“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?
But those pale blue eyes regarded him balefully. Oliver had said he would help.
“All right.”
He pushed away the doubts that crowded in on him. How many people touched real magic in their lives? Once more, he started for the edge. The winter man stiffened, head cocked at an angle as though he were listening for something.
“What do—”
“Hush!” Frost snapped.
Oliver listened with him. The wind nearly screamed. But after a moment he realized that it was not only the wind. Something else shrieked along with the storm, something hidden in the darkness and the driven snow.
“Move!” Frost snapped. “We must go now or all will be lost!”
It was lunacy. Complete and utter lunacy. Through the storm he could still see the Christmas lights on his father’s house, the world he had always known and trusted. But he had the weight of the winter man against him and there was something more . . .
A change in the air. Snowflakes pelted his face as he looked around. A prickling sensation played across the base of his neck as he felt an ominous presence. The storm seemed to pull against him, but Oliver was keenly aware that it was his own fear that made him feel so sluggish.
“Please,” Frost rasped.
At last he tore his gaze away from his home and turned to stagger with the injured myth through the driving snow. The edge of the bluff loomed nearer, and snow blew off that cliff in a cascade of white. If he went any closer he might truly fall. A strong enough gust of wind might end it for both of them.
“Now what?” Oliver asked, voice strained.
“Go on,” Frost replied. “Just to the edge.”
Oliver’s mind flashed back to earlier in the evening, the moments he had spent there on the bluff, the pull of the edge, the temptation to throw himself over. It was as though he were being punished for that temptation now, as if the universe was determined to make him decide for real.
He shook his head sharply. “I can’t.”
But when he glanced at Frost, the winter man was not looking at him. Instead, those misting ice eyes were staring back over his shoulder. The myth looked terrified.
“The Falconer,” Frost whispered, the words swirling up and away with the storm so that Oliver was not even certain he had really heard them.
But he knew what he would find when he turned. The hunter. Slowly Oliver turned.
Knee-deep in the snow of an extraordinary storm, a dark figure blotted out Oliver’s view of the world he had once known. The hunter was eight feet high and half that across its shoulders. Its legs and arms were wrapped in strips of leather, chest and torso clad in hammered metal that looked pewter gray through the curtain of snow. It stood like a man, but its head belonged to a bird of prey and huge wings jutted from its back, pinioned to decrease wind resistance as it advanced upon them.
The Falconer.
In its right hand it held a long, thin blade, curved like a scimitar, and the scimitar was on fire.
“I am sorry,” Frost said, a pained whisper in his ear. “He will kill you for coming to my aid.”
Not real. It isn’t. Can’t be real, Oliver thought, gaping at it, forgetting to breathe or to blink or to allow his heart to beat.
But with each step he could hear the crunch of snow beneath leather-clad feet and the hiss as flakes fell upon that burning scimitar and melted. It paused and looked back and forth from Oliver to Frost as though trying to make sense of this new addition to its hunt.
“Oh, Jesus,” Oliver said.
He thought of his family, and of Julianna, and he wanted to say good-bye to them all. He wished he could see the house, the Christmas lights, be in his mother’s parlor again. But the Falconer was huge and terrible and blocked out the world. It opened its mouth and let out a bird-cry that pierced his ears, and Oliver shouted and clapped his free hand to the side of his head.
He felt like throwing up. He was prey, that was all.
Oliver shook his head violently. “No.” He tore his gaze away from the Falconer, backpedaling toward the edge of the bluff, feet slipping on new snow. The wind shoved him with frozen hands and even over the pounding of his own heart in his ears he could hear the crash of the surf on the rocks below, could feel the empty void that stretched out over the ocean only a few feet behind him.
He reached up and grabbed the winter man’s chin and turned the myth to face him. Wildly he stared into Frost’s eyes. He could hear the Falconer screeching again.
“Do something!”
“Get me to the edge!”
“Fuck you!” Oliver screamed, frenzied, enraged.
The mist had stopped leaking from the winter man’s eyes. The blue ice there seemed to have shrunk down to glistening, razor-edged diamonds.
“Get . . . me . . . to the edge!”
The Falconer shrieked loudly and raised the scimitar. Its huge wings beat the air and its feet left the snow and it flew across the bluff at them. Its beak opened wide, only darkness inside, and the fire of its blade gleamed dully upon its armored chest.
With what must have been the last bit of strength remaining to him, Frost thrust his right hand into the air, curved into a claw as though he could tear a chunk out of the sky. He ripped the air with icy talons and when he brought his hand down it was not merely air but ice, a massive blade forged of the storm itself. With a savage roar, voice like a raging blizzard, Frost swung the blade at the Falconer.
The hunter pulled up, wings struggling in the storm, and brought his blazing scimitar up in defense. It shattered, the fire doused, and the winter blade clanged off the Falconer’s armored chest. The pewter-gray chest plate was scored deeply but the sword forged by the winter man shattered.
The Falconer stumbled and went down on the snow. But he stirred almost immediately and began to rise, even as Frost fell to his knees.
“No!” Oliver cried, reaching to steady him. He stared down into those ice-blue eyes, then glanced at the winter man’s wound to find that the water that spilled from it was flowing faster.
The blue eyes began to close and again to leak cold mist.
“No,” Oliver whispered.
In a panic he turned toward that sheer cliff that overlooked the ocean and the rocks below. Less than ten feet away. He could see the huge whitecaps the storm was driving in. Numb with fear, Oliver began to move toward the edge.
Head bowed, shoulders hunched, he braced himself against the wind that buffeted his back, urged him on toward that fatal tumble that lay ahead. No longer was Oliver merely supporting Frost; he was practically dragging the winter man now.