Elle doubted the dream theory. If this was a normal dream, she knew she would be able to have some control in it. Here and now, she had none. Hours seemed to pass at hyper speed. Elle could see the moon quickly shifting to different points in the sky before the sun rose. That was when she saw the first hint of a frosted white mop of hair slowly rising from the near-frozen lake.
Jack was beyond pale as he slowly rose from the lake to walk himself out. His skin was tinted a light blue while his lips looked purple. No blood colored his cheeks. His face was no longer beaten and bloody, but he still looked sickly. Both of Jack’s eyes still had the brief proof that they had been swollen shut. His arm hung at an awkward angle to show it was still broken. Elle’s eyes widened in horror. Jack literally rose from the lake, looking half dead and beyond freezing. Elle stepped closer, and that was when she noticed that Jack seemed surprised he was even alive. He glanced down at his fingers, no doubt noticing the sickly pale color they were. Looking around his body, Jack seemed to have a hard time reconciling the fact that he was alive. He took a few steps in the snow, looking like a newborn fawn on shaky legs. After he took a few steps and seemed satisfied he wasn’t going to fall over, Jack looked to the sky as he saw the sun had risen. He took off in a mad sprint toward the forest.
Elle followed after him. She was barefoot and already sore from her time in the arena, but she felt she had to follow him. Jack whipped and zoomed throughout the forest, passing many tall trees and leafless bushes while he ran. It was difficult to keep up with him. His run finally slowed as he neared the small cottage at the end of the snowy trail. Jack looked relieved as he sprinted up the path toward the open front door. “Mother, Father?” he shouted, running inside. “Mother? I am home! Please come with haste!”
Elle was making to move toward the front door where he had gone before a long staff-like object touched her shoulder. She jumped in fear to find a little boy standing nearby, shaking his head lightly once he caught Elle’s gaze. “Don’t go in there,” he said quietly.
Elle looked around her in fear, her heart beating madly. A little boy who looked no more than seven or eight stood nearby as he wielded an off type of icicle staff. He looked bored as he watched Elle. The boy’s sandy-brown hair was in a very messy display as his too-grey eyes bored deeply into Elle’s eyes. It took her a moment to register that this little boy looked remarkably familiar.
“W-where am I?” she asked, confused beyond belief. That’s when the screaming started. Elle turned to see where Jack had gone. Inside the cottage, a bloodcurdling screaming could be heard. It gave off the impression that the person issuing the scream was in the utmost of unimaginable pain.
Elle made to move toward the door before the little boy roughly whacked the back of her head with the staff. “Ow!”
“What did I just tell you?” the boy asked crossly. “Do you want to see someone’s face ripped off?” Elle stared at the strange little boy before rubbing her head. He looked smug that he spooked her. “Then park it right here and don’t move.”
That was when Jack appeared in the doorway. His hands were covered in blood as he started sobbing uncontrollably. The young man fell onto his knees as he cried, looking positively heartbroken. He was still covered in the blood from the night before, most of it mixed with new blood that was not his own. Jack’s pale body broke down in front of the small cottage as he sobbed deeply in despair.
Elle couldn’t help her eyes from watering as she watched Jack. His too-pale of face looked positively heavenly in the light sun shining. He looked like a broken angel as he cried. She made to move toward him before the little boy grabbed her forearm and led her away from the scene.
“B-but…we have to help him,” Elle said, making to move only for the boy’s grip on her arm to tighten.
“He’s long past help,” the boy said coldly. “Have you not put together what this is?” Elle wiped the light tears falling from her eyes as she shook her head. The boy rolled his pretty grey eyes. “Come now…you can do it. If what you’re seeing is past events, what is it?”
Elle’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. “A memory,” she said in surprise. The boy nodded before releasing her arm and continuing on his brisk walk. Elle scampered after him, massive confusion taking over. “Wait…What about Jack? Is he okay?” she questioned, unable to stop the pity saturating her voice.
“It was over two hundred years ago,” the boy replied stiffly. “He’s fine.”
Elle followed after the rude boy, not understanding anything. “Why are we here? Why am I seeing this? Who are you?”
“You’ll find out.”
Chapter 19
Elle found she was next inside a busy hospital. She couldn’t explain how she got there. One moment she was being dragged around by the boy and the next she was suddenly in the middle of a hallway while all alone. The boy had disappeared. The hospital was an absolutely normal setting that she could recognize from the real world. Nurses in scrubs were walking to and from places while people made their way to their rooms or to visit loved ones.
“He’s going to be okay,” a familiar voice squeaked. “He’s got time still…” Elle did a double take.
Her head snapped up to stare down the hall at the little girl with curly dark hair. She was sitting at the very end of the hallway. The kid was sitting on the floor wearing jean shorts and a random purple t-shirt that was one size too big for her slender frame. She had the body of a child still, someone yet to reach puberty to develop curves. The child’s feet were covered by black sandals that showed off how horribly painted her toenails were. A ramification of the kid painting them forest green all by herself. She had been multitasking while watching Saturday morning cartoons and barely looking at her nails as she painted them.
This was Elle at age eleven.
Elle gaped at her childhood self before she looked around in wonder. She knew this place. Elle recognized it because it was the last place she was with her father before he passed away. St. Johns Oncology department in New Jersey. Why was she here? Was she dreaming? No matter the reason, Matthew Darrow was nearby, and that made Elle’s heart swell. But that happy feeling at the thought of seeing her father disappeared. This was not a happy memory.
A man in a white coat soon exited Matthew’s room. The doctor looked tired as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Child-Elle perked up from her spot on the floor, taking a break from writing in her journal. Glancing at the book in the girl’s hands, Elle realized she still had the green and brown notebook buried in her closet back home.
Little Elle jumped up from the floor, following after the doctor as he hurried down the hall. “Mister, can I see my dad now?”
The doctor turned to look down at the child with wide eyes. He seemed to be stumped as to how to answer. Adult-Elle knew why this was. The man didn’t want to reveal what he knew. “Uh…sweetie, where’s your mommy?”
Child-Elle didn’t blink as she answered, “I don’t have one.”
The doctor bit his inner cheek, breathing deep through his nose. “Do you have family or friends here with you right now?”
“Nope.” The kid shrugged, attempting to peek into the room only to see her father sleeping. The nurse inside started pulling a white sheet over Matthew Darrow’s head, covering up his face. “What is that lady doing?”
“You don’t have anyone with you right now?” the doctor asked to clarify. He stepped in front of the door to block the girl’s view. He didn’t seem to know what to say to the child who was oblivious that only her father’s corpse was left in that sickly clean-smelling hospital bed. “My grandma and grandpa are coming tonight,” the little girl replied. Her father had called his estranged parents that morning when his stage three cancer took a turn for the worse. He had started vomiting blood from the moment he woke up.
The doctor released a low breath. Not quite wanting to be the one to break the news to a child that her father was gone, the man started to walk away. Little did he know, the small Elle was qui
te stubborn. The little girl gently grabbed his long, flowing white coat to keep him in place. The tall, balding redhead turned. He wore a sheepish look to find the child shaking her head at him. “I’m eleven, not stupid,” young Elle said quietly. “My dad’s dead, isn’t he?” Soon, the nurse closed the blinds to stop anyone from looking inside.
Appearing extremely pained, the doctor slowly nodded at the child, looking on the verge of trying not to let his eyes water. “Yeah. Yeah, he is.”
The little girl nodded solemnly. She started to walk away only for the doctor to grab her arm. “Where are you…ow!” he yelped, retracting his hand quickly. The child-Elle walked away, not sparing her father’s room another glance. Older Elle saw something she hadn’t noticed about this horrible memory back when she was a child. The doctor had removed his fingers from the girl’s bare skin and his hand had started to blister, showing a bad burn.
“Must have burned them while barbecuing this weekend…” the man muttered, turning on his heel and walking away. Elle then realized it was her. Her skin burned the man upon contact. Even as a child, she was showing she wasn’t normal; Elle had just neglected to see the little things while growing up. Now being among the supernatural helped her see things more clearly; she was never technically normal.
The memory started to dissolve. Elle soon found the hospital setting began to disappear around her as a new setting kicked in. St. John’s Hospital had a two-acre plot of land that was specifically reserved for people to walk around and look at the koi pond set up next to a gazebo out back. This was supposed to be a beautiful place that people in late stages of cancer could visit when they wanted to get out of the hospital but were too sick to go far. Elle had walked this place with her dad’s wheelchair and his hospice keeper probably a couple dozen times in a few short weeks.
Older Elle knew where the child was going to hide. She remembered hiding under it as she cried the day her father died. Elle made her way over to the gazebo, toward the hiding place underneath where the younger her was crying. This image brought older Elle’s eyes to widen. She had seen this image before. On her first day of trying to escape Winter’s Kingdom, she had come across drawings of this exact moment. Young Elle was the little girl in the drawing. Young Elle was shaking as heavy tears escaped her. Adult-Elle could feel the sorrow radiating from her; it was the same pain she felt back when this moment had first occurred.
Adult-Elle jumped in surprise as she found Jack Frost was nearby, sitting on top of the large gazebo. His legs dangled off of it. Jack did not look his usual self-assured or too cool to care self. The Jack on top of the gazebo looked crestfallen.
Elle glared. “Why am I here?” she demanded harshly. “You wanted to rub my dad’s death in my face? Well, congratulations…” She trailed off. Her anger slipped away.
To her surprise, Jack did not reply. His grey eyes were down, watching the small child beneath the floor of the lovely man-made wooden gazebo. He closed his eyes as her soft sobs were the only noise to be heard with the exception of the cars passing in the parking lot. “I’m alone…” The little girl sobbed between heavy breaths, rocking back and forth in a ball. “I’m alone…”
That’s when Elle noticed that Jack appeared to be only paying attention to the childhood Elle and not the adult one. He jumped off the gazebo with ease, not making a lick of sound as he did so. Jack jumped off the steps of the gazebo next. Taking a knee beside the child-Elle, Jack watched her with pity. The little girl continued to cry as she held herself in a tight little ball. Her eyes were red and puffy. She was choking on her sobs as she continued to rock back and forth in her small, ball-like form.
Elle slowly approached Jack as he got on bended knee, wondering if he was in fact part of this memory. She didn’t remember him in the original memory of her father dying. It seemed the child crying in front of her couldn’t see him, either. As soon as Elle touched Jack, her fingers slipped straight through him. He was as part of the memory as little Elle was.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop your father’s death,” Jack said quietly, watching the child with an odd form of pity. “I heard of it too late… I thought for sure it would be seventeen years before I saw you again. I suppose we’re both orphans in the land of gods and monsters, huh?”
The child was oblivious to Jack speaking as she continued to cry her eyes out. Jack watched her with strong sadness, shaking his frosted white head. The girl couldn’t see or hear him. She was oblivious to his presence. “Fun fact, child…” Jack said, suddenly standing as he twirled his bow staff in front of the oblivious child. “During the spring, summer, and even fall, I’m absolutely invisible to every mortal and demigod…funny, no?”
The little girl continued to cry. Only now, the small child laid herself on the hard cement to hold her ball position while she cried fresh tears. Jack watched the child before sticking his tongue in his cheek. Grinning suddenly, he tilted his frosted head up toward the sky and began to blow softly, as if he were hoping to remove a speck of dust that floated in front of his face. What seemed like a long period of time began to pass. After a while, gentle snowflakes began to fall down onto the earth. It was now snowing heavily.
The little girl stared up at the sky in awe as Elle remembered this moment. It had started snowing the day her father died. A freak snowstorm hit New Jersey, leaving almost two feet of snow in its wake. It shouldn’t have been snowing in May. The weather was absolutely sunny and perfect; it had been almost seventy degrees out. Elle remembered her teachers at school had been talking about the effects of climate change. Instead, young Elle had taken it as a silly sign her father didn’t want her to be sad. Apparently, she hadn’t been naïve in thinking the snow was to halt her sadness; it just wasn’t provided by her father.
Elle slowly stood up and watched how Jack grinned down at the little girl. A small smile crossed her lips as she realized it was him who provided the freak snowstorm. The little girl slowly pulled herself up from the cement to stare at the sky. The snow hadn’t taken away the passing of Elle’s father, but for a very brief moment in time, Elle remembered she had been amazed as to how it could be snowing when summer vacation was just around the corner. The young girl started to walk away toward the koi pond to watch the snow falling into it. Jack kept in place, watching the little girl with strong pity.
“Look at that, you two are already bonding,” a familiar voice snorted. Elle saw Hermes was leaning against a fence a few feet away, talking exclusively to Jack.
“Hold thy tongue, Hermes; I’m not in the mood for you,” Jack replied, his eyes not leaving the little girl.
“I’m not in the mood for much, either. My best mortal friend is now dead,” Hermes said quietly, pain in his voice. “His only child is an orphan.”
Jack said nothing as he continued to watch the little girl attempt to catch a few snowflakes as she tried to stop crying. “Who did it?” he questioned, his grey eyes not leaving the little girl. Hermes looked at him strangely. Jack didn’t have to look to know he was watching him. “We both know the mortal was murdered,” Jack continued. “All it took was Eros telling my father he was dead and I knew it was murder. Someone got to Matthew and killed him for disrespecting the gods.”
“I don’t know who did it,” Hermes admitted. “Matt started showing the symptoms of the poisoning a few months ago. I have my suspicions it was someone from winter’s throne.” There was a tone that Hermes used that caused Jack to divert his gaze from the child.
“You thought I murdered him?”
“Can you blame me?”
Jack said nothing for the longest time as his jaw clenched. He eventually turned his gaze back to the child. “I could never take away a child’s family.” Hermes did not comment on this. “I’m going to place a guess he was long past healing?”
Hermes nodded sadly. “He was mortal. There was no healing him. No ambrosia could help his condition when he was already overdosed by it.” Jack watched the sad little girl with a steely gaze. Hermes took a step
closer, a heavy frown plaguing his young face. “Don’t hurt her.”
Jack’s eyes did not flicker away from the little girl before he answered. “She has a decade. If I can’t unseal our fates by then, she’s honestly better off dead.”
“You don’t know her,” Hermes said with a look of utter disbelief. “She’s a sweet kid, Frost. Get to know her—”
“Look at what the gods did to her!” Jack suddenly growled. He teleported to the other side of Hermes. “Wake up and unravel your tunic from your ass. The child’s life was ruined centuries before she was born. Her mother sold her before she was even conceived. You, Triton, and Ajax attempted to hide Matthew, and for what? They still found them. Someone still got to him in order to kill him. Come on, you know the reason why he was murdered. It was possibly not even malicious. ’Twas simplicity. Now they’ll send the child straight to Hera to prepare her for her royal obligations as a future bride without any more interference from her sly mortal father.”
“No,” said Hermes sharply. “I promised Matthew on his deathbed I would make sure Elle spends her childhood with his family. She will not yet face the obligations.”
“I can’t imagine Hera is taking such a promise well.”
“She knows I can make it so Elle is not found for many years. Quite easily I could make it so she lives a mortal life without ever knowing what was to become of her destiny. It’s my way or no way.”
Jack balked. “Then why not spare her! If you truly hold that much power, why not give the girl a chance at a happy existence without contaminating it?”
“Because this is a design of fate,” said Hermes sharply. He whipped a finger toward child-Elle’s direction. “As loyal as I am to Matthew’s wishes, I always knew Elle’s sole reason for existing was to become your bride.”
Betrothed to Jack Frost Page 17