Giving Way to the Light

Chapter Twenty-One

Jack Frost knew the moment he showed up in the clearing, and saw everyone except Vera, that she had been the one to come across the Wanderer. And although, logically, he knew she was the best suited for dealing with the spirit, he could not help but feel that something wasn't quite right. He had a tension headache, and he could not, for the life of him, soothe his own nerves— even by hitting Bunny in the face with a snowball. That had only served to irritate the older Guardian.

"Just because you're girlfriend isn' here to keep you entertained, doesn' mean yah should start acting up, yah gumby," Bunny had said grumpily.

To which Jack retaliated by freezing Bunny's feet to the forest floor.

"Tha's it!" Bunny roared, drawing out his boomerangs.

"Do I have to separate you two?" Tooth snapped, uncharacteristically crabby. The fight then stopped before it had truly begun, but that didn't put any of them in a better mood.

As the sky started to lighten to a sleepy grey color though, Jack started becoming more angsty.

"Someone should go and look for her," he said as he watched the first rays of sunshine touch the horizon. "She should be here by now. She's the one who set up the rendezvous point."

"She said to wait here, and not get lost," the other Jack said, though he didn't exactly sound like his cheerful self either. He was pacing slowly from one side of the clearing to the other, and although he tried to stop when Wayne asked him to, he had inevitably failed and continued wearing a trench in the ground.

Murray was passed out on one of the boulders and Frank was pulling thorns out of his foot a few feet away. Tooth was fluttering about nervously, and Baby Tooth lay fast asleep on the crown of her head. Bunny was as far away from Jack F. as he could be while still being in the clearing, polishing his boomerangs, and muttering darkly under his breath about, "Snot nosed little frost sprites."

"I'm going to look for her," Jack F. said finally. "I can just take a quick look around from above, and if I find her, I'll let her know you're all waiting here."

No one tried to stop him this time, so he silently called upon the wind, and shot up into the sky. He started in the direction that he had seen her fly off in, going for a zigzag pattern so as not to miss anything.

He was squinting down at a dark thicket when he heard a strangled cry. He whipped in the direction of the sound, and immediately knew he was right. Something was very wrong.

Swooping low to the trees, he shot off in the direction the cry had come from, quickly scanning the forest floor for even a glimpse of feathers or a dark cloak. He crossed over a clearing and there she was, crumpled on the ground clawing feverishly at something on the ground.

'Feathers,' he realized with a jolt.

They weren't the small downy ones, or the bent bristly ones he had seen her plucking out while preening. They were long, shimmery, black primary flight feathers.

"Vera!" he called, stumbling in his landing, and rushing over to kneel next to her. "W-what happened?"

"Wanderer," she whimpered, gathering all of the lovely feathers in her trembling hands. "F-found him hiding in the trees. I t-t-tried to banish him b-but it d-didn't work. He g-got mad- really mad- and he... he..."

Her whole body was trembling like a leaf, in barely suppressed terror. She was in shock— maybe even slipping into a panic attack, and all Jack could do for several seconds was stare in horror.

"C-can't fly," she hiccuped. "I can't fly. Jack, I can't fly..."

The trembling in her hands got, if possible, even worse, and the silky feathers slipped through her fingers. "What am I going to do? I can't fly."