Author's Note: Ok, I lied. But c'mon, you were expecting it. I wrote a short chapter for Child of Spring, so yay! I'd say sorry for the cliffhanger, but you were expecting that too. :)

I want to give a special thanks to my two reviewers on the last chapter, Brenne and CrossoverJunkie! And thanks for letting me know you were on vacation, CrossoverJunkie. I should have known you wouldn't abandon this, even if it does take me forever to write chapters sometimes. Also, thanks for the idea on slowing down decay. I admit that never even crossed my mind, but I'll keep it in mind for next time.

Also a big thanks to the follows and faves! Now without further ado, the next chapter!

Chapter Fifty-Three: Winter's Plight/Spring is Stuck

The thing about traveling by a snow globe was that sometimes they took you right where you wanted them to and sometimes they didn't. For instance, when you used a snow globe to appear at the North Pole, the portal would always appear right near the globe room. You knew that you would be safe and warm.

If you took a snow globe to the Tooth Fairy's Palace, the portal would sometimes appear a short distance away from the Palace. Nobody knew why, but it did. So unless you had some way to fly, you were in for a bit of walk.

When Lillian told the snow globe to take her to Gethen's lair, she assumed that the portal would appear right smack in the middle of Gethen's lair and there Gethen would be, ready to answer her questions. What actually happened was that the portal appeared a few feet off the ground and Gethen was nowhere in sight.

Lillian screamed as she fell to the ground with a thud. She was a little dazed by the fall, but still had the presence of mind to roll out of the way when she saw Jamie coming. Soon Jamie fell right beside her with another thud and then the portal vanished.

"J-Jamie!" Lillian said, trying to catch her breath as she sat up. "What are you doing here?!"

"Ugh," Jamie replied as he stared up at the very overcast and gloomy sky. He sat up slowly and rubbed his head. "I wanted to help," he said. "Besides, you said you were going to the North Pole. What is this place?"

As he looked around in bewilderment, he could see that they were definitely not at the North Pole. The place was in varying shades of brown and gray and everything looked dead and withered. It looked almost like the life was sucked out of everything.

"I told the snow globe to take me to Gethen's lair," Lillian admitted, looking embarrassed at being caught in her lie. "I never thought you would tag along! This could be dangerous, you know. You should have stayed home."

"Jack's my friend too," Jamie said with a pout. "That's all we ever do is wait at home while you guys get to do all the interesting stuff! Remember Easter? We helped out then!"

Lillian winced at the reminder and looked down at her lap.

"..No.." she said quietly. "..I don't really remember. Everything about that is still kind of fuzzy. I just remember waking up on the lake, and Jack.. and.. and Pitch.."

She stopped as her voice wavered. She had never seen Jack look so.. un-Jacklike before and Pitch..

She thought he had been...

A wave of homesickness suddenly hit her as she realized she missed living with Jack and Pitch at Pitch's lair. She missed her room, and her home.

She missed her family.

Jamie looked at Lillian guiltily as he watched her. She looked so sad now, and definitely like a lost little kid.

Way to go Jamie.

"Hey, um.. I'm sorry.." he trailed off awkwardly.

Lillian shook her head and discreetly wiped her eyes.

"Well, I guess you're in this adventure now. We have to find this Gethen guy's lair and see if he has Jack or knows where he is," Lillian said as she got to her feet.

Jamie stood as well and looked around at the bleak landscape. There weren't a lot of plants and there was a whole lot of dead grass. Everything was flat and there didn't seem to be anything around that looked like a lair of any sort.

"Then what?" Jamie asked her.

"Then what what?" Lillian blinked at him.

"What will we do after that?" Jamie clarified.

"Then we go home," Lillian said with a sinking feeling.

How were they going to get home in the first place? She didn't have any more snow globes and she still hadn't gotten her bracelet from Mother Nature yet.

Whoops.

Weeell.. Maybe Gethen would have some way of traveling that they could borrow or something. They'd figure it out.

Either that or Jack could fly them all out of there.

Yeah!

Lillian brightened a little at that and after waving at Jamie to follow her, she chose a direction and began walking.

They could do this.

They would find Jack.


As if to make his point, Gethen grabbed a hold of the Winter Spirit that was still outside of the cage. His hand glowed and the spirit cried out as he started to fade again.

"STOP IT!" Jack shouted in anguish.

Gethen looked at Jack, eerily calm.

"Well?"

Jack bowed his head. He couldn't believe this was happening.. And this time there was no Pitch to make him all evil. He'd be doing this of his own free will.

I hope the others will understand, he thought desperately.

He very reluctantly nodded.

"..I'll.. I'll do it," he said without looking at his other sprites.

No! they cried out. Don't do it!

Gethen smiled evilly at Jack.

"I thought you might see things my way," he smirked.

He released the Winter Spirit and the spirit, who had been fading, came back to himself slowly.

The spirit shuddered at almost fading again.

Gethen looked down at the remnants of Jack's staff and walked over to where Jack was still being held by the Spring Spirits. He passed the staff off to the male spring spirit.

"Here," Gethen said giving it to the confused spirit. Gethen rolled his eyes when he saw the spirit had no idea why Gethen had given him the staff. "It's wood. You make things grow, moron. Fix it!"

Jack's mouth dropped open in surprise as he stared at the spirit.

"You can do that?!" Jack exclaimed.

The Spirit looked down at the staff dubiously.

"Maybe?" he said, staring down at it. It didn't look particularly growable. But after a quick glance at the darkening expression on Gethen's face, the spirit hastily tapped into his powers, which caused his hands to glow a spring green.

He concentrated hard on the staff, pouring more and more spring magic into it. Very slowly, the staff started to grow, the decomposition fading into newer wood. After what felt like forever to Jack, the staff had regrown to its normal length, but it looked.. off.

The top half looked older than it should, having been touched by Gethen's decomposition and the bottom half looked like brand new wood, like the staff had just been carved.

"Uh.." Jack said, as he stared it.

The Spring Spirit shrugged apologetically.

"It's the best I can do," he said.

He handed the staff over to Jack, who took it.

Jack looked at his once beloved staff and hugged it gently. His poor staff. It had already been broken once and now half of it had rotted away. Would it work the same as always?

After a comforting hug, he pulled the staff away and held it like he usually did. He took a deep breath and pushed some of his winter magic into it. He frowned when the wood seemed to give a protesting shudder, but then it frosted over as it usually did. It still didn't look right, with the top half looking older than old and the bottom half looking brand new.

Maybe he could paint it or something.

He gently tapped the staff on the ground and frost patterns swirled on the floor. He suddenly took aim at a wall and a bolt of strong, deep blue winter magic hit it and the wall froze over.

Jack looked down at his staff. It seemed to hold up from the use of it, but he wasn't sure. As he was taking stock of his staff, Jack realized that horrible feeling was gone. He no longer felt like his soul was being torn in two. But he didn't feel quite whole either.

He hugged his staff again, wishing that Pitch were there.

"Excellent!" Gethen said with a grin. "Now here's what I want you to do."


August stormed up to Marin and grabbed her by the arm.

"Wha?!" she exclaimed and then noticed the serious expression on August's face and his eyes which seemed to practically glow in his anger.

"August!" she gasped.

"Marin," he said coldly. "What are you doing?"

Marin's lip trembled and she looked down, ignoring the vice-like grip August had on her arm.

"..I had to.." she said softly as her voice trembled a bit. "You don't understand..!"

August huffed in annoyance.

"What I understand is that you're working out of season. No one works out of season. Mother Nature is going to have my head over this!"

He shouted, shaking Marin a bit in his anger.

Tears sparkled in Marin's ocean blue eyes as August's anger broke over her.

"H-He was going to kill them..! To make them fade!"

August paused in mid-rant to stare at her.

"What?"

"G-Gethen.. he's.. he was going to kill the Seasonal Sprites.. He's got Spirits t-too.." Marin said as tears fell down her cheeks. August had never yelled at her like that before. He'd never been so frightening. "..From all the seasons.."

August cursed and released Marin's arm.

"That no good.." he grumbled, trailing off. He ran a hand through his wavy locks and looked around. All this nonsense was going to give him wrinkles, he just knew it.

"I suppose we'll have to tell - " he started, but then stopped as clouds seemed to appear out of nowhere. He noticed the temperature was rapidly dropping and gaped as the first snowflakes started to fall.


The kids, not knowing what to do, had retreated back into Jamie's house since the Winter Sprites were still in Jamie's freezer and they weren't sure when Jamie was coming back.

They had turned on the tv again to see if they could find anything unusual and were surprised to see that there were several weather reports on a variety of stations. They gaped at the radar that was showing a rainbow of colors. The little of Canada that was showing said "SEVERE HEAT WARNING" while California was awash in pink and blue, but was rapidly being covered in purple.

The purple seemed to be radiating outward from California and the weatherman sounded completely baffled as to why this was happening in California of all places.

"Do you think it's Jack?" Pippa asked anxiously.

"Who else could make it snow in California?" Monty asked.

"..I don't like this," Caleb admitted.

"I hope Jamie's ok," Cupcake said with a sigh as she stared at the tv.


Jamie looked up at the sky while they were walking. They sky had already been gloomy and now the clouds seemed to darken as the temperature dropped. They had been walking for what felt like forever now, but it really had only been a half an hour or so. Lillian couldn't believe they'd been dropped off so far away from Gethen's actual lair, but maybe the snowglobe didn't quite know where it was either.

Jamie, who was watching the sky more than where they were going gasped as a flash of blue zoomed by overhead.

"JACK!" he shouted. "It's Jack Frost!"

Jamie started waving his arms frantically.

"JAAACK!" he shouted as loud as he could.

Lillian started and looked up at the sky.

A slow grin spread on her face as she saw the familiar blue hoodie of Jack.

"Jack!" she shouted up at him, but Jack didn't seem to hear. Or did he? She thought she saw Jack glance down at them. In fact, she knew Jack had seen them since he did a double take.

But Jack didn't seem to want to stop as he flew even faster, as if he were running away from something.

Jack, who had left Gethen's lair to go spread snow very out of season in California, didn't want to have to stop and explain things to Lillian. He bit his lip in worry as he could tell Lillian and Jamie were headed right towards Gethen's lair.

What was he going to do? He had to save his sprites, but now Lillian and Jamie would be in danger. Could he somehow spread word to the Guardians? And what about the two Winter Sprites he had inadvertently abandoned?

He sighed as he silently urged Wind to help him go faster.

I hope they'll be alright. Jack wished with all his might.

Lillian glanced back at Jamie.

"..He.. ignored us," she said softly to him.

"I know," Jamie said, sounding very disappointed. "What are we going to do?"

Lillian stopped walking.

"..I.. I don't know.. I was hoping Jack would be there and he could give us a lift home with his Wind." she admitted.

"Well, if this Gethen guy is bad news we probably don't want to go to his lair," Jamie said as he thought things over. "We were only going there to save Jack, right?"

"Right," Lillian said gloomily. "But I don't have a snowglobe to get back home."

"What about your powers?" Jamie asked.

Lillian shook her head.

"I don't have my bracelet and without it, it's very hard for me to control my powers."

Jamie looked around at the bleak landscape and shivered. He was in a t-shirt and shorts and now it was snowing out.

"So we're stuck here?" he asked, as he felt the first flickers of fear. If they didn't get out of there soon, there was a chance this Gethen guy could find them or else they'd freeze.

Lillian frowned at where Jack had gone in frustration.

"If we could contact the Guardians, maybe someone could come get us."

Jamie thought furiously for a few minutes, before his face lit up in triumph.

"I've got it!" he exclaimed.


Author's Note: This is a little bit of a filler chapter. Unless the next one gets completely derailed from me, that should be the one where it has some action. Since they've been all neglected for awhile, the next one will have some of the Pitch/Guardians in it, doing their thing. Mother Nature still has to give Lillian back her bracelet too. I wonder if Lillian will get it back in time?

Also, anyone have any guesses on what Jamie's plan is? I already know, I'm not fishing for hints. :) But if you guys have any other suggestions, that would be nice.

Since right now I'm on a roll with Child of Spring, my next update might be for it. Either that or the HP one, since I have a vibe for HP right now. Jamie's ghostyness will be updated eventually, don't worry.