The Wolves of Winter
by K. Stonham
first released 29th November 2012

January, 1711

The young winter spirit walked through his woods, light as a snowflake, his feet leaving no tracks in the snow. So what if no one in the village could see him. Or hear him. Or touch him...

He didn't need it! He didn't need them. He had his pond, and the woods, and the pure stark beauty of winter. He could ride the winds and they would take him anywhere he wanted.

...He didn't know why he kept coming back here.

But he did, so he figured this was home.

He tapped the crook of his staff to the trees as he passed them. Frost patterns, beautiful and complex and never quite the same, bloomed on each trunk. Ice laced across bare branches, captured green pine needles in its heart.

It was quiet, and he was alone.

Almost.

He half-turned at the low growl.

A gray wolf stood in the snow, not twenty feet away. Its teeth were bared at him.

Jack Frost was young, and didn't know much except his name, but something instinctive, something deep in his gut, like the memory of a past life, told him one thing.

Wolves are bad news.

Run.

Turning, his brown wool cloak whirling, Jack bolted.

March, 1711

Jack perched on the rocks jutting from the frozen center of "his" pond, watching the wolf pack drifting at the edge. Over the past several weeks, he and the wolves had gained a kind of mutual respect for one another. It helped that they couldn't catch him. Here on his pond, they couldn't even approach him as he slicked the surface. And they'd both discovered that Jack could sling nasty ice pellets as needed.

Now, though, the wolves seemed almost pitiable. The lead one kept pawing at the surface of the pond, once in a while casting a wary glance at Jack.

"What are you doing?" he murmured, watching. "That's ice. You can't dig through it, you stupid wolf." But the wolf didn't stop trying.

"You don't want to go in that water anyway," Jack said. "It's too cold for you."

He stopped. There was something in that thought...

"The water?" he asked. He stood. "You want the water, don't you?" The whole forest was frozen, heavy in the grip of winter. Even the rivers and streams were iced over, though he could feel their cold waters moving sluggishly beneath. The villagers packed clean snow into their buckets and took it inside to melt. But it took a lot of snow...

Jack stepped off his little promontory and walked across the pond's thick, thick ice. Several of the wolves shied away. The leader only backed up, growling slightly, as Jack neared the edge.

Jack didn't look away, meeting the gray wolf's gaze as he raised his staff-

-and hit its base hard against the ice.

The ice fractured, a semi-circle crumbling away to expose the cold dark waters below.

Jack took a few steps back, watching as the wolves came to drink.

He always left a drinking hole open for them after that.

November, 1715

He kept his eyes low, didn't challenge. The wolves knew not to like humans, but Jack wasn't human. And they were smart. Very smart. And he was very lonely. He knew how to watch. He knew how to learn.

The first touch of wolf fur under his careful hands bristled and brushed and was quite possibly the most wonderful thing Jack had felt in his entire life: the feeling of connection with another living being.

March, 1723

"Hey, who's got puppies?" Jack murmured, on his hands and knees, head peeking into the wolf den. In the back, the female he'd named Lily for her pale color raised her head and whined softly at him, then nosed at the pile of puppies squirming against her flank.

"One, two... six," Jack counted. "Wow." He smiled, though he did not grin. The wolves, he'd discovered, didn't like seeing his teeth. He guessed that was fair - he still had a lingering wariness of theirs. He didn't go inside the den; even years on into their acquaintance, he still wasn't accepted enough into the pack to be allowed there. "It's spring now, so I'm going north, little mother. Take care, until I'm back in the fall."

December, 1798

A girl's terrified shriek cut the silence of the forest. Jack's eyes shot open and he jumped from his tree, flying like the wind.

The pack had her half-surrounded, and the village girl was small enough that she couldn't have outrun them on a summer day, much less a snowy one.

"Oh no," Jack breathed, and dropped in front of her, staff out.

She didn't see him, of course, but the wolves did.

"Look," Jack tried to reason with them, "I know you're hungry. It's been a long winter. And she looks like food. But humans are not prey!" He readied a handful of stinging ice.

Most of these wolves, though, knew him as one of them. As a wintertime packmate. They didn't know, or maybe they did, because who knew what they could smell on his clothes, that he spent as much time in the village, playing with human children, as he did with them.

Her name was Mary, and she looked after her younger twin brothers with a responsibility completely out of proportion with her age and size.

He couldn't let them have her.

Jack stood tall, making himself as large as possible, and growled low. Then, for the first time, he snarled at his wolf pack, unleashing a gust of icy hail.

The girl turned and ran. Listening, Jack tracked her with his ears until he was sure she was safe back in the village.

He never took his eyes off the wolves.

February, 1877

The snow was red.

Jack stared, breathless, for a moment, then rose into the air and followed the listing tracks and the spotted snow.

He followed the two pair of human prints that followed after the wolf's.

He got to Foxglove before the hunters did. The wolf whined at Jack as he knelt down next to her, pulled her head onto his lap. "Oh, Foxy," Jack breathed. There was blood... he didn't know what to do...

She bared her teeth and growled, not at him, but at the two men who had just come into view.

"Why did you do this?" Jack demanded, voice breaking even as he knew he wouldn't be heard.

One of the men raised his rifle. He sighted along the barrel.

Cold anger balled up in Jack's chest. Absolute. Merciless.

"I hate you," Jack hissed.

His voice was lost in the sound of ice cracking. Foot-long icicles dropped from the tree branches above the two men. They both shielded themselves with their arms, crying out.

How did they dare come into his territory, hunt one of his pack? Foxy hadn't done anything. She'd been staying close by the den all winter. She was going to have babies in the spring...

Jack stood. "Get out of my woods." Jack threw a blast of wind at the men. "Get out of my forest!" He called snow. Hail. An ice storm.

They wanted to call him a demon? Fine. He'd play the part.

Jack didn't stop until they cried for mercy and left.

"Never come back here," he seethed, watching the two men run.

A whine from behind him made Jack turn.

Foxglove's golden eyes looked at him.

"I'm sorry. All I can do is make you cold," he apologized, kneeling.

He stayed with her, stroking her fur, until she died.

He hid her body where the hunters would never find it, so they could never claim her pelt.

April, 2012

Somewhere along the three hundred years he'd spent in the area, he'd come to know the changing generations of the Burgess wolf pack as well as he'd known the humans of the village-now-town. Perhaps better; there were decidedly fewer wolves. The pack had survived being completely exterminated due to Burgess backing onto a large forest reserve. And a little winter help from Jack himself.

"Hey, miss me?" he asked, kneeling down in front of Kujo, the newest lead male. The wolf, whose gray fur was touched with brown, yipped, then started washing Jack's face. He couldn't help laughing.

"Um, Jack?" a young voice rose up from behind him. "I'm not so sure about this. That's a wolf."

"Hey, it's your wildlife project," Jack said. "You want a good grade?"

"I'm not sure an 'A' is worth it..." Jamie replied.

"Relax." Jack turned his attention back to Kujo. "Anything goes wrong, I'll fly you out of here in a flash."

"If you're sure..."

"Am I a Guardian or not? Now, this is Kujo," Jack said, running his fingers through warm, rough fur. "Huh, looks like he got tagged. Anyway, he's six years old, last spring." He smiled at Jamie. "Want to meet him?"

Author's Note: Got a head-image of a maybe slightly darker Jack with wolves behind and to either side of him. Since my art skills are badly rusted, this resulted instead. Three hundred years of solitude, and you'd be making friends with other apex predators too. That said, I took bit of liberty here. There are very few grey wolf packs left in the lower 48 states. Even with a winter spirit's protection, it's extremely unlikely that a pack would have survived in Pennsylvania. Story edited by my Wonderful Husband.