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What begins it is the fear. The great and terrible fear. It doesn’t come all at once, no, this fear builds and builds and builds, growing stronger and deeper with each and every passing day. His Nightmares revel in it, glory in the sweet, rich taste of it, and the Fearlings grow fat on it. There hasn’t been such fear as this since the Dark Ages, and finally, Pitch finds he cannot ignore it.
But oh, how he wants to.
Because this fear, delicious as it is, is far too close to him. It’s near and dear – he could half believe it was his own, if it didn’t call from outside.
It’s the fear of being alone forever, of never being touched, of never being seen.
The fear of a spirit. A young one, a painfully young one, one so new and fresh to this world that Pitch feels almost angry it should fear quite so much.
It isn’t hard to locate the spirit. It makes its home near an entrance to Pitch’s, and all it takes are a few Nightmares to herd the spirit close enough – and then Pitch reaches out with his shadow hands and he drags the spirit down, down, down, and oh the burst of terror is glorious.
For a time, he lets the Fearlings and the Nightmares have the spirit. The loneliness doesn’t abate – it grows instead, and from time to time he can catch thoughts in the fear, like what if this is all there is, no person to talk to just- just the horrible things the horrorterrors, the shadow monsters, and Pitch begins to feel bloated with it. He hasn’t even seen the spirit yet, hasn’t even introduced it to true fear yet and still-
And yet, Pitch begins to find he doesn’t want to.
Pitch calls the Nightmares away – sends them to spread terror into the dreams of children. The Fearlings are harder to dismiss, but they bend to his wrath eventually, skittering away into the shadows. And then there is just the spirit, cowering there, half sobbing with terror and Pitch- ah, Pitch doesn’t like this fear. It’s still edible, still delicious, but bitter with it – too close to his own fear, and Pitch has ever found that distasteful.
So he approaches. He steps out of the shadows, glides towards the spirit – oh, he’s so young – and kneels before him. It takes a moment before the spirit responds, and then bright eyes open and stare at him with wide eyed shock and – Pitch can see the very instant the boy-spirit realises Pitch can see him – then there’s a broken, shattered sob and the spirit all but flings himself forward, arms wrapping around Pitch’s shoulders and face buried against Pitch’s collar. Little frozen tears drip from the boy’s face, shattering where they hit the floor.
For a moment, Pitch is unsure. He is, after all, the embodiment of fear. And even now, the boy-spirit is overwhelming with it. Fear of rejection now, that even though there is someone who can see and touch him, they’ll want nothing to do with him. And that too is familiar; like the loneliness before it, it leaves a bitter taste in the back of Pitch’s throat, so he carefully strokes his fingers down the boy’s back. The boy shakes against him, still sobbing, and Pitch-
Something warm unfurls in his chest, something familiar yet not – for a fraction of a second he thinks he can hear a voice calling him, a voice calling a name he knows is his yet is not – and Pitch finds himself murmuring soothingly until at last the boy shudders and is quiet.
A Fearling darts out of the shadows and tries to slither onto the boy – Pitch crushes it with a snarl, before gathering the boy-spirit into his arms and carrying him away from the pit. He takes him to a bed, settles him under the covers and sits and waits. A Nightmare comes, eager to slip into the boy’s sleep and bring more fear and Pitch, suddenly furious, shrieks with such sudden rage it sends the herd running for the world outside, fleeing for the freedom and safety of the sleeping children.
The boy sleeps.
He sleeps for a long, long time. It is a dreamless sleep – no good dreams can enter Pitch’s domain, and no Nightmares dare to disturb him. Pitch watches and waits, rarely leaving the boy’s side. He hears whispers from outside – stories the Nightmares bring home, stories of bright summer days remaining long after they should have left, stories of children left despondent when winter fails to come, of adults wondering what new trickery of the gods this is, of animals breeding out of season – plants growing too long and too swiftly and of the Guardians, frantic over something that they refuse to share.
No spirits visit Pitch, down in the darkness, and his Nightmares only give the slightest care for anything not fear.
It takes perhaps half a decade before Pitch finally hears how each and every spirit that haunts the mortal world searches for a winter child – a spirit who brings frost and snow behind him. A spirit they call Jack Frost, and a spirit who continues to sleep the sleep of the dreamless in Pitch’s bed of shadows.
None have thought to ask him yet. None have come to Pitch and requested his aid in the search – perhaps, he thinks, bitterly, they’ve forgotten him. Or perhaps they simply think he revels in the fear all this uncertainty is causing, and that he would be little help in ending it.
Either way, they have overlooked him. So he will not offer his assistance – and in truth, even if they did ask, Pitch doubts he would hand his sleeping Jack over to them. He was the one who found Jack. Before him, no-one cared. Why should he deliver him back to them, when they so obviously didn’t appreciate him until he was gone?
Pitch has appreciated Jack since he knew he existed; first, for the fear he provided and now for- for the calm.
Nothing pleases Pitch so much as to watch Jack sleep.
But all good things come to an end.
It is seven or eight years since Jack began his sleep – since Pitch brought him here – and at last, at last the cavalry is banging upon Pitch’s door. He lets them in; lets the Fearlings lead them astray and the Nightmares stamp at their heels, and when, at last, the Guardians burst into the room Pitch considers Jack’s, he remains where he is, seated beside Jack. He doesn’t bother to look up and greet them – they are hardly guests after all – and merely continues to watch Jack sleep.
“So he is here,” the Tooth Fairy murmurs.
“Of course he is,” Pitch replies. “He’s been here for as long as you’ve looked for him.” He looks up at them and smiles. “And yet only now do you come to ask me.”
Sanderson flashes through several things angrily, sand whips coiling at his feet, and the others also ready their weapons.
“Does he look like he’s having a nightmare?” Pitch asks, airily, and that gives them pause. Jack continues to breath evenly – the air above his head clear of any sort of dreamsand and his face is relaxed. “So now you know he’s safe in my care, I must ask you to leave.” On the last word, a horde of Fearlings tumble from the ceiling, landing between Jack’s bed and the Guardians. They shriek and hiss, and drive the Guardians back – still bloated on Jack’s old fear, these Fearlings, on the last traces they’ve snapped from the pit, and strong with it – until Pitch can twist his realm just so and they are abruptly expelled.
Jack shifts in his sleep, just slightly, and Pitch smiles.
It is another three years before Jack finally wakes. He blinks blearily in the twilight, sleep still clinging to his eyes, and yawns mightily before he finally lays eyes on Pitch. It takes perhaps a moment before recognition sets in, and then a smile the like of which Pitch has never seen before breaks out on Jack’s face.
“You can see me!” he cries, scrambling out of the covers and racing to stand in front of him. He hesitates a moment, hands reaching out – there is a twang of fear what if i’m wrong what if he can’t – and then Pitch meets his hand with his own.
“Yes,” he simply agrees.
The smile on Jack’s face is like the sun.
~
One day, Pitch finds Jack carefully and calmly icing over the bridges, painting it smooth and clear, and as soon as they hear the first hooves in the tunnels, Jack grabs Pitch’s hand and tugs him up amongst the hanging cages.
“Shh,” he says, as the first Nightmare canters out towards the bridge. Its hooves hit the ice and, with an aborted neigh, it skids across it, legs splaying ridiculously. Jack laughs, bright and clear, as the second and third Nightmares hit the bridges as well, and then more, hooves skittering wildly across the ice. And when the Fearlings come it is truly chaos – shrieks and brays, snorts and wild, terrified kicking abound, and all the while Jack laughs uproariously beside him.
When at last the final Nightmare escapes the bridges, Jack finally quiets and wipes tears away from his eyes.
“Now that,” he says, “that was fun.”
But eventually, eventually, Jack gets bored. He misses the world outside – misses the children especially, and wants to go out there. Even though they cannot see him. Even though he cannot touch them. Pitch wants to rage – wants to snap and bring the fear back because the fear, the fear would keep Jack here.
But he resists.
He resists because when Jack finally decides to leave, he takes Pitch’s hand in his and says, “Let’s go together.”
There’s a moment, when they’re outside, and Jack is spreading snow and happiness, spreading fun with a smile – there’s a moment when Pitch’s shadows snap at a child, touch it with fear, and he thinks Jack sees and thinks – Jack will be like the rest, once he sees, once it isn’t simply an idea but reality.
But Jack just turns and says, “Hey, I might love snow, but I’m not stupid – it could kill these kids if they stay out too long,” and that’s an end to it.
He jumps away, laughing, and snowclouds form in his wake.
He spreads winter – cold and fun and fear and darkness, and Pitch is taken by how perfectly they match, how wickedly, terribly perfectly he and Jack complement each other.
That first year after Jack wakes, the fear of the people of the world is rich and thick – a decade with winters so mild they were hardly worthy of the word winter, and now- now the snow falls thick and heavy, and the wind comes in biting and the dark, oh the dark spreads like syrup, invading everywhere it can possibly reach. The fear is so delicious that Pitch barely minds the sun rising – Jack takes the day light hours, throwing snowballs and etching frost, luring children onto thick frozen lakes and playing with them. The wind echoes with his laughter, and this, this Pitch finds so much more satisfying than Jack’s fear.
And when the night comes – and it comes early now – Jack grins and makes the wind blow faster, the ice freeze like knives and lets Pitch feed. The Nightmares come in droves, sweeping in and out of hovels and manses alike, breathing in the fear the sudden return of winter has made. Pitch half expects the Guardians to object, to have all their spirit minions come down upon the pair of them, berate them for every little thing they do but – but Sanderson meets them while they’re out, and Jack is sending bitter wind through gaps in the wood, and making the roof groan and creak under snow and ice. Pitch’s Nightmares follow the wind, bring bad dreams to child and adult alike, and Sanderson-
He watches and he smiles, and when the Nightmares move on, his dreamsand takes their place.
Jack knows of course, knows that there are others like them – he can’t miss them now, not when they peer out of their every hideaway to see Jack Frost and Pitch Black heading their way, but he doesn’t approach. He might throw a snowball or two, rile them up with gusts of wind and billowing snow, but he stays away.
“Why should I go to them?” Jack asks. “They never came to me,” and there is bitterness in his words, resentment that reminds Pitch oh so much of himself, and he finds he cannot abide that look on Jack’s face-
The first blizzard is entirely Pitch’s fault.
It is, perhaps, some four years since Jack woke. And the fear has faded somewhat with each new winter – not completely, never completely, because you cannot kill fear – and the Guardians are finally showing their irritation that Jack – fun loving, sweet, mischievous Jack – continues to drag Pitch in his wake.
They catch him during the day, when Pitch is glancing away, looking towards the night that clings to the other side of the world. Pitch never finds out what, exactly, they tell him. But when he arrives, Jack is angry.
No, Jack is furious.
And he is incandescent with it.
“Is it true?” Jack asks. “Did you send the shadows after me?”
And it doesn’t occur to Pitch to lie, because back in those sweet beginning days, Jack’s fear had been too potent for him to ignore – and isn’t he glad of it now anyway?
So he says, “Of course I did.”
The blizzard rages for days. Pitch would almost be proud of him, except- except that Jack is vindictive in his fury, and clever with it. Perhaps the worst blizzard he has ever created, and he does it far from any human – far from any animal even. In the deepest, darkest parts of Antarctica, where even the penguins avoid – and nothing can fear down there. Jack stays in the centre of the storm, winds and snow and ice whipping around him, too fast for even a spirit to dare to enter and Pitch has no doubt, no doubt at all that Jack would cast him out if he even tried.
When the winds do die down, Pitch returns. He offers his hand again, like he did so long ago and Jack... well, Jack simply stares and shakes his head.
“Not this time,” he says, and he slips away.
Pitch returns to his home, with the Fearlings and the Nightmares and it’s too quiet, too quiet by far and Jack is gone and he is furious and betrayed and.
Scared. Of course he is scared.
Jack returns near Easter, muttering about rabbits that can’t take a joke.
“It isn’t even time yet,” Jack grumbles – and Pitch simply snorts and agrees.
A week later, Jack sits up in bed and says, “Hey, let’s go spread winter in Australia, I bet that’d really piss him off.”
Jack is brushing pink egg dust out of his hair for weeks afterwards, but, in his own words, it was “So worth it.”
~
He spreads the fun in fear – the rush of power, of invincibility when a child leaps a ditch, or swings over a fast flowing river. When they first ride a horse, or fire a gun; when they do those things they thought they couldn’t. Once, such laughter grated on Pitch – their fear was banished, gone, but now. He savours it now, savours it like he hasn’t before – and when the humans spread horror stories, talk of monsters in the dark, Jack will sit rapt and happy to listen, and Pitch can feed with equanimity.
He laughs off any fears later, when the stories are finished. “Why should I be scared?” he asks. “I sleep in the Nightmare King’s bed.”
Perhaps the other spirits hear this once too often – Jack befriends some of them now, ones he likes – and soon the whispers spread and one day Pitch comes home to find the herd riled with rumours of Jack- Jack stolen away and corrupted, Jack kidnapped and held prisoner, Jack not free. There are murmurs amongst the spirits, murmurs of terrible things – things most would balk at, if not outright reject, and Pitch listens and grows angry. The Fearlings cackle; they dine well on a rich soup of spirit-fear, fear of not seeing what they should have, fear that they have wronged someone in their negligence – and oh, they have, but not how they think.
The beauty of Jack’s fear – and indeed, of fear is that acting on it can simply take it away. Better to leave it to fester and grow, to play into it just enough that it doesn’t wither away, but not enough to kill it. And the spirits – fearing though they may be, well. They won’t act. They look after Jack with curious, wondering eyes – glance between the pair of them, desperate to see what they fear is there, and yet desperate not to. It’s enough to make the Fearlings fat and lazy, and Pitch glories in it.
He touches just enough to prick their ears. And Jack, beautiful, perfect Jack, he plays into it unwittingly. He says he never has nightmares in Pitch’s bed. He laughs over making snow days on Valentine’s Day, or of avoiding Easters – better yet, he talks of ruining Easter, with blizzards and darkness. He says, “Well it’s only natural, you know? Nothing goes as well as the cold and the dark.” He keeps their fear alive in a thousand myriad ways and he never even realises he’s doing it.
They come at the touching of the seasons – when spring turns to summer and summer turns to autumn; when Jack is at his weakest and the days are at their longest. They come and they sweep into Pitch’s domain, all fire and righteous fury, and Jack is sleeping and Pitch- well, Pitch is still never so pleased as when he watches Jack sleep.
“We take him now,” North says – and they have brought an army with them. Yetis and fairies and giant stone eggs, and near every spirit they could find as well, and Pitch has little option but to acquiesce.
“You won’t be able to keep him,” he warns. “He has a taste for darkness now.”
The other spirits shake their heads in disgust – Pitch would almost laugh, for this? This has done nothing to allay their fears. They leave, and they force bindings on Pitch’s lair – golden sand and achingly sweet memories, hope and wonder all woven together to keep him trapped.
“He’ll come back,” Pitch says into the silence.
He waits.
~
The crops fail the first year of Jack’s ‘freedom.’
The ground remains too cold, the sun too weak; in the north there is a freak snowstorm in July, the height of summer, and then another in December in the south. When spring comes, the days remain cold and snow stays later than normal. Flocks of sheep lamb as per usual, only to have their new-borns freeze before their coats have fully grown. The mortals fear; they fear death and starvation, and even the children flinch away from the snow, for it has suddenly turned to knives on their skin.
The second year, thousands of tiny lights go out. In swathes. The fear is back – almost as good as in the Dark Ages – and still, Pitch is trapped.
The third year, the Nightmares bring fears of blizzards consuming them all – of a terror not yet named stealing the children and turning them to snow and ice.
The fourth year, the terror has a name.
Jack Frost.
And the fifth year? The fifth year the dam breaks – the bonds go with not a bang but a whimper, and within seconds the icy wind is back, blowing through Pitch’s domain and rattling the cages. The herd snorts and stamp their hooves, eager to feast and then there is Jack, clad in a new blue cape and smiling.
“Sorry it took so long,” he says, crossing to stand in front of Pitch.
“It was no trouble,” Pitch replies, bending just slightly – and there is Jack’s hand in his hair and cold lips over his, Jack smiling into the kiss.
When he steps back, there’s still a smile on his blue, blue lips and he says, “Let’s go have some fun.”