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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 it from the start, click here.

Gina’s harsh encounter with the mysterious Rhema was nothing like her brother Zack’s. He’d been offered tea and sympathy, while Gina had been given an insane “quest” to find and smite her “true enemy!”

“Could I have some of that tea now?” she asked.

“If you will.” Rhema turned around with an already-poured cup in her hand, and held it out to Gina. “If it doesn’t work, we can try again another time. And ‘untake’ is perfectly correct, by the way.”

Gina looked down at the spider-veined saucer. What did Rhema mean, ‘If it doesn’t work?’ Something about its delicacy made Gina want to drop it, but she fought the urge and lifted it to her nose. Why were there tears in  Rhema’s eyes? For one brief moment, Gina could have sworn she’d seen the fairy queen’s face before, long ago when…but then the memory was gone. She brought the cup to her lips. The tea smelled as if it were distilled from every slight and every wrong she’d ever experienced.

Her mind flooded with memories:

Of doing detention every day for a month after Lindsay Hurd hid Treece Vondermueller’s grandmother’s watch in her desk and swore Gina had stolen it…

Of being forced to spend half a year’s allowance on a puppy for creepy Lenora Klemmer after Gina had set all of Lenora’s “pet” (imprisoned!) grasshoppers free…

Of Artifíga and Skelljaip humiliating and nearly killing her while the entire town of Rennou watched…

Of things that had never happened:

Being prodded and leered at in a mudbrick bazaar by a toothless man snorting powdered flame-ants, who was considering buying her as a slave…

Standing over the man in the violet-gold helmet and hacking at his head with a sword!

Her eyes slammed open. “I would never do that!” There was no one there. “I can’t do this, Rhema!” All she could see was the edge of the forest. The cottage in the fallen rainbowwood tree was gone. And so was that horrible cup of tea. She turned and saw Zack staring at her.

“So I dreamed it?”

“Not exactly.” He pointed to her back.

She reached behind her and felt the sword hanging from the leather harness.

“That’s the sword she stabbed me with,” said Zack.

“What?”

“Look.” He pointed past her shoulder.

She turned and saw that they were at the edge of the Rainbowwood Forest. No more than a mile away was the fishing village of Kellansend, dotted with fresh-lit kiss-lanterns. Impossible. They should have been hours away still. They’d only left Naimian…how long had it been? And yet there was Kellansend, and beyond it the blue-green waters of the Kellish Way.

And it almost felt like home.

φ

Thoughts: Quests alter not just our actions, but us. For that is their true purpose.

To read the next episode, click here.