Source: Waif Phillips

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.

Aided by her brother Zack, Gina faces her shape-shifting nemesis, which has suddenly turned into an immense dragon.

A rumble began within the creature’s bowels, like lava about to burst from a fissure. “There!” yelled Zack. He pointed at the scaleless inside of the Beast’s right hind limb.

Without hesitation, Gina ran to the treelike leg. She hacked at it like a lumberjack, using the verbé swordmaster Buigor had taught her. Her blade cut deep into the Beast’s tumorous ankle, slicing through layers of skin and cartilage, exposing a garden hose-sized artery. For the first time she realized the broadsword wasn’t just her weapon — it was her ally!

The Beast let out an ear-bursting bellow. Gina dodged its huge foot as it shifted its weight. Zack ran too, to avoid the massive moving limbs. In the tumult, under the Beast’s moving belly and amid its crashing claws, brother and sister lost sight of one another.

Gina scanned frantically, trying to spot her brother, as well as the wounded leg, still focused on felling the Beast. There! Blood was spraying from the artery as if it were a broken steam pipe. She dodged the creature’s car-sized front left foot and dashed toward the wounded right hind limb. Knowing it could move again at any moment, she closed her eyes, secured a two-handed grip, and swung with all her might.

The blade connected. But something was wrong. There was no resistance; the sword felt weightless in her hands. And then she heard a cry:

“Rhema!”

She opened her eyes and saw Zack standing there where, a moment before, the Beast’s leg had been. She’d hacked her brother open with her broadsword! Gina screamed. Zack screamed. They stared at one another as the universe froze around them.

And then time started back up again.

Why wasn’t Zack on the ground with the sword half-way through him, confirming the unthinkable, that she’d killed her own brother?

“Why aren’t you dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“The hauberk! Oh, Zack! Thank God, you’ve got the—”

“No, I don’t. I gave it to you.”

Gina’s face twisted. “But then how—?”

“Thank God, you’ve got it.” He pointed at her stomach.

Gina looked down and, with zen-like detachment, saw the Beast’s double-spaded tail protruding from her abdomen. Her emotions pinballed from horror to relief to…confusion. She simply could not process the information.

After a surreal moment, Zack reached out and pulled her toward him, de-shish-kabobbing her. The monster’s tail whipped away. In a second the Beast would be on them again, yet Gina couldn’t stop wondering: if she was wearing the hauberk, why wasn’t Zack dead? And…

Where was her broadsword?

φ

Thoughts: Have you ever sensed, while in the midst of life’s battles, that a greater, unseen force was at work?

To read the next episode, click here.