Midnight’s Fables

A Grim Fairy Tale

You sincerely doubt that anything in Midnight’s extensive collection could actually meet your desire to see something that isn’t horrible and tragic and twisted. But if it claims to have something you’ll like, you aren’t about to say no thanks.

You follow it through its palace of madness, its temple to tragedy and despair, seeing grim display after grim display in the endless halls whose mix of architecture makes no sense, until you finally reach – after what feels like an hour or more of walking – a small display containing a tiny shard of bone, covered in a thin layer of sparkling frost.

“This tale comes to you courtesy of Jack,” Midnight begins. “A traveller, whose fate was strange indeed.”

***

There is little doubt I am sure that you have heard of Jack, or even met him on the road at some point in your life. Think you haven’t? What about that time he guaranteed himself good luck in life by jumping over one hundred lit candlesticks in a row without putting out a single flame?

No?

Jack, be nimble. Jack, be quick. Jack, jump over the candlestick?

Perhaps you know the tale of how he saved his mother’s farm from ruin by slaying a Giant and stealing his golden goose? The one with the magic beanstalk?

The Jack who annoyed a powerful Demon so many times he was cursed to never leave the Earth in death, barred both from Heaven and Hell.

Him, you’ve heard of. You carve pumpkins to remember him by on Halloween, though you might not know why they’re called ‘Jack O’lanterns’.

Indeed, the life of Jack was varied and busy, as adventure and pure blind luck carried him forth in all he did. He made a fortune with that golden goose and lived like a king, travelling all across Europe for almost seventy years. He partied well, he made the most of life in all he did, and he never saw a day of bad luck.

Well, not until he turned one-hundred-and-nine, at least.

‘Foolish old man,’ Jack thought, sat on the banks of a blizzard, watching the town below freeze. ‘Should have known. Jumping a candle without extinguishing the flame brings one year of good luck. You jumped a hundred when you were nine. Should have known it was going to end…’

You may have noticed by now, two more famous Jacks are missing. Jack of Jack-and-Jill, and Jack Frost.

Those are, of course, him too.

Frost thought darkly on his past as he watched the fledgling colony suffer to weather the harsh winter he had wrought for them. Oh, they gladly carved pumpkins and named them after him on Hallow’s Eve, but when winter came with he as the harbinger… then they were less pleased to see him.

He had taken plenty of lives in both guises, of course.

As harbinger of winter and a spirit of frost, he had claimed many souls with hunger and cold.

As an aspect of Samhain, The Spirit of Halloween, he had claimed many more lives still. They made him wander the world on that night. Wherever somebody was celebrating the Spirit, Jack was sent to watch. He saw how this strange time had butchered the legends of the life he had lived. How they sang songs of him and his luck, wrote pantomimes about that time he killed a Giant and stole his goose, and made pumpkins into faces and named them after him.

It was strange. They remembered him in so many different ways, so many different stories. But nobody remembered him. Nobody seemed to know that all those different stories were about him, or that he was real.

That was the one benefit of Samhain, he supposed. It let him get his revenge.

Because whenever he went out into the world on Halloween, he saw so many costumes, so many strange creatures, so many masked faces…

But one of them always got him angry.

Because there was a reason  he was stuck here, unable to move on. His curse.

So if you go out on Halloween, the one thing you should never do… is wear the mask of The Devil or a Demon.

Because you will find the Spirit of Halloween embodied in the form of an angry, vengeful ghost, and he will come for you.

You can run.

You can hide.

It won’t help.

Jack will hunt you.

Jack will find you.

And he will kill you.

Jack Frost sneered bitterly at the thought of how many people he had cut down for daring to mock him, dressing as the ones that cursed him, on the one night he is forced to walk the Earth.

They deserved it. They knew enough. They knew is name. They should know better!

He whipped up his little storm and pushed the snow down onto that little hamlet harder and harder, spitting at them from the clouds.

Thick snow fell, frozen and unyielding, shutting them in their homes and claiming any who were not inside. Corpses littered the streets, frost in their lungs, ice in their hearts.

Frost smiled as he looked down upon them, a crooked smile, twisted and dark.

At least they were free to leave. He could only kill them, after all.

He was trapped. Claimed at once by Winter and Samhain, the rare occasion a soul was owned by two of the Earth’s Great Spirits. Many were owned by one. Loads of souls were part of The Spirit of Christmas, an aspect of The Spirit of Humanity. Plenty of others were part of The Spirit of Samhain, another aspect of the same. Plenty of souls – Human, animal, and plant – were claimed by various aspects of The Spirit of Nature. Vanishingly few were owned by more than one.

Lucky old Jack.

Lucky as he’d been on his hundred-and-ninth birthday. Going up the hill to the well with his daughter Jill, just looking to bring down a pail of water.

But his good luck had run out and all the bad luck of a hundred years had struck him at once, and then…

He slipped, hit his head on a rock on the way down the hill and…

Jack fell down and broke his crown…

That was that.

The end of Jack.

Or so he’d thought. The end of his life maybe, but just the beginning of his torments.

It had been almost a thousand years. How was he still here. How were people still talking about him? Couldn’t they all just forget him already. Stop with the rhymes and the fairy tales, enough with the pumpkins, and stop talking about him as part of winter.

Let the world forget him already. Let the Spirits drop him.

Let him rest.

He pushed a little harder with his storm, breaking windows and sending snow down chimneys and into those warm homes, extinguishing fires and freezing the inhabitants within.

He couldn’t freeze the whole world. If he tried to, Winter would grow and Spring and Autumn would push back against him. Austara and Autumnus would kick up a fuss and ensure The Jul Father and Jack were kept in line. No, he couldn’t freeze the whole world and everyone who knew to sing of him.

But he could freeze these people, and that made him feel a little better.

With a crooked grin and a flash of snow, Jack Frost went on his way, in search of a new little band of mortals to torment with his bitter cold.

***

“I do not normally tell fairy tales,” Midnight says to you, “that is normally my twin’s area. But this is grim enough to be mine. But, you see, it goes well for Jack. He gets to punish and hurt as many people as he likes forever. That is good for him, yes?”

Midnight… genuinely seems not to comprehend how bleak of a tale that was. A story of a soul trapped on Earth forever who likes to take it out on unsuspecting innocent mortals?

“That was really dark, Midnight!” you protest. Midnight just nods excitedly.

“I know, isn’t it good?” it asks, voiced with an invisible grin.

“No, Midnight, that was horrible as well! I said a story without tragedy and horror! That had both!” you argue, unconsciously stepping away from the monster before you.

“But I do not have any tales that are truly devoid of such. By definition, this is all I collect,” it argues, still not seeing the problem. As though… it can’t comprehend your problem with its stories.

“Tell me something… I don’t know…,” you try to ask, unable to explain to this thing exactly what you need from it. “Bittersweet. Happy and sad together. Can you… do that?”

It pauses for a moment, head cocked, as though it is struggling to comprehend what your request even means.

“I… think I might be able to…” it nods eventually. “Come with me.”