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.

Freshly-saved from drowning, and in search of an elusive Questing Beast, Gina and her brother Zack had found an inn overlooking the Frengan coast.

Thanks to the pearls Shelcor had left them, they ate a lavish breakfast, served by the suddenly slavish innkeeper. He’d decided that they were the children of rich nobles, and repeatedly asked to meet “the father and mother of such delightful little pooties!” Pooties, according to popular Frengan sentiment, are pink-cheeked cloud shepherd babies. Zack resented the inaccuracy. Gina resented being called a baby.

They’d learned of a coach bound for Holos, the kingdom east of Frenga and the direction the sword was urging her to go. Three hours would pass before the horses were changed and the coachman sobered up, so sister and brother sat opposite one another on a window seat overlooking the billowing Kellish Way. They spoke of all that had happened.

“I’m scared out of my gourd,” Gina confessed. “I don’t want to die.”

“But Rhema said—”

“Rhema! Why should we trust her?”

“Because she forgave—”

“Well, she didn’t forgive me!”

“Maybe she did. Maybe you have to forgive yoursel–”

“I’m done!” Gina shouted. “I refuse to go on with this stupid quest!” Tears of desperation welled up in her eyes. It was the first time she’d let Zack see her cry in years.

“The sword won’t let you quit,” her brother reminded her, “and besides, Rhema said we’ll find the Revealer when we kill the Questing Beast.”

“When I kill the Questing Beast! Which I won’t, because it’ll kill me first!”

Zack struck his hand with his fist. “I’ll die before I let that happen. I swear!”

Gina snuffled up a stray tear, and patted her brother’s knee. “Stop being all noble and mature or I’ll think faeries stole my real brother!” She was only beginning to realize how profoundly his time in Naimian had affected him.

Before they left, Gina asked if she could buy a large volume of Frengan history she’d spotted in a cob-webbed corner. The innkeeper insisted on making it a gift. He also haberdashed her and her brother into costly louppweave traveling cloaks. It was clear by now that the huge pearl they’d paid with—which the innkeeper kept fondling lustfully—was worth way more than they’d realized. They offered the coachman one of the smaller pearls, and asked him to take them “as far east as you go.”

“For this I’ll take you to all the way to Ongoltan,” he replied, “and dance the Dance of the Swirling Seers with a Shenzuni saber between my teeth!”

It would take eight days to reach the Holosian border, assuming the sword didn’t change its mind in the meantime. How long would they travel before they found the beast? Days? Months? Longer?

Would they ever see home again?

φ

Thoughts: The unknown tends to be rather hard to find, and the unexpected tends to arrive rather unexpectedly. So the best way to prepare for both is to simply live.

To read the next episode, click here.