Jack and Holly picked up the mag-char and used the motor engine to drive it to one of New Athens’s many outgoing magnet lifts.
Once Holly had programmed the route to Invierno – the capital city of the Ice country – into the automated captain computer, the two settled back in the rear passenger cab and watched New Athens vanish around them.
“They’ve sped these things up,” Jack observed as the last vestiges of New Athens disappeared. The windows stretched all the way around the teardrop-shaped passenger cab, with a blind spot at the front, where all the computers were housed in a spherical cabin.
“They’ve changed a lot of things.” Holly trailed her fingers over the glass on her side of the cab. Without any buildings to decorate it, the landscape seemed depressingly heartless; uneven scrubland with many rocks and few living things. “It’ll be a trip getting used to it all again.”
Jack glanced at her sideways. “At least you got out a few times.”
“A few times,” Holly repeated firmly. “Don’t go heaving your poor-me-in-Tartar-Sauce-Prison spiel on me. It’ll just get you a bloody nose, no matter how blistered you are.”
Jack raised his hands. “I’m just saying...”
Holly turned back to the window, setting her chin on her fist. “Well, don’t. I didn’t have it much easier than you did.”
Jack watched her for a minute, but she didn’t look back at him. He sighed and returned his gaze to the changing landscape.
The full moon was just at the edge of land when the first snow patch appeared.
Holly had been dozing for a while, but Jack couldn’t sleep. The nightmares he had gone through in Tartarus would keep him off that particular practice until he passed out from exhaustion. At first he thought the sparkling little dot, flashing past the char in an instant, was just something his mind had created.
You did go a little batty in prison, he thought. Just feel lucky you haven’t acted too much off the deep end. That whole episode with Hermes had been a little too Alice in Wonderland for him, anyway.
A stab of guilt at the uncomfortable interrogation with his mentor nearly made him miss the second sparkle on the landscape. But this one was bigger than the last, and Jack managed to focus on it before it disappeared behind them.
Snow, he thought. Was that really...
Two white-blue clumps, one hanging onto a scruffy sapling, the other burying a patch of scrub grass, approached.
Jack lunged to the other side of the cab and shook Holly’s arm. “Holly! Hol, we’re almost there!”
“Whaa?” Holly sat up, eyes half open, and turned from side to side. “Where’s the attack...”
Jack laughed. “No attack. Hol, we’re almost there. We’re almost home.”
Holly sat up straighter. “What?”
Jack took her face in his hands, turning her head to the window. Snow, growing in size and constancy, spackled the land. “We’re in the Ice People’s country,” he said softly.
“A thousand years, Jacky.” A grin spread over Holly’s face. Her emerald eyes glowed. “After a thousand years, we’re finally back.”
Jack couldn’t stop his own grin. He grabbed her shoulders and gave her a loud kiss on the forehead. “We are back, Holly-Bush.”
Holly didn’t say anything else. She was too busy watching snow and white-topped mountains coming closer and closer.
Invierno came just half an hour later.
Jack couldn’t get the door open soon enough. Holly had to reprogram the char with instructions to go back to New Athens; until it had the new coordinates, it wouldn’t open the doors. Jack bounced on his toes in impatience as Holly fiddled with the controls, the top half of her body stuck through the hole in the front terminal wall. “Can’t you hurry up?”
“This is a new model.” Holly’s voice sounded tinny and far away; a handful of clicks and bleeps accompanied her words. “It’s a little harder than whistling Dixie to get it to – ouch, dang it! – cooperate.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “You’re gonna wake the whole neighborhood.”
“Aw, the neighborhood should be honored to be awoken by Jack Frost and Holly,” she retorted. Then she unthreaded herself from the sphere and stood up straight, her strawberry-red hair frizzed and poofy. “Ready.”
The door disconnected itself from the cabin hull and folded to the side. Jack hopped down, then offered an arm to Holly. She grabbed it and jumped out, too. The door beeped, folded back in; then the char rattled and started off down the magnet line.
Jack turned away from the char and faced the city of Invierno. His city. Snow coated everything in sight, glimmering like jewels in the pure moonlight. Tall buildings of white stone grew up as a forest. Here and there, leafless trees, frozen ponds, and iridescent ice caves formed the Invierno version of parks. The aura of clean, frozen ice hung everywhere in the air; it bit at the skin, tickled the ears, filled the nose, tantalized the tongue, all in a frame of white snow and indigo sky.
So beautiful. Jack could barely stand it.
“Jack?” Holly whispered.
“Mmm?”
“You’re breaking my finger bones.”
Jack had barely realized he had grabbed her. He released her hand, sliding his own fingers together and grasping. Ouch. It did hurt.
“Let’s go,” Holly murmured, glancing at him and smiling. “Road Two, Houses Six and Seven.”
“Across from the prettiest green-and-red ice cave you’ve ever seen,” Jack said with a smile back at her.
“Constructed by you-know-who for yours truly.” Holly laughed and grabbed his sleeve. “Come on! We’re gonna wake the whole place!”
Jack took one step to follow her. Then the ghost appeared in his path.
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