All right, get him out the back door and to the bluff. How hard can that be?
What the hell am I thinking?
Oliver reached out and clicked on the hated Gaudí lamp, then gently shut the door, once again closing himself in the parlor with his unexpected visitor. The many colors from the glass shade cast a rainbow of antique hues upon the sharp facets of the winter man’s frozen form.
“What
are
you?”
The winter man staggered slightly, dagger fingers still clamped to his side. He lowered his chin and glared dangerously at Oliver, an eerie fluorescent light in those pale blue eyes, now narrowed to slivers.
“I’ll help,” Oliver heard himself say, stunned by his own words. “I will. But tell me that, at least.”
Carefully the winter man moved to the fireplace and placed a hand upon the mantel to support himself. He cast a glance at the windows, at the storm outside, and when he turned his attention again to the question at hand, Oliver thought he saw fear in those haughty, jagged features.
“I have many names, but by your custom, I am known as Frost.”
Frost,
Oliver thought. In his mind, something clicked into place. Tonight, this very night, had been the first snowfall of winter.
“Jack Frost,” he whispered.
Frost nodded curtly. “Now you must aid me, or I shall have to attempt to reach the Borderland on my own. The Falconer—”
“But,” Oliver interrupted, shaking his head, staring at the being he still half thought of as the winter man. “You’re just a myth.”
With a hiss, colors sliding over his translucent form, Frost lunged across the parlor at Oliver. The winter man did not so much leap as
flow
. Terror shot through Oliver and his heart thundered in his chest as Frost clutched him by the throat in a frozen grip, icy fingers like arrows embedding themselves in the wooden door, trapping Oliver there.
Frost sneered, showing glistening fangs like ice diamonds, and a polar wind seemed to wash from his open mouth as he spoke.
“Don’t
ever
call me that again. Nor any other of my kin. Many of the Borderkind would slay you for that. I might have as well, another day.”
Oliver felt his neck freezing, his skin sticking to the winter man’s hand. He stared into those frozen eyes and swallowed hard.
“I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he rasped.
Frost glared at him another moment, then pried his fingers from the wood and pulled his hand away, the ice tugging at Oliver’s throat, leaving the skin seared by the cold.
“Will you aid me?” the winter man asked.
Oliver nodded.
Frost exhaled a blast of misty, frozen air and seemed to diminish somehow. His eyes— lashes tiny spikes of ice— fluttered lightly and his hand slipped away from the gouge in his side. Water spilled from that wound in a small cascade that spattered Oliver’s pants. He could feel the freezing chill of that water, the winter man’s blood, soak into the fabric and numb his skin where it touched.
The winter man slumped toward him. Stunned, Oliver reached up to support him and his hands slid on the creature’s frozen surface, barely able to get a grip beneath his arms. Frost’s body was so cold that it burned to touch him. It was as though only his fear and rage had kept the creature going and now, whatever he was, monster or myth, this thing who claimed to be Jack Frost had surrendered to injury and exhaustion.
“Shit,” Oliver hissed at the pain in his hands. He spun around and propped Frost against the wall. “You’ve got to stand here. Right here, while I get . . . I don’t know, gloves or something. A minute. Just one minute. I’ll be right back, I swear.”
Those frozen breaths came shallower, but Frost’s eyes opened, still glowing ice blue, and he nodded. “Go. Quickly. I place my trust in you. What are you called?”
“Oliver,” he said quickly. “Oliver Bascombe.”
“Make haste, Oliver. Time is short. As long as I remain herein, you are in danger as well.”
Not liking the sound of that at all, Oliver backed away from Frost, blowing on his frozen hands, then rubbing them together.
No way,
he thought. But the feeling was coming back into his hands, and with it, the pain. There could be no doubt that this was real. Which meant that this danger, this Falconer, Frost was talking about must be real as well.
Oliver opened the door carefully and stepped out into the hall. It was dark save for a lamp in a corner just outside the dining room and the soft orange glow of Christmas lights in the windows. He shut the door behind him, then rushed along the hall with as much stealth as he could manage. The house was silent save for the loud tick of a grandfather clock as he entered the main foyer.
Oliver allowed himself a tiny sigh of relief and cautiously opened the door to the large coat closet built in beneath the grand staircase. It took him a moment to find a pair of thick ski gloves and a wool scarf striped red, blue, and yellow.
“Hello? Oliver, is that you?”
Like a thief caught in the act he dropped the gloves and scarf and backed out of the closet. Collette stood at the top of the stairs, clad in red cotton pajamas that made her look younger than ever.
“Hey,” she said with a sleepy smile. “What are you doing down there?”
“Nothing,” he replied, perhaps too quickly. From her vantage point, at least, she would not have been able to see exactly what he had been up to in the closet. “Just trying to find this old leather coat I haven’t seen around in a while.”
“At this hour?” Collette said doubtfully. Even in the dim light he could see her smile. “You’re not trying to find your Christmas presents, are you? I thought you’d outgrown that pursuit in the eighth grade.”
A nervous laugh bubbled out of him. “Well, twelfth grade, maybe. But no, just remembered it had been a long time since I’d seen the coat. And I couldn’t sleep, so—”
“It’s natural to be nervous. I have sleeping pills if you want one.”
“I’ll be all right, but thanks.”
For a long moment Collette only stood there. She was his older sister and knew him well enough to sense that there was more going on than he was prepared to reveal. Oliver could not imagine what she was thinking, but eventually she stretched and yawned and the moment had passed.
“All right. I just wanted to say good night. Don’t stay up too late. Julianna might take it personally if you fall asleep at the altar.”
Oliver chuckled softly. “I’m going to have a glass of milk, maybe some graham crackers, and then I’ll be up.”
“You and graham crackers,” Collette replied, and then shuddered comically. “Good night.”
“Night, sis.”
Collette paused a moment, then glanced down one last time. “Ollie. If you really feel like . . . like you’re going to be put in some kind of prison . . . you have to remember that no one’s making you go. And if you decide not to, you know I’ll back you up. No matter what.”
He smiled. “Thanks, Col. Thank you. I love you. Go to bed.”
She nodded once, then disappeared in the darkened hall at the top of the stairs. Oliver waited a full minute to be certain she was gone. At last he bent to retrieve the fallen gloves and scarf and snatched a thick green winter coat off a plastic hanger. Quickly he drew on the jacket and gloves and wrapped the scarf around his neck.
Even as he shut the closet door, Oliver was startled by a scraping sound behind him. He spun around to see Frost peeking around a corner. Jagged ice dragged across the wall, and though he knew the sound must be barely audible, it seemed impossibly loud.
The winter man said nothing. A kind of blue mist leaked from his eyes and his head bobbed as though he could barely hold it up.
Oliver shot another glance up at the top of the stairs but all that lingered in the gloom there were memories. All the magic he had believed in as a child had slowly bled out of him over the years. Now here it was again, all at once, rushing back to terrify and imperil him.
His face felt strange for a moment and then Oliver realized what it was; he should not have been, but he was smiling. Without further hesitation he went to Frost and slung one of the winter man’s arms over his shoulder. Oliver could feel the cold emanating from the ice even through his heavy clothing but not so much that it hurt.
“You’ve got to be quiet,” he whispered.
Frost glanced up at him, and Oliver was amazed to find gratitude in those frozen eyes. Together they started along the hall. The winter man was a troublesome burden, even though he bore some of his own weight. His feet scraped the wood floor and Oliver paused.
“Isn’t there something you can do to help?” he asked. “The . . . the snow? You were . . . you were part of the storm at first.”
“I am too weak for such feats,” the winter man replied, his voice a rasp of frosty breath. “I tried to reach the Borderland myself, but fell short. I saw you . . . in the window . . .”
This last was said with such effort that Oliver felt almost guilty for making him speak in the first place. But amongst his many questions, another rose to the surface.
“I don’t understand any of this. What border are we talking about?”
They had reached the French doors at the back of the house. Oliver grunted quietly as he shifted Frost’s weight and reached out to unlock them. Outside, the snow still fell heavily— at least eight inches, from what Oliver could tell.
The lock slid back. Oliver grasped the handle.
“The border that separates your world from my own. Your kind are trapped here. You cannot see beyond the Veil.”
The way that Frost had said this last, the gravity in his tone, made Oliver pause again and regard him carefully. What was the Veil? Where did Frost come from? If this being, this winter man, was the source of the legend of Jack Frost, what did that mean for other myths and legends?
Frost shuddered and winced in pain. He glanced out into the snowstorm, eyes darting back and forth, anxiously searching the darkness.
“Please,” the winter man asked again. “We must hurry.”
There was so much that Oliver wanted to know, but the pain and fear in Frost spurred him on. If this was all he would ever know of the secrets of the world, it would have to be enough. Certainly it was more than most could ever hope for.
He opened the French doors and the storm rushed in. Snow swirled around them, the wind tugging at Oliver and making the winter man’s icicle hair chime. Together they shuffled outside and Oliver managed to close the doors behind them. The click when they were shut seemed to echo.
“Come on. It isn’t far,” he told Frost.
It was almost as light outside as it had been within. The orange Christmas lights in the windows threw a queer glow out into the storm. Oliver was grateful for the scarf as the wind stung his cheeks, snowflakes pattering against his face and sticking to his eyelashes so that he was forced to blink his vision clear every few seconds. He cast his gaze down to get his face out of the wind and the driven snow and saw that Frost left no mark upon the snow. His feet passed through it, certainly, but it was as though his icy form flowed with the snow and it filled in instantly afterward. A ghost of December was passing through, and the storm— this storm Frost himself had started— barely took notice.
The chill breeze whistled past Oliver’s ears as he bore Frost toward the bluff. His shoulder ached and pain shot through his neck; his legs felt like wisps of flesh and bone, certainly not up to the task of conveying the weight of the winter man any farther. But Oliver did not buckle. He gritted his teeth and grunted softly as the blizzard seeped into his bones. Between the cold and the burden, all of his questions were for the moment banished, and he focused only on the task at hand.
As they approached the cliff above the ocean, the surf crashing far below, Oliver hesitated.
“What now?” he asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the howling wind, for they were perhaps forty feet from the edge. “If we get too close, we could be—”
“This is your property?” Frost asked, voice like the cracking of ice on the surface of a lake in spring.
“My father’s,” Oliver replied, confused.
“No, this. Right here. This is not . . . public? Not public space?”
Oliver shook his head. The winter man scowled, showing those icy fangs once more. He winced in pain and when he clutched his side again, Oliver saw that despite the temperature, the water was still running from his wound.
“It’s ours. The family’s.”
Frost snarled and a tremor of fear went through Oliver until he realized it was pain, not anger. Blue mist leaked steadily from the winter man’s narrowed eyes now and he squinted even further, looking through the storm.
“You must take me to the edge.”
Oliver stared at him then gazed again at the bluff, blinking snowflakes away. He could see the snow dancing in the high winds that buffeted the cliff face and recalled the way Frost had spun with the storm. He should drop the winter man, turn, and run back to the house. He could crawl from here if necessary. What the hell did he need Oliver for anyway?
