3A/N: My fics take the original City of Bones trilogy as canon. (For more about why I haven't read the later MI books, see my profile).
As always, characters, story and universe all belong to the incomparable Cassandra Clare.
No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
"How often already you've had to be told
Keep cold, young orchard. Goodbye and keep cold."
— Robert Frost, Goodbye and Keep Cold
An Orchard So Young in the Bark
by midwinter monday
They have gone high up in the mountains to climb the granite rock faces there. Jace is much too young for real mountaineering, but he's agile and intrepid and it's hard to think of better exercise for young limbs and mind than clambering up the sheer cliffs on Whin Fell. No high-tech climbing gear, I fancy, no nylon slings and state-of-the-art harnesses: just old-fashioned carabiners and knots and rope tied securely around the waist — and if it hurts rather more when you slip to be brought up short by the sharp tug of bare rope on flesh with no five-point harness to cushion the force of the fall, well, that only encourages surefootedness...
A freak autumn storm catches them late in the afternoon on the broad and stony summit of one of the lower peaks. One minute they are basking in the thin October sunlight and the success of their final ascent of the day. The next, ragged clouds are sweeping in out of clear blue skies, bringing thunder and lightning and savage winds.
At that altitude, it's too dangerous to descend into the high forest ‑‑ lightning is slashing at the wooded slopes all around them and as they watch, a tree just below them explodes in flames ‑‑ so Valentine keeps them crouched prudently on a high grassy col between two peaks. The pelting rain is icy and uncomfortable, but Jace is entranced by the spectacular pyrotechnics lighting up the hillside to earsplitting cracks of thunder ‑‑ and quite unafraid.
By the time the storm has passed, though, it's nearly nightfall, much too late to get off the mountains before dark, and Valentine is silently berating himself for not having seen the gathering storm before it caught them on the mountaintop. To make matters worse, the storm has left a thick fog in its wake. It's impossible to see more than a yard or so ahead; the witchlight Valentine produces from his pocket just reflects back off a solid bank of mist. With cliffs and rockfalls on every side, attempting to descend in these conditions would be suicidal. They will have to make the best of it and spend the night on the mountain.
The weather has turned bitingly cold — the last of the rain was mixed with sleet and a sprinkling of snow — and they are not at all adequately dressed. Valentine takes them down into the shelter of the tree line, and finds a place at the base of a cliff where they are shielded from the worst of the wind. But it's much too cold, and even huddled over a fire, as close to the blaze as he can safely get, Jace is shivering violently...
It seems like he's been hunched up like this for ages, sitting with his arms wrapped tight about his knees trying to get warm. His left side — the side nearest the fire — is scorchingly hot, but the chill has got deep inside him and the heat just seems to bounce off his burning skin without properly penetrating.
Anyway there's too much of him facing the other way. He tries turning round and round to even things out (is this what a piece of toast feels like, he wonders?), but the warmth can't seem to reach the ferocious cold that is knotting up his middle, or stop the violent shudders that have begun rolling through him like heavy surf in a storm. His teeth are chattering so hard that his head aches — all his muscles are aching, really, from the savage, unrelenting shivering.
His father has vanished into the shadows. Peering past the glare of the fire he can just make out the tall figure at the base of the cliff behind them, a darker shadow against the looming blackness. Looking for a cave maybe? Bears sleep in caves, so a cave ought to be warm. Warmer than out here anyway.
Taking a deep breath he tries to will his aching jaw to loosen and his limbs to relax. For a blessed second his body is quiet, but he knows you can't stop shivering for long — it's like trying to stop breathing. A fresh, shuddering comber runs through him.
His father has been a long time now...There couldn't actually have been a bear in the cave, could there, lying in wait for him? It's too early in the autumn for that surely: the bears will all still be in the forest, fattening themselves up for winter.
But there are other things that lurk in the darkness, not actual demons probably, not here in Idris — but other infernal creatures: he knows the wilder parts of the countryside are riddled with Downworlders. Of course his father is more than a match for any beastly half-breed, but the bravest Shadowhunter in the world can't fight off an entire pack of Downworlders.
He is just starting to really worry when his father reappears in the flickering circle of firelight, arms piled high with more firewood. Jace watches him set the tangle of branches down carefully on the stony ground and set about stirring up the blaze with a booted toe.
No snug cave, then. With a sigh, he curls himself up even tighter — as if the cold were a monster that might not notice him if he can make himself small enough.
When he looks up, his father is gazing at him across the bright, wavering flames. For a moment Valentine looks at him, frowning; and then stripping off his own jacket, he walks around the fire and wraps it around his shivering son.
The heavy, voluminous cloth settles over him, soft as his down quilt nestling around him in bed, and for a moment he simply lays his head on his knees with relief and snuggles into the blissful warmth.
A moment later though, his tousled head pops up.
"But Father, don't you need a coat?" He looks across anxiously at Valentine who is kneeling in his shirt sleeves by the fire, feeding it with more wood. Even a child's eye can see the goose bumps on Valentine's exposed forearms and collarbones, and the steady, rapid vibration running through his body as he breaks a branch over his knee and leans in to add the pieces to the blaze. But his voice when he replies is tranquil.
"A Shadowhunter can bear the cold, Jonathan."
The child thinks about this a moment, and then throws off the enveloping folds of the coat he's wrapped in.
"I'm a Shadowhunter," he protests.
A muscle twitches at the corner of Valentine's mouth. Setting down the handful of kindling he's holding, he rises and crosses to where his son is sitting. "You are an incorrigible and self-willed four-year-old," he says repressively, wrapping the coat again firmly around his son, "who needs to do as he's told. Leave the coat on."
He gazes at his small son for a moment. "You needn't worry," he adds, a little grimly. "When you are old enough, I shall expect you to bear the cold as I do."
"How soon is old enough?" The child cocks his head to one side. "When I can climb to the top of the Long Gully without help? When I'm old enough to carry a dagger?" A hopeful expression enters his cloudless face. "You said I could have a dagger when I was five, and that's only eight months from now."
Valentine looks at him for a long time; and if his observant son notices the shadow that crosses his father's face, this time he says nothing.
Dangerously easy to be seduced by that loving innocence. A danger to himself and to the child. The gift of empathy that already burns so brightly in his young spirit will be a deadly disability if it is allowed to flourish unchecked. Unpardonable to succumb, and let his own weak-mindedness ruin the extraordinary promise of this angel-born child, whose gifts have already exceeded his wildest hopes. Or to forget the vow he took four years ago on a dark hillside above the smouldering ruins of his home.
He would never let himself love like that again.
At the time, it seemed an undiluted impulse of self-protection. Now, gazing into the hot embers of the fire, he adds silently: Or bring down another such holocaust upon someone he loved.
Love is a hostage he can't afford. Any more than Jonathan can. Only tragedy can come of it: they have been dedicated by Heaven to other purposes. But a Shadowhunter can bear the cold. In time, this stern discipline becomes second nature ‑‑ and he will teach it to his son.
"How soon is old enough?" Jonathan repeats hopefully. Valentine looks down into his son's radiant, trustful face.
"Too soon," he says quietly.
.
Sheffield
November 2012
.
If you liked this story, you might enjoy my other Jace and Valentine stories: Discipline, Fall 1997, Lessons and Chiaroscuro. They're all really leaves out of a single book, the story of Jace's childhood with Valentine, as I imagine it.
You might also try my Valentine and Jocelyn stories Odi et Amo, Wednesday's Children and the Academy-era The Circle Game — or Permanent Marks, a long Jace-and-Clary fic set just after City of Glass. Of course, like all my stories, it's really all about Valentine...