The room began to darken. Jack raised his head and discovered Pitch’s shadow hovering above him.
“Looking for something?” Pitch asked. His shadow moved around the walls, then disappeared into a narrow, cramped hallway.
Pitch cackled with laughter as Jack raised his staff and began to follow.
“Don’t be afraid, Jack,” Pitch said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Afraid?” Jack continued searching for Pitch. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe not,” Pitch said. “But you are afraid of something.”
“You think so, huh?” Jack asked.
Pitch’s shadow then moved to a bridge above Jack’s head. Shadows fell everywhere.
“I know so. It’s the one thing I always know.” Pitch stepped into the light and faced Jack. “People’s greatest fears. Yours is that no one will ever believe in you.”
Jack felt a surge of panic. He’d never told anyone what he was most afraid of, but somehow Pitch knew. Jack searched the room for a way out. He had to escape. The shadows in the cave surrounded him and what he thought was a wall was actually the floor. Jack spun around, desperate to find an exit.
Pitch had disappeared again, but his voice still boomed throughout the Lair. “And worst of all, you’re afraid you’ll never know why. Why you? Why were you chosen to be like this?”
At that moment, Jack found an exit, but it was closed off with bricks. He watched as Pitch’s shadow moved in closer.
“Well, fear not, for the answer to that is right here.” Pitch held out a tooth box toward Jack. The box had a picture of a little boy and the name JACK FROST written on it. “Do you want them, Jack? Your memories?” Pitch jiggled the box so that the teeth rattled.
Jack held back his hands. He wanted to reach out and grab the teeth, but then again, he couldn’t. Taking them from Pitch would be a mistake. While he debated what to do, Pitch moved back into the main area of the cavernous lair.
“Everything you wanted to know is in this little box,” Pitch taunted.
Jack pursued Pitch, but every time he got close, Pitch moved away. It was as though Jack was trapped in a carnival fun house. More and more shadows of Pitch began to appear.
“Why did you end up like this?” the many Pitches continued. “Unseen. Unable to reach out to anyone. You want the answers so badly. You want to grab them and fly off with them, but you’re afraid of what the Guardians will think.”
Jack felt the shadows all around him. He was trapped in a corner.
“You’re afraid of disappointing them,” the many Pitches went on. “Well, let me ease your mind about one thing: They’ll never accept you. Not really.”
Jack waved his hands at the shadows. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it!”
“After all, you’re not one of them,” Pitch said, pulling all the shadows of himself together and standing in front of Jack.
“You don’t know what I am,” Jack said, taking aim at Pitch with his staff.
Pitch laughed. “Of course I do. You’re Jack Frost. You make a mess wherever you go. Why, you’re doing it right now.”
Pitch tossed Jack’s tooth box into the air.
Jack caught it and then asked, “What did you do?”
Pitch smiled. “More to the point, Jack, what did you do?
With an echoing laugh, Pitch moved backward through the room. Anger filled Jack, and he lunged, but he wrapped his arms around nothing but air. An instant later Jack was swallowed into one of Pitch’s blackest holes.
Jack landed in an egg tunnel and charged, ready to fight Pitch, but then he remembered he’d left someone behind . . . someone important. “Baby Tooth!” he cried out. When he tried to go back to Pitch’s Lair, he ran right into one of Bunny’s Sentinel eggs. His fingers closed around his tooth box in fear as he examined his surroundings. The eggs! Thousands of colored eggs were smashed in the tunnels surrounding the Warren.
“No . . . ,” Jack said breathlessly.
CHAPTER
NINE
Jack raced to find Bunny and the Guardians. Bunny was hiding in some bushes, watching an Easter egg hunt in England. The kids were wandering around a garden with disappointment in their eyes.
“Come on, let’s go,” one kid told the others. “There’s nothing.”
“Maybe he just hid them really well this year,” suggested another kid.
Bunny hopped out and then scampered across the grass. “Kids! Oi!”
A boy gave up. “Nah, I checked everywhere,” he reported. “There’s nothing!”
“Yes, there is!” Bunny called out. “I mean, these aren’t my best-lookin’ googies, but they’ll do in a pinch.” Bunny held out a broken egg.
“I can’t believe it,” a girl said.
“I know.” Bunny looked down sadly at his colored bits of shell.
“There’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny,” the girl told the others.
“What?” Bunny cleared his ears.
The children began to walk away from the park. Bunny chased them down, shouting, “No! Wrong! Not—not true. I’m right in front of ya, mate.”
The kids passed through Bunny as if he were vapor, and continued down the path.
“Let’s get out of here,” a boy said.
Bunny touched his belly. Tugged at his ears. He was there. He knew he was there!
“They don’t see me.” Bunny’s shoulders drooped. “They don’t see me.”
Jack arrived just as the kids were giving up their egg search. He hung back while Tooth went to comfort Bunny.
“Where were you, Jack?” North came up behind him. North looked exhausted. His red coat was stained and tattered. “The Nightmares attacked the tunnels. They smashed every egg, crushed every basket. Nothing made it to the surface.”
Tooth came over to Jack and North. She spotted the box in Jack’s hands and then asked, “Where’d you get that?”
“I was . . . . It’s . . . ” Jack stumbled over his words.
Tooth was furious. “Where’s Baby Tooth? Oh, Jack, what have you done?”
“That is why you weren’t here?” North asked. “You were with Pitch instead?
“No, listen, listen . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Jack tried to explain.
Bunny hopped over. “He has to go,” he said without hesitation.
Jack was stunned. “What?”
Bunny looked heartbroken as he said, “We should never have trusted you. Easter is new beginnings, new life. Easter is about hope.” He groaned. “And now it’s gone.”
Jack turned from Bunny to look at Tooth and North. They both turned away from him. It was exactly as Pitch had warned. The Guardians didn’t need him. They didn’t want him around anymore.
Reaching into his pocket, Jack pulled out the little Russian doll North had given him in the Workshop. He stared at it for a long moment, then tossed the doll to the ground. Jack created a big gust of wind and then leaped into the breeze.
Back in Burgess, it was already late afternoon, and Jamie stood on a ladder, still searching for Easter eggs in the rain gutters around his house. As he looked over the roof, the ladder began to topple.
“Whoaaa, whoa, whoa, aaaah!” Jamie shrieked when the ladder tipped over. He grabbed the gutter for support, but it broke loose, and Jamie crashed down into a mound of snow.
Rising, he dusted snow off his back. On second look, the Easter egg he thought he saw turned out to be a dirty old tennis ball. Jamie’s friends began to laugh.
They picked up their empty Easter baskets.
“Let’s check the park again,” Jamie suggested.
Caleb was annoyed. “Really?”
“For what, the Easter Bunny?” Claude added.
“Guys, I told you,” Jamie said. “I saw him! He’s way bigger than I thought, and he’s got these cool boomerang things—”
“Ah, man, seriously?” Claude rolled his eyes.
Jamie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What’s happened t
o you guys?”
“It was a dream,” Caleb explained. “You should be happy you still get dreams like that and not—”
“Nightmares,” Cupcake finished his sentence.
The others turned to walk away. Pippa held back. “Forget it, Jamie. There’s no Easter this year.”
Jamie stood alone, holding an empty Easter basket. “He really is real,” he muttered to himself. “I know he is.”
Up at the North Pole, the yetis stood watch at the Globe of Belief. Lights were going out faster than they could count.
After he left the Guardians, Jack went down to Antarctica. He stood on the edge of an iceberg, holding the tooth box. He wondered if he should just throw it out into the ocean.
Pitch came out of the shadows and stood next to Jack.
“I thought this might happen,” Pitch remarked.
Jack didn’t look up.
“You can’t blame me, Jack,” Pitch continued. “They’re the ones who abandoned you. But I understand.”
Now Jack turned to face Pitch, and he blasted frost at him. Pitch met the frost with nightmare sand.
“You don’t understand anything!” Jack cried, continuing to hurl ice and frost at Pitch.
“No?” Pitch asked as he blocked all of Jack’s attempts with nightmare sand. “I don’t know what it’s like to be cast out? To long for a family?”
Lowering his staff, Jack began to listen to what Pitch was saying.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised. I was someone once too, you know.” Pitch moved closer. “We don’t have to be alone, Jack. I believe in you. And I know children will too.”
Jack gave Pitch his full attention. “In me?” he asked.
“Yes!” Pitch answered, and gestured to the white frost and black sand covering the iceberg. “Look what we can do! What goes together better than cold and dark?”
Jack looked around at the frost and sand sculptures as Pitch continued. “We can make them believe,” Pitch said. “We’ll give them a world where everything is—”
“Pitch-black,” Jack suggested, realizing then that this was all about Pitch’s personal fame.
Pitch quickly added, “And Jack Frost too. They’ll believe in both of us.”
Jack considered the offer, then said, “No, they’ll fear both of us. And that’s not what I want.” He turned to walk away. “Now, for the last time, leave me alone.”
“Very well,” Pitch said. “You want to be left alone? Done. But first . . . ” A familiar, tinkly sound forced Jack to spin back around.
“Baby Tooth!” Jack charged forward to rescue her from Pitch.
“The staff, Jack,” Pitch demanded. “You have a bad habit of interfering. Now hand it over, and I’ll let her go.”
Pitch tightened his grasp, and Baby Tooth squeaked.
She couldn’t breathe.
Jack gave Pitch his staff.
Pitch scooped it up happily, twirling the magical staff in his hand.
“All right,” Jack told Pitch. “Now let her go.”
Pitch chuckled. “No. You said you wanted to be alone.” Baby Tooth wriggled in Pitch’s hand and pecked at it. Pitch cried out and threw Baby Tooth into the air. She fell into an ice canyon.
As Baby Tooth was falling through the air, Jack lunged, screaming, “No!”
Then Pitch took Jack’s staff and broke it in half. Lightning exploded from the stick. Nightmares swirled around Jack, slamming him into a wall of ice. The iceberg began to crack. Jack stumbled forward, moaning softly as chunks of ice collapsed around him. Pitch threw the pieces of staff aside.
Unable to get sure footing, Jack tumbled into a large crack in the ice, down into an endless frozen chasm.
As he fell, Jack could hear Pitch’s evil laughter echoing far, far above.
The crack in the ice was not endless. Jack landed hard at the bottom. Aching from the fall, Jack raised himself up and looked around. In an icy corner, he discovered Baby Tooth lying on the ground.
“Baby Tooth!” Jack held her gently in his hands. “You all right?”
Baby Tooth nodded, but she was cold and injured. Jack hugged her close. She shivered.
“Sorry, bad idea,” he said, holding Baby Tooth away. “All I can do is keep you cold.” He sighed. “Pitch was right, I make a mess out of everything.”
Baby Tooth wriggled herself into Jack’s jacket pocket, where it was warm . . . and where Jack had stashed his tooth box.
Too tired to even think about getting out, Jack leaned back against a wall and began to close his eyes. A voice called out to him from his memory.
“Jack . . . Jack . . . ” He opened his eyes to discover a golden glow coming from the tooth box in his pocket. “Jack,” the voice said again.
Baby Tooth gave him a look that meant he should open the box.
Jack reached out toward the lid, and as he did, the top popped open. Inside were a handful of his baby teeth. The teeth glowed with intense light.
Memories washed over Jack like a waterfall.
His family lived in colonial times, in the same small village Jack had come to when he first awoke in the moonlight. And it was the village that had grown into the town of Burgess, where Jamie lived today.
He heard his mother calling, “Come on, Jack. You can’t have fun all the time.” Then Jack saw himself as a child, playing in the trees.
“Stop tricking us,” Jack’s sister called playfully.
Another memory flooded Jack. He and his family were warming themselves by a big fire. He wore antlers, trying to make everyone laugh.
“You’re funny, Jack,” a boy said.
The memory changed again. Now young Jack was out at the Pond with his sister, ice-skating in the center of the frozen water. As a child, Jack had brown eyes and brown hair, not Jack Frost’s blue eyes and white hair.
A small crack was forming in the ice under his sister’s skates. She wobbled, and the crack began to grow.
“Jack, I’m scared,” his sister said.
“I know, I know, but you’re gonna be all right. You’re not gonna fall in. We’re gonna have a little fun instead.” Jack looked around for the safest way back to solid ground.
“No, we’re not,” his sister replied.
“Would I trick you?” Jack asked.
She was so frightened, a tear rolled down her face. “Yes! You always play tricks!”
Jack giggled. “Well, all right. But not this time. I promise. I promise you’re gonna be . . . ” He paused to look at the ice cracks. “You’re gonna be fine.” Jack stared into his sister’s eyes. “You have to believe in me.”
His sister choked back her tears and gave a small smile.
Jack told her what to do. “You wanna play a game? We’re going to play hopscotch! Like we play every day.” He showed his sister how to make the first leap toward the Pond’s edge.
“It’s as easy as one . . . ” Jack jumped, but landed unsteadily. Grinning, as if his stumble was on purpose, he called out, “Two.” Jack leaped again. “Three!” He was at the shore.
He held out his arms toward his sister. “All right,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.” Jack reached down by his feet and picked up a stick lying on the ice. He held out his new staff toward her. “One.”
She hopped carefully.
“That’s it, that’s it,” Jack said. He pushed the staff out, so she could grab it. “Two.”
She was almost there.
“Three.” Jack’s sister grabbed the end of the staff, and using all his strength, Jack flung her to the shore. But he couldn’t hold on to his own balance, and Jack was thrust back onto the Pond. He crashed through the ice, into the freezing cold water.
“Jack!” his sister shouted.
Jack looked up through the ice to make sure she was safe. And then he began to sink.
Under the water, Jack could see the full moon shining down on him. The moonlight grew brighter and brighter until Jack’s entire body began to glow. His eyes flashed open.
They had changed
from brown to blue.
Jack sat up and looked at Baby Tooth. “Did you see that?” he asked, excited about the memory.
Baby Tooth tweeted. She was excited for Jack, but she couldn’t see into his memory.
“It was me!” Jack pushed himself up to stand. “I had a family. I had a sister!” He slowed down as he realized just what his memories meant. “I saved her.”
Suddenly, moonlight filled the narrow cavern at the bottom of the ice crack. Jack looked up to see the moon peeking out at him from behind a cloud.
“That’s why you chose me,” he whispered to the Man in the Moon. “I’m a Guardian.”
The moon shone a little brighter.
Baby Tooth tried to flit out of Jack’s hand, but she was too injured.
“We have to get out of here,” Jack said as he saw his broken staff lying in two pieces on the ice.
Jack tried to put the staff back together, but it kept falling apart. Finally, Jack managed to throw off a blue spark, which turned to light. The wooden pieces melded together, and the staff became whole again.
Jack smiled. “Come on, Baby Tooth! I owe you one.”
With Baby Tooth in his pocket, Jack rode the wind out of the cavern and straight to Pitch’s Lair. Moving quickly, they set all the Mini Fairies free.
Once the cages were open, Jack told them, “Come on, let’s go.” But none of them moved.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked. “None of you can fly?”
Jack was struggling with how to help them when Baby Tooth drew his attention to Pitch’s Globe. It was dark. It looked as though there were no lights left.
There were no longer any children who believed.
At the North Pole, a yeti was putting the last, freshly painted red robot on a shelf when the factory started to shake. All the robots fell off the shelf. The yeti groaned.
“Paint ’em black!” Pitch’s voice boomed as nightmare sand began to streak around the factory.
Rise of the Guardians Movie Novelization Page 6