To Ally with the Guardians

Chapter 14: What Was Missing

Mallory was aroused from sleep by the bright golden light above him pelting at his eyelids and the smell of food somewhere in the Warren wafting into his nose. Or maybe it was his conscious nagging at him for guilt-tripping the Guardians. It wasn't that he hadn't believed his words, but it reminded him just too much of when he emotionally had manipulated people as a teen.

He sat up from under his blanket on the ground, and a bolt of fear struck through him as he noticed that his kids were no longer sleeping beside him. He leaped to his feet and swerved his head around, searching for them. When he spotted the two helping themselves to some food with the L.E.R. at the bottom of the hill, he was relieved. He put his socks and shoes back on and joined them.

"I haven't been able to sleep without Nightmares attacking me for months," Jamie was telling Angelia as he plopped another pancake onto his plate.

"Fearlings would only usually attack us during the day." Angelia cast a worried glance at Matt, who had dark circles under his eyes and looked like he was only half-aware that syrup was dripping off of his waffles onto the ground.

"What happened to him?" Mallory asked.

"I don't think he slept," Duran replied.

"Hey, I could've answered that!" Matt tipped his plate to the side to stop the flow of syrup and raised his eyebrows at Mallory. "I can still hear and do things. I'm not stupid."

"Where's Whisper? Is she awake yet?" Mallory asked before telling Sophie that she wasn't going to put that whole stick of butter on her plate, almost laughing.

"I don't think she sleeps," Matt said over Sophie's protests and the growing rumble of chatter as everyone else began to wake up as well.

Duran cut a piece off of one of his omelets with a plastic fork. "How come?"

Matt shrugged. "When I tried to talk to her for a long time last night, she didn't sleep. She didn't even look tired." He paused and looked around. "Where's Bunny? We're supposed to be making our plan today." Mallory also searched. He saw all the other Guardians spread out amongst the creatures and waking children, but Bunny wasn't there.

"What were you trying to talk to her about?" Angelia asked.

"Think: when did the Indicator start moving away from the orange part?"

Angelia raised an eyebrow at him. "When the Guardians came." She obviously didn't know what Matt was getting at, and neither did Mallory.

The teen boy threw the hand that wasn't holding his plate up in the air, his bag of those tiny clear balls clutched in his fist. "No!" he snarled. "When Haven turned into a Fearling!" There was a strange hard look in his eye, and Mallory realized that the kid probably wasn't acting under his own accord.

Angelia gasped and brought her hand to her mouth, her fearful light brown eyes wide. "Oh no..." Mallory suddenly comprehended what Matt had been trying to convey.

"I asked Whisper if I could stop a Prophecy, but she wouldn't answer me." There was venom in Matt's voice, like he could put a curse on the Prophecy Person with his very words. "She refused to."

Duran narrowed his eyes and placed a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Matt. Calm down. It's the curse."

"No!" He flung Duran's hand off with a strong jerk and backed up. "The curse doesn't mess up my brain like that!"

"No, not what you said, your behavior. You need to calm down."

Suddenly, the talking around them swelled, and Mallory noticed that Bunny had returned. The Guardian ran down the hill toward them.