Source: r/midjourneygallery

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 was stunned to discover that the terrifying apparition who’d halted the naim’s war was not, in fact, the mysterious Rhema, but his sister Gina!

She was standing on a boulder in the shadow of a ring of saplings, her oversized cloak hanging half her height again below her feet, making her appear ten feet tall. She’d draped her face with the crystalline scarf Aunt Aloysia had given her, resulting in a multiplicity of mouths and eyes. Gina pushed her hood back, pulled off the scarf and sat down on the lichen-covered boulder, then slid to the ground. “Zack, we have to go!”

Zack didn’t seem to hear her. She scanned the woods around the clearing and then hurried out into the middle of the field. Her brother was staring at the blood-stained bluebells where the old naim’s head had lain. “Zack, if anyone sees us, they’ll—”

“It’s all my fault.”

“We can talk about that later!” She reached under his armpits and tugged. He rose without resistance, but then just stood there, like a sleepwalker at a closed door. He didn’t seem to care whether he went or stayed. Gina had never seen him like this before. She turned him and pushed. He moved like the living dead.

They’d been traveling for about twenty minutes—twenty minutes of deathly silence. “So after you left,” Gina blurted, “we figured out you must have gone with the naims. But how come? Did they kidnap you?”

No answer.

“It didn’t look like it. Heck, it looked like you were their new king!”

No answer.

“Maerith brought me. Oh, Zack, she’s so kind, and she’s lived such a sad life. Her whole family turned against her when she married Shelcor. They tried to kill her—and her little brother died protecting her! I kept thinking, what if it had been you. Anyway, when we got to the naim place—”

“Naimian,” Zack corrected, but kept moving as if he planned to walk until he collapsed. Or died.

“The road to Kellansend is easy to follow, so I sent Maerith back.” Gina looked up at the darkling sky. “Only it’s not going to be day much longer.” She ran ahead about twenty feet and turned to face her brother as he plodded toward her. “Thank you, big sister, for saving my life? Hello? Talk!”

Zack stared at her torso, as if it took too much energy to raise his head. “I turned into Fierce Fischer.”

“What?”

“I told them that for somebody to win, somebody else has to lose.”

“So? That makes sense.”

“Not to them, Gina! People got hurt—really bad. And Tuber is dead because of me. I murdered him.”

“What? No you didn’t!”

Zack began to sob.

“Oh, God, Zacky…” She pulled her brother into her arms. They stood there in the middle of the path as the narrow strip of light in the canopy far above began to glow…

A deep coral orange.    

φ

Thoughts: The hardest person in the world to forgive is yourself.

To read the next episode, click here.