A Midsummer Day's Chat

It was a bright and clear day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the breeze was blowing, and if I’d crossed the street I’d have been able to get myself some handmade cotton candy from a cute little cart set up by the park. All in all, it was a perfect day.

It was almost a pity that I’d be using it to torture someone.

I didn’t do this anywhere close to my home. While many people would call me an idiot, and perhaps rightly so, I’m not stupid. Instead I went about this in the only smart way.

I took a seemingly-normal playing card from the pocket of my coat and flicked it onto the ground. The card landed upright in the dirt. The ten clubs glowed and expanded, overtaking the card and creating a club-shaped doorway. The doorway led to the middle of a forest far away from my home. Once I stepped through I snapped my fingers. The doorway shrank down and the card snapped back up into my hand.

I returned the card to my coat. From a different pocket I extracted two vials of dirt. I uncorked them both and held the two of them in one hand. I flipped them over and let the dirt start pouring out. They poured and poured, releasing an unending torrent of dirt and soil. I walked in a circle while whistling a soft tune to myself.

Once the circle was complete I put the corks back into the vials. Both were still full, so they went back into my pocket. The final thing I pulled from my pocket was a tiny glass case. A snowflake was preserved in the glass. I rolled the glass over in my hand, letting it settle on top of my thumb. A quick flick of my thumb sent it flipping over and over, sailing to a stop in the center of the circle.

For a few moments, nothing happened. That wasn’t surprising or disheartening. I was fully prepared to stand there for the next several hours.

It didn’t wind up coming to that. After only a few dozen minutes the winds shifted around me. The sun continued beating down on the forest, piercing through the trees without any obstruction. A single snowflake fell from the sky and spiraled down. It drifted this way and that, spinning all around the clearing. It lurched up and landed on the tip of my nose.

Between one moment and the next, a man appeared in the center of the circle of dirts. His skin was pale and lips had a faint blue tint to them, though it was nothing compared to the piercing blue of his eyes. He was also naked.

Jack hummed and stretched his body out. He let out a groan and began idly shaking his limbs. Flakes of ice fell from his skin, settling onto the ground in a thin layer of frost. His eyes flickered first to me, then to the forest around us, and finally to the glass on the ground.

He bent down to pick up the green object, clenching his fingers around it. Jack released a sigh of relief and straightened up. He ruffled his hair, sending another layer of frost falling around him. He shot me an insufferable smirk.

“Bynes!” He held up the glass case to show it off, though didn’t let it out of his touch or sight. “You really shouldn’t have!”

“Frost,” was all I said in response.

Jack spun the case around his hand, letting it flip from finger to finger with practiced ease. “So, how’s it going? Still in the mystic hunting business?”

“Fine,” I said flatly. “Still a winter spirit?”

“What can I say? La Befana offers great benefits.”

“I’m sure.”

“So am I!” Jack laced his hands behind his head and leaned back, balancing on his heels. “So, Gadot, it’s been, what, two months now? Three? More? Less?” My eye twitched and I shot him a glare. Jack just shrugged unrepentantly. “I don’t really bother with keeping track of mortal time.”

“Nine days.”

Jack gave a slow and exaggerated nod. “Right, right, nine days. Makes sense, makes sense. You’re lost without me, right, Keaton?”

He reached out the hand not holding the snowflake. The moment his fingers grazed the air above the dirt circle he yelped and recoiled.

Jack shook his hand around, his entire body jumping and dancing from the sensation. I didn’t so much as twitch while Jack did his exaggerated dance. I just stood there with my hands shoved into my pockets.

At some point Jack started gently licking his middle finger, letting it rest against his lips. That was about when I had enough. “You done?” I asked, raising a single eyebrow.

“Nope,” Jack decided, his lips flapping and popping in equal measure. He made a show of examining his fingertips. The skin on his index finger had started to cave in and erode away, while his middle finger was badly burnt. “Well. Well well well. Well, Nimoy, well! Did you mix consecrated ground with scorched ground!” He spun around, carelessly dragging his damaged fingers through the air to trace the circle. “You did! Wow, you really pulled out all the stops here.”

Jack dropped his hand to his side and spun around, letting his face finally sober up. He balanced one hand in front of him on an invisible and intangible podium, leaning over to more properly stare at me. “You must really want something from me.”

“Why else would I summon you?”

“My dazzling personality?” Jack suggested. He smiled at me, letting his teeth sparkle in the light of the sun.

“No.”

Jack sighed and slumped back, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes and let the glass case balance in the center of his palm. “Oh, McAvoy, you wound me! You really do, Taylor. You really do.”

“That’s the plan,” I agreed.

Jack’s eyes snapped open. He jumped up and rubbed his hands together awkwardly. “Oh, oh! We’re getting to the part where you threaten me already?! Well, color me intrigued. Whatcha got for me this time, Jackson? Another squirt gun of holy water? I should warn you, that no longer works on me.”

“Sun.”

“I have a son?” Jack asked. “Or you have a son? Wait! Wait wait! Le gasp! Paltrow, do we have a son?!”

I turned around for a moment, putting my back to Jack. I couldn’t have him seeing the frustrated scowl, after all. Though if I were to take a guess, he already knew. He definitely laughed like he did.

I wiped my face clear and turned back to him. “The sun, Frost. The sun.”

Jack scoffed. “Well, yeah, any son of ours would be the son, wouldn’t he? My everything combined with your me? Perfect recipe for perfection. Maybe even more than perfect. Oh! That’s what we should call him! Morthan Perfect!”

“We don’t have a son.”

Jack wilted. “Oh.” I actually almost believed his disappointment was real. Almost. Still, real or not, he got over it easily enough. “Well, we can fix that. I know a few rituals that can make up a kid for the two of us faster than you can say pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. What do you say, you down?”

“Is your plan to annoy me into letting you go?” I asked.

“It working?” Jack countered.

“No.”

“No.”

Jack and I stood in silence for a while after that. Me with my hands shoved into my coat pockets and Jack still fiddling around with my snowflake.

I was eventually the one to break the silence.

“The sunlight’s slowly killing you.”

“Yep, it is,” Jack agreed. “It’s not pleasant. I can feel every surface level cell of my body melting around me. You feeling extra sadistic, Staunton? Or you just that desperate?”

“I need to know where to find Medusa.”

“No.”

I let the silence linger between the two of us. A few drops of Jack’s melted body dripped to the ground.

“Excuse me?”

“I said no.” Jack’s voice came out firm and cold, all but frozen in every respect. In contrast to that, his face remained easy and conversationally open. “You don’t need to know where she is.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You really don’t.”

“I do.”

“Don’t.”

“I do.”

“Don’t.”

“I do.”

“Don’t.”

“Do.”

“Don’t.”

“Do.”

“Do.”

“Great, tell me where to find her.”

Jack’s eye twitched. He ran his hand down his face, stretching the skin down and down. He finally released it, letting his head snap back to normal. A small shower of water droplets was sent flying in every direction.

“That usually works,” he muttered. He sighed and fell back. He bent down and sat in midair, one leg crossed over the other. After a few seconds of that he fell further and collapsed to the ground. Jack sighed again and stared up at me, not bothering to stand.

“Fine,” he decided. “Fine, fine! The usual deal, then? I tell you what you want to know, you let me go, and then you go off to most likely die a brutal and painful death?”

I bobbed my head once in a simple nod. “Medusa,” I prompted. “Where is she?”

Jack shook his head and wiped the liquid from his forehead again. “Why do you even want to know?”

“So I can get stoned.”

A startled bark of a laugh drew out of Jack’s throat. He stared at me for a long moment. Long enough for the last of his hair to melt off his head. He absently twisted the snowflake in his hand. “I guess that’s reason enough. I can’t tell you where Medusa is-”

“Frost,” I snapped.

“I don’t know, Elwes. I don’t know where she is. But! I do know where she was. If you know that, a hunter of your caliber should be able to track her down. I tell you, you let me go. Capiche?”

“Deal,” I intoned back at him.

Jack nodded once and breathed out a long breath. He took a long and deep breath in, arching his entire body as he filled his lungs.

“Once upon a time!”

“Frost.”

Jack was undeterred. He just took another breath, longer and deeper than the first.

“It was a dark and stormy night!”

“Frost!”

Jack’s next breath was so long and deep that it sent his body arching further and further, only stopping when his head hit the ground behind him with a soft and wet thump.

“A long time ago, in a-”

“Frost! You don’t have time for this!” I snapped.

Jack let his body slump and fall to the forest floor. “There’s always time for theatrics,” he muttered sullenly.

“No. There’s not.”

Jack sighed and closed his eyes. A few moments later his eyelids melted away, leaving him physically unable to stop staring at me. I raised an eyebrow.

“Last I heard, she was holed up in one of the deeper parts of Hell. Middle-left side of the fraud circle. Go past the sulfur lakes on the side closest to Lucifer’s bathroom, follow the road paved with the souls of sorcerers, if you hit Lincoln’s Manor you’ve gone too far. What you’re looking for is a cute little tavern between the Respite for Drowned Witchfinders and the casino. Place is called Saint Paul’s. You can’t miss it. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” I responded. I finally pulled my hand from my pocket, revealing a trowel clasped in my fingers. I crouched down and dug into the dirt circle. I lifted up a small pile of the stuff, carefully balanced on the shovel.

The moment the circle was broken, a cool wind started blowing around the forest. It condensed and rushed through the gap in the dirt. The wind picked up and began swirling around Jack, growing into a miniature blizzard contained by the dirt. He released a sigh as his body stabilized. He let the flurry of snow lift him up and begin rebuilding his body.

Jack flipped the glass case containing my snowflake and caught it in his hand. He smirked and winked at me.

“Well, Johansson, that’s you set up on your suicide mission,” he declared. “So, yeah, good luck on that, hope you don’t die, do lots of drugs, and so on and so on. Probably see you never again, and go to Hell.”

I didn’t say anything.

The blizzard started shrinking down around Jack, disappearing off to whence it and he came from. His hand clenched into a fist around the snowflake.

I flicked my wrist. The dirt launched out of my trowel and splashed onto his arm. Jack cried out and flinched away. The snowflake dropped out of his hand and began spinning to the ground, untouched by the diminishing winds. The storm and Jack disappeared completely the moment the glass case landed.

I whistled to myself and strolled toward the abandoned snowflake. I tossed my card ahead of me as I did, letting it spread into a doorway. Without breaking my stride, I bent down to scoop up my snowflake.

Returning it to my coat pocket, I waltzed through the doorway.