Artwork by SirTancrede

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, his encounter with the mysterious Rhema had dramatically changed him. But now Rhema was gone. Or was she?

Gina stared at her little brother. He looked free. No, something more complicated than that—“freed,” like someone who’d been completely forgiven. And it suddenly occurred to her that being forgiven was far better than insisting you didn’t need to be forgiven. It was true freedom.

Zack walked out the door and stood staring at the path. His sister was about to suggest they go, when a voice called:

“Gina.”

A jolt ran down her spine. It was the voice that had spoken to her in the Frengan Light Forest. She’ll have some sort of warning for me, or more mystical words like “you have taken a step you cannot untake.” Hah, “untake” isn’t even a word!

Gina turned, assuming the voice was disembodied, and instantly wished it had been. The Rhema she saw standing before her was inhumanly tall. Her frazzled gray hair was drawn back into a severe bun and held in place by a twig full of dead blossoms. Her dress was nothing more than tattered cobwebs smeared with ugly berries and mucousy droplets—from poisonous spiders, Gina decided.

“You are angry with me.”

Gina didn’t answer.

“And yet your anger is nothing compared to mine.”

“What? Why?”

“You falsely represented me, and have caused the naims to fear me. You told them I was their enemy and, in my name, swore eternal wrath against them.”

“I…I didn’t say that!”

“Don’t add lying to the list, Gina.” Rhema pressed her hand against Gina’s chest, causing her to tumble backward. She put her hands behind her to break the fall, but instead of hitting the ground found herself looking up from the height of a child. No, not a child, a naim. She was back in the clearing at Naimian, only this time she was a naim, and she was looking up at the artificial Rhema she had created.

“I am Rhema,” the monster rumbled, “and you shall fear me!” Gina was experiencing her own impersonation of Rhema exactly as the naims had experienced it, and it was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen. It was the height of a three-story building, shrouded in darkness, with sixteen eyes and eight mouths. “You shall obey all that I command you,” it thundered in a voice that threatened to rupture her mouse-like ears, “or I will surely smote you! For you are my enemies now, and my wrath is eternal!”

Gina began to scream, but suddenly realized she was back in the cottage…

Standing before the real Rhema.

φ

Thoughts: Sins often masquerade as virtues. And pride is the cleverest chameleon of all.

To read the next episode, click here.