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.

Wracked with guilt, Zack had entered a strange cottage while his sister Gina waited outside. There he was offered tea by a kindly old woman, Rhema.

Gina watched from the doorway as a tea cup suddenly appeared in her brother’s hand. Where had it come from? He lifted it to his lips. “No!” she screamed. “Zack, don’t!” But he was oblivious to her, and she was unable to enter the cottage.

——————

Zack downed the tea without hesitation, half expecting it to kill him, half wanting it to. But instead, it warmed him as nothing else ever had—not just his stomach, but his whole being. He looked up and saw Rhema beaming like a parent whose child has accomplished something really difficult. The kharis tea, he suddenly realized, was somehow the exact opposite of the emptiness he’d felt in his vision of the Dark Tinkurs.

“So, how come I didn’t die when they speared me?” he asked.

Rhema pulled a huge sword out of the air and said, “Stand.”

He slid out from the little nook.

In one swift movement, she sheared off his heavy tunic. It fell to the ground in wisps as if it were made of tissue. Looking down, Zack noticed his hoodie had two prominent holes—the naim’s lances really had impaled him!

“Lift your garment,” Rhema commanded. Zack pulled up his hoodie, revealing the strange, reflective shirt Aunt Aloysia had given him. Little Rhema effortlessly swung the heavy blade toward him. Well, if anyone has the right to kill me, she does, Zack thought. He closed his eyes.

She shoved it into his belly! He let out a grunt as it disappeared all the way to the hilt. But, just as before, Zack felt no pain. He opened his eyes and looked down. Right at the point it touched his metal shirt, the sword bent like one of those arrow-through-the-head tricks, and then curved around him until it stuck out again behind him. Only this was no trick, the sword was solid iron. So, how…? It was as if the shirt’s threads were made of tiny mirrors that could bend not just images, but actual objects.

Zack shook his head in astonishment. “My Aunt Aloysia said it was an Australian…no, wait…‘Austro-Hungarian hauberk.’”

“Aloysia,” said Rhema with an inscrutable smile.

After a long silence, Zack glanced over his shoulder and saw Gina standing in the doorway. When he looked back, Rhema was gone. He turned and walked toward the door, and as he did he heard Rhema’s voice: “Tuber was right. You showed them the stories inside them, and that will heal them in time…

Uol’s time, Zack, not yours.”

φ

Thoughts: It almost always takes someone other than yourself to show you how to believe in yourself.

To read the next episode, click here.