Frost Read online

  There was one thing, and one thing only, that could coax me into striped red tights, a fur vest, and an elf cap: Jack Snjosson. Make that Jack Snjosson in a Santa suit. Our high-school paper’s for-charity lunchtime food drive offered an up-close-and-personal with the old fellow in exchange for a nonperishable. Jack, as the paper’s editor in chief, was the unanimous choice for the red suit. Never the look-at-me type, he resisted, digging in deep the heels of his old work boots until he devised a scheme requiring company in his misery. My current ensemble was the result. As the paper’s fashion editor, I found playing elf more than a little embarrassing, but at least I got first crack at Kris Kringle.

  “Uh, Santa,” I said, “aren’t you going to ask me what I want for Christmas?” I scooched my striped limbs into the velvety folds of his lap.

  “Tell me, what is it you want from old Saint Nick?”

  “Santa”— I buried my face into his beard and whispered into his ear —“all I want for Christmas is . . .”

  I couldn’t help drawing out the moment. It was just too much fun and too surreal, even if my definition of surreal had all-new meaning since September. It was still hard to believe everything that had happened in just three short months. I really thought I was losing it when, shortly after the move from LA to Minnesota, I discovered that I was a Stork: a member of an ancient flock of soul deliverers. Things only got more complicated when I met Jack. Turned out he had a pretty nifty talent of his own. As a modern-day descendant of Jack Frost — uh-huh, that Jack Frost — he had the ability to control the weather. All the same, had you told me three months ago that I would ask Santa — and not even the real thing, instead my seventeen-year-old, bony-kneed, mahogany-haired, gem-eyed boyfriend — for what was possibly the only thing you couldn’t get at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus, I’d have said you were cracked.

  “A white Christmas,” I said.

  “And have you been good?” fake-Santa asked.

  “Mostly.”

  He groaned. Because of his special ancestry, heat was Jack’s kryptonite. The heavy costume was uncomfortable to him; my proximity made it worse. Not to mention he wasn’t really the PDA type and there was a line of at least twenty can-donating do-gooders — all girls — waiting their turn.

  “Thanks, Santa,” I said, kissing him briefly on the cheek and springing from his lap.

  His face went candy-apple red. It was, as always, our combustible combination that tested his abilities. He made it through the rest of the lunch hour without incident, while I, his elfin helper, handed candy canes to both the naughty and the nice. When his lap was finally girl-free, he stretched, peeled off the press-on whiskers, and headed in my direction.

  “Were you trying to kill me?” A much younger Jack seized me by the shoulders.

  “What?” I asked, all innocence. “I was your helper.” I shook my satchel of goodies as proof.

  “You were no help at all.”

  “Ungrateful,” I said.

  “Unthinking.”

  “Unworthy,” I countered.

  “Unbelievable,” he said, though his tone had softened considerably.

  “Ahem.” I looked up to see Penny standing behind us. “I just wanted to thank you guys for all your help. We collected ten boxes of food.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Are you two still gonna help us load the van after school?” Penny asked.

  “We’ll be there,” I answered for both of us. In the three months since our fateful Homecoming adventures, Jack and I had become a unit. Nothing like almost getting sucked through a portal to another dimension by an evil soul-snatching Raven to fast-track a relationship.

  I watched Penny walk away with a Prancer-like lope. She deserved the bounce in her step. She’d worked hard to promote and organize the food drive. I was glad it had been successful and was happy to have assisted by printing up flyers and plastering signs throughout the school.

  Jack took advantage of my diverted attention and coiled a thick swath of my hair around his fist. “And what’s this about wanting a white Christmas?”

  “I do. Now that I’ve embraced living a stone’s throw from the North Pole, I actually do.”

  “You? The California Girl? Not liking this mild winter?”

  “It’s wimpy,” I said, laughing. It was true. Now that I lived in Minnesota, the recent start-of-winter warm temps and lack of snow seemed pathetic.

  He arched his eyebrows. I loved the way it flared the blue of his eyes. “Wimpy, huh?”

  The truck’s radio crooned Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” The song worked on two levels: not only was it Christmas Eve, but the drive to Jack’s family farm felt like going back in time. I always knew when we were close, because my watch began to spin counterclockwise. The numerals even changed to Roman. At the road, stone pillars fronted the entrance with a carved wooden SNJOSSON FARMS sign strung between them. We pulled down a long gravel driveway. Apple trees dotted both sides of the narrow lane. They were barren, but I remembered them leafy and heavy with fruit. Even now, with their silvery bark set against the hard frosty ground, they were an impressive sight.

  Jack parked in front of the house, and we got out. I filled my arms with wrapped packages, gifts for his family. I took a deep breath, lingering by the passenger side of the truck. I had been to his house many times and shared many meals with his parents. I had, however, never been for a holiday dinner. Reluctantly, my mom had agreed to a trade-off. I got to spend tonight at Jack’s; in exchange, she got us both for Christmas dinner. A win-win, I’d thought, until, standing there, my nervous system lived up to its name.

  Jack walked around to me and pulled my suddenly cement-bottomed feet toward the house. “Come on,” he said.

  I was mostly freaked about meeting Jack’s grandmother, who was visiting for Christmas. The few things I knew about her hinted at an unusual woman. For starters, she had been the one to suspect and then advise Jack of my rightful membership in the Icelandic Stork Society. This, years before even I knew of my soul-delivery-service future. And she had recognized Jack’s immunity to the cold as something extraordinary, even for one of the Veturfolk, the Winter People, a Norse race of arctic descent. Moreover, she had intuited our unique connection, the heightening of powers created by our predestined combination.

  “We’re here!” Jack called out.

  “Finally.” Jack’s mom, Alda, met us in the small foyer, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She had Jack’s sky-blue eyes and dark hair, though hers was streaked with gray.

  We stamped our boots on the mat inside the front door. The house had old wooden floorboards throughout, even upstairs. They were scuffed and more warped than the Coen brothers, but I liked the colorful rag and braided rugs that cozied up each individual room and that no one was ever expected to remove their shoes. Besides, they kept the thermostat at, like, forty — below. Footwear, at its most basic design, was protection against the elements, one of which was cold. I’d come a long way from the girl who had once thought that shoes needed to match the outfit, not the season. You still wouldn’t catch me sliding my polished toes into a pair of Birkenstocks, but I’d made serious progress. I was currently wearing the Timberland boots Jack had once broken in with a rock. With pink-and-brown argyle laces tied ankle-to-toe, they were both stylish and comfortable.

  Jack’s mom was joined by Jack’s dad, Lars, a tall man with dull blond hair that thinned on top and was cropped neatly above his ears and through the sideburns. Alda hugged me and took the packages, while Lars, a man of few words, took my coat.

  “Your amma’s waiting to meet Kat,” Alda said to Jack.

  I swallowed what felt like a golf ball — with an accompanying divot of turf.

  Jack took my hand and led me through the kitchen and into the family room
. His grandmother was seated on a chair near the Christmas tree with a needle and thread in one hand and a large bowl of popcorn on her lap. As Jack and I crossed the room, she set her things on the floor and stood to greet us. She was small and thin and wiry. Her eyes darted quickly to me, and though she wasn’t one of the Storks, she was definitely cut of the same homespun cloth. I immediately brushed my hair off my face and straightened my shoulders.

  “Amma,” Jack said, “this is Kat.”

  “I’d have known her for one of Olaf’s clan,” she said, approaching me with a shuffle.

  I extended my right hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  She took my hand but didn’t shake. Instead she ran her right index finger along my palm and then, curiously, into the groove separating my thumb from my fingers. Seemingly confused with what she found, or didn’t find, there, she released me. “The power of three,” she said with surprise. She scrunched her face into an impressive network of worry lines and stared at me hard and long. Then she turned and headed for the kitchen. “I think I’ll make some tea.”

  When she was gone, Jack pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Sorry about that. She’s a little unpredictable.”

  I was still holding my hand out in front of me, staring at it, as if any sense could be made of what had transpired. I’d heard of palm reading but didn’t know the opposable thumb factored into the road map of one’s life lines. “No worries.” I shook it off. Hulda, our wise-woman leader of the Storks, had hacked a trail for me through what I would have once considered weird and wacky. “Does she drink the tea, or just read the leaves?”

  “She may eat the leaves for all I know,” Jack said. “And then the cup.”

  I relaxed. It was cool that we were able to show each other vulnerabilities, a synonym for family as far as I was concerned. Tomorrow was my turn. After Christmas morning apart at our respective home bases, we’d spend Christmas dinner with my pregnant mom, her boyfriend, Stanley, and my afi, my grandfather. And this without even my dad to factor in. He was still in California finalizing his plans to move to Norse Falls and open a wind turbine factory.

  I sat back from the Snjossons’ dining-room table, so stuffed even my ears were clogged. I had been wary of a forewarned menu of mutton stew with rutabaga. Mutton, insofar as I could tell, just meant old lamb. And as much as I appreciated my meal having had a full life before ending up on my plate, old meat meant tough. As for the rutabaga, anything that was classified as a tuber was not fit for consumption. The lamb, a term I definitely preferred to mutton, hadn’t been half bad, after all. Jack’s mom had used parsnips instead of rutabaga, a kinder and gentler member of the underground veggie world. And, though I routinely avoided words with the confusing Icelandic d that sounded more like a th, the laufabrauð, the leaf bread, with its intricate design was almost too pretty to eat and as complicated to say as it probably was to make.

  “Gifts now,” Jack’s grandmother said, clapping her hands with authority. Her economy of words hinted at her being biologically related to Jack’s dad, as would the matching bristled eyebrows.

  We gathered around the tinseled tree.

  Alda handed out rectangular packages wrapped in hunter-green paper and tied with raffia. “Kat first,” she said.

  I slid the soft-sided gift from under its ribbon, gently tearing the wrapping. Inside lay a hand-knit sweater of crimson red with a motif of snowflakes trimming its yoke.

  “Thank you. It’s beautiful,” I said, holding it to my chest. “Did you make it?”

  “I did,” Alda said. “It’s been so many years since Jack would wear one of my creations.” I looked at Jack. His holiday attire consisted of a white button-down and Levi’s, only a slight upgrade from his usual — faded T-shirts and Lee jeans. Despite temperatures tumbling daily, I’d yet to see him in a jacket. A Nordic sweater clinging to his ropy shoulders? I just couldn’t picture it.

  “I’m very flattered,” I said. “It looks like a lot of work.”

  “It will keep the Jolakottur away,” Jack’s grandmother said.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked, pushing my arms into the sleeves of the sweater.

  “The Jolakottur, the Yule Cat,” Alda replied. “An old character from Icelandic folklore. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

  Families didn’t get much more Icelandic than mine, so I was surprised, too. I could, of course, name all thirteen of the Yule Lads: Spoon Licker and Door Slammer tying as favorites, and Meat Hook had headlined as the bogey in a few of my childhood nightmares.

  “The Yule Cat belongs to the child-eating ogress Grýla. At Christmas, everyone in the family must be gifted an article of clothing, or else the Yule Cat will attack,” Jack’s amma said, wagging her index finger.

  “Attack?” I asked, poking my head through the neck and shrugging the sweater down over my torso. It was beginning to feel more like a warning than an old wives’ tale.

  “In the olden days,” Alda said in a gentler tone than her mother-in-law, “people hurried to finish all autumn’s wool work before the holiday season. Children were pressed into service with stories of a gigantic black cat that made a Christmas Day meal of anyone without a new piece of clothing.”

  Finally, a legend I could wrap my mind around. A vicious fashion-frenzied feline prowling the streets and tearing into the poorly attired.

  The rest of the gifts were exchanged. I gave everyone, except Jack, a selection of California-themed items: Ghirardelli chocolates, La Brea Bakery granola, Napa Valley dipping oils, Palm Springs dates, Kern County pistachios, all of which my mom had thought of and assembled. In addition to the sweater, I received apple butter, an All Apple All the Time cookbook, and, from Jack’s grandmother, a bag of rocks. Literally.

  “They’re moonstones,” she said.

  “They’re very pretty.” I shook a few from the small black velvet pouch onto my palm. They were of various colors from light browns to grays and engraved with symbols. I ran the tip of my finger atop one of the gold-painted engravings. It looked like a pitchfork.

  “That one’s Mannaz,” Jack’s grandmother said. “The rune symbol for man. The runes are the Norse pre-Christian alphabet.”

  “Oh. I get it.” I didn’t. I already had an alphabet. It was working fine; I didn’t think I needed another, not an ancient one, anyway. Besides, language seemed the kind of thing that moved forward or progressed, like science or medicine, or synthetic and blended textiles. “Thank you,” I said. “They’re very interesting.”

  It became painfully obvious that Jack and I hadn’t exchanged our gifts. Alda raised her eyebrows. “Is that it for gifts?”

  “I think I’m going to take Kat on a little sleigh ride,” Jack said, standing up. “Is that OK? The horses could use the exercise.”

  “Sure,” Alda said. “Don’t be too long, though. You still have to drive Kat home.”

  “Watch out for the Yule Cat,” Jack’s grandmother said.

  “I’m not worried,” I said, accepting Jack’s hand as he led me out of the room.

  While bundling up, I was grateful for the new sweater; it was beautifully crafted, warm, and another layer in my connection to Jack’s family. Bring on the Yule Cat, the child-eating ogress, and all thirteen Yule Lads — Meat Hook included — I mused to myself. I had complete confidence in my companion. The buddy system: now that was something I believed in.

  Jack drove the sleigh down a path that headed to the back of the property, one that had been frequented by trucks and tractors during harvest season. A few scant inches of white powder covered the ground, but, by all accounts, the winter was off to a slow start, with snowfall well below average. The weak light of the winter sun was no match for the advancing dusk. There was less than an hour left in the day. I noticed that Jack had packed several very large battery-operated lanterns.

  If passing through the road-front gate felt like time travel, dashing through the snow in an open sleigh felt like waking up on the front of a Hallmark card. I was sure that S
eason’s Greetings was scrawled at our feet in calligraphy.

  Finally, Jack pulled up along the edge of a small creek that gurgled with brackish water.

  “Are you warm enough?”

  I was bundled in both of the thick lap blankets that Lars had swung over the seat. “Yep.”

  He pulled me close to him. I tucked into the nook created by his outstretched arm. “Gifts now,” he said, clapping his hands as his grandmother had.

  I laughed. “I went first last time. Your turn.” From inside my parka, I pulled a wrapped gift and placed it in Jack’s hands.

  He turned it over several times, shook it, knocked on it, and even sniffed it.

  “It’s a gift, not a melon,” I said.

  He took his time, lifting the tape gingerly, folding the paper back carefully. I finally reached over, dug my nails in, and ripped.

  “There’s always that way,” he said.

  Inside was a folded navy-blue LA Dodgers cap. He shook it out. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A new hat.”

  With a puzzled look, he held it up to the fading light, turning it one way and then another. OK, so maybe the Dodgers were an acquired taste. “I already have a hat, a lucky one,” he said teasingly.

  The cap in question was, indeed, lucky, having once skittered and drawn me away from an out-of-control truck. Still, it wasn’t the most stylish of things. “It’s always nice to have options,” I said.

  “So, am I supposed to wear this thing?” He dropped it on his lap.

  “Let me show you,” I said, cramming it over his shaggy bangs.

  “It makes a statement, I suppose,” he said.

  “The statement being: I’m with Kat Leblanc, California Girl, Dodgers fan.”

  “You think I need a reminder?” he said, lifting my chin with his forefinger. “You’re not exactly the kind of girl one forgets.”

  “I’m sure you say that to all the girls you’ve saved from being dragged into another realm.” Hard to believe I could be so flip about that horrible night and Wade’s evil plan. I supposed making light of it was a way to deal. Jack had almost died. I shivered to think of it.