THE FULL MOON WAS low on the horizon. It would soon set behind the trees that surrounded Werewolf Valley to the west.
“I would like for you all to see my other family,” Jack told the Guardians. North called for his sleigh. There was just enough room for everyone, even Shadowbent. It was the first time in centuries they had taken a ride together in that most elaborate and wondrous of contraptions.
Jack sat pensively in front, between North, who piloted his reindeer, and Katherine. It was an effort for her not to glance too often at Jack; she knew it would annoy him. Without intending to, they had both settled into the same age. Jack was the oldest he could ever appear—eighteen—and so was Katherine.
A light snow still fell. It was Jack’s snow, certainly, but Katherine could feel that it came from a place inside his heart that she had never before known. It was a place of tranquility, perhaps even peace.
As the sleigh landed outside the Ardelean cabin, Shadowbent looked around appraisingly. “The snow. The cold. This is very like the night I brought you here for the first time,” he said to Jack. And indeed it was.
Jack thought for a moment. “I went to the house alone,” he said more to himself than to Shadowbent.
Toothiana and Twiner were standing outside the cabin to meet them. “All is tended to,” Toothiana assured Jack as he leaped from the sleigh. The rest of the Guardians stayed put. This moment seemed to belong to Jack.
Boisterous sounds from inside the cabin caught their attention. The house was alive with light and warmth, just as it had been all those years ago. Jack’s heart swelled as he walked hesitantly toward the front door. He paused to peek through the window. Once again he could barely see through the frost.
Then the door swung open, the warm inner glow lit the snowy night.
A boy stood silhouetted in the doorway. A wild-haired boy. Thin and willowy. Jack could just make out his face. The mischievous grin was there. It was a Jacklovich descendant, all right.
“You’re him,” said the boy with awe. “The boy they tell us to remember.”
He grabbed Jack’s hand. The one that had been wounded all those years and wars ago but now was healed, the skin now smoothed of its wounds.
“And what do they tell you?” asked Jack as the boy began to tug him inside.
“That your name is Jack Frost.”
“And?” Jack coaxed.
“And that you saved our family. And that you’d come back someday.”
Then his sisters crowded the doorway. One grabbed Twiner, and the other pulled on Jack’s other hand.
“They told us,” said one sister, “that we should always believe in you.”
“Even if we never see you,” said the other.
Now Jack grinned. “And did you?”
“We believed! We believed! We believed!” the threesome shouted.
The Guardians, smiling from the shadows, recognized the echo of Ombric’s first lesson in magic—to believe. They watched as Jack was drawn into the cabin, surrounded by children and parents, everyone talking excitedly at once. But Jack stopped just inside the door. Without looking back at the sleigh, he held out his healed hand.
“Come, Katherine,” he said. “You must see how my story ends.”
She smiled at her fellow Guardians, hopped from the sleigh, and joined Jack. As she took his hand, it dawned on her: This is the beginning of his story, not the end.
The snow was still falling, now in huge, feather-size flakes. The tracks of the sleigh and all their footprints would be lost and covered before the Moon set and the sun rose. But they would remember this moment for as long as they had breath. Perhaps longer.
“I think we’ll know where to find Katherine and Jack when we need them,” North remarked. Bunnymund nodded, as did Sandy, Toothiana, and Shadowbent. For an instant, they felt Ombric’s presence. The great wizard could still work magic like no other.
With one last look, North called “Away!” to his reindeer. And each of them thought the same thought as they coursed through the sky and watched their mighty friend the Moon finally disappear at the world’s edge.
No matter what may happen, through time and tide, through thick and thin, children will always believe.
The End