Source: Adventure Gamers

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 and Gina had decided to send the mysterious objects in Zack’s toy chest back to the world they came from. They were pushing the chest to the Wishing Map in Gina’s room when it started disintegrating!

“Zack!” Gina jumped off the chest and prepared to dash down the stairs as Zack jerked the lock open. The chest grew suspiciously silent. He squinted at his sister: her face was a maze of doubt and fear. He slowly lifted the hasp, expecting the chest to burst open like a torched fireworks stand, but nothing happened. Gina came and stood beside him. “If we die, I’m going to be so ticked.”

Applying rip-off-the-band-aid logic, Zack threw the lid open, but the Objects just sat there. “Are they dead? They’re so…” He picked up the “springy-hingey thing,” the Object he’d always liked the most, but that Gina thought looked suspiciously like a torture device. It rested heavily in his hand.

“I think they know we’ve been to Ismara,” said Gina, “and they’re waiting for us to wish them back.”

“Yeah, so…” Zack pulled out the “brass football” and carried it and the other Object toward his sister’s bedroom. She raced ahead, pushing the door open, and then stood back as he got down on his knees and placed the Objects near Zshinia on the torn right edge of the Map. Nothing. Brother and sister scrinched their noses in sync and then silently headed back to the chest. Gina pulled out the lavender hour glass and the purple-gold letter opener and carried them to her room.

Within a few minutes they’d placed all twelve Objects on the Map. They stood and stared. “I don’t want to say goodbye,” Zack admitted. The Objects had been erratic and unpredictable, especially since the arrival of the Map, but they’d had them for years and spent hundreds of hours playing with them. They’d always known the objets mystére were more than toys, and it had made them feel special.

“Next to books,” said Gina, “they’re the closest thing I’ve had ever had to pets.”

But now the Objects had to be wished back to the world they came from, to fulfill ancient prophecies and confirm the rightful ruler of Ismara, still… “This is a wish,” Zack began, “that I wish—”

“We didn’t have to wish?” Gina finished. “Me too.” She sighed. “So let’s just get it over with.” She placed her hands on the pile of Objects. “I wish…”

“We wish…” Zack corrected, placing his hands next to hers.

“That the Objects would go back to Zshinia,” they said together.

Nothing happened.

“To Ismara?” Zack modified.

The Map began to shimmer. Zack pointed at Zshinia, and said, “Look. No ring.” There were hundreds of place names on the Map, but only six had the same glowing triangle-in-a-circle as the Sheyaran temple and the pixies’ Sacred Circle. Zshinia, the capitol of the Ismaran world, was at the edge of a tear that ran down the right side of the Map. “Its ring must be on the other piece of the Map,” said Zack. His sister wondered aloud…

“So who has that piece?”

φ

Thoughts: Have you ever faced a task that would affect your entire future, yet seemed impossible to complete?

To read the next episode, click here.