A Bird of Praise: Act I

Chapter 2: Familiar but Alien

Tara's suspicions were confirmed in the worst possible way when she decided, instead of going home to go to Castle Beyers to see if there was a chance he might be there and she was just being paranoid.

Tara felt mildly dizzy throughout her walk there and simply attributed it to being tired from the panic brought on by her nocturnal spook and the fact that between the school and the fortress, it was, admittedly, a bit of a trek.

By the time Tara got to the fort, she was absolutely winded. "Will?" she asked, peering inside.

No dice.

Tara was startled by the sudden hand on her shoulder.

"Jonathan," she sighed in relief. "You frightened me."

"What are you doing here?" he asked, probably more interrogatively than he intended.

"This is gonna sound so crazy!" Tara blurted out, flustered. "But I had a dream last night that something bad happened to Will and I just wanted to see if he was okay."

"You didn't hear?" Jonathan asked.

"Hear what?"

"Will is missing! We've been all over trying to find him!"

"You were supposed to pick him up!" Joyce called, her tone accusatory as she bee lined towards the small brunette.

"I went to pick him up!" Tara blurted out defensively. "When I got to the house, Mrs. Wheeler said he already left!"

Joyce sighed and buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry, honey. This isn't your fault."

Tara pushed her glasses up wiped the tears from her face. "He never told Mrs. Wheeler that I was supposed to pick him up."

"Of course he didn't," Jonathan sighed.

"Do you think Mike, Lucas and Dustin knew? That he was planning to sneak his own way back home?" Tara asked.

"What happened in your dream?" Jonathan asked, in an offer to change the subject and perhaps grasp at straws as to where Will could be.

"You really wanna know?"

"It might help us find him."

Tara took a deep breath. "It's kinda complicated. It involves Swan Lake. Do you know about that?"

"Not really. I've heard of it, but I'm not too familiar with the actual story."

"It's about a princess who gets turned into a swan by an evil warlock. In my dream, I was the princess. When I was about to be turned into the swan, I saw Will. Rothbart, the warlock, dragged him away into some awful dark dimension."

Tara looked around. "It was... familiar, but alien."

"That narrows it down," Jonathan quipped sarcastically.

Tara let out an exasperated sigh. "What I mean is what it looked exactly like this, but darker... and more eerie... and empty..."

Tara shook her head. "I'm sorry. You're right. I'm not making any sense."

Suddenly her head started to pound. She grimaced and put hands to either side of her temple.

"Hey! Hey! Hey! Are you okay?" Jonathan asked, placing hands on her shoulders.

Tara was so stunned by the sudden onset that she couldn't communicate that she was having a really bad migraine.

Jonathan sat her down on a tree stump. "What's wrong?"

"Migraine," Tara was finally able to blurt out.

"Hang on, honey! I think I have some aspirin in my purse," Joyce said rifling through it.