a few times today; nothing too dramatic, just a feeling that creeps up on me and then there it is – kind of beautiful, frosted fractal shapes on the skin between my fingers, along my jawbone.
‘Owl, are you still working?’
I click off Google and pull my book towards me.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want a hot drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘I’m going to work for a bit longer,’ she pokes her head in, her eyes slightly distracted, as they always are when she’s stuck in on something. ‘Don’t be too late, love. School tomorrow . . .’
‘OK.’
She pauses, looking me up and down. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Yep. Just . . . working . . .’
‘Mmm. Well. Go careful.’
Is she psychic? It wouldn’t surprise me. Either way, she leaves me to it and after a few minutes I have a really stupid idea.
I’m going to find him.
It’s crazy. How does a person go about finding a fairy-tale character? I mean, he’s not just going to be dancing over the rooftops, is he? Is he? I’ve tried to tell myself it’s all rubbish but Mum doesn’t lie. And normal girls don’t cry ice; don’t stare out of dark windows imagining what it would really be like if they found Jack Frost and he was their father.
So, I have to try. And if it really is all real, then there will be something between us, won’t there? Some sort of frost connection that will lead me to him, or him to me? It’s worth a try. I can’t just sit here forever anyway, wondering, questioning myself and everything I’ve ever known. My scalp itches with irritation as I fret over it and when I go to scratch, my hair is crisp with frost. That decides it. I pull on a dark jumper and my boots and prowl through the flat like a burglar, creeping out of the door when I’m sure Mum’s back up in the studio.
It’s bitterly cold outside and it rained earlier in the evening, so there are puddles in all the gutters. I tread in one by accident as I head across the road, making for the suspension bridge, and when I look down the water is freezing all around my foot. I reach down to touch it and where my fingers meet the ice, little veins of white appear, spreading across the surface.
Wow!
I look around, afraid someone will be watching, but nobody’s about. It’s nearly midnight and too cold for anyone to want to be outside. I tread through all the puddles I can find, a thrill rushing through me every time I turn back to see the trail of frozen water I’m leaving behind me. I jump into the next big one, feeling a bit foolish and a bit excited, completely gobsmacked when a cloud of pale ice crystals rises up around me on impact, spinning in the night air before drifting to the ground. It’s like being in a snowglobe: my very own little world, all of ice; and for a moment I’m so mesmerized, I forget about my mission. And then the moon breaks through the clouds, and the world seems to blaze silver around me. And I remember.
Jack.
I run on, every so often looking around to see the traces of winter I’ve left behind. The moon seems to urge me onward, onward, and my feet fly faster and faster as the world around me sparkles silver with new frost. By the time I get to the bridge adrenalin is pumping through my body, a hot-cold sensation I’ve never known before. I lean against the railing looking up at the moon, a grin spreading over my face at the infinite possibilities that suddenly seem spread out before me. If there’s magic in the world then
this is it, and I’m part of it! The feeling thrills through me and then a creaking sound breaks the silence behind me; when I turn, the whole of the railing has been wrapped in a thick layer of ice that cascades to the bridge itself, sparkling in the moonlight and throwing jagged new shapes on to the hard, frost-covered ground. My fingers look almost like they were cast in ice themselves as they grip the railing, as my heart pounds and the ice spreads, further, further, until it feels like I could cover the world with it, standing here forever, just watching the magic take over.
This is Jack’s power.
This is mine.
‘What is this?’ demands a voice.
I spin to see who’s speaking but nobody’s there.
‘What are you? What do you do here?’
I look around again, trying to find the source of the voice. It’s not a whisper exactly, but it’s not quite normal speech either. It sounds more like the hissing of an old steam train than anything else.
‘Answer me!’
‘I can’t, I don’t know . . .’
There’s a soft booming sound and the whole bridge seems to vibrate. I look down to the other end, and I can see it: a tide of ice, coming right at me. And not only on the railings, not only a thin frost of it on the ground, but a great swell, a roaring wall of ice blooming over everything, jagged ridges of it forming on either side and a swathe through the middle. The lights on the bridge make the whole thing glow and then, finally, I see a shadowy figure stalking towards me, his arms held low and wide, as if conducting.
Oh, help! I step back but I’m too late, the tide swells and bursts around me, and I don’t think, I just leap up, out of its path, landing awkwardly on warped ridges of ice thicker than I’ve ever seen. I balance myself, my heart tripping in my chest as he gets closer, and I tell myself, ‘This is what I wanted. It’s what I gambled on.’
I stand in his path, my fists clenched at my sides.
It’s Jack Frost.
He is like nothing I would ever have imagined. Taller, wilder, more powerful than any of Mum’s stories warned me. The air around him blurs with a thousand little shards of ice. His dark hair is tipped with frost, his eyebrows thick with it. He is pale-skinned, the angles in his face accentuated by the blue tinge in the hollows of his cheekbones and beneath his eyes.
‘Are you Jack Frost?’ my small voice rings out, surprising both of us.
‘Some call me thus,’ he says, leaning forward to study me, his gaze fierce. ‘And you? You have been making your own small winter here. What creature are you? Do you seek to challenge me?’ He tilts his head to one side, his movements all slightly too fast, too stilted, a hungry grin sending a shiver down my spine. ‘You may, if you wish. I like a challenge, and you may be worthy. I could hear your play half a thousand miles away.’
I take a step back. This is not a man. This is not a father. This is an elemental creature, who thinks I challenge him. There is nothing in his face of kindness or humanity; nothing I can find there to relate to.
He thinks I am a creature like him.
But I’m not.
I’m. Just. Not.
I turn and run, and there’s a crack of brittle laughter behind me and my whole body is ringing with the shock of it all, my mind a fizzing, confused storm of too many images and too many emotions. I run, as fast as I can, for as long as I can. And then I collide with something, and everything goes black.
This was his part of the world, he told her, and there had never been another like her there before. For centuries, since the Norsemen first named him, he had been alone there, his only companions the wolves of winter and the Owl, who appeared when he had work to do. She would call him back to her world, he said, and there he would lay the first traces of winter, signalling to all nature that it was time to rest.
It was in her world that he would meet with his brothers and sisters, he told her, while they walked in the mountains. The air was cold and sharp and her breath steamed before her but his did not; all the world around them was an extension of him, there was no part of him that did not fit there.
If he was like no man she had ever known, then his family were wilder, stranger than he by far. They were the powers of the world, names learned in legend and fable. They were all of Mother Earth’s devising: the North Wind, that spread the clouds and whipped up the seas, roaring in full storms and at other times, with only a whisper, playing among autumn trees and rattling at the windows. The Queen of May, who heralded new beginnings, and Lady Midday, who brought heatwave and summer madness, the autumnal Earl of October and the wise old Green Man, and the Lady of the Lake, who has her own kingdom beneath clear waters. He did not see them often, he told her, only when they were called to Mother Earth’s court by the lesser spirits, the winged fairies and the tiny, nimble sprites, all in tribes allegiant to air or fire, water or earth, that they remember their duty to her and do their work as it should be done.
‘Even in chaos there is order,’ he said. ‘Every thing leading to another, keeping the world alive . . . We are part of that cycle.’
She did not know if she was awake or if she dreamed. She did not question, as he held her hand and led her safe up crumbling, shifting hills of snow, as the light changed, and the blue-white shadows over the land grew longer beneath the pale sun. She listened to his stories and heard his loneliness and her own heart panged for she knew that she was only a brief interlude for him, and he for her.
‘It does not change,’ he said, looking out over the lake. ‘All is still here, all is quiet. Sometimes it is what I need, when I have been in the world of men and seen the creep of concrete, the swell of smoke on the horizon. And sometimes I am angry when I am here, for it is my prison, and when I am let out it is only to do my duty. I cannot make the world a different place, I can only do just as I should. It is all I am, all I was made for.’
‘And yet,’ she said, finding her voice in a cloud of steam. ‘And yet you have some power, and liberty. You have form and feeling, does that not count? Does that not make you capable of something more than your limits?’
He did not answer her, then. His silver eyes gleamed as he looked down at her and then he swept her up with him, sliding and tumbling down the hill, landing in a spray of snow and ice, and she flailed on that frozen lake but he did not. His bare feet were firm as though they were on solid ground and as the sun set, turning the whole world a rose-gold pink, he showed her how to dance.
I open my eyes to darkness so complete that for a moment I think I haven’t opened them at all. Then the moon breaks through the clouds and a face appears. Familiar, and not familiar. Probably the last face in the world I need to see while I’m lying all confused on the ground.
Alberic.
He reaches down to help me sit.
‘Are you all right? What were you doing?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know . . .’ I shift back, straining my eyes until I’ve worked out that we’re beneath a massive oak tree in the middle of a field. It’s the old common. I’ve flown kites here, made daisy chains, tried my best at cartwheels (Mallory put me to shame, every time), shared picnics with Mum, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been here in full night. All the shapes that would normally be so familiar are like little bits of nightmare: fences creaking, spiny trees clustered together like gnarled old men and, for a moment, I’m sure I see strange shapes darting along the hedges in the distance, little otherworldly creatures, ready to chase and pounce and gibber and howl.
When I look back there’s nothing at all, just a solid line of black where the hedge is. I shake my head and pull myself up against the tree, ignoring the wobble in my knees. If there was something there, it’s gone now.
‘What are we doing here?’ I ask, making my voice firm. ‘Why are you here?’
‘You rushed into me,’ he says. ‘Don’t you remember? You came right at me and then sort of collapsed. I staggered about a bit and then managed to carry you here.’
‘But why?’ I look around as a low autumn breeze begi
ns to play with the leaves on the ground, picking them up and shuffling them like cards before throwing them out in all directions. I give Alberic a sharp look as my hair blows back from my face. His eyes are focused on the leaves, his expression distracted. ‘Why you? Why here?’
‘I don’t know! I was lucky, I suppose.’ He shakes his head, the leaves drifting silently back to the ground. ‘I didn’t know where else to take you. I don’t know where you live! What were you doing out there, anyway?’
‘I was looking for . . . someone.’
He stares at me. ‘Did you go looking for Jack? Did you find him?’
What did I find? Not what I was looking for. I try to forget the way Jack looked, the way he acted when he saw me.
‘How do you know I was looking for Jack?’
‘I know who you are,’ he says, his voice gentle. ‘I told you, we come from the same place. And even if I didn’t know before, it’s clear. It shows on you.’
‘What shows? What place?’
‘You’re connected to Jack. You have the same affinity with ice and frost. There were rumours of a daughter . . .’
‘Rumours?’
‘At the Royal Court,’ he says. ‘The Royal Fay Court of Mother Earth.’
He says it with such reverence. The Royal Fay Court of Mother Earth. All the little bits of nightmare seem to come to life again and for a moment I think that perhaps I’m just going to drown in all of this, that nothing will ever be the same again, no matter what I want. Then I think of Mum discovering my empty room. How long have I been out? It must be hours by now.
‘I have to go,’ I tell Alberic, dragging myself away from the tree. ‘I can’t just sit around here under trees all night. I’ve got to go home.’
‘Let me help you,’ he says as I stagger forward, narrowly avoiding colliding with him.