To Ally with the Guardians

Chapter 25: Breaking Normal

As the days went by, Matt saw Mallory try to distance himself further from everyone except Whisper, and saw Haven become more accustomed to the events that had passed. Matt became more relaxed himself. However, one thing still bothered him, and it was that Haven had nightmares every night, the same scene over and over again. Apparently she retained one memory from being a Fearling: the one where she had fought against the curse, because she had been partly herself. It haunted her.

Whisper tried to help everyone as she came out more often to look after Sneak, the five-year-old (according to Whisper, after comparing units of time on the different planets, Earth years and The years were about the same) Prophecy Person who involuntarily turned invisible whenever he was spooked. How Pitch had ever found him was a mystery to Matt that he didn't ask the boy to recount.

Whisper couldn't do much, though. But Haven told her that removing the curse was more than enough help.

When the week ended, one of Tooth's Mini Fairies delivered a letter to Mallory from his mailbox that said he was fired for failing to show up to work for multiple days due to a "made-up excuse" and not returning his boss's calls, texts, and emails.

Mallory took it pretty hard from what Matt could see. Mallory kept it from his kids, though, and he continued to pour over his translated records. He had finished reading them through once, twice, maybe even three times, but he had yet to make any visible move to test anything or hand them off to Haven. What was even more strange were the wounds on his body that Pitch had apparently given him. They healed rapidly but tingled, according to Mallory, even when they had gone. The Guardians and Whisper checked them out. The latter said they were dangerous, but she didn't know how; the former had no idea what was wrong with them but agreed with Whisper.

Aside from that, though, Matt hadn't seen anything bad since returning from Pitch's lair. Were the Fearlings and Nightmares taking a break to plan something disastrous, or had they just picked someone new to target? The Guardians didn't know. They sent out Mini Fairies to see if there were any attacks, but they didn't find any. They even asked the Man in the Moon, but he didn't know what Pitch and the Fearlings and Nightmares were doing, either. North eventually said he and the other Guardians would "wait and see" and that if there continued to be no attacks, they would begin sending everyone home, even Mallory.

Which brought them to another problem: what would they do with all of the cured children? Matt almost volunteered to ask his parents to adopt Whisper and Sneak (it would be the least he could do for the former), but Whisper said that she wanted to stay in North's workshop to help with anything she could, and Sneak wanted to stay with her. Some of the other older children could remain with North as well, and Vivian would obviously be with Bunny in his Warren. But there were much too many other kids for the Guardians to be able to take care of on a daily basis. Not only that, but they needed one-on-one attention for healthy development and to heal their emotional wounds. Mallory couldn't juggle both counseling everyone and working on the cure, which was slowed anyway due to his worry about finding another job once he returned home.

However, after several days, the Guardians figured out a solution. All the kids, aside from Vivian, would stay back in the houses in the workshop, and Sandy would create Dreamsand caretakers for each of them. The Guardians would contact their few adult believers and see if they could get any counselors to come help them, or ask if the men and women could possibly adopt any for themselves.

A month went by with still no attacks or even sightings of Pitch or his minions, even though still no one knew what their plan had been before they stopped. Duran said that he had missed his college orientation and would have to go to one of the later ones. The Guardians decided to begin moving everyone back to their homes. Angelia was impatient to return to America due to her parents and gymnastics, as was Duran so that he could prepare for college. They all also missed their families, though Duran didn't say it out loud.