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Jack’s laughter is the first thing that she remembers. She is not very old, hardly able to walk, but it is the sound of her brother’s voice that makes her light up and giggle while taking a few shaky steps. He is only seven years old but his hands are steady as she grips them with her chubby fingers. Their parents laugh as she wobbles towards him but Jack is grinning at her and she smiles toothlessly back at him.
His name is the first thing she says and from that moment on they are inseparable.
Despite their large age difference of six years, Jack does not let her feel excluded. There aren’t many other children in the village and their home is further than the rest, settled at the edge of the forest that the others are too afraid to explore. Jack packs small lunches in old flour sacks and holds her hand as they sneak into the woods by themselves. He weaves stories and hides behind trees, jumping out with bits of bone or pretty rocks to sooth her fear after he frightens her with his antics. She can never stay angry at him for long, because he only ever tries to make her happy. He just wants to have fun.
When she is six years old they discover a pond to the east of their home, hidden in a thick grove of trees and perfect for their games of pretend. They slide across it in the winter and swim in it during the summer. Jack comes up with new games every day. She doesn’t question Jack’s immaturity, or the fact that at twelve years old he is still playing with his kid sister. They made a promise to be together forever one night under the thick quilts of their shared bed, and Jack’s hands feel big and safe over her small ones. They pretend to be kings and queens and run around with sticks, sword fighting with each other and giggling.
When she falls and scrapes her knee he carries her home on his back, telling stories to make her stop crying.
Eventually the other kids grow up and they join in the games, no longer afraid of the woods. She is jealous because her Jack is sharing stories with the others, but Jack is at his happiest when everyone is laughing. She supposes that she can share him with the others, if only because it makes him happy. He is still her brother, and late at night when she has nightmares Jack is the one who bundles her up and hums her to sleep.
They receive ice skates as an early Christmas present and she urges Jack to skate with her, ignoring that the ice might be too thin, ignoring her mother’s plea to be careful. Jack follows her through the trees with his laughter and he ties on her skates for her. She rushes onto the pond before Jack has his skates on, and that’s when the cracks appear. She cries out, frightened, unable to move. Jack walks slowly across the ice with his bare feet and even though she is afraid of the ice breaking she is more afraid of Jack’s terrified eyes. But he plays a game, he always plays games, and his big hands reach out to her little ones and then she is safe.
Jack’s smile is the last thing she sees before he plunges beneath the ice, standing where she once stood. She knows her hands are too small, too weak, to help him out of the water. When he doesn’t break the surface, she tears off her skates and runs home to her mother with bare feet. The snow is cold and biting and her feet are scraped but the blood trail she leaves is what she and her mother follow back to the pond.
She watches her mother slide across the ice on her belly, reaching beneath the ice for Jack, and when the village men finally arrive one of them covers her eyes with his hand. She does not see Jack’s body but she hears her mother crying. She closes her eyes and focuses on Jack’s smile, the relief in his eyes as he pulled her from the cracking ice, the sound of his voice as he coaxed her into believing in him. She finds herself vomiting into the snow, sick with guilt.
She is eight years old when her brother dies in her place.
They give him a proper burial in the spring, and it’s only when they put up the cross that she realizes he is gone forever. The winter after fills her with bitterness and the cold wind on her cheeks makes her howl with anger. The other children try to console her but they are not Jack, they can’t tell his stories, and when she is nine she doesn’t have any friends because none of them are Jack.
She doesn’t go to the pond anymore. She doesn’t play games anymore. She spends her days staring into the woods, wondering why Jack broke his promise and left her alone. It’s easier to be angry than it is to accept that he is gone. It’s easier to be angry than to feel the guilt (because it should have been her, it should have been her.)
She dreams of cracking ice and water surrounding her and the sound of Jack’s voice. She wakes in tears and there is no one to hum her to sleep anymore.
The years pass by without much change and she doesn’t scream and howl anymore, and though she can go into the woods without crying she doesn't smile. She is fourteen (just like Jack, just like her brother) when she finally returns to the grove. The pond is swollen and deep after the snow melts. It’s not yet spring but the season is warmer than usual, warm like the year that Jack had gone, and she takes off her shoes and wades into the water.
It’s freezing cold and it hurts before her legs go numb. Her dress is heavy, weighed down by the water as she walks further out. She holds her hands beneath the water and wonders how big Jack’s hands would be now, if he would be married, if he would have kids. He would be twenty.
It is his birthday.
She sinks beneath the water and her sodden dress pulls her down, down, down.
It is cold, and it is dark.
She is afraid as she stares at the surface, watching the ripples above her until her vision goes black at the edges. This is what Jack had seen, she tells herself. This was his last sight, the sight she should have seen. She remembers his final smile, just before he fell beneath the ice, and she closes her eyes.
She slips out of consciousness.
It is quiet.
And then she hears Jack’s voice, panicked and afraid, and she wakes up to find herself on the bank of the pond in only her underclothes. Her dress is half floating in the water, covered in frost.
She doesn’t know who saved her but she hears Jack’s laugh in the wind, sad and relieved, and she bows her head and cries.