Painting by Alex Garant

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.

Gina was searching for her brother Zack. Meanwhile, Zack was trying to stop the war he’d accidentally triggered among the childlike naims (gnomes), when a powerful voice shook the glen.

While every button-eyed face scanned the glen, Zack slid little Bud out from under his layered shirts, and handed him to his mother Noddie. Like Zack, Bud had somehow been untouched by the lances—but the arrow was still in his knee.

Noddie glared at Zack, then broke off the head of the arrow and yanked out the shaft. Bud shrieked, but no one heard because at that same moment the terrifying voice boomed again from the edge of the clearing:

“How dare you harm my sacred servant!”

For the first time, Zack saw the apparition that was commanding the attention of twenty thousand naims. “It’s her!” voices murmured. “It’s Rhema!”

She was ten feet tall and seemed to hover above the ground, her long dark garment blending into the wooded surroundings. Her head was shrouded, leaving much of her face in shadow, but what could be seen was shot through with all the colors of the rainbow. Her myriad eyes were penetrating in their duplicity. Her mouth seemed to exist in seven or eight places at once.

“You have drawn his blood and said unto yourselves, ‘Let us slay him and defy the Queen of the Fae.’”

“Nay, great lady!” Lyffwin protested.

“Silence!” the Faerie Queen roared, as Lyffwin crumpled to her knees. “You shall not harm my servant Zachary Zinn, for it was I who sent him to test you, and you have failed the test!”

Zachary Zinn? Zack thought. How could she know about—

“I am Rhema, and you shall fear me!”

“Y…yes, Queen Rhema,” the terrified naims stammered.

“Allow my servant Zinn to leave this place, or I shall smote you! For you are my enemies now, and my wrath is eternal!”

“Yes, Great Queen,” said Bulgy. “As leader, I will personally—”

“Oh, shut up! You especially annoy me!” She spotted Lyffwin crawling away on her hands and knees. “And you! Both of you shall leave this place and never come back! You have polluted my precious,” she told Bulgy. She pointed at the knife in Lyffwin’s hand. “Is that a dagger I see before me?”

“Nay, or rather yes, great lady, but…”

“You are a spot on my creation! And I say unto ye, ‘Out, out, damned spot!’”

Bulgy and Lyffwin hurried away, followed by their cohorts. Then Rhema turned her multi-faceted face toward the rest of the naims. “The future,” she began, sounding as though she were presenting a memorized speech, “is not assured. We must not assume that everything will happen exactly as we hope. The parents and teachers—um, I mean the naims—who are gathered here today know better. Not everyone soars forth on the wings of the future, some drag themselves backward on the elbows of the past!”

“Gina?” Zack muttered.

φ

Thoughts: As nearly every Hallmark movie ever made has taught us, well-intended deceptions can only delay happy endings.

To read the next episode, click here.