Guardians Chapter Book #5

  Contents

  Chapter One

  A Nose Is Nearly Nipped

  Chapter Two

  Less Than Early Frost

  Chapter Three

  Pitch Is No Longer at Bat . . . for Now

  Chapter Four

  An Unusual Pair of Tails

  Chapter Five

  The Guardians Begin to Guard

  Chapter Six

  Misgivings on Giving Gifts

  Chapter Seven

  A Yuletide Most Untidy

  Chapter Eight

  The Everlasting Lip Touch

  Chapter Nine

  Where There’s a Will, There’s a Whisper

  Chapter Ten

  What’s Good for the Goose Is Grand for the Ganderly

  Chapter Eleven

  How to Get the Goose

  Chapter Twelve

  The Greatest Library the World Has Never Known

  Chapter Thirteen

  In Which We Get to the Root of the Matter

  Chapter Fourteen

  Anger Management

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Pause that Thickens (the Plot, that Is)

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Worm Turns Inside Out

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jack Is Nimble; Pitch Now Trembles

  Chapter Eighteen

  One for All and All Against One

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Moon Is Full

  Chapter Twenty

  Between the Tick and the Tock

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Like an Elephant Stamps a Flea

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Greatest Strength

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Once Upon a Time . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mind Over What Matters

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  No Mercy

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sadness Into Snow

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Snag, Smush, and Whittle

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Time and Tide

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my editor,

  Caitlyn,

  my most stalwart

  Guardian and friend

  Jack Frost

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Nose Is Nearly Nipped

  CHRISTMAS EVE WAS JACK’S favorite day of the year. And for the last few decades or so, he had spent that day in his favorite place: his tree.

  Jack’s tree was the oldest in Central Park. A thousand people, maybe more, walked past it daily and had done so for many years, but not one of them knew that Jackson Overland Frost was very often living inside it.

  This tree was much older than the park it stood in and was even older than the city of New York itself. It was a sapling when the city was still called New Amsterdam and there were more Native Americans than settlers living in the swampy forests of Manhattan Island.

  By this Christmas Eve 1933, millions of people lived within shouting distance of this noble oak, but its secrets were still more absolute than they had been when flintlocks or bows and arrows were the order of the day.

  A heavy snow was falling over all of the East. It muffled the sounds of the city, though New York was already quieting down. People had finished shopping and were heading to their apartments and penthouses and homes. Jack, however, could feel the thrum of excitement from the children. Sleep would be difficult for them. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.

  A busy night for Sandman, he thought.

  The inside of Jack’s tree contained more than a dozen rooms within its majestic hollow, and the furnishings were a mix of pieces from several centuries: spears, shields, stools, and pottery from the various tribes of the Iroquois, along with colonial tables and ornate chairs and couches brought over from Europe. There was a tomahawk from a chief of the Algonquians. The jacket that George Washington had worn the night he crossed the Delaware was hanging on a hat rack that had belonged to Teddy Roosevelt. This tree, like all the tree-houses Jack called home, was a handsome, comfortable clutter of the region’s history.

  Jack was readying to meet up with the other Guardians when he felt the dull, worrying ache in his left hand. He wanted to ignore it. He knew Nicholas St. North would already be grumping about his being late.

  Jack Frost! The fair-weather Guardian! North would playfully gripe. Comes and goes when he pleasies!

  The word, my dear North, is “pleases,” E. Aster Bunnymund would correct.

  Go lay an egg, General Rabbit Bunny, North would retort, and they would begin to amiably argue.

  Jack could imagine it exactly. He grabbed his staff, Twiner, and prepared to leave, but then paused as another even sharper pain seared through his hand. He looked at his palm, at the curious scar etched across it. The inky stain of Pitch’s blood had discolored it and was, Jack knew, the source of the pain, for it only twinged when Pitch or his forces posed a threat.

  He turned back to a cabinet, well hidden, where he kept his daggers. There were several similar daggers in this secret cabinet. All of them were made from large, sharp, single diamonds, and each gemstone had been formed from the tears of someone Jack had loved. As far back as his earliest days as Nightlight, Jack had possessed the ability to turn sorrow into a weapon. These daggers could only be used against dark forces or to protect the kind and weak. But there was one dagger, unfinished, that was different from the others. It had come from the tears of Pitch himself. This dagger had one purpose only.

  Jack had never completed its construction, but he knew now in his heart that it was finally time to use it. And this worried him deeply as he took the dagger and tucked it into its sheath. He slipped on his blue hoodie, which he wore as a sort of uniform, then set out for the pole. The North Pole.

  The thousand or so squirrels that sheltered in his tree were eating nuts and singing squirrel carols around a squirrel version of a Christmas tree, a cone-shaped mound of acorns covered with candles. They squealed “Merry Christmas” to him in squirrel-speak. Jack squealed back; he spoke fluent squirrel and chipmunk.

  As he leaped out of the hollow, he felt his hand throb once more. Not now. Not tonight. He gave his hand a shake.

  A breeze suddenly kicked up. The trees swayed and lurched, their message clear. Danger was near. Twiner instantly transformed into a bow and a quiver full of gnarled arrows.

  Jack quickly nocked an arrow.

  “Where?” he whispered to the bow.

  He let Twiner lead him to where he needed to aim. While Jack could sense danger, Twiner could always see where it was coming from. The wind stilled, and the snow stopped.

  Hmmm. Not only do the trees know there’s danger, so does Mother Nature. Jack squinted through the trees and spotted something flying through the air toward him.

  Nightmare Men! And they were coming fast.

  But before Jack could shoot, he heard a telltale sound that made him tense up: the quick, sharp rip of arrows in the air. The limbs closest to him shook and bent faster than seemed possible, forming a shield. Bark and wood took the heavy hits, stopping more than two dozen dark arrows in midflight. One struck less than an inch from Jack’s head.

  The arrows were most unusual: black as coal, with an oily shine. He had first seen arrows like these back when he had been called Nightlight. These were the very type used in the last great battle against Pitch: the Battle of Bright Night. They came from the Dark Side of the Moon. He pulled his bow tight, whispered “Seek,” and let his own arrow fly. It splintered into a multitude of shafts. In the distance he heard a rat-a-tat of thuds as each arrow found its mark. Silence followed. Then the snow began to fall again, Mother Nature’s signal that the dan
ger had been dealt with.

  In the distance he could just barely hear carolers. They were singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” It was one of his favorites. He looked more closely at the arrow that had nearly killed him.

  “Jack Frost nearly had his nose nipped,” he said to Twiner. Then he leaped into the air and flew off into the night sky toward the North Pole with a new urgency.

  He knew that these arrows meant that Pitch was somehow enacting a long-festering plan of vengeance.

  This Christmas would mean the return of the Nightmare King.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Less Than Early Frost

  KATHERINE STOOD WITH KAILASH, her giant Himalayan Snow Goose. They were perched at the top of the actual North Pole. Katherine was anxiously scanning the busy skies for any sign of Jack. Down below, the Great City of Santa was at the height of busyness.

  North was bellowing orders from his balcony with the voice amplifier Bunnymund had invented for him. Every citizen of the city who had ears could hear the great man’s voice.

  “A dream come true for dear North,” Bunnymund had said to the others when he had first presented the amplifier to his fellow Guardian. “An earache for the rest of us.”

  But if North was urgent in his orders, he was also jolly.

  “Get that shipment of teddy bears sorted properly, or I’ll stuff you all!” he ordered with a belly laugh. A frantic troop of elves had arrived with a fresh shipment from the Bear Works building. North chuckled at their hurrying.

  His laugh was of such full and rumbling mirth that it was rumored to cause earthworms as far away as South America to wiggle underground from the tickling sensation it caused. And so, as the last-minute preparations for the Great Delivery were being put into place, the citizens of the North Pole were in a festive, cheerful panic.

  Soon the ten thousand balloon blimps would be launched to their assigned locations across the globe with their resupplies of toys for North’s sleigh. An equal number of Bunnymund’s underground trains, also loaded with playthings, would simultaneously steam toward their destinations in many lands.

  Of course, sending toys to children across the planet in a single night was a major undertaking, and a certain amount of chaos was to be expected. Yetis were yelling at elves. Elves were shouting at Lunar Lamas. Stuffed animals were nearly at war with toy soldiers. But somehow, with North’s urging and good humor, it always seemed to miraculously come together. Every year Katherine was amazed that the scheme worked. Doing a great kindness to children brings out the best in every creature, she thought. But where is Jack tonight? She always knew when he was in trouble. And tonight the trouble she sensed was deep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pitch Is No Longer at Bat . . . for Now

  PITCH DESPISED HIS IMPRISONMENT. It had been more than a hundred years since the Nightmare King had been jailed after the Battle of Bright Night, but his influence had not stopped. His armies had been soundly defeated, but they had not been obliterated. While Pitch did not know how many of his soldiers had escaped, this much was certain: The Earth has many places where shadows and gloom can give safe refuge to wickedness.

  His daughter, Emily Jane, had betrayed him, and during these many years since Bright Night, she had fully evolved into her great calling: to be Mother Nature. While she had stayed neutral throughout the early Nightmare Wars, she now used her formidable powers to keep her father confined.

  No jailer in history understood their prisoner’s strengths, weaknesses, or abilities better than Emily Jane Pitchiner. She was the only child of Lord Pitchiner, the Golden Age hero who had become the scourge of a thousand galaxies, known as Pitch Black the Nightmare King, and she knew what a valiant and doting father he once was. She knew the tenderness that had once emanated from him. And she knew that in one hand he still held the remains of her childhood portrait in a miniature cameo. Emily Jane clung to the small, desperate hope that he could someday be restored to his former gallant self.

  For generations, her father’s Nightmare soldiers had huddled in ragtag groups without their leader, but in time they set about on Nightmare missions that were becoming increasingly more organized and effective. The world seemed to be unraveling, and there was fear in the air. The Nightmare soldiers fed off fear; this made them more daring and powerful. Fear is always a tonic to the wicked. It is dark and stealthy and can travel like no other feeling. Even in his isolation, Pitch could feel this fear.

  Pitch’s prison was unlike any that had ever been, and it was in the most unlikely of places: underneath the village of Santoff Claussen. So much of the Guardians’ history originated from this enchanted settlement, and though it had been a place of refuge for magical thinking and innovation, it was by accidental design the perfect place to contain evil.

  It had been Ombric Shalazar, when he was a young wizard, who had discovered a strange, parched meteor crater at the edge of the European wildlands. The crater’s surface was coated with the densest metallic ore he had ever seen, and being the last living citizen of Atlantis, he had seen many things no other being since had laid eyes upon.

  In the center of this crater grew a tiny sapling. Tempered by the fires of the cosmos, this tree would soon grow into the towering heart of the village Ombric founded, Santoff Claussen. Its branches, trunk, and roots could transform in density and shape at Ombric’s command. Chairs, doors, entire rooms would take shape inside its massive trunk. Ombric called the tree Big Root, and from within this living tree-house, Ombric studied until he was the last of the all-powerful wizards. In time he brought to his town of Santoff Claussen other like-minded men, women, and creatures, and finally, the Guardians themselves. First North and Katherine, who became his pupils. Then Bunnymund, who had knowledge beyond even Ombric’s. And Queen Toothiana, and lastly, Sanderson Mansnoozie.

  The creature called Nightlight had been in their company from the very beginning. He was the only one who understood Pitch’s one weakness—that his villainous heart still had a glimmer of humanity—but this knowledge put Nightlight in constant peril. Pitch hated this weakness, but even more, he hated that Nightlight used it again and again to defeat him.

  Being encased in a dungeon beneath the birth city of his enemies was for Pitch a humiliation too loathsome to bear. And Big Root lived up to its name admirably. When Pitch was buried beneath the earth of the tree, its deep, sprawling roots braided into an elaborate, inescapable series of buttresses, and walls that fused with the metallic rock left by the meteor. This rock had given the tree its otherworldly power. In the passing centuries Ombric had learned that the meteor was made of what is called “dark matter,” the only element in the universe that Pitch could not breach or break.

  And so Pitch lay there in complete isolation. Weakened, silent, weary but waiting.

  Nightlight. Jack Frost. Whatever name the boy had. Pitch would soon get his revenge upon him. He had set his plan in motion. It was a plan he had nurtured for decades. And now it was ready to be let loose.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  An Unusual Pair of Tails

  DESPITE THE GUARDIANS’ VALIANT efforts to isolate Pitch, there were creatures . . . beings . . . entities that walked the Earth in his service. Two in particular were eager to further their master’s plans. Their identities—their very existences—was unknown to any of the Guardians. The Guardians had once been very familiar with them, fought them, even vanquished them. But that had been centuries ago, and these two had changed forms and shapes so that they were now completely unrecognizable. Thus, they moved outside the Guardians’ detection.

  These two were not specters or phantoms like Pitch’s Nightmare Men, but were flesh and blood. They were men, at least of a sort—at close inspection it became apparent that there was something off about each. One had an abundance of legs, which he tried to hide under a long coat. There was also a fleeting glimpse of what appeared to be a thin hairy tail. The other fellow was rather doughy, with bulging eyes that gave his peculiar face a masklike expression of co
nstant alarm. He also possessed a tail, a grotesque appendage of considerable girth and wormish looks.

  Lampwick Iddock of the Many Legs was the more polished of the pair. He dressed elegantly and had what appeared to be a gracious manner. He was, in fact, polite to a fault. But like many creatures of prey, his pleasing outward appearance was merely a disguise, what Ombric would have called a “phasma,” which is a word of Greek origin with many expressive definitions: “a trick of the eye,” “an apparition,” or most colorfully, “the monster in a velvet cloak.” Like the Venus flytrap, the pleasing scent of which could lure insects to their doom, Lampwick Iddock used his charm and demeanor to hide his brutal and murderous intent.

  The phasma Lampwick and Blandim

  His companion—his sidekick in crime, his partner—was named simply Blandim. The name fit this oafish child-man to perfection. He was on the surface agreeable, if not a bit clueless. He appeared almost stupid. He smiled constantly and nodded incessantly and chuckled at Lampwick’s every utterance. He seemed as bland and unthreatening as a Shetland pony, but he was at heart more conniving and cruel than even Lampwick.

  These creatures had a long history with Pitch and an even longer one with the Guardians. Iddock had once been an actual man, a maharaja who had once battled Queen Toothiana. But since coming under Pitch’s power, both he and Blandim had displeased their master and had been turned into a series of ever-lowlier creatures. Pitch had promised to return them both back to human form if they succeeded in this new mission. The Nightmare King had managed to send instructions to these former associates. The two phasma were now well equipped by Pitch for the task he had assigned them. They knew exactly how to find, trap, and—with their master’s further instruction—bring an end to the threat of Jack Frost’s power.