Source: Sisko1701

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 had been given a magical sword to aid in her search for the Questing Beast, and it kept pulling her toward the water. So the fisher folk Maerith and Shelcor agreed to take her and her brother Zack out to sea.

They’d seen the fishing sloop from a distance, but never up close. Now, as they boarded, it looked almost as if it wasn’t made for humans. With its up-swept bow, raked mainmast, and submerged seal-tail stern, it seemed to be a part of the ocean itself.

“OK! We’re going!” Gina shouted at the sword. “Gimme a break!”

Shelcor smiled. “I’ll secure that sword for yer.”

“Trust me, it’s not going anywhere without me.”

“Yer cannot be too certain. The Kellish Way is roughsome fierce.” He reached inside his shirt and took hold of a leather cord, then slipped it off over his head. There was a small sack hanging from the end. He used the cord to bind the sword handle to the sheath opening, gave the sword a hearty yank, and judged the arrangement “snug as a mud-cockle.” Then he turned and, with Maerith’s help, began raising the mainsail. Within moments, the graceful craft was gliding toward the opening of Kellansend Bay.

“Hey-fah for the sea!” Shelcor and Maerith shouted, their deep green eyes shining.

When they reached the edge of the inlet, Shelcor raised the spinnaker. It bloomed like a bellflower as it whisked them out of the protective shallows. Zack and Gina’s hearts raced. There was nothing ahead but open sea.

Gina’s plan, assuming the sword continued to urge her eastward, was to sail to Doviclé, the nearest point on the western coast of Frenga. It was only eighty quamtomurs (about 53 miles) from Kellansend. Still, it could be a tempestuous voyage, Maerith warned as she laid out two stiff blankets on the deck. They smelled like oily old tarps and were anything but comfy, but they kept away the salt spray and the cold.

After a couple of hours, Shelcor said, “Sleep as best yer can, cheldings. Fairhap twill be good sailing, but may as like not.” Nodding in agreement, Maerith gathered a rope made of braided kelp and began lashing them to the deck.

“Why are you—?” Zack began.

“Uol willing,” she explained, “twill keep yer from hoving inter the deep.”

“Maerith,” Gina asked just before she drifted off to sleep, “why is the Temple of Uol under water?”

“Yer know little of the selchies (fisher folk), do yer?” the woman replied.

Zack was jerked awake as the sloop shot skyward, and then keeled over and plunged toward a trough at the foot of the immense wave they’d just climbed. For a moment he thought he was dreaming, but then he heard Shelcor’s voice, urgent, raspy, and strangely changed, “Yer must abandon, cheldings! Abandon the boat…

“Now!”

φ

Thoughts: There is nothing we fear and desire in such equal measure as the unknown. Perhaps because we know that without it, life is merely survival.

To read the next episode, click here.