RotG - A Bitter Frost - 16

In all my years as the Tooth Fairy, I never had anything else strike terror into my heart the way that the sight before me did. Black horses. Everywhere.

They flew around my towers, chasing after my fairies who were in a panic. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered how they'd found the Palace at all, and somewhere else I registered that these creatures could only be of Pitch Black's creation, but the rest of me was filled with both rage and panic. As the horses swept past me, I could hear tiny shrieks and caught glimpses of the fairies trapped within the bellies of the beasts. Others were flying away from the horses as fast as they could while still more of them were flying in formation, attacking the horses as best they could. I flew straight into the fray, diving at one of the horses, and found that it was less dense than I thought and seemed to be made of sand. My collision with it disturbed its shape and some of the fairies trapped in its belly were able to escape, but the dark creature reared, its glowing eyes locking onto my and I felt a shiver of terror crawl down my spine and froze for a minute. I realized that letting myself look into their eyes would only scare me into stillness so I tried to avoid it.

It was chaos: horses swooping everywhere, fairies bolting around trying to escape and trying to fight and me, me diving through everything, trying to run into as many of the nightmarish things that I could but it seemed like for every fairies I manage to free, two more were gobbled up. The more I fought the creatures, the more frightened I felt but I didn't stop. Yet for all our efforts, soon almost all of my Baby Teeth had been captured by the beasts. The horses darted away from the palace and I chased them as far as I could but they outflew me. "No!" I cried, "No, no, this can't be happening, no!" The horses were quickly out of sight and I flitted back to my Palace, swooping through the structures. "Babies, are any of you still here? Please!" I cried, but none appeared. As I flew, I swooped past the honeycombed wall where the teeth were kept and the shock of what I saw nearly knocked me out of the air.

Gone. All of the teeth were gone.

My wings beat hard and I flew erratically through the structures, choking back sobs and feeling like I'd just lost everything. I didn't even notice North and the others arriving until North's sleigh crashed onto the landing of one of my towers. "Tooth! Are you alright?" I heard North call.

"They... they took my fairies," I said, my voice cracking. I couldn't calm down - I was still darting around the Palace. "And the teeth, all of them!" Suddenly, the image of the frozen lake and the hole in the ice flashed into my mind and I felt like I'd been doused in the freezing lake water. It was the pain of losing Jack all over again - except this time, it really was my fault. I'd fought so hard to save them but it wasn't enough. I hadn't stopped Jack from going to the lake, and I couldn't stop the horses from stealing my fairies away. The pain was so strong that it physically hurt. How many times could this happen to me? I had the heart of a sixteen-year-old girl; coping with this pain once had killed me - but twice? "Everything is gone," I said, drifting down to the landing of one of my towers. "Everything." I had no strength left. I've failed. I failed every single one of them.

The Guardians and Jack gathered around me. Sandman laid his hand on my shoulder but I felt like I'd never move again. Aside from my fairies, North, Bunny, and Sandy were the only friends I had in the world. But they all had their own duties as Guardians, and our encounters were typically brief, few, and far between. My fairies kept me company all the time and I needed that. Growing up in a colonial town, I'd rarely been alone. There were always chores to be done with the family, all of the other children to play with, my brothers to entertain. The fairies had filled in the void left by the death of my family, but now they were gone. With this fresh painful loss, all of the grieving I'd so firmly locked away from the years before - Jack's death, and then losing my brothers, my parents, and Pippa - it all threatened to completely overwhelm me. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that I should be trying to figure out where they were taken and try to get them back, that was, if they were still... It took all the will I had to not curl up in a ball right there and cry.

Then, I heard a familiar chirp. My eyes darted up to the source of the sound and I saw a fairy peek over Jack's shoulder.The Baby Tooth flew over to me and landed in my outstretched hands. "Oh, thank goodness! One of you is alright," I said, looking at her and blinking back tears.  My voice was shaky but still sounded so much calmer than I felt. Sorrow and anger clashed like thunder in my heart while the heavy weight of utter defeat settled into the pit of my stomach. In the past few hours I'd dealt with more emotions than I'd had to deal with in at least two hundred years. This one tiny fairy was a spark of hope but it was hard to keep that spark lit in the sea of anguish that enveloped me.

"I have to say, this is very, very exciting," a voice suddenly echoed through the palace. The sound bounced off the structures, seeming to come from everywhere at once. I instinctively cupped Baby Tooth in my hands, holding her protectively to my chest. "The big four, all in one place. I'm a little star struck." I took to the air again, having a feeling that I knew who was speaking. I looked above me and there he was. I had never seen him in person before but with the black cloak and hair, and pale skin, there was only one person he could be. Pitch Black. Inside me, anger took over sorrow. "Did you like my show on the globe, North?" he taunted. "Got you all together, didn't I?" North made a frustrated sound, and I couldn't hold back any longer.

"Pitch!" I shouted, flying up toward him. "You have got thirty seconds to return my fairies!" He swept around the roof of the structure and I darted after him but it was like he had simply disappeared.

"Or what?" The voice came from behind me and I spun around, seeing him on the roof of another one of my structures. "You'll stick a quarter under my pillow?" His arrogance infuriated me and I was about to dive at him again when North spoke up.

"Why are you doing this?" he said, sounding both angry and genuinely curious, and raising one of his swords toward Pitch. Wait, swords? I vaguely remembered having seen them over North's fireplace but had never seen him use them. This of course was all just commentary running through the back of my mind.

Pitch raised a finger and pointed at the Guardians gathered on the platform below. "Maybe I want what you have. To be believed in!" His brow furrowed and suddenly he was gone again, reappearing on a landing closer to North and the others. "Maybe I'm tired of hiding under beds!"

"Maybe that's where you belong," Bunny said, stepping forward with one hand on a boomerang.

Suddenly Pitch was on the side of the tower below Bunny, looking up at him. "Oh, go suck an egg, rabbit." Bunny lunged forward, swiping at Pitch while just the tips of his back feet kept him holding onto the landing, but just like a shadow, Pitch was gone again. His voice emanated from thin air it seemed as he said, "Hang on, is that... Jack Frost?" Jack turned around, his eyes searching for Pitch, his staff held defensively in front of him. Pitch just laughed. "Since when are you all so chummy?" Pitch asked.

We're not, I thought angrily, my fury at the situation leaking into my feelings about Jack.

"We're not," he echoed my thoughts.

"Oh, good, a neutral party" Pitch said, appearing across a landing from Jack, leaning casually against the cage-like structure. Jack had turned to face him but the Pitch straightened up again. "Then, I'm going to ignore you," he said, like a king scoffing at a peasant, "but, you must be used to that by now." I didn't realize right away how cruel that was, but as I thought back, when I'd been around Jack, no one had ever seen him even though he made no effort to hide. Had that not changed in 300 years? Pity and a little bit of a wanting to defend Jack crept into the writhing emotional mass in my heart, only making things worse.

Jack's face hardened but it was Bunny who reacted fastest. "Pitch! You shadow-sneaking ratbag! Come here!" he growled, leaping down a level after him but Pitch disappeared once again.

I screamed in frustrating, darting past Bunny and grabbing one of his boomerangs and then toward the last place I'd seen Pitch, determined to do whatever I could to make him sorry. That cowardly scumbag was just running away from real confrontation - but then I found out why. A black horse made of sand lunged at me from nowhere, rearing and screaming. I darted back, gasping, my eyes wide with fear, but Pitch was as pleased as ever. "Whoa-ho-ho, hey, easy, girl, easy..." he said, calming the beast. She snorted and trotted around him while he swept a bit of the black sand from her, letting it run through his fingers to the platform below where North and Sandy still stood. "Look familiar, Sandman?" he asked, a satisfied smile on his face. I could see Sandy clench his fist around a cloud of his own golden sand and glare up at Pitch. "Took me a while to perfect this little trick--" the Boogey Man said, stroking the horse's neck, his voice now affectionate and proud, "--turning dreams into Nightmares."

I flew back down to the other Guardians, suddenly more fearful than before and feeling safer with them around me. "Don't be nervous, it only riles them up more," said Pitch, sounding like what he wanted most was for us to be very nervous so that his beasts would be even more inclined to attack. "The smell fear, you know," Pitch commented, his voice again menacing. I was scared and furious and a thousand other things at the same time. It was those shadow beasts that took my fairies! I fumed.

"What fear, of you?" Bunny laughed, full of bravado. I held his boomerang out to him and he took it, stepping forward with a confident smile. "No one's been afraid of you since the Dark Ages."

"Oh, the Dark Ages," Pitch said fondly, reminiscing. "Everyone frightened, miserable... such happy times - for me! Oh, the power I wielded." He turned his glaring eyes on us again then. "But then the Man in the Moon chose you to replace my fear with your wonder and light, lifting their hearts and giving them hope." The words themselves seemed to disgust him. "Meanwhile, everyone wrote me off as just a bad dream! Oh, there's no such thing as the 'Boogey Man'!"

"Well, that's all about to change," Pitch said forebodingly, looming forward, but then turning toward the lattice-structure of the tower behind him. "Ah, it's happening already," his tone once again pleased. As we looked on, parts of my towers began to crumble slowly, their normally gleaming gold luster fading away to stone gray.

Jack turned and looked at me. "What is?" he asked, but I could even answer, gasping as my heart began beating faster in panic. Children's belief in me was fading, and I knew what that meant. The Moon had told me about it but in 300 years it had never been a problem. I could already feel energy leaving me and there was nothing I could do but drift to the ground, my wings wilting behind me.

Pitch took the liberty of answering the question for me. "Children are waking up and realizing the Tooth Fairy never came," he said, like he was narrating a bedtime story, and then he laughed. "It's such a little thing, but to a child..."
"What's going on?" Jack asked, looking at me again.

"They..." I managed, my voice breaking again, "they don't believe in me anymore." There were tears in my eyes again.

Jack's eyes widened in surprise and concern it seemed, while still more gold was crumbling off of the towers of my Palace, and Pitch said, "Didn't they tell you, Jack? It's great being a Guardian - but there's a catch. If enough kids stop believing, everything your friends protect - wonder, hopes, and dreams - it all goes away. And, little by little," his voice grew quieter which was somehow just as scary, "so do they." He chuckled again, clearly pleased. "No Christmas, or Easter, or little fairies that come in the night. There will be nothing but fear and darkness, and me," he hissed. "It's your turn not to be believed in!"

Bunny didn't hesitate a second longer, launching one of his boomerangs at Pitch, who ducked, his speech interrupted. He managed to dodge the boomerang the first time and as it swung back around, he leapt off the platform, a Nightmare catching him. All of us immediately gave chase but he managed to slip away while we just landed on the grassy hills that lay underneath the towers.

"He's gone," North said.