Mark of Snow 8
by K. Stonham
first released 9th February 2019

The light had faded away by the time Jamie woke up late the next morning. But as the sun shone down on him, he closed his eyes, just to check, and felt magic humming beneath his skin. So that was all right, then.

He looked for his clock and yelped, scrambling out of bed, rubbing the stray grains of dreamdust from his eyes as he yanked clothes on, late for class. Still, he paused on his way out the door to tap the snowflake that hung in his window here just as it always had at home.

He smiled as Jack's ice refracted the light, spinning rainbows all over his room.

"Good of you to join us, Mister Bennett," his professor said drily as Jamie quietly entered the studio and went to his usual space.

"Sorry," Jamie said, setting up his station quickly. "Late night."

"Indeed."

Something about the tone of his professor's voice, the way he lingered on the word, made Jamie pause. He looked sidelong at the man. Something seemed different about him. As he continued getting his paints and brushes in order, Jamie thought on it. He wondered...

The man's small smile, not even as he looked at Jamie, but as he made quiet comments to one of the other art students, convinced Jamie he wasn't imagining it. He touched fingers to his snowflake mark, and looked.

A small golden light, a seed, glowed in the professor. And in three of the other students. Mixing his paint, Jamie let the sight go, but smiled to himself as he started work on the day's subject. (A folding metal chair, draped in rosy chiffon, with what looked like boards ripped from a pallet stacked on it. Joy, another exercise in texture.) He hadn't noticed the four of them last night, but then there'd been so many people joining the chain. Hundreds. There was almost no way he could have seen them all.

Still smiling, Jamie lost himself in his work.

Some time later, the professor stopped by his easel to check Jamie's progress. It was still rough work, but Jamie was slowly getting there. As he considered his progress, Jamie felt a spark of daredevil mischief flare.

(It was his Jack-feeling, the little voice inside his head that sounded so much like his best friend.)

Loosening his magic, Jamie called to the lines, the light, the colors on his canvas.

Come out and play.

His professor drew in a breath as Jamie's painting did just that, floating off the canvas. "Interesting technique, Mister Bennett," he managed.

Jamie tilted his head this way and that, examining the painting. "I think I need to work more on my definition," he said, gesturing at the somewhat blurred legs of the chair.

He heard more sucked-in breaths as the students on either side of him saw what he was doing. Their eyes were wide.

"Yes, that's a bit Impressionistic right now," the professor said, regaining a bit of composure. But Jamie could see his eyes were wide, shining. Wondering. "I trust you'll clean that up."

"Yes, sir." Jamie held the magic for just a moment more, because he could, then let the image go back to the canvas. The paint was still wet.

Somehow, Jamie felt like the rest of the term would be much easier.

"You did WHAT?!" Pippa demanded, half-standing from her chair.

Jamie shrugged. "Gave a couple hundred people magic?"

Cupcake, more sedate than Pippa, rolled her eyes and slugged Jamie on the arm. "But not us."

"Well, you kinda weren't there," Jamie pointed out.

North laughed. It was weird seeing him-and Jack-out of "uniform," but given Burgess' summer heat, both were wearing lighter layers. Jack, in fact, was down to blue swim trunks, and sitting in the shade of a patio umbrella in Jamie's backyard. He'd stolen a pair of Jamie's sunglasses, which were currently perched on the tip of his nose, and his feet were stuck into a kiddie pool which now had little ice floes drifting around. North was more sedately dressed, wearing a red camp shirt and black slacks. His flip-flops had Christmas trees on them.

"So what'll you do now?" Bunny asked. Under his fur coat, thick now for Australian winter, he looked wilted, even more than Jack. His feet were also in the kiddie pool and he was sucking down a frosted beverage like his life depended on it. Occasionally Jack would touch a hand to the Easter-bringer and momentary hoarfrost would race over his fur. It seemed to help.

Jamie shrugged. "I have a book to edit, a summer job to work at, and my vacation to enjoy. I'm not dealing with more than that right now, thank you very much."

"Yeah, man, but what about us?" Claude asked.

"You gonna give us magic too, or not?" Caleb persisted.

Jamie looked at his friends, considering. Monty leaned closer, anticipating. Sophie made gimme hands.

"Oh, go on," Jack encouraged, leaning forward. "You know you're going to."

With a laugh, Jamie shrugged and submitted. He turned his hands palm-up, gathering light into them. Bringing the gleaming sphere toward his face, he inhaled, then breathed out.

It was like blowing seeds off a dandelion. Motes of light took flight, seeming to drift on the wind for a few moments. Then, one by one, they landed on his sister, his friends, and were absorbed.

They each took a deep breath.

"Whoa," said Claude.

"That's... different," said Monty.

Sophie blinked, shook her head. "No, it isn't," she said. "Not really..."

Somehow this was Jamie's life. A welcome-home summer party with his friends, including Jack Frost, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. Only one person was missing.

"I wish Sandy had been able to come," he said.

Bunny snorted. "Drongo's a workaholic," he said.

"You're all workaholics," Jack groaned.

"Is not true!" North insisted. A small smile danced on his lips as he looked sideways. "Tooth, for instance, has been known to take breaks of a whole three minutes!"

Everyone looked at the Tooth Fairy, who even now was hovering and directing her tiny helpers all over the globe. A few fairies paused at the snacks table to grab a grape or nibble a cut-up piece of melon.

As one, the eleven of them laughed. It was loud enough that it caught Tooth's attention. "Oh, um," she flustered. "Um, you know what to do," she told her assistants, who nodded and took off. One, Baby Tooth, rolled her eyes and buzzed a quick lap around Jack's hair before flying away, a strawberry grasped firmly in her hands. Tooth flittered over to the party and sat down, accepting the frosty fruity drink Jack handed her.

Jamie wouldn't change his life for anything in the world.

Sophie set her drink down, though, her face troubled. A moment later, she seemed to come to a decision. "Jamie," she said, "what about Mom?"

Jamie blinked. "Um." Somehow the thought had never occurred to him. "Are you sure that would be a good idea, Soph? I mean, she'd be worried about us, all of us, running off and getting into supernatural trouble..."

"Yeah, but we wouldn't have to sneak around to see Bunny and the others anymore. And she'd know we had friends to watch out for us."

"Assuming she didn't ground us for life," Jamie muttered. But he sighed. He could see both sides of the argument.

"Jamie," North said, "is this to consider: doesn't mother deserve magic in her life too?"

"There is that," Jamie admitted.

"It can't've been easy, raising the two of you alone, after your dad died..." Tooth agreed.

Jamie exhaled, then nodded. "You're right. 'Scuse me."

He stood, and went in the house, finding his mother in the kitchen. After a few minutes of talk, which she clearly thought was purely theoretical, he got what he decided was assent when she said "Jamie, if there was magic in the world, of course I'd want to be able to see it. But you know there isn't, not really."

"Mom," he said, "there is. There really is. And I want to show you something." Golden light glittered in his palm, transferred into her as he took her hand and led her to the backyard.

She stopped as she stepped out the screen door, staring at the Guardians that she could now see. Jack looked human enough, as did North, but Tooth and Bunny? No way.

"Who- who are you people?"

"Mom," Jamie said, "I'd like to introduce you to my friends."

Some time later, when Jamie's mom was past her shellshock, and getting some firsthand accounts of what her children and their friends had gotten up to in the last decade that she hadn't known about, Jamie's attention was caught by the shade of the apple tree in the side yard.

Unnoticed, he got up and walked over to the old tree. "You could come over, you know," he said softly. "You could join in. You're invited."

There was silence. But Jamie knew he wasn't wrong. "It must hurt, always being on the outside. I know it hurt Jack. But when you're ready... the invitation stands." He smiled. "I'd love to draw you," he confessed, then wandered back to the party.

As he sat back down Jack looked at him, then at the shade of the tree. And even if neither of them saw Pitch... well, both of them knew he was there, watching. Simply watching. None of the others seemed to have noticed.

"You think he'll ever actually join in?" Jack asked softly.

Jamie shrugged. "Someday. Maybe. When he's ready. Meantime, all I can do is make sure he knows the door's open."

"You're such a bleeding heart, Jamie." But Jack smiled at him as he said it.

Jamie reached for another can of soda. Jack flicked a finger against it, chilling it down instantly. Who needed ice and a cooler when you had the spirit of winter at your party? "Guardian magic, remember? And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that bullies and jerks are never that way without a reason. Someone hurt them, to make them like that. So... sometimes there's things that they need guarding against as well. Or at least a chance to heal. To learn better. And stop the cycle." Jamie nodded. "And someday, I'm going to put that in a book too."

But for now, for this summer, Jamie's main concern was getting the first book in shape and off the ground. Between and around his work schedule at the bookstore, he went through the thick folder of edits he'd amassed, and tried to make sense of them, not only for what his friends had changed, but to understand why they'd changed it. Slowly he collated them into the text. Some of the edits, he realized, really did make it read better. Some didn't have much effect. And a few he discarded outright, liking the flavor of his and Jack's own words better.

Then, when the book was as good as he could make it, Jamie started the laborious work of writing a query letter to send out to literary agents. The librarians at his library actually ended up being a lot of help with that, and also assisted him in figuring out who to send it to.

But then came the wait. Sighing, trying to stave off the simultaneous anticipation, dread, and boredom, Jamie pulled the next of North's hideous magical treatises off his shelf and started working through it.

(He discovered that he hated this one even more than most of the others. It looked deceptively like it was only a couple hundred pages, but Jamie quickly discovered that the book itself was magic and closer to a thousand pages long. He vindictively contemplated using a highlighter on all the actually important bits, but, alas, it was North's book, not his, and Jamie knew better than to mark up Santa's belongings. That way lay the Naughty List.)

Then, one day, the e-mail he'd been waiting for came back.

Yes! An agent was interested in representing the book!

Jamie pumped a fist, spun Jack's snowflake for good luck, and sent the whole book, illustrations and all, off to the agent.

He was back at school and the fall term half over by the time she sold it. She looked askance at the author name he gave her. They tussled over it via phone and e-mail for a couple weeks. Jamie eventually realized it was going to take the special touch to get his way on the issue, and asked her for a lunch meeting. Of course, then he had to skip classes for a day and get to New York City for it, but certain things were worth it. One magic lightshow and one magic seed later, she was on his side. (He promised to come back to NYC in the winter and introduce her to his writing partner.)

Jamie's Christmas present to Jack that year was a copy of the contract. They promptly took that as permission and started work on the sequel.

His present to Jack the next Christmas was the book itself, Sammy and the Visit to the North Pole, by J. S. Bennett and J. O. Frost.

It was the first book in what proved to be a long and enduring series that included, eventually, a book or two about the Boogeyman.

Pitch posed for the illustrations.