Illustration by trungtinart

The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode, click here. To read the entire novel, begin here.

Zack learned his misplaced sister had been spotted in the Frengan Light Forest. So he and his immense raptor friend Aviar set out to find her.

He wasn’t sure what the distance was between the Northern Mountains and southern Frenga, but he knew it was a long way. “Bury your body in my neck feathers, Shak,” Aviar shouted, “or you’ll freeze. And don’t touch the silver ones, or I’ll bite your thumbs off!”

“Now I know you like me!” Zack yelled. “Before you were gonna bite my leg off, now it’s just my thumbs!” Aviar swung his head back to see a grinning boy with wind ripping tears from his eyes. He said nothing, but the corners of his beak curved in an avian smile.

Even at subsonic speeds and an altitude that made Zack air-drunk, it took four hours to reach the Frengan Light Forest. Soon, the great nocturnal hunter spotted something moving upward from the northern edge of the forest. “There!” he said, executing a ninety-degree turn.

“Whoa!” Zack grabbed a three-foot-long silver feather. “Sorry!”

What Aviar had seen was a squadron of night-hunting pixie youths decked in full mouse leathers, piloting foot-long fox bats. The bats screeched anxiously when they spotted the mountain-sized bird, but the leader of the pixie squadron squeaked a soothing scree-eee-k-k-kooo, and they collected themselves.

“Greetings, Lord Sheya!” the tiny commander called in fluent Zshinian. “You are far from the frigid climes of northern Gerd.”

“Too far, young knight.”

“I am Jenblevó, prince and future king of the South Frengan Pixies.”

“I am Aviar, Master of—”

“Say no more, great hunter! Your name is honored throughout the Ten Kingdoms. Trusted Friend of Prime Regent Melcarhassen and Fabled Servant of Uol, we salute you!” Jenblevó doffed his mouse skin cap, and the other squadron members followed suit.

“Errr-hrrrrmmm…I thank you, Prince Jenblevó. Now to business. It has been reported that a human girl fell from the sky into the Light Forest, and that—”

“Yes! The beautiful and mysterious Queen J’nah!”

“You have seen her?”

“Uh, no,” Zack intervened, “We’re looking for a regular girl, like me. Only, I mean, not like me because she’s a girl…”

Clearly, until now Prince Jenblevó had not realized the legendary raptor had a passenger! “My lord Aviar,” he coughed, “it is an embarrassment to have to tell you this, but there is a human boy—”

“I know! The girl we seek is his sister.”

“Ahhhhhh! Then he too is of royal blood. What is your name, honored sir?”

“It’s Zack.”

There was a sudden silence. Then Jenblevó and the others burst into guffaws. “Your sister, the queen, is called J’nah, ‘he who fights,’ a strange but honorable name! But you are Zhec, ‘the Surrenderer?’ This is a servant’s name!” The pixies roared a hurricane of hoots. “But it is a joke, yes? Or are you the illegitimate child of a slave?” Another wave of laughter crashed on the shores of callow youth.

Because the prince spoke with a thick Pÿthzién accent, Aviar could not understand him. This burned his feathers. Even more, it annoyed him that these crude pixie teens seemed to be having a laugh at Shak’s expense. “This is fine fun, fledglings, but it is over. You will help us find the human girl. Now!”

“But glorious Lord Avi—”

“Listen, precious princeling, this human is my friend. You will honor him, and you will help us find his sister or, by Uol, you will wish you had never lived!”

Whatever flaws Jenblevó might have, he certainly knew how to command his squadron. He divided the Light Forest into six wedges (like a pizza, Zack noted), and sent a bat-piloting aviator to search each. He sent two more to Rennou. The last two he sent to scour the Frengan countryside. All were to return with any information they could find before moontop.

Aviar and Zack followed Jenblevó to the Palace of Light, which was immense by pixie standards (it could have fit in Zack’s bedroom). Aviar alighted, if a twenty-three foot-tall bird can be said to alight, on an immense irontree branch near the Palace entrance. Attendants rushed to meet the Prince. A groomsman began to rub down the glistening foxbat, but seeing the massive bird, went whiter than the double moon.

“Yes, you pathetic poltroon,” said the prince, “I know he’s there. I brought him.” Then he spun around and walked through the baroque bracken entrance into the Palace. A moment later the groomsman fainted, and the little foxbat flittered off…

In search of something to eat.

φ

Thoughts: Have you ever become friends with someone so entirely different than you that simply knowing them altered your view of the world?

To read the next episode, click here.