A remote cabin in the dead of a Northwestern Ontario winter. The air is still and frigid, smelling of pine smoke and creeping damp. Every surface is cold to the touch, and the only light comes from a struggling fireplace and the pale moon on snow-covered glass.
The iron latch on the woodstove was stuck again. Ellie pulled at it with her wool-mittened hand, the metal a block of ice even through the yarn. A thin, pathetic ribbon of smoke curled from the stove’s seams, smelling of soot and weak heat. The logs inside were starving. Outside, the wind pressed against the cabin walls, a low, constant moan that made the whole world feel small and besieged.
Her grandmother sat at the table, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug, her knuckles swollen like old walnuts. She wasn’t looking at Ellie, but at the big window that faced the frozen lake. It was a sheet of white, scrolled and feathered with frost so thick you couldn't see the trees on the other side.
“Leave it be, Ellie,” her grandmother said, her voice raspy. “It’s cold enough to freeze your breath. The fire’s done what it can.”
Ellie let go of the latch. Her fingers were numb. The cold wasn’t just outside anymore; it was inside the cabin, inside her bones. It felt like the quiet in the house back home, the one that had started after the shouting stopped. A quiet that was heavier than any noise.
She thought of what her dad had said. ‘We’re like a pane of glass that got dropped.’ He’d tried to explain it to her, his hands making breaking motions in the air. ‘All the pieces are still there, but they don’t fit together anymore.’ But Ellie didn’t feel like a piece of a bigger thing. She felt like an icicle, a sharp, lonely splinter hanging off the edge of the roof, about to fall.
“He’s out there tonight,” her grandmother said, her gaze fixed on the frosted glass. “Old Jack. Looking for pretty things to keep.”
Ellie came over to the table and sat down. The wood of the chair was so cold it bit through her pants. “The Jack Frost from the stories?” she asked. The one from her picture books had a pointy hat and a mischievous grin. He painted leaves in the fall and nipped at your nose.
Her grandmother finally looked away from the window, and her eyes were not kind. They were dark and serious. “Not the one from your books. Our Jack… he’s different. He’s a collector.”
“What does he collect?”
“Things that are one of a kind. The last red leaf on a maple tree. The sound a fawn makes when it first sees snow. A pattern of sunlight on the water that will never happen again.” The old woman took a slow sip from her mug. “He finds them, and he breathes on them. Freezes them. Traps them so they can’t ever change or fade. So he can have them forever.”
Ellie stared at the window, at the ferns and spirals of ice. They were beautiful, but now they seemed… hungry. “He puts them on the windows?”
“Sometimes. A gallery of stolen moments. He steals memories, too, if you’re not careful. The good ones are the prettiest. A first kiss. A mother’s lullaby. He’ll take the shape of it and press it to the glass. A warning, or a temptation.” Her grandmother leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But it’s a trick, see. If you see something out there you recognize, something you want back… you must never, ever let him in. He doesn’t give things back. He just takes the rest of it. He takes it all until there’s nothing left but a cold, empty space where it used to be.”
Later, long after her grandmother’s soft snores started from the other room, Ellie lay awake in her cot. The fire had finally died, leaving only a faint orange glow deep in the stove’s belly. The moonlight was a blade cutting through the frosted glass of her small bedroom window, casting strange, skeletal shadows on the floor.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the empty spaces. The space in the car where her mom’s bag used to be. The space at the dinner table. The space in her dad’s voice when he said her name.
She sat up. The floorboards were painful to stand on, each one a slab of ice. She crept to the window, pulling her thin blanket around her shoulders. The frost here was different from the one in the main room. It wasn’t just ferns and swirls. It was a delicate, impossibly complex web of lines and shadows, crystalline and perfect.
Her breath hitched. She pressed closer, her own warmth creating a small, clear circle on the pane. She looked through it, then pulled back, letting her eyes lose focus. And then she saw it.
It was a face. Not a perfect portrait, but the impression of one, woven into the ice like a secret. The gentle curve of a cheek. The sweep of eyelashes. And the smile. It was her mother’s smile. Not the happy, wide one from the photograph on the mantel, but the other one. The sad, tired one she’d had for weeks before Ellie was sent up here. The one that was just for herself, when she thought no one was looking.
A one-of-a-kind thing. A memory. Trapped in the ice.
Her grandmother’s words echoed in her head. A temptation. You must never let him in.
But her grandmother didn't understand. This wasn’t just a memory. It was a piece of the glass that had shattered. If Ellie could just get it back, maybe she could put it together again. Maybe the cold wasn’t a thief. Maybe it was just lonely, like her. Maybe it saved things so they wouldn't be lost forever.
Her decision was a hard, sharp thing inside her chest. She had to let it in.
Her fingers fumbled with the window latch. It was old and swollen with damp, painted over a dozen times. She pushed and pulled, her muscles straining. Nothing. She looked back at the face in the frost, so fragile, so real. A sob caught in her throat. She put both hands on the sash and shoved upward with all her weight, a desperate, silent scream building in her lungs.
With a groan of tortured wood, the window gave way. It shot upward, slamming into the top of the frame.
An instant, predatory cold flooded the room. It was not the simple cold of a winter night. This was an ancient, absolute cold, a cold that had a weight and a will. It poured over the windowsill and across the floor, a physical presence that sucked the air from her lungs. It smelled of deep earth and frozen stone. The last, stubborn ember in the distant woodstove winked out with a soft hiss, plunging the cabin into near-total darkness, lit only by the merciless moon.
Ellie gasped, stumbling back from the window. The cold wrapped around her, a suffocating blanket. The face in the frost was gone. The entire pane was now clear, a perfect black square framing the snow-covered pines outside. She slammed the window shut, her hands shaking so badly she could barely find the latch. She scrambled back to her cot, pulling the blankets over her head, shivering not from the cold, but from the sudden, profound emptiness that had just entered the room.
The sun through the window woke her. Not warmth, just light. The air in the cabin was still and achingly cold. The frost on her window was gone, every trace of it vanished. It was just clear, clean glass.
She got out of bed, her feet sticking slightly to the frozen floorboards. In the main room, her grandmother was already up, stoking the woodstove, where a new fire crackled weakly. She didn’t look at Ellie.
Something was wrong. A quiet that was deeper than yesterday's. Ellie’s eyes scanned the room. The pine-cone basket, the stack of old magazines, the chipped blue vase. Her gaze landed on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.
There was a row of framed photographs. Her grandfather in his fishing gear. Her dad as a boy, missing a tooth. A picture of her on a swing. But the big silver frame in the middle, the one that held the picture of her parents on their wedding day, was different. She walked closer, her heart beginning to pound a slow, heavy drum against her ribs. The photo frame on the mantel held a picture of just her father, smiling alone in the snow.
“The photo frame on the mantel held a picture of just her father, smiling alone in the snow.”