Image by Lindsey Best

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, Zack and B’frona slept through the night and into the next evening, their healing wounds siphoning every dram of energy left in their bodies.

B’frona’s adoptive sister Sh’renn had re-stoked the fires against the deepening Season of Wisdom, and then checked a dozen times on her brother and the Two Strangers.

Near sundown, Gina dreamed that Mom had sent her outside to water the flowers. Just as she was beginning to spray the morning glories, she saw something magical. She dropped the hose and moved closer, expecting to see flower faeries. Instead, she saw tiny striped creatures with poisoned swords in their tails moving from flower to flower. She awoke, shouting, “Beezes! Beezes!” But the moment she moved, her pleasure passed. Every cell in her body hurt. So she willed herself back into oblivion.

Zack woke to the smell of baking shrennel bread. He wrapped himself in a blanket and began to move. It felt like he was walking on knives. To match the holes in his throat, the Beast’s tentacles had sliced through his sneakers, leaving deep furrows in his feet. Nevertheless, he managed to drag his cocooned body to the open window. Staring out at a darkened sky full of gestating clouds, he whispered, “I want to be up there with you, Liulah. Up where there are no monsters or broadswords, where we can play, and kiss, and send the rain someplace else.”

He thought about the war he’d started among the childlike naims. About the arrow in little Bud’s knee, and the scorn in his parents Sniggle and Noddie’s faces. About the hatred, hurt, and battered children. About the light passing from dying Tuber’s eyes. And he thought, I caused all of that.

But then he remembered the kharis tea Rhema had given him, and how it had made it possible for him to forgive himself. “Still, I haven’t forgotten,” he whispered.

Of course not, a silent voice replied. So, what will you do?

“Make it better,” Zack murmured. And the instant he spoke, his mind flooded with images of broken bodies strewn upon blood-splattered fields–pride, cruelty, and madness unleashed. But it wasn’t the war of the naims, it was a future war, one greater than any he’d ever imagined.

So, what will you do?

“I’ll make it better!” he shouted. And this time his voice reverberated across the River Rennou and through the tops of the irontrees. “I swear by Uol…

“I will make it better!”

φ

Thoughts: Failure, not success, is the shortest path to victory. But be warned: it leads through a broken heart.

To read the next episode, click here.