What would happen if the Guardians completely vanished into thin air? What would you do to keep your younger family members believing? When the Guardians stop visiting a small southern town, a girl named Mercy springs into action to keep the children from believing. This is the story of how she kept her brother and all the other children believing throughout the Year Without the Guardians.
Okay, I know I need to be writing in my other stories but this idea won't stop bugging me so I'm going to go ahead and get it down.
Older siblings will do anything for their little brothers or sisters. Most would give up their lives for them in a heartbeat, without a thought. Most older siblings would go to the ends of the Earth and back again for them.
Well that's what the older brothers and sisters in the small town of Kimberly did. Yes, the town was called Kimberly, and so small it wasn't even a dot on the map. In the Southern United States, belief in such things as Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman was a complex relationship between children not wanting to grow up or growing up too fast. Some believed, some didn't, but all of the older children seemed to know something the younger ones didn't.
The big brothers and sisters knew the signs though. How else when, left alone to babysit, did the tooth be replaced with a coin when no one else was home and your back was turned? How else did the presents get under the tree when you know for a fact that Mom and Dad were both sound asleep in their room down the hall, where you were waiting at your door the whole night? How else did you see traces of golden sand on the windowsill after a wonderful dream, but you live on the second story and don't even know what kind of strange sand this is? How else to brilliantly painted eggs manage to hide themselves in your sneakers when you had accidentally knocked them under your bed last night and no one but yourself knew?
They weren't blind. They knew the Guardians were real. They just never talked about it. Let the younger ones enjoy the mystery surrounding these strange icons of childhood.
Then the signs vanished…
The whole high school was in a panic. Older siblings of every crowd were whispering to each other. The parents were worried, but the older siblings knew that if they didn't do something fast every small child in town would stop believing forever. That was something they were determined not to let happen.
"His tooth was still there Sunday morning. I told him that maybe she was just busy and to try again that night." Mercy Stone whispered to a girl nearby.
"What did you do?"
"I stayed up the whole night, but she didn't come. I ended up taking a quarter from my purse and sticking it under his pillow. His tooth is in my jewelry box." Mercy replied.
Eventually all the older siblings had gathered into a crowd. It was most of the school.
"Alright, listen up! As word seems to have gotten around, at least five of the younger kids lost a tooth this weekend, and the Tooth fairy never came. This is out of the ordinary. She never missed one of us, and never multiple nights in a row. Something is up, and we're going to have to work together to keep our siblings believing. Belief in Santa and all of them is a part of being a little kid. We can't let that be taken from them. Who's with me?" Mercy called. The whole place cheered, even the teachers who had heard.
Mercy became the leader of the most ambitious and complex
stunt the High School and the students inside had ever performed.
And so, the teeth were collected by the siblings at night and hidden away in one of the classrooms by day after being sorted out.
As Easter approached, the school spent a whole day painting eggs to send along home, that the teenagers all hid skillfully around the house and outside for their younger siblings to find and believe it was the Easter Bunny.
The dust on the windowsill that the older kids had saved from over the years was handed out in small pinches of a few grains at a time to give good dreams every few nights, just like they did naturally.
Those skilled in forging handwriting mimicked Santa's handwriting onto the tags of the gifts that the whole school had pawned money together to buy.
Operation Guardian, as it was dubbed, was a well-kept secret throughout the year.
Among the teenagers and adults, worry for the true Guardians set in as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. It was only a matter of time before a child discovered that their older siblings and parents were behind the gifts and eggs and coins, after all, and after that the disbelief would begin to spread like a virus, spreading perhaps beyond the small town and out into everywhere else. What would the Guardians do if whole populations stopped believing?
Before any of those in Operation Guardians knew it, Christmas was over, and the final week of the strange year without the Guardians was over. It was New Year's Eve, after Midnight.
Mercy's little brother had lost his last baby tooth. She snuck into his room to find that a woman who appeared to be part hummingbird was flying by his bed, handing the tiny little molar to a smaller version of herself, which flew out the window. Mercy couldn't be relieved. Anger flooded her. She grabbed the Tooth Fairy's wrist, covered the woman's shocked gasp with her hand, and dragged her bodily from the room, down the stairs, and outside. She released the startled human-bird hybrid to start yelling.
"Where the hell have you been?" she growled angrily.
"What?"
"It's been a year. A year since any of you came to this town! Do you know what kind of work we went through to keep these kids believing in you? How much time was spent painting enough eggs, or searching for just the right gift to pass off as Santa for Christmas, or spreading dreams with leftover dream sand that we found on our windows? Do you know how many teeth we've collected for you? How much time was spent making sure they all stayed organized and neat for when you finally decided to show up again if you ever did? Do you know worried I've been? You watch over and protect the kids. That's the only way I can ever sleep at night, knowing there's someone out there looking over my little brother even if I'm not there to. And then you just vanish!" Mercy ranted angrily.
"I'm sorry. Something blocked us from coming into the town; we've been trying all year. We were so scared all the kids stopped believing. Thank you for keeping them believing!" Tooth hugged the teenager. Mercy's anger evaporated like smoke.
"Come to the school tomorrow, okay. The high school. We're older siblings; we know that you're all real. We aren't blind." Mercy said, hugging her back in relief.
"I'm so glad you're all okay. I was afraid something bad had happened to you. One year was hard enough. I don't think we could go on forever." She said. Tooth smiled.
"Thank you."
The next day, Tooth and the other Guardians came into the school only to be bombarded with angry voices and demands as to where they've been.
"Something kept us from coming here, we don't know what but it's gone now. We're sorry, we really are. We didn't stop trying." Tooth said earnestly.
"It's lucky for you Mercy had the idea for Operation Guardian!" one of the boys piped up.
"Operation Guardian?" North echoed. Sandy formed a question mark over his head.
"It's what we called our efforts to keep our siblings believing. Every teen and adult with a young kid or little sibling was in on it. I was the organizer. I made sure dream sand was distributed, teeth were sorted, eggs were handed out to be hidden, and the tags on presents were of suitable forgery to pass off as Santa." Mercy said proudly.
"That's impressive. It's hard enough doing one of our jobs, much less all four of them." Bunny commented.
"Well, it wasn't just me. It was the whole town." Mercy said. She handed Tooth a basket full of zip-lock baggies. Each had a name clearly written on it in neat handwriting and at least one tooth inside.
"We made sure to keep the teeth from getting mixed up." One kid explained as Tooth took the box.
"Thank you. We'll get them sorted into their boxes back at the Tooth Palace." Tooth said with a nod.
"Thank you for everything." North said. The others all nodded and Sandy passed Mercy a pouch full of dream sand. The message was clear.
Just in case.
For the most part things returned to normal. Never again in Mercy's lifetime was there ever a need for Operation Guardian to be put into use again.
But every once in a while, the paintbrushes are pulled out, the stock of dream sand is opened up, the teeth are collected, and kids with skills in forgery were sought out.
Because every once in a while, there is a year without the Guardians.
And as rare as they are, those years only bring residents of the small southern town closer together.