Child of Winter
by Amaretto

Child of Winter

by Amaretto

It was eerie, how quiet the cold could be. Penelope pondered this silently as she trekked slowly through the snow. Far too quiet, even considering it was late at night.

She looked up from watching her steps. One benefit of the still, cold night was that it was also a very clear night. Even with miles yet to go, she could just make out the light in the window that was ever lit for visitors and weary travelers. Or a sister.

Smiling at the sight of it, Penelope nodded firmly to herself. Resettling the package she carried on her back, she pressed onward. The oddness of the silence she brushed aside, filling her mind with the image of the sisters and warm fire waiting for her where the light shone.

Humming tunelessly to break the still she continued to trudge through the snow. One foot, then the other, slowly and carefully through what had to be at least two feet of snow. She'd tied her skirts up to prevent their getting wet as much as possible, trudging through the wet cold in heavy pants and high boots - they had cost her a great deal, those boots. But so far they seemed worth the cost. She wished she could have used her snowshoes, but the snow was too wet for them. So she trudged.

Continuing to hum, she pressed forward, pausing only occasionally to resettled the package on her back. Luckily it was not overly heavy - just heavy enough that the weight of it, combined with the effort of walking through the snow, kept her warm. Her breath came out in thick puffs in the crisp, night air.

The lull was abruptly broken by a sound that made her freeze in fear. She held rigidly still, humming choked off by a gasp of dismay.

It was the sound of something cracking, breaking beneath her. Her thoughts went wild with confusion - there was nothing around here that should break like that. Heart in her throat, she slowly took another step forward.

Before she could fully comprehend it, she was plummeting through the snow and down into darkness.

With a pained, echoing groan Penelope opened her eyes. She held her hand to her forehead, dizzily unsurprised to see her fingers came away sticky with drying blood. A nasty gash; hopefully the scar wouldn't look too awful. Slowly she glanced up, where a hole in the snow was visible. She examined her immediate surroundings, not liking the way they tilted and wavered. Maybe the gash was worse than she had first thought.

She was in some sort of cave. Hunching her shoulders against the worry and fear that gnawed at her, she leveraged herself shakily to her feet. Taking a deep breath, she looked more carefully around the small cave.

It wasn't dark, she realized after a moment. She pressed a hand to the wall to steady herself, frowning in thought. It was... sort of light. But she couldn't tell where it came from. Looking up at the hole above her, she knew there wasn't enough moonlight to make the dark hollow so visible. She started to shake her head, then thought better of it.

Abruptly she recalled to mind her package, and once more went cold with fear. Ignoring the dizziness she fumbled to get the package off her back, unwrapping it with clumsy haste.

And breathed a sigh of glad relief when the doll proved unharmed. The layers of cloth and fur had protected it. That and the fact that she'd more or less landed on her stomach. If she managed to get out of the cave, at least the gift was intact. Somehow that made her feel a whole lot better.

Once more pressing careful fingers to the wound at the corner of her forehead, she breathed another sigh of relief as she verified the blood was drying. It had somehow stopped bleeding, so at least bleeding to death was not an immediate concern. Blood loss perhaps, and certainly freezing to death...

She wasn't cold, Penelope realized with a startled blink. She finished rewrapping the doll and once more tied it to her back, then stood standing and thinking in the middle of the small cave. She wasn't cold. Now that she'd realized that... it was actually warm. Letting out a puff of air she jumped when there was no steam, no cloud to show she had breathed.

What was going on?

A sudden sound made her scream thinly in surprise, and she spun fearfully around to face the source.

It was a fox, his claws brushing against the stone floor of the cave. It was white, eyes yellow and fierce. But it didn't seem poised to attack; rather it seemed to waiting patiently for something. Penelope blinked again, distracted by what was behind the fox.

A tunnel. It seemed she wasn't trapped after all. Funny she hadn't noticed the passageway before. Cautiously she stepped forward, pausing uncertainly when the fox too moved.

It yipped, making her jump again, then turned and strolled into the tunnel.

Hesitating, she at last shrugged and pressed onward, following the dizzying white that was the fox's tail swishing back and forth as they traveled through the long, not quite dark tunnel.

She pressed a hand to her wound, willing away the unwelcome spinning of the narrow passage. Whatever was going to happen, she didn't want to pass out again. The nausea was not a welcome feeling either.

"Oh... it seems you were correct after all Bite. We do indeed have a guest."

Penelope gasped at the sound of the voice, feeling for an instant much better. It was a cold voice but a good kind of cold. Like diving into the cold lake in the wood behind their house, when the summer sun beat down relentlessly upon them. Or stepping out of a house too warm from a blazing fire to enjoy the feel of crisp winter air. Walking with her sisters as soft snow fell lazily around them.

Eased of some of the relentless dizziness plaguing her, she examined the speaker and the chamber in which she suddenly stood.

It was easy to forget she was standing in the middle of a cave. The chamber was high and wide, the ceiling covered with icicles of a hundred different colors - as if they were glass and not ice. The cave walls were the same, cloaked in rainbow ice. White furs and colorful carpets covered the floor, pillows amassed at the back, more surrounding a table where sat a figure even more exotic than the room.

He was as pale and beautiful as a fresh snowfall, relentlessly white with eyes of a pale, frosty blue. Even his lashes were white, barely visible against his pale skin. Exactly like the snow, she thought, cold and precise but pretty and unexpectedly soft as it fell to cloak everything in white. His smile was all warmth, though, as he beckoned her further into the colorful chamber. "How do you come to be here?"

Penelope hesitated, hands fisting uncertainly in her skirts as she wavered on the threshold.

"Come." He urged her inside, and slowly Penelope obeyed.

The strange man held out his hand as she reached the table. She held out her own, jumping slightly as his proved warm to the touch. Somehow she had expected his hand to be cold.

He laughed lightly and tugged her gently down to sit beside him. "It's not often I have guests." He smiled ruefully, pressing his warm fingers lightly to her wound. "I do wish they arrived in less painful ways." Leaning forward he breathed softly on the wound. Penelope closed her eyes as warm air washed over her, surprised to realize that it smelled richly of candy - the peppermints that her father had once brought home for them every year at this time, and the sugar candies that her mother had once so lovingly made.

Light laughter filtered through her thoughts, and slowly she opened her green eyes - smiling gratefully as she realized that the world had ceased to spin and tilt around her. Reaching up, she felt for the wound. There was nothing there.

"I'm afraid you'll have a slight scar... but your lovely hair will no doubt cover it." He ran a finger along the corner of her forehead, tracing the thin scar there. "I do apologize for your rough arrival."

"Where am I?" Folding her hand in her lap, she looked once more around the brightly colored chamber. "Who are you?"

The man did not immediately reply, lifting from the table a heavy silver goblet and holding it out to her. She was again reminded of candy as she accepted it, gingerly sipping the steaming contents. Sweet and faintly fruity, warm and soothing.

He nodded and smiled. "This is nowhere special," he indicated the room with an easy wave of his arm. "Nor am I particularly fascinating." He winked one pale eye, "Jack Frost is what most call me. I have always rather liked the name."

Penelope gasped, pausing in her sipping. "Jack Frost? But how? How did I get here?" She looked around the room with renewed bewilderment, half wondering now if she had hit her head much harder than she had thought. Perhaps in reality she was still unconscious on a cold, stone floor with a broken doll wrapped in cloth on her back.

Warm chuckling broke her unhappy thoughts. "During the winter, doorways open to my home to allow my comrades to come and go as they please." He stroked the fur of the small fox that had led her through the tunnel, curled up now at his side. "Occasionally a human or two will fall through. I try to bury the more dangerous holes enough they do not cause problems," he shrugged, "But if visitors are meant to come, they will come."

"Meant to come?" she fumbled with the words, frowning at him.

Again he did not immediately answer, taking the goblet from her still hands and placing a small plate of food before her. "Yes, meant to come." Reaching out slowly he tucked back a few loose strands of her chestnut hair. "Tell me about yourself. What is your name?"

"Pe-Penelope."

"And what do you do in life, Penelope?"

She paused, her fingers toying briefly with a thin slice of cheese. "I... I recently was a servant in the mayor's house. But yesterday I finally obtained a teaching certificate. When the snow melts I will begin teaching at the school in my village."

"Charming. And why do you travel alone on this cold winter night?"

Looking up, she was immediately disconcerted by his ice-pale gaze and slid her eyes away. "I wanted to surprise my sisters. They are only ten and fifteen, and live alone in our house while I make what money I can working in the manor. My youngest sister's birthday is tomorrow. I wanted to surprise them with the news of my certificate."

"You can not be so very old yourself. Eighteen? Nineteen? What of your parents?"

"Eighteen," she said faintly. "My parents died four winters ago of illness."

"I am sorry for dredging the unhappy memory up. You must dislike winter a great deal, with such a memory bound to it." His statement seemed more like a question.

Vehemently Penelope shook her head, "No. My parents loved the winter, as do my sisters and I. We could never hate it. I hate that it often keeps us apart, but the snow I think is kinder than the sun. At least to me the sun seems much harder."

Jack Frost threw back his head and laughed, the hearty sound of it once more making Penelope jump. His hair seemed for a moment to catch all the colors of the room. He smiled at her, winking again. "I think my summer brother would be highly offended to hear he is 'harder' than I. However I am most flattered by your words, child of winter."

Penelope smiled hesitantly. "I do not mean to offend your brother."

"He needs to be offended occasionally, so think nothing of it." He once more pushed the silver goblet, refilled, into her hands. Her empty plate was exchanged for one heaped with sweets.

She frowned down at the goblet, "I still don't understand what I'm doing here."

"No special reason. Children of winter all eventually find their way to me."

"Children of winter?"

Another wink, "Those whose hearts are devoted to winter, who love best the ice and snow and cold. It is that love that gives me form, and so it is only right that eventually all who created me should meet me."

"I don't think I understand."

Jack Frost smiled, "You said you worked for the mayor, yes?"

"Yes," she nodded slowly.

"Then you know he is duty-bound to care for the village and all the people in it, yes?"

Again she nodded agreement.

"But he only has power so long as the people give it to him, yes?"

"Right. He is elected each year, in the spring."

Smiling, he encouraged her to drink the warm contents of the goblet. "I am similar. I control winter, but only so long as people love it and believe in me. Wouldn't you dislike to be under the power of a Mayor you had never met?"

"Yes, I suppose. But the King..."

"Ah, but I'm not so powerful as a King." He winked again. "Merely a mayor in the grand scale of things. Do you like winter more, or less, for having met me?"

Penelope smiled, "Better, for all the strangeness of it."

"That I am most happy to hear. I regret only that you have sad memories tied to the snow."

"It actually makes it less painful. There are more happy memories than sad. It was hard, at first, to remember them. But it becomes easier for us, as the years pass."

Jack Frost nodded, taking her goblet as she finished drinking. "Good." He rose gracefully to his feet and held out a hand. "Now come, you must be eager to reach home and your sisters." Stooping, he took the package earlier removed and carefully replaced it himself. "I will take you there." Stepping close he pulled her into a loose embrace.

She knew only a flurry of white and cold, a small snowstorm that somehow seemed not threatening at all. In an instant the room of colored ice was gone.

Instead she found herself standing in front of her own house, a lamp burning brightly in the window and smoke rising cheerfully from a small chimney. She could just spy her two sisters inside at the table, reading and playing with cards by lamplight.

"There we are. Safe and sound." Jack Frost smiled at her, pale blue eyes soft and pleasant. He stooped and kissed her softly on the cheek, a snowflake melting on warm skin. Her eye was caught by a sudden flurry of movement; her sisters as they realized there was someone outside.

When she looked back, he was gone. Penelope smiled, and caught her sisters in a fierce hug as they tumbled out of the house to greet her.