Image by Dimitris Vetsikas

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 and her brother Zack had been secretly sent to Ismara to retrieve a lost Object. And now, for the first time, they’d told someone about their mission.

“We came from another world, “said Zack, “which I know sounds totally bogus, but–”

“’Lest they fall into erroneous hands,’” Shelcor recited, “the Thirteen Objects were ‘ta’en to another world until the Time of an End and a New Beginning, when they would finally return by the hands a’ strangers.’”

“So…you believe us?” Gina asked.

“Yer fell from the sky,” said Maerith.

“And though yer spake Kellish,” Shelcor added, “we knew yer were not of Sur Kellan, for yer didn’t even know that spiffwits cannot fly.”

In a revelatory gush, the siblings told the two fisher folk about accidentally scattering the Thirteen Objects throughout Ismara. All the while, Maerith and Shelcor glanced furtively about the room.

Zack confessed carelessly starting a civil war in Naimian. And when he spoke of his consequent encounter with Rhema, his eyes reddened and his voice grew husky. Maerith touched his eyebrows. “Without forgiveness it’s none of us as can live.”

“Well, obviously, not everything is forgivable,” Gina objected. And then she told them about her own encounter with Rhema, and the absurd quest the Faery Queen had sent her on. “She says it’s not punishment, but it is. Where’s my forgiveness, huh? Plus she tried to poison me!”

“So, yer must smite this Questing Beast,” Shelcor summarized, “yet yer know not where it is ter be found. And Rhema says—”

“That this stupid, pushy sword”—she smacked the scabbard strapped to her back—”will lead me to it and to my ‘true enemy,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean!”

The moment the four stepped out of the inn, the sword began nudging Gina toward the water’s edge, and the others followed. “I think it wants me to go out there.” She pointed at the roiling abyss of the Kellish Way. “What if I have to fight some kind of sea monster?”

“Then we’ll fight it with yer, lass,” assured Shelcor.

Gina sat down and stared at the sea. She’d managed to put the quest out of her mind as long as she was eating and enjoying the company of her friends, but now that the mission was about to resume, her courage plummeted like a broken elevator. “What does a Questing Beast even look like?”

Maerith put her arm around her and said, “Nay two alike, lee sister. Ismaran lore says there’s a different Questing Beast for every knight, for each must face—” Gina completed the thought:

“My true enemy.”

φ

Thoughts: Courage is the greatest of all weapons, but it’s also an invisible one. You don’t know whether you have it until you’re called upon to use it.

To read the next episode, click here.