Source: Dard Shayari

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’s search for a monstrous Beast has led them to Rennou, where Gina has learned the millboy B’frona’s cruel fate. What of hers?

B’frona’s step-sister Sh’renn invited Gina and Zack stay the night, and B’frona, despite his previous bitter words, made no protest. Sh’renn led Zack and Gina up to the third floor common room, which, in Gina’s words, was “preggers with books!”

“He never stops reading,” Sh’renn explained. “He knows things no else one knows. He is destined for far more than grinding grain.” She made up two rag-filled pallets and started a fire in the dusty hearth. Then she turned suddenly, and asked, “Are you the Two Strangers?

“Maybe,” replied Gina.

“We don’t know,” Zack clarified.

Sh’renn pierced them with a look neither would have thought possible. “It is because you do not know yourselves. B’frona also does not, and this is why he wrestles so. The Anaruols say, ‘You must defeat the enemy within before you can even recognize, much less defeat, the enemy without.’ I will not cease to struggle for you before Uol.” And then, without another word, she turned and headed up to the fourth floor, leaving the stunned brother and sister in her wake. This was no bland promise to “say a little prayer,” it was a to-the-death pact!

They thumbed through B’frona’s books, unwilling to speak and afraid to sleep. Gina found the millboy’s childhood legacy, Of Knights and Dragons. She admired the engraving of an adult Frengan Dragon, and wondered if she would ever see her little pup full-grown. Then her eyes wandered to the image of a thousand-toothed Hadessian Dragon on the opposite page, and her flesh began to crawl. She slammed the book shut. Were they the Two Strangers? They’d had the prophetic Objects and returned them (sort of). But it seemed like they’d done more harm than good from the moment they arrived. How could they possibly save this world? Let alone “two worlds?”

Utterly spent, Gina looked over at her brother. He’d fallen asleep with his face in a book about cloud shepherds. She rolled over onto her side, her most comfortable position given the unremovable sword on her back. Mercifully, as she drifted, her former nightmares did not return. Are Sh’renn’s prayers protecting me? she wondered.

Sleep had just claimed her, when she felt an insistent tugging at her back. She sat up in the darkness. The broadsword was lurching harder than ever before; it wasn’t just urging her to move, it wanted out of its sheath! The realization both exhilarated and terrified her. Finally! she thought. This could only mean the Questing Beast was at hand! And then she said aloud:

“Oh, God—finally.”

φ

Thoughts: “You must defeat the enemy within before you can even recognize, much less defeat, the enemy without.”

To read the next episode, click here.