Work Text:
it starts, as it always does, with a pond. it’s a pond, because it’s too small to be a lake and too grand to be a pool. and it starts, as it always does, with a boy. he is a boy, because he was a boy and he stayed a boy, stagnate and cold in time.
the winter after young jackson overland died lasted for a long, long time after it was supposed to. a curse, whispered some of the townsfolk. a haunting. jackson overland did not die easy, and his body was never lain to proper rest because the surface of the lake froze over and then never unfroze again.
so when the chill did not leave the air of the town and the frost never stopped appearing each morning, they realized that it meant there was a ghost among them, whose love of winter and death of winter meant that winter followed him in turn.
this is how it happens: jackson overland becomes a ghost story in the town of burgess, a spirit of trickery and snow.
and this is how it changes: curious people wonder about the town of ever-winter, and when they travel and they ask, they’re told of a boy named jack who brings the frost and never leaves.
(this is how it becomes: jack frost is the story told outside the borders of the town, the one that no one ever believes in. jackson overland is the story told in burgess, that becomes twisted over time but the core of it remains the same.
jack frost and jackson overland are not the same. jack frost is the spirit of winter who decided from the moment he rose out of the water that this place was home. jackson overland is the bones beneath that very same water that are preserved under a layer of ice yards thick.)
the town of burgess believe in the spirit of jackson overland. they never see jack frost.
the pond just off the town of burgess is odd and a centerpoint for endless speculation that never comes close to the real story. in places where it looks thinnest (right near the center, right where what looks like cracks are preserved in perfect clarity within the ice), the ice is at its most thickest. the thicker it appears to be, the thinner it really is. but it’s never too thin, never thin enough to break through, no matter the strongest blow slammed into it.
but perhaps the most perplexing: the surface never unfreezes. in the hottest heat of summer (which in the boundary of burgess is really only a little bit warmer than other places’ winter weather) the ice does not even waver.
scientists speculate; they never find the answers. nothing ever breaks through the ice.
children in burgess grow up skating on that little pond no matter what time of year it is. this is how life is for them and they never question it. their parents never tell them to be weary of thin ice when they skate on that pond; everyone knows that the ice is never, ever thin.
(there’s only one set of child-bones down in the depths of the waters. there’ll only ever be the one.)
the bennett’s get used to the constant frost on the edges of their windows. of course, most houses in burgess have frost on their windows during the early mornings and late evenings, no matter the weather, but the bennett’s windows never seem to learn to unfrost.
maybe it started when young james bennett (quickly nicknamed jamie bennett) was born. that was when it seemed most prevalent, most obvious, because the baby loved tracing the fern-like patterns on the windows with eyes full of joy. but maybe it was always like that, and they’d just never noticed. (maybe the spirit didn’t know why it could never leave this house alone, with it’s brown-eyed and brown-haired and eerily-familiar occupants.)
jamie looks at windows and sees frost. perhaps it was inevitable he’d be the one to see jack frost, too.
when the group (soon to become known as the burgess believers) discovers that it is their town that jack frost calls home, it’s a moment of realization.
“you’re the reason why it’s always cold!” jamie exclaims, and his face is full of only wonder and excitement but jack flinches anyway.
“i’m— i’m what?” he questions, genuine confusion on his face. (he never knew, never realized that calling the town home changed it, down to its core. naming things gives them power; jack frost names burgess home and it gives the place power.)
“well, it’s always almost winter, even when it’s the middle of summer,” pippa says, “we get snow in august— it’s not exactly normal weather.”
“is it?” jack asks, twists his staff through his fingers and there’s a ring of frost around his feet, “i never realized, i just always came back and it was cold like winter so i thought i could stick around. it just always felt like i was welcome here, like i didn’t have to leave when the seasons changed. i didn’t realize it was affecting you guys too.” he pauses, notices the frost on the grass ringing him and kicks at it with a foot. more bashful, embarrassed, not looking at them, he adds, “i can try and make it stop; i didn’t realize i was messing up the seasons here.”
“no!” the kids all shout, in almost perfect synchronization. more subdued, the twins add, “it’s like it’s—“ “—like it’s our thing.”
jamie grabs jack’s hand and holds it like he can’t feel the death-cold of the limb. “we’re the town winter never leaves.” he tells jack, smiling, and jack finds himself smiling back.
(the frost remains extra-extravagant that year, and refuses to melt away. for the first time, the cold in effect is entirely on purpose. jamie, to the wonder of the adults around him, becomes remarkably accurate at knowing when it’ll snow, no matter how out of season, even for the wacky seasons of burgess, it is.)
emma overland writes a book in her thirties. it’s a collection of smaller stories, all of them about the adventures of a boy who loves to play tricks and who is followed by winter. sometimes, the tricks and the winter is for the boy’s little sister who is never named and always laughs at his fun. the tales of jack, is written on the cover.
the book is never published, and never leaves the family. as generations pass, as overland becomes bennett, the stories become a well-loved bedtime classic in the household.
at some point, some other ancestor had rewritten the book using a typewriter and bound the new copy in a leather cover. the words were kept exactly the same, the original copy kept in a carefully created wooden box designed so that time would not decay it as quick as it should have.
(jamie and sophie find the original, one day, exploring the attic. the copy had been lost, not too long before they were born, in a housefire eventually stopped by a snowstorm. the original and its wooden box remained perfectly unscathed. so too had the foundation of the house, so it was built right back the way it always had been, for over three hundred years. the tales of jack, the well-worn, well-loved cover states proudly. “huh,” jamie says, and sophie says “jack! jack! jack!” and they both read it, right there on that attic floor. the boy in the book is brown haired and brown eyed but oh-so familiar, especially the way he laughs and jokes and plays.)
(the very last story in the tales is one not very suited for children, made all the worse because it had been witnessed by children. right before it is a page otherwise empty except for a note that says you always did love playing tricks, jack, but i don’t think this is one i’ll ever forgive you for. i love you and i hope you never stopped laughing. and is signed by emma overland. it’s a story about a day too far from winter and too close to spring, where a boy and his sister skated on ice too thin. a story where a boy said, “we’re gonna have a little fun instead,” and a story where a boy said nothing at all because he was under the ice and never coming back up.)
(jamie, all of ten years old and best friends with jack frost, thinks he understands something he never should have. there’s a pond with ice that never unfreezes. jamie thinks he knows why.)