[rd][fic][Rise of the Guardians] Mark of Snow 5/?

[sakon76]

Mark of Snow 5
by K. Stonham
first released February 4th 2019

Jamie spent the first day of his winter break hitting his head against his keyboard. Eventually the hitting turned less figurative and more literal.

"Hey, whoa, no damaging the goods," someone said, a cold hand insinuating itself between forehead and desk.

Jamie cracked open one eye and peered up at Jack.

"Something wrong?" his best friend asked.

Jamie let out a gust of air and sat back up, turning to face the winter spirit. "I," he declared, "am not a writer."

"Yeah...?" Jack asked, clearly not sure where Jamie was going with this point.

"Art, I can do," Jamie declared. "Telling a story, not so much."

Jack snorted. "I've heard you try to tell stories," he agreed. "Emphasis on 'try'. You suck more often than not."

"How the hell do I turn my drawings of you and the other Guardians into a book without a story?" Jamie demanded. "I have nothing, Jack. Not one single idea."

Jack shrugged and seated himself on Jamie's bed. "That Maurice Sendak guy seemed to manage okay."

Jamie thought about that for a minute. "'Where the Wild Things Are' still has words. And a narrative. I only have pictures."

"So invent a narrative to go with 'em," Jack suggested. "I mean, if all else fails you can tell about epic sled rides, losing a tooth, and fighting the Boogeyman, right?"

"I... don't think I'm ready to put that one on paper yet," Jamie hedged. It felt too personal. He didn't want to put it out there for the world and children's literature reviewers to mock. "I need something else."

Jack tilted his head. "Jamie visits the Workshop?"

Jamie glared. "I'm also not using my name for a character. I don't want people to think I'm that egotistical."

"What's your middle name?" asked Jack. "Use that."

"Samuel."

Jack sniggered. "James Samuel Bennett? You sound more like a Quaker than I ever did."

"So what's your middle name?" Jamie shot back.

"Overland," Jack replied easily. "Jackson Overland Frost."

"Jackson?" Jamie demanded.

"It was my mother's maiden name," Jack said. "Pretty common back then for the eldest son to be named for his mom's family."

"Overland?"

"That one," Jack said, staff suddenly pointing at Jamie, "you don't get to mock. That was my dad's older brother. He drowned saving my dad, back in England when they were just kids."

Jamie blinked. "Um," said Jamie.

Jack looked away. "Yeah. Ironic, or something."

"I was thinking tragic, maybe," said Jamie, who knew how and why Jack had been chosen to be a spirit and a Guardian. "Or prescient," he muttered, looking away.

Jack was silent for a moment. "Yeah, well. Whatever," he said. "So. 'Sammy visits the Pole'?"

"That sounds stupid," Jamie objected.

"Call it a working title, then. So how's Sammy get to the Pole?" asked Jack. "Why's he there? Heck, when's he there? I gotta tell you, November or December's just plain a bad idea if you want verisimilitude."

Jamie blinked. "How do you even know that word?"

Jack waved off the question. "Not the point. You need a plot, my friend."

"I know." Frustrated, Jamie tilted his chair back onto two legs and stared up at the ceiling.

North called him a magician, but he couldn't do one single piece of magic. No silly wand-waving, as it had been put in Harry Potter, or making of potions. Not even a single spoken spell! The couple of books North had dragged off his shelves and given to Jamie had been big on theory but small on practice.

I have Jack Frost's magic and Guardian magic stuck inside me, and I can't do a thing with either of them, Jamie thought crankily. I'm supposed to have 'the power of transformation: reshaping the world by redefining it, and by believing in that new definition.' Which is not very helpful if I don't know how.

"Maybe this is a bad idea," he mused aloud.

"No, it's not." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jack flop down on the comforter, lying back and also looking up at the ceiling. "Trust me. I'm the king of bad ideas. I know one when I hear one. And this? Is not a bad idea."

Jamie let out a long breath, examining the whitewash. He could do this. He just... needed a story. He needed a plot, motivation....

Surreptitiously, he studied Jack again.

It was no secret that Jack was his favorite of the Guardians. Or, among the immortal community, that Jamie was Jack Frost's favorite mortal. Which had actually led to three kidnappings and one murder attempt over the past several years. These days, Jamie was very cautious about who he invited over his threshholds.

But the thing was, Jack wasn't like the other Guardians. Nor like any other immortal Jamie had ever met. At least, not in some small but very significant ways.

Namely, he didn't care about how many believers he had. He cared about how many friends he had. And those friends he had, he took very good care of.

"What if..." Jamie said slowly, fitting pieces together inside his head. "Sammy is lonely. Maybe he just moved to a new town." Which Jamie hadn't, when he first met Jack. Like the winter spirit, he'd been born and raised in Burgess. And he'd had friends. But none of them had ever quite got him in the way that Jack had. For as long as he'd been able to see and talk with the winter spirit, Jack had been borrowing his books and watching movies with him. None of Jamie's other friends had ever been into the mystical and magical. Dragging any of them on hunts for cryptids had been like pulling teeth.

Jack, on the other hand, had cheerfully vetted the naiad who had been Jamie's first girlfriend.

"Lonely kid wants a friend?" Jack asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Two lonely kids want friends. Sammy sees Jack Frost outside his window, talks to him." Jamie grinned. "Jack's so shocked he almost falls out of the air."

Jack threw a handful of snowflakes at Jamie. They fell short and melted on the rug. "I never fall!"

"And then," Jamie said, his grin widening to shit-eating proportions, "somehow, by the magic of plot necessity, Jack takes Jamie to the North Pole."

Jack rolled his eyes. "'Step three: profit!'"

"I'll figure that part out when I get there," Jamie insisted with a negligent wave of his hand. He could already picture the first page of the book: a small brown-haired boy sitting at a window, looking forlornly out on a winter scene.

Jack was silent for a minute, then sat up. "It sounds good," he said. "Want me to look it over when you're ready?"

"Are you kidding?" Jamie asked. "I'm planning on enlisting you to be co-author."

---

"Are you just playing stupid?" Cupcake asked, tone flat.

"Uhhh..." Jamie replied intelligently.

"That's not nice," Monty told Cupcake. "Even if you do have a point."

"A point?" Jamie asked.

Pippa rolled her eyes. "You seriously can't figure out your center, Jamie? It's kind of obvious."

He blinked. "It is?"

Claude and Caleb exchanged a wordless look, then both reached across the table and slapped Jamie upside the head.

"Oww!" Jamie recoiled, holding a hand against his head. "Seriously, guys, what gives?"

"Playing dense isn't attractive, Jamie," Pippa said.

"I'm not playing!"

She rolled her eyes. "If Jack's center is fun, Jamie, yours is--"

"Belief," "Imagination," "Trust," "Creativity," and "Open-mindedness," tumbled over one another like the manuscript pages scattered across the coffee table the six of them were gathered around.

"Uh..." Monty said, as they all exchanged glances.

"Yeah, guys, real obvious there. Thanks," Jamie deadpanned, and turned his attention back to his sketchbook.

---

The thing was, though, Jamie wasn't a Guardian. Not like Jack and the others were. Yet at the same time, he had Guardian magic in him. So he wasn't and was at the same time. And somehow this conundrum, or at least the fact that he had magic, was getting disseminated through the spirit world's ranks. More than a couple spirits who owed Jamie or the Guardians favors had shown up over the last couple months and placed wards on Jamie's dorm, his campus, his car, his mom's house.

If you could see, you could be seen. If you could touch, you could be touched. And if you had allies who had enemies, as the Guardians did, you were a target. Jamie had known that for years. What he hadn't realized was that having magic of his own would make him a bigger target. So he needed to learn to use it, fast. The Guardians would always have his back... but they weren't always around.

"Ya gotta stretch it," Bunny told him one morning over Spring Break, leading Jamie through a series of Tai Chi moves in his mother's garden. "Not just the muscles, though those're important too. You gotta take the magic and work with it, make it stronger. Build it up and get yourself used to using it."

Jamie eyed the way the blossoms on the apple tree, thirty feet away, were opening and shutting in time with the Easter Bunny's breath, and wondered if Bunny was even aware of the flexing of his own power.

Sighing, he let his mind drift through the familiar movements and focus inward instead. He identified the cool/warm feeling that was centered in the snowflake, and if he really paid attention, he could just barely feel tingling trails of it down his arms and legs. He remembered the feeling of Jack touching his hand that one time at the ski resort, pulling at the magic like it was taffy....

"Ahh," Bunny breathed, "now that's the right of it, Jamie."

Jamie didn't dare try to look, to do anything but hold on to that barely-remembered sensation for as long as he could, his body moving on auto-pilot.

He barely managed to last five minutes before he all but collapsed onto the grass, feeling like he'd run a marathon without training for it.

"Well, now, not bad for a beginner," Bunny said, crouching down next to him. He dug about in one of the pouches on his bandolier and handed a block of chocolate to Jamie. Jamie reached up with a shaky arm and took it. He shaved off a bit with his incisors, too wiped to bite. The dark chocolate melted on his tongue, tasting of apples and raspberries.

"I'm wonderin', actually, if you being mortal has something to do with it," Bunny said eventually.

Jamie let more chocolate melt in his mouth, watching through closed eyes as the sunlight turned his eyelids crimson. "To do with what?"

"Well, you've had that magic sat in you for ten years. And you've only started trying to do anything with it the last two. Something that new and foreign, most spirits wouldn't even be able to move it as far as you did for another decade."

"Move it?" Jamie blinked his eyes open against the dazzling sun and flopped his head to the side, looking at Bunnymund.

The lagomorph smiled. "Bet you didn't see it, mate, you were so busy concentrating. But for a few minutes there? Your hands glowed blue."

---

Author's Note: For those who caught it, yes, I wanted to imply in this chapter that Jamie lost his virginity to a naiad. But saying that outright didn't really fit the tone of the story.