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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.

Returning to the magical world of Ismara in search of the lost Objects, Gina and Zack suddenly realized they were falling into an ocean!

They hit the water without resisting, like crash test dummies, Gina in an off-kilter sitting position, Zack like a horizontal plank. The smack of the sea was so bone-jarring it nearly knocked them out.

Zack was six feet below before he even began to slow, Gina still farther. By the time either had any idea what was going on, they’d swallowed half the ocean. Disoriented and stupefied, they alternately floated and flailed, flailed and floated…until they looked down and saw it.

Washed in sapphirine blue, the temple was magnificent, even seen through fifty feet of filtered moonlight. It was made entirely of living things, its floor a triangular mosaic of shells of every imaginable shape: king’s crowns and periwinkles, whelks and wentletraps, conches, cockles, and scotch bonnets; all lined with pink and purple urchins and glittering golden sea anemones. It was encircled by ten spiral pillars of live coral, garlanded in undulating yellow-green kelp dotted with pale blue sea stars. They stared in awe.

For too long.

They’d run out of breath, and were in serious trouble. Whether they would they have survived on their own they’d never know, for at that moment something reached out and grabbed them, hauled them to the surface, and began towing them toward the shore.

Gina felt a sharp-toothed mouth encircling her ankle, and thought with dreamlike detachment, “Now I’m going to be eaten by a shark.” Zack was unable to process even that much, although he did manage to hold onto his backpack.

Five minutes later, they felt themselves being dragged like dinghies across slippery rocks, and then nestled onto pebbles like scallops on a bed of rice. Gina opened her eyes, and by the light of the double moon saw an image that made no sense: a dark, slick figure with what looked like wings or fins. But then, as she regained her senses she realized it was a woman in a heavy coat with long, webbed sleeves, with which she was vigorously rubbing Gina. And a few feet away, a like-clad man was expertly squeezing the wetness out of Zack.

Coughing up a fountain of seawater, Zack spluttered, “Wha…who…”

“Shhhh,” said the man, “draw forth the heat that’s in yer, lad, an’ waste it not on useless barking. It’s still the Season of Wisdom, and cold as a forsaken flounder.” He spoke Kell with a thick SurKellish dialect.

“Zaggy?” Gina gurgled, and then she too exhaled a bucketful of seawater.

“Do likewise, lass,” said the gentle-voiced woman. “Yer can speak soon enough. And then yer can tell us how it is yer came…

Ter fall from the sky!”

φ

Thoughts: Would any of us be alive today if we’d never been rescued from our own bad choices?

To read the next episode, click here.