Source: etsy.com

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 the entire novel, begin here.

Zack and Gina had been depressed and plagued by nightmares, when suddenly their mercurial Aunt Aloysia showed up again.

She was squeezed into a loveseat made for two regulation-size adults. The family had just opened her presents to them: centipedes-suspended-in-amber earrings for Mom, a brass hookah for Dad, and for Gina a head scarf of crystal threads that broke her features into a Picasso-esque array of colored cubes.

“Gina’s Face Descending a Staircase!” Dad quipped.

“Und now the mozt special ting of all,” said Aloysia, waxing Germanic, “for mine own little Zeck on his tirteent birsday!” She pulled out a tattered burlap sack. “Here, liebchen…so dat you vill alvays be vith us!”

Zack started to open the sack, only to discover it wasn’t a sack. And it wasn’t made of burlap, but rather a loosely-woven metallic cloth. It was similar to chain-mail, but finer in construction. And it wasn’t dirty, it was tarnished.

“I’ll bet I can make that sparkle!” said Mom.

“No!” Aloysia shrieked. She leapt to her feet, snatched the shirt from Zack’s hand and clutched it to her chest, mumbling in a language none of them had ever heard. “I’ve put a Teutonic death curse on anyone who tries to wash this!” she said.

Mom froze like a hare in a hedgerow.

“Hah! Gotcha! Just kiddin’, Suzie-girl! It really is best not to wash it, though. I don’t think it could handle your modern detergents: it’s an antique Austro-Hungarian hauberk. If Zack ever gets into a jousting match, the lance’ll bend right around him!” Aloysia pantomimed a Looney-Toons lance bending around Zack’s middle.

After the laughter died down, Dad made an ice cream run. Mom went into the kitchen to clean up. And Aunt Aloysia dragged Zack and Gina up the stairs. At the top, she demanded to know, “Why is it back?” It took a moment for them to realize she meant the double moon. Before either could respond, she’d marched into Gina’s room.

“Zack fell into the Map!” Gina blurted. “So I went looking for him!”

“I went looking for you!” Zack retorted.

“Ye both were there at once?” asked Aloysia in a lyrical brogue. She shook her head, but then smiled. “Well, what’s done ‘tis done, and mayhap ‘tis good it were, seein’ as how ye survived and all. And what o’ the Objects? Safely t’home, are they?”

“Well…” Gina began, “they’re in Ismara…”

“Fine, fine, then your work is done.”

“Only not all in the same place,” Zack explained.

Gina glared at him.

“Lord!” said Aloysia. “Well, then ye’ve made of mess of it, certain. Where did ye send ‘em?”

“Well, first I dropped the letter opener—”

“No, not that!” Aloysia screamed, suddenly accent-free.

“Anything but that!”

φ

Thoughts: Is there someone who knows the real, “unimproved” version of you and likes you anyway? Hold onto them!

To read the next episode, click here.