Fearlessly Frosted: Chapter Eight

~Sanctuary~

The fourth night of their journey was the worst of Jack’s life.

The snow around him was thick and the wind was fierce, changing direction every moment it saw fit. It blew him backwards, pushed him forward, and shoved him from side to side. The snow on the ground was extremely thick and Jack’s calves burned with the effort of pushing through it and keeping his balance at the same time. His back and shoulders ached from the tense strain of holding Katherine, and his arms felt they would melt off his body. He could barely see anything in the storm and his wind-tossed hair wasn’t helping. He only stopped to adjust Katherine, who was constantly slipping.

Jack didn’t do much daydreaming—all of his energy was focused on putting one foot in front of the other and following the guiding light before him. His body urged him to stop every moment, his eyelids constantly betraying him. Through pure willpower, not the use of his powers, he dragged himself and Katherine’s lifeless body across the icy wasteland.

Miles later he stopped a moment in the wake of a large tree and tucked Katherine’s scarf back over her face and turned her to face into his shoulder. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his own and his feet worked in rhythm with it.

Hours passed, measured only in the breaths Katherine took. Jack mused to himself in the hours of silence, wondering if he had walked more in the past few days than he had in his whole existence as a guardian. His body assured him he was probably right—he had never ached as he did now. It seemed his spine would break, or his body would just fall apart at the seams.

His legs trembled and his arms shook.  The deeper into the wilderness he went, blindly following the dandelion seed, the deeper the snow became around his knees. In some unfortunate places it rose up to his thighs, and in some places even deeper. The trees around him became larger and wilder, and the great branches whipped about wildly like the cape at his back. He rested his head atop Katherine’s, blocking himself from the icy wind that rubbed his cheeks raw.

He stumbled in the snow for the umpteenth time, barely catching himself before he fell face first into the snow. His legs moved groggily and it was no surprise he fell moments later, unable to catch himself again. He sat in the snow for a moment, his limbs rejoicing in the rest and the stillness of the cold. His mind began to silence itself and melt into the snow he laid in as it did every night he slept, but there was something different there with him in the cold. The warmth and pulse of Katherine’s fragile life in his hands roused him from his mindless state, and he struggled to move again.  

Getting up was a civil war against mind and body. His mind won the battle and the defeated carried him off deeper into the woods. It seemed his legs were unattached from his body, moving on their own as his mind wandered. The world was blurred and hazy and everything was swirling around him. He couldn’t even see the light that was guiding him anymore.

The only consistency around him was the feeling of Katherine’s life in his arms and his feet moving to the beat of her breath. Both were a much slower tempo now. His mind chanted her name with the beat, which kept him from slipping away from his body entirely.

He didn’t know when he fell again, or how long he had been lying in the snow. His mind was stimulated for only one moment before he lost consciousness again, and his body remained latent.

He pried his eyes open, which was as hard to do as it had been for him to stand. His fingers twitched around Katherine’s coat, but he couldn’t make his body create any more movement. He couldn’t see anything around him—it was all a blur of white. The storm was at its peak.

All control and energy he had over his body drained away, and his blinking eyes started to close. Before his eyes could roll into the back of his head and his spirit detach from his body to rest he saw something nearing him quite quickly—a small light. It grew brighter and brighter, and then Jack was gone.

His eyes closed completely and he drifted away. The last thing he felt was the warmth of Katherine in his arms, and the immense strength of another pair of warm, furry arms encircling around his worm body. A word echoed through his void mind—Sanctuary.