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He was at North’s when it happened, the ripping, burning sensation in his very core that told him that something was very, very wrong. Falling to his knees, Jack gasped like he was drowning, grasping at his sweater over his heart. It hurt, hurt, hurt so much. Like when Pitch had snapped his staff in twain. Glancing at the staff clutched in his white-knuckled grasp, it was only momentary relief when he saw it whole, unblemished, as the day that he picked it up off the ice.
Taking a gasping breath, he screamed wordlessly in pain and anger and fear, summoning all his icy prowess as the wind whipped around him in its protective cocoon, blasting all the windows open. Without thought, Jack flew out the nearest window, leaving the other guardians mystified in his wake. Only moments before, Jack was joking along, cradling a cup of eggnog. Now the remnants of a freak blizzard blew around the globe room, covering everything in a thick coating of hoarfrost while the finely painted cup lay broken on the frozen ground. “Jack?” North called after, too startled by the abrupt change in atmosphere to use anything except the boy’s name. Even if he was heard, the boy was long gone.
Much further south, Jack flew on, mainly without thought beyond abject denial and the urge to go faster, that he would never be fast enough. Reaching Burgess, specifically his pond, the eternal teenager landed, kicking up mud and dirt like an invisible meteorite striking the barren earth. Releasing a hollow scream, Jack whipped his staff around, blasting ice and wind in every direction that he could reach, terrifying the grown men that stood at the edge of the ageless pond, wearing orange and yellow vests with matching hats. Machines, machines were around his pond, raping the sacred ground and distorting what which had lain untouched for over three hundred years.
“Leave!” Jack billowed, the wind blasting his anguished, bodiless voice around, echoing off the cliffside and ancient trees. “Leave me alone!” The words themselves didn’t reach the unbelieving adults in the strange clothing, but the intent was clear as the warm autumn day suddenly took on the likeness of a heartlessly cold day of January, dark grey clouds gathering and swirling ominously overhead.
“Boss, you need to come see this!” A man shouted as he emerged from the water, wearing skin-tight black clothes with a strange cylinder strapped to his back. “I think these are human.” Screaming in time with Jack’s voice, the wind whipped around the clearing, frothing the very water of the pond and blinding every human in the clearing with decaying leaves and heavy, thick snow.
“Leave!” Jack’s unheard voice gaining an edge of hysteria as he whipped the environment into an unseasonal blizzard, only resulting in the heartiest of humans huddling further into their light clothing while the less apt ran at the seeming explosion mere moments beforehand. The man that emerged from the water held something up, laying it out for the others to see on the bank. Bones. Human and discolored with mud. “Please…” At seeing what the man held, the precious proof of his mortal life, Jack collapsed to his knees, staring at the proof that he did, indeed, exist at one time. “Just… leave me be.” He sobbed out, his tears crystallizing on his cheeks. He had no shame; the Ignorant could not see him. He wished, pleaded that the humans would realize what they were doing, what pain they were putting him through as the wind sang its mournful tune as it wound through the surrounding trees.
The storm that he had worked up quickly died, flakes dancing in what, any other time, would be a merry way as they were tossed about, though they still were heavy and filled with sorrow. One man knelt by where the man in the wet clothing laid the bones, picking up a long slender one to examine it, not hearing the pained moan that the bone’s owner let out. “Yeah, it’s human.” The man sighed, tossing the bone back on top of the other bones that were brought to the surface. “Looks like we got ourselves a body dump boys. Someone call the authorities.”
“Frostbite?” The word was as soft as the paw that was laid on his shoulder. Jack whimpered, collapsing into himself as he watched the man stand up and callously threw the bones back into the pond. “You scared us back there, mate.”
“Hey, what are you doing?” A teenage boy with brown hair and a plaid trapper hat called, standing at the crest of the hill and taking in what was happening mere feet from his back yard. He had heard that there was going to be some construction in town, but not exactly where. Following the signs of Jack coming back to town, he was startled to see yellow-orange backhoes and various other machines parked next to the pond, as well as an empty water truck and a dump truck’s worth of fill dirt off to the side. The adults generally ignored the child, opting to keep to their jobs, but keeping an eye out in case they had to physically remove the troublemaker.
Walking down the hill, hands stuffed into his jacket in a similar way to his hero, the teenager stepped up beside the gathered guardians, where they stood around a kneeling Jack. “Jamie.” North greeted the Last Light with a nod as he came to a stop. Greeting the invisible spirits back with a small nod and a look out of the corner of his eye, Jamie turned a scowl to what he could see.
“I said: what are you doing here?” Jamie called out over the wind, since the stupid adults obviously couldn’t hear him the first time.
“Get out of here kid, go play some video games or something.” One of the men finally acknowledged the ‘only’ person in the clearing that obviously didn’t belong there.
“No,” His glare could peel paint, “Not until you tell me what you’re doing to Jack’s pond!”
“Who the hell is Jack?” one of the louder men in the construction crew asked, obviously not a local, judging from his accent and not knowing. Everyone knew that it was Jack’s pond. Not necessarily that it was Jack Frost’s pond, but everyone grew up with the stories from colonial times and the boy named Jack. The legend went that a Colonial boy named Jack drowned in the pond one winter, and ever since the pond was always frozen solid, or at the least too cold to swim in. It was something of a local mystery.
“Boss.” The man that was on the phone tapped the leader’s arm, grabbing his attention. “The cops are on their way. They told us to clear out.” Nodding, the man gave a whistle and waved his arm in a sharp gesture.
“Everyone back off. Turn off the CATs and up the hill. Jerry, outta the water.”
“Gladly.” The man in the skintight black suit complied, pulling himself up onto one of the rocks before taking off long black flippers so that he could walk on land.
Watching the adults leave with cold eyes, Jamie finally turned and knelt next to Jack, drawing the young immortal’s glazed gaze. “What happened?” He asked softly, not liking the look in his friend’s eye.
“That’s what we’d like to know, ankle-biter.” Bunny gruffed, standing back with his arms crossed, clearly uncomfortable… or cold. His fur was sticking up on end and dusted with heavy snowflakes, at the least.
After years of knowing the immortals, Jamie was easily able to bypass the tone to hear the worry in the Pooka’s voice. “Those were yours, weren’t they?” At that, Tooth gasped, her hand flying over her mouth in shock. “They finally found your body.”
“What do you mean, body?” North asked while Sandy had a giant question mark floating over his head. “Is impossible. Would mean Jack is…”
“Dead, yeah. I thought you all were.” Jamie spoke for his friend after getting silent permission. “Jack drowned over 300 years ago, saving his sister from the breaking ice. I thought you all knew that.” Jamie had only found out about it last winter after a particularly warm week had weakened the ice enough that Jack had panicked when he saw his mortal friends skating on his lake.
“No, we were all alive when Manny made us guardians.” Tooth murmured, the hand not over her mouth hovering in indecision over Jack’s shoulder. She wanted to comfort the boy, but he was still uncomfortable about most forms of touch. “We assumed the same had happened to Jack.”
Jamie settled in, ignoring how his pants were now soaked with half-melted snow and mud, and waited next to Jack to see what would happen next. Oddly, Jamie hadn’t felt the deep sting of uncomfortable cold for years now, not since he had met Jack. He didn’t know whether it was a gift from the colonial or a side-effect from always being outside.
Soon enough, an investigation team from one of the bigger cities showed up, bringing their own swimming equipment. As the new man in an identical black tight suit (Scuba diver, Jamie supplied later) dove down, Jamie kept his hand on Jack’s arm, squeezing it in both silent companionship and to keep the immortal teen from lashing out at the new group.
“Don’t worry Jack, I don’t think these men want to desecrate your body. They just want to find out how you died.” Jamie murmured, watching with a close eye and a closed expression.
“Hello.” One of the new people waved with a smile, “This isn’t exactly something to watch, especially with how cold it is here. The weather here is crazy!” The woman shivered theatrically.
“I want to watch.” Jamie replied in a no-nonsense tone. “The construction crew found Jack’s bones and he’s not happy.”
“Who’s Jack?” The woman asked, her demeanor still pleasant, but her eyes had grown sharp with the knowledge that the kid knew something.
“Jackson Overland. This is his pond.”
The way that the teenage boy sitting in the snow spoke like it was a fact set off a shock of suspicion in her mind. “A friend of yours?”
Jamie tilted his head in an indecisive way, “I’d like to think so. I study the local legends and I’ve talked to his ghost a few times.” Jamie smirked at his own joke. “Even if he doesn’t reply sometimes, I’d expect a three-century old ghost to be lonely enough to listen to a teenager’s sulking.”
“So, you don’t think this is one of the local missing persons?”
What the woman didn’t see was Jack’s jerk as the diver found his first bone and brought it up to the surface. “No. The legend says that the pond is nearly always frozen solid except for the middle of summer, and I believe it. I’ve been playing on this pond my whole life since I live just up there.” He gestured just up the hill with his head while he watched Jack. The diver was slowly bringing up bones and lying them out on a tarp-covered gurney, displaying them to make sure that they found all the pieces. “And when you do find out that you’re desecrating a three-hundred-year-old grave, please call me so that they can be put under his gravestone. I think Jack would appreciate that.” If anything, Jack grew paler at the thought of his grave and finally getting his proper burial. He vaguely remembered the funeral he ran across the first spring he was a spirit, and the colony burying an empty casket as soon as the ground was thawed enough to dig into.
It took a breath and a mental reminder that he had to actually move, to say something, for Jack to nod in agreement to Jamie’s request. The woman opened her mouth to say something, but the diver popped out of the water, holding a sphere-like object aloft, “I found the skull!” His enthusiasm was met with reprimanding looks and a frigid blast of air, but he was undeterred. “And lookee that, not a blemish on the thing. Teeth are white too, and not a filling to see. Can’t wait to get this back to the lab.” The youngish man exclaimed, placing it proudly at the top of the gurney, above the smattering of ribs and long bones. The short bones, such as the vertebrae, foot and hand bones would take sifting through the accumulated debris in detail.
What he didn’t know, was that the skull’s owner was standing right behind him, about as ghost-like as the boy had ever acted, a dead expression on his face as he confronted, well, himself. Even with an insulated scuba suit on, the young man shivered, feeling the ghost’s presence. Tooth hovered on the other side of the gurney, looking from Jack to his bones and back. “So your teeth were always this beautiful then, right Jack?” She asked, trying to lighten the mood, but her smile quickly faltered and fell like a card tower. “Oh, honey, I’m so, so sorry.” She couldn’t stop it anymore, she flew around the gurney and attached herself to his person, pressing his ear to her breast and softly stroked his snowy hair.
As the diver turned to continue, one arm accidently went through the spirit and Jack gasped in pain. He was numb, but the stab of Ignorance still burned like placing his hand in a campfire. “Here, lets go back and sit with the others.” Tooth spoke gently, pulling Jack away from the gurney and the immediate possibility of being walked through, again. If she was Jack, she wouldn’t want to leave her… bones with anyone else either. She saw the odd, semi-detached look in his eye and pulled him back to the gathering.
As afternoon wore on to dusk, floodlights were brought in and mud sifters were assembled. Buckets were filled with ‘evidence’ and a pair of rusted ice skates were brought up, still attached, if barely, to rotting leather boots in a very, very old style. Jamie had gone home for a short while, only to bring a large thermos of hot cocoa and a wool blanket to cover the muddy ground with. Minutes later, the rest of his friends started to show up as well, grimly watching the morbid project as they sat amongst immortals, sipping cocoa that North quietly complimented. It was odd to see a single teenager with multiple cups for his drink, but surrounded by friends, the forensic people didn’t bother to notice a few extra mugs that appeared and disappeared as they were set down and picked up.
Near midnight, the signal was given to wrap things up, they had found just about as many things as they could. The tent shelter was torn down, the bones bagged up, and the lights turned off. Their last clue was the female investigator coming back over to ask for Jamie’s contact information. Of what she had seen that afternoon, even without doing any major testing, she could tell that the things they pulled out were old. The teenager’s story had a kernel of possibility after all. With one last plead to keep him updated and a hurried assurance, the last of the team left the teenagers and immortals alone in the dark.
“Well, show’s over, time to get back home.” Claude stood up, shivering, “See ya later, Bennett. Guys.” The teen nodded and pulled up his brother casually, hiding a squeeze to Jack’s shoulder in the motion. He was one that still believed, but never said anything out loud, just in case.
“Jamie, phone!” Mrs. Bennett yelled up the hall, hoping that she was heard over the radio blasting in her eldest’s room.
“Got it!” He yelled back a moment later, after a moment of startling silence in the wake of the blaring music. Upstairs, Jamie cleared his throat before purring a ‘hello’ into the phone.
“Oh, hi, I’m calling about the bones; you said that you wanted us to keep you informed, correct?” A cheery voice responded, not quite sure how to respond to the flirtatious greeting from a kid half her age, but plowing through anyway.
“Oh! Ah,” The teen squeaked in embarrassment and covered it with a cough. “Yeah. So, what did you find?”
“Well, we couldn’t confirm that the bones belong to a Jack Overland, but we could at least date them to around the time the colonies started. If you wouldn’t mind helping, and if the city agrees, we were planning on giving them a proper burial in Burgess Cemetery.”
“Th-thank you.” Jamie practically whispered into the phone. His non-existent asthma must be kicking up, making his throat tight. And the roof must be leaking as well, and dripping on his face. A busted pipe or something. “I’m sure that Jack would appreciate that.”