Shadow
Chapter 4
[January 27th, 2014]
"I think that's enough tears for one day, don't you?" a male voice asked.
Amity pulled her hands away from her face, promptly whipping away the liquid droplets that blurred the picture in front of her. She looked up, still shaking. And to no surprise, embarrassment forced her to look away.
In front of her now stood Shadow, betraying a little concern as he reached out to pull her up to her feet. He looked perhaps a little dishevelled, but otherwise, still very much the same, except for the frown on his face. "Why do you avoid me?"
She didn't answer, looking down. She was a mess. Her folders and all her schoolwork, homework, assignments - those all were as good as gone. Manky, the ink and pencil lines distorted, broken, faded and barely visible... it didn't seem to good at all. Some sheets were torn, others soaked past fixing, with all the color and lettering faded. Biting her lip, she folded her arms against her chest, as if grieving over the lost notes. She protected her left arm though, as it ached miserably.
"W-was it you who scared them away?" she finally said something, quietly.
"The Rottweiler wasn't me, but it had been my idea," he exclaimed, honestly. "Would you rather we left you to face them yourself? Even you can't say that I had absolutely no right to scare them. You've seen what they can do..."
"N-no... I... how did you...?"
"I'd have thought you'd figure it out by now. You were afraid, that is all it takes for me to find someone. As for the Rottweiler, he's the dog of one of your mother's friends, remember? All I had to do, was persuade him, but I was certain he'd do that anyway," Shadow explained. "You used to spoil him rotten, of course, he'd recognize your name."
So, it had been Max who had scared them off. Not that it eased the confusion. She still couldn't decide whether she should continue avoiding him, his dangerous habits and cruel ideas of revenge, or whether she should thank him and let go of the past. After all, he'd been right. That didn't make his decisions any more righteous. He shouldn't have given her former friends a scare when they were eleven just because they were false. He shouldn't have petrified her bullies. As for his creepy attitude, strange abilities and the fact that he could sense fear... that really spoke for itself. Eleven-year-old Amity would have been fascinated and intrigued. Thirteen-year-old Amity was nervous, cynical and paranoid about all of this.
One of her hands dug into the other; a nervous habit she had. For a while, she stood and thought about his words, before finally facing him. "I-I... thank you," she stammered out, "for h-helping me."
The frown seemed to leave him and instead, he attempted something akin to a smile. It didn't look like most smiles... perhaps a little awkward, unnatural, but sincere nonetheless, even with the teeth protruding. In a rather comical way, his smile seemed to mimic a certain fictional character's smile... namely Toothless. The notion did calm her, although she would have preferred if he'd done it closed-mouth.
She frowned. Two years. It had taken all of two years since he'd shown up again. That was probably her fault, but all the same, she couldn't help but wonder. "Why?" she asked, watching him intently. "Why did you decide to show up? Why now?"
He shook his head. "That is for another time." Then he paused, looking around. Kneeling down, he grabbed a hold of some of the folders, picking through them. The ones that were the most intact were the ones he handed back to her, the others he kept in his arms as he stood back up. He didn't seem too bothered by his newly soaked trousers or the state his cloak was in now, although he didn't seem pleased by it either. Instead, he gave Amity another pitying look - something she hated even more than she despised the people who had left her like this. She could cope.
"Thanks a-again," she whispered, holding onto her work with her right arm as, before turning around. But before she could take a single step forward, she got pulled back and for a while, everything turned black.
Then in the blink of an eye, the light returned, her stomach swayed and her mind was reeling. The darkness faded out, leaving her with a clear picture of her surroundings. She no longer stood in the alleyway she had been in before. No. Instead, seeing the neatly kept garden and the slightly tarnished albeit still steadily standing row of picket fencing, she came to realize she was just outside her house. Gawking, she turned around to face her captor, who still had his hands on her shoulders.
She narrowed his eyes at him. "What was that for!?"
A smirk tugged at his lips. Clearly, he was feeling mighty proud of his actions and that feeling wasn't mutual. "I thought you would welcome a faster method of transportation. At the rate humans walk, you'd have been home by midnight," came a teasing reply, playful and friendly. Not at all like the person he could be.
Home. She sighed, glancing back at the house behind her. It was indeed getting darker and the lights in the living room were already switched on, radiating past the thin, white curtains and creeping into the garden. There were no bullies there. Just her mother and a promise of another therapy session. She welcomed it, though only reluctantly, after the past day's events. Taking a few steps forward, Amity walked up to the doorstep, wondering if her mother would question her late-coming.
"Oh, she'll be terrified," Amity's lanky re-acquaintance spoke from behind her. 'Comforting...' He chuckled. "Don't be too surprised if you get grounded."
"I get grounded? How is that fair?!"
"Unless you're willing to tell your mother the truth about today..." he offered, knowing the answer fully well.
"No." How predictable.
"Well," he paused, watching the girl reach out to the door handle, "I ought to go."
She turned to him, raising an eyebrow. Where? Why? How- well, she already had her suspicions as to how he would go. Why was he even holding those tattered bits of ruined paper anyway? There were plenty of questions Amity would have liked to ask him if only she could find the voice to ask. If he were willing to answer them, although his expression said otherwise. Everything about him said otherwise. Her free hand tugged at the doorknob and she silently winced. Still rather sore.
"I- um... goodbye, Shadow," she said quickly, before pushing the door open.
The spirit stood on the stone garden path, opening his mouth in protest, but she'd closed it behind her sooner than he could speak. "It's Pitch, Pitch Black..." he said weakly, to no one in particular, as he looked down at the stack of papers in his hand.
Sarah Parker sat in the living room of her house, the house she had lived in for over a decade, her head in her hands. When there wasn't her daughter to worry about, there were always other things. Now it was Kyle, ignorant, twelve years older Kyle who'd caused her more heartbreak than he ever did joy. Worse still, he and Amity scarcely even talked. Unlike with some of her previous partners, where she at least tried to be polite, it seemed that her daughter was resolute in her choice to hate this new addition to their family. It didn't help that Kyle had gone off on yet another business trip. And Amity was nowhere to be found, even an hour after the normal time she was normally home by.
'Sometimes, life makes you wonder where you fucked up,' Sarah thought miserably, shaking her head.
Her heart stopped suddenly. The front door opened and she wasn't sure whether she should rush to it, or sit still and think of a suitable punishment for her daughter. She chose option B, taking the time to wipe away the tears that had formed around the corners of her eyes.
Her daughter made the attempt to sneak past the living room, dodging her mother as she rushed up the stairs. She only muttered a brief "hello", before racing to her bedroom, where she (with very little subtlety) dumped a pile of something heavy - possibly her bag, but curiously, Sarah never did catch sight of the item. It was only once Amity had dressed - allowing Sarah to realize that something had changed about the state of her clothes - and walked back down the stairs, in a much calmer fashion that Sarah spoke.
"Well...?" she asked, expecting a decent answer.
"Well... what?" Amity retorted.
"What kept you? It's already five!" Sarah snapped, raising her voice, trying to stay level-headed. Regret flooded her mind as her daughter took a step back. Yet she had every right to be angry at her daughter. She would not back away from that. Though she never wanted to push anyone away. She didn't want to mess up another time...
Lowering her head, Amity apologized quietly, before sitting down beside her mother. There was enough space on that couch for more and maybe it was Sarah's hopeful thoughts of having more people in her house, but even with Amity, the couch still felt somewhat empty. Still, she forced a smile, before looking at her daughter. "So, how's you're day been, Ami?" she asked gently, lowering her voice. She watched the expression on her daughter's face shift until finally, it turned into a neutral one. "No weird voices or funny spiders?" she teased.
With some hesitance, she shook her head. "No." It didn't sound convincing, but Sarah wouldn't press. This relationship was precarious enough already. "Just had to talk to a teacher about something..."
Right. Teacher. "Any homework?"
"Well... sort of," Amity mumbled awkwardly. "But I went off the path and dropped my bag-no... well... my papers are..."
"Speak up honey," Sarah encouraged her, worried. From the little excerpts, she had heard she couldn't help but be confused with Amity's situation. "Where did you go off the path? Did something happen to your bag? What homework was it," slipped out of her before she realized it. And that was enough to trigger the tears. Placing a hand on Amity's back, she waited by her, unsure of what to do. In two years, Amity had never cried or said much of anything. She never had problems.
With her face filled with tears, Amity looked up at her mother. "I-is it so wrong t-to be different?" she asked meekly.
Unable to answer this question, Sarah just shook her head. She remembered little of her childhood. How could she know what was normal for a child, what was right for a child, when she barely felt as though she ever was one? She only remembered growing up too fast, too soon, with little opportunity. She didn't recall her friends, or how she acted as a child, no- an adolescent.
"No." Sarah brought her daughter to her chest, hugging her. "There's nothing wrong with being different."
She felt her own tears stream down her cheeks as she said this. Images flashed past her mind and as much as she desperately tried to push them away, she couldn't help but slowly recognize them. Each little picture, a small piece of her memory coming back to there.
"Y-you... you can see me?"
"Well, I was always a little different. Mama says so," a young voice responded with a giggle.
.
.
.
[January 28th, 2014]
Another day, another memory. Amity looked up at the greying clouds floating about her, intimidating and proud. It looked as though the sky might break loose with the pressure of water upon them. In front of her, the outlines of her school already showed up. Some kid pushed past her, with more eagerness than she ever had for the social setting that started slowly unveiling. Never even had the manners to say sorry, but the brunette immediately greeted his friends with a "what's up?"
She sighed, deciding to ignore this and pulled the strap of her bag. It was new, grey and rather dull, but it would do. The best bag she and her mother could get a single day before school. It was strong and large enough for all her paperwork... and the homework that she hadn't entirely lied about. She'd also managed to acquire a painful sprain, which she now had wrapped inside a rather long piece of bandaging. For now, her left hand was temporarily out of order.
A black flash appeared out of nowhere, scampering past her in what seemed like lightning speed. Once it finally stopped, she could see the feline from precisely two weeks ago staring at her, pupils drawn into a thin line within the golden irises. It's gaze followed her as she evaded it, picking up her pace and walking into the school field. Treading by her legs at an almost leisurely pace, it managed to keep up surprisingly well. She scoffed, before trying to lose it within a crowd of other kids, but there was no such luck. It stood patiently on the other side, having managed to out-pace her, tilting its head to the side. A few of the other children noticed - some backing away, others fawning over it. Which was enough to make the cat itself scowl. Even Amity was amused by this.
She finally decided to acknowledge its presence, walking up to it. "Well, what are you doing here?" she inquired of the cat, despite the looks that some of the younger kids standing nearby were giving her. It sat down, holding eye-contact with her. It refused to blink for the longest time and only responded with a small mew.
"Is that your cat?" a young girl questioned, only to sigh disappointedly when she shook her head.
"It's the witch!" another voice exclaimed, this one familiar. Samuel.
The girl backed away hearing this. Amity gawked in shock. How could she believe something as ridiculous as this? Amity had no strange powers. She didn't do voodoo, or witchcraft, or partake in black magic. She hadn't received a Hogwarts letter either, or one from any other wizarding school in the world. If she had, she wouldn't be stuck here. So what proof could they possibly have for her being a witch? She narrowed her eyes at the cat. And that's what you get for associating yourself with a feline that clearly isn't normal.
Though before she could respond to the insult, the school bell rang. Hearing a few last insults from Samuel's groupies, she made her way into the school building, not knowing that the cat was following her intently. That day, she had received a telling-off from a teacher, on account of bringing in an animal to school with her.
And when she tried to explain that the cat wasn't hers, it unhelpfully hid behind her legs at the teacher's outrage, which issued her with a letter to her parents. In this case, parent, because she refused to call Kyle a parent.
She walked off from the teacher's office with a letter in her hand, a sour-faced expression, and a feline refusing to budge following her. Her maths teacher eventually gave up after a hiss from said feline, though it did not stop anyone from calling her a witch. This continued throughout the rest of her school day, with only the cat as a desk mate, teachers gawking at her and students whispering amongst themselves. Even at lunchtime, she sat alone - no surprise there, she wasn't a social butterfly.
Amity glowered at the cat, whilst picking at her food.
"A little personal space would be nice," she muttered, as it hopped onto the bench beside her. Apparently, the cat didn't share this view. Lady misfortune loved to befriend girls like her. Cats as it were, were no different. She sighed, nibbling at the vegetables.
Not very long after she'd finished eating, she spotted a crew of people walking up to her table. Adults. In uniforms. They looked down at the cat once they saw it, only asking Amity if the cat was her's. When they heard a "no" they promptly reached out to pick the feline up by the scruff of its neck, only to receive a few serious scratches and some angry hisses. Angry red lines were scrawled along one of the men's arms by the time he finally gave up, backing away to hide behind the older one.
"'Ere kitty, kitty," the other man tried.
The cat himself was not impressed and with a flick of his tail and roll of his eyes, he turned around.
The man was about to through a sack over him, when the cat yowled, dodging the attempt and clambering up his legs. Digging his tiny claws very, very deep into the man's thigh. "Oh, bloody, frickin' hell!" the older man cursed through gritted teeth, his eyes bulging.
That elicited a laugh from anyone who had stood nearby, including the man's co-worker. After this show, no one bothered to try and take the cat away. So it jumped back down, walking up to Amity, before sitting back down at her legs. There, it proceeded to nonchalantly lick its paws with an unbelievable level of innocence as it looked around itself occasionally, pretending as though nothing had happened. As for the man, well, he grumbled, hobbling back outside with the other one.
Tuesday was an interesting day, to say the least.
Toothianna sighed, searching through yet more memories to ensure that none of them were as chaotic as Sarah's. She couldn't risk the world's balance by letting the adults remember every aspect of their lives, including those they should have forgotten years ago.
The good news was that from the memories that she had already checked upon, there were no other anomalies. Bad news was that there a) was at least another few billion individuals to go through and b) the issue with Sarah's memories. They started to open up on their own, going into an unexpected depth. Some images and visions she had never seen before, despite having seen most people's memories - or at least those which mattered most.
As for Sarah herself, she'd heard that she wasn't doing anywhere near well. In fact, her fairies had told her that whilst she was fortunate enough for a child, life wasn't so simple. Stressful in fact. It may have contributed to all of this. Or in the least worsened it. Especially with one bad choice after another. Toothianna could empathize with certain aspects of it; she'd dealt with loss, with pain, with unfaithful males or those too busy to care for her and had had more breakups than she would wish to remember, even as a spirit. There were plenty of spirits in this world and very few of them ever cared long enough not to have hurt her. She knew how that was like. The world was filled with Richies, Kyles, and Toms. There was plenty of work to be done, children to be kept safe.
Worse still, she started remembering Jack. However, in spite of this all, Toothianna didn't have the strength to wipe out those memories entirely, even though she could. She could just erase every last bit of Jack left in Sarah's mind. She could end that turmoil and cut off the strand that would lead her to chaos were she to follow it. She could prevent the risk of Sarah becoming a victim to other spirits through her old self resurfacing, the susceptibility to seeing spirits returning. But those weren't her memories.
It struck her then that it was unfair to let adults manage the world on their own. It was unfair for children to have guardians, but for adults to have none.
Her hands took a container with a familiar face on it. Jack Frost. He may not have been able to remember her, despite a closer, more in-depth analysis (as in-depth as she could go) proving Sarah's memories valid, but he was a Guardian. Not just a Guardian of Childhood.
"Baby Tooth," she called her most faithful fairy. The miniature creature appeared, zipping past a cloud of multicolored feathers, before landing on her shoulder.
She chirped at Toothianna, looking down at Jack's memories. At the prospect of doing something Jack-related, she seemed to perk up, her turquoise feathers ruffling a little. "What is it, mother?" she asked, excited, as she looked up at Toothianna.
"I'd like you to go get Jack," Toothianna said. There was something about the seriousness of her voice that made Baby Tooth shiver.
Had something gone wrong? Mother didn't sound pleased. "Is there a reason?"
"I'll tell you later," the older fairy promised, before shooing her away. Spreading her wings, Baby Tooth finally took off, finding her way through the fairy palace once more and with a sense of urgency in her head encouraging her, she flew on to Antarctica, where she believed the young winter spirit to reside.
Toothianna meanwhile called her other fairies to help her place the memory caskets back where they had come from. It didn't ease her paranoia - the thought that someone could get caught in a crossfire between Pitch and the Guardians. If Pitch found out that this adult believed, he would find her. He would take her. He would turn her life and her daughter's upside down if he hasn't done so already. And if Jack were forced to remember through Pitch's threats there would be a good chance he would do something rash to keep Sarah from danger.
And his daughter.
No, she wouldn't let that happen. None of the Guardians would.
'Please don't be stubborn about this, Jack...'
Baby Tooth shivered as the cold nipped on her feathers. She wasn't entirely sure if she could fly all the way to Antarctica. Belief was the first issue and she could already see the lack of it around the Southern Hemisphere weighing down on her. Exhaustion was a threat. Then, there the cold, which she remained unaccustomed to despite it being almost two years since the fight in Antarctica and she'd frequently been here since. However, it was always with the aid of Jack. This time, not even the wind was on her side.
She landed with a thud, not very far inland, despite trying a more graceful descent. She whimpered in pain, knowing that her legs would probably bruise.
Sneezing lightly, as the frost tickled her nose, she rubbed her hands together, before walking on. As small as she was, she hoped she could get to Jack's castle with relative speed. It was then that she realized the next underlying issue. She lowered her head in shame. Where in the name of the Man in the Moon was Jack's castle anyway?
She let out a wheeze, exasperated. Sometimes she wished her friend was a spirit of something warmer... life, well, flowers... and plants... And that he wouldn't build his place in the middle of nowhere with no mapping system to record it.
But, she shut her eyes and pushed on.
When she'd finally reached a memorable place, a colony of emperor penguins just a mile or so down the line, she could hear voices. Some coming from the penguins - "Have you seen Melody, she should have been back by now?"
"Oh, have you heard about Cass? She went out to swim in the sea a little too early. Came back with the tip of her left flipper missing and hauling a leopard seal over the ice."
For a moment, part of her wanted to dash in there and find out about the latest gossip. Though she soon forgot about the distraction when she remembered her task. Go get Jack. She sighed and walked on, trying to ignore the penguin gossip.
"Hey, Baby Tooth!" a cheerful voice called out.
She looked up, with a mixture of relief and nervousness. Above her, Jack was drifting on a narrow current of air, watching over the penguins. When he spotted her, he smiled, landing just beside her. She immediately ran towards him, ignoring the fact that he was likely no warmer than a snow cone in December. Hugging him, she chirped ecstatically. Oh, it was great to see him again. Even though she'd been here for less than an hour, it was great to see anyone again.
She sneezed again, as Jack picked her out, which forced an apology from him. "Sorry, I'm not really cut out to be a heater," he joked a little, placing her on his shoulder. "So, what brings you here?"
She told him then, all she knew, trying to sound as serious as her mother had, although it made her wonder what she might have possibly wanted Jack for. Or what the emergency was. For all she knew, it could just be concerning teeth and Toothianna would be reacting no differently.
"Wait- me? Why me?"
Baby Tooth shrugged.
"But there's got to be some other spirit..." he insisted.
She shook her head.
"It's not about North's belly again, is it?" Jack asked, "because last time, remember, it was because he had far too much eggnog." They both recalled that time. There was that possibility, but the lack of an Aurora Borealis nullified the possibility of that. Then he would have to act subtly.
Baby Tooth squeaked urgently.
"Alright, alright," he sighed. Looking back at the colony of penguins, he waved at them, as though they were his lifelong friends and then flew off, with Baby Tooth holding on to his shoulder.
Once he slowed down a little, flying straight ahead, she made the point of asking him about those penguins. She couldn't help but feel a little jealous of the attention he'd been giving the flightless avians. Jack chuckled. "That's a long story... any reason why you're asking?"
Baby Tooth refused to answer that question.