The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles) (29 page)

“These aren’t the wishes he needs,” she finally said, raspy and deep. An umbrella blast from the end of her wand cascaded over top of them, devouring the nine floating wishes and obliterating them to dust. The powder slowly fell and dribbled over their shoulders as Avery released the spell. Quiet rushed back into the echoing hall, and Avery turned her thoughtless gaze back toward nothing at all. Lifting inches from the wooden floor, she floated once again and let go of Goren. All they could do was look, stunned and breathless. This wasn’t the Avery they knew and even though she’d always been distant, quiet and mysterious, she wasn’t evil. Not until now.

Foster’s face burned red with building heat. His body flushed with anger and he pushed himself off the floor, forgetting about any pain still pulsing through his bones. He and Goren whipped and charged their wands, daring Avery to make a move.

She made a move.

Without any dramatic pause, hesitation, or looming possibility of a dual, Avery spun suddenly like a twister, rising up above them trailing black dust behind her high among the shelves of the hall and flashed a bolt of black energy from the end of her wand. In an instant, Goren and Foster were flung against the broken shelving, and fell face first into the shards of glass and spilled dust.

The quiet once again returned to the hall and Avery floated to the floor. Arms limp at her side, toes scraping the floor boards, head tilted slightly down. She left her friends unconscious and bleeding and slowly floated out of the barn.

It was not the Purities she needed. It was a different type of wish Avery Waterstone needed, and they awaited her arrival within a dark, damp cave upon Exclamation Point. Though the pink-haired, blissful little fairy of her past was long forgotten, there remained a fleeting notion within her that this curse could be lifted. That despite the impossibility of realizing her love for Elanor and the crippling anger that came with it, the only way to end her pain was to personally fulfill her final wish. To have Elanor as her own.

41

At The Edge Of A Memory

Standing at the base of the mountain, Shea, Beren and a limping Elanor looked up. Exclamation Point was barely visible, towering overhead. The light of the Wishing Pool was the only way they could spot The Point, but as they stared upward, the difficulty of their task was suddenly apparent. Rising up, the mountain was the tallest of any in the valley and even though Exclamation Point wasn’t at the very top of it, it still resided hundreds of stories above their heads. Getting a crippled Elanor up the side of the mountain would be daunting, but having her grapple the final few feet before The Point would be nothing short of a miracle.

They rested for a moment at the mountain’s rocky base as Elanor leaned against a boulder. Her breathing was labored and not only because of her cracked ribs. The black dust was visibly trailing from her shoulders now and Shea wondered at how painful it must be to ward off such a thing, even though she didn’t understand it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to keep you in one place for so long, Beren,” Elanor said, smiling through the pain and looking at the handcuff spell wrapped around his wrists.

He returned the smile and helped Elanor sit. “Shea, did I ever tell you about the first time I met your mother?”

“Do we have time for stories, Dad?” Shea said, even though she actually did want to hear this one.

“A moment for a breath. Plus, it’s not much of a story,” he winked at his daughter and Elanor gave a hearty laugh, knowing it was a bit of joking insult.

“It was our first training session on The Other Side. It was known as a Live Performance Test at the time, but basically it was a Singulars mission - a Wish Wrangling Performance Trial - as we call it today.”

Shea nodded her head, knowing the term. She’d always wanted to try one. Very simply, it was an annual training session race between the top Keeper recruits to track and find one particular wish that was individually assigned to them and hidden somewhere on The Other Side. No one knew what region in which it was hidden and the test famously lasted for weeks. The fastest to capture their Wish and return it to Paragonia automatically qualified for the Keeper force and resulted in quite a bit of fame for the successful Keeper. The top five finishers were given a “legendary status” on their recruitment sheet. It was another little dream of Shea’s; achieve legendary status among her peers.

“Where were we, Ellie? Prague? I think it was Prague,” Beren asked Elanor.

“Hamburg. You always get the Maker cities screwed up. Your dad was never very good at Maker geography.”

“It was Prague,” Beren said, smirking at Shea. Elanor guffawed, fighting the urge to argue. “There is a giant time-keeping machine at the center of the city and I was certain the Wish was hidden there.”

“They call them clocks, Beren. And, hmm, you might actually be right. There was a clock tower in the Prague city square.”

“Prague,” Beren said again. “As I floated to the top of the tower, there it was. The Wish. I looked around me in case any other Keepers were following, but I was alone.”

“Or so he thought. I pushed him off the edge of the overhang,” Elanor said, laughing. “That Wish flew away so fast at the sound of your dad’s yelp, I’m surprised the Makers didn’t hear him.”

Shea laughed, but tried holding back when she met the annoyed eyes of her father.

   “It wasn’t a yelp. It was more of a cough. She hit me square in the wings. Very illegal move, and it forced the breath right out of me.”

   Shea watched her mom and dad stare at each other, silently recalling the moment with soft smiles.

“But, really, it was the sight of your mother’s eyes that truly made me lose my breath.” Beren continued. Her eyes filled up with tears and, self-conscious from the building blackness currently swirling, she looked away.

She had never seen it before, but Shea noticed a slight brightness radiate from her parents’ wings. Even though her mom’s were broken and shredded, just a touch of light emanated from them, as did Beren’s. Maybe this was what love looked like. Despite the gravity of their current situation, Shea thought it was beautiful.

As Shea was lost in her loving thoughts, Beren turned to her, reached his handcuffed hands and took his daughter’s.

“I want you know understand something,” he said. “When two people love each other, time is the only thing that can change. The love always remains constant. No matter what happens tonight, we will always love each other.”

“And we never stopped loving you, honey,” Elanor said, looking up at her daughter. For the first time, Shea wasn’t frightened when looking into her mother’s eyes. She suddenly understood what her dad had said. Her mother’s eyes were swirling with cursed darkness, but it was still her mother. Her mom was still there and she would always be there, even if the curse consumed her.

A long pause filled the quiet stillness of the air and finally Beren sighed a deep breath. “I think that’s enough reminiscing for now.” He helped Elanor stand. “You say there is a small cliff below the edge of the point?”

“Yes, I used to hide there when you two would bring wishes to the statue,” Shea returned.

“Ellie, we’ll fly you to that edge, but you need to grapple us up from there. We cannot assist in any way after that point or he’ll know.”

She nodded and clutched the rising trepidation inside her. She had no idea how she would do such a thing without at least grimacing, but the Captain didn’t know pain. She was going to have to do the same.

“When you present me to him, during the exchange, you’ll fire a wrangling spell at the wish. Shea, you’ll need to free Thane and the Makers, but you have to wait until after your mom fires first. Like you said, Erebus can’t see you. He needs to think we came alone.”

Shea nodded and straightened her skirt. Just the sound of Thane’s name made her heart beat a little faster. There were too many reasons why it fluttered, but she did her best to calm the incessant feeling that she missed him and was excited to see him again. She didn’t understand the feeling as it pumped through her veins, but she thought it must have been some form of love. Trying to hide it from her parents, she looked over her shoulders, wondering if her wings were glowing as her parents’ did before. They weren’t shining and, surprised, Shea was a little disappointed.

They readied themselves for launch and put Elanor’s arms over their shoulders. Rising up along the side of the mountain, Elanor looked at her daughter.

“Thane, huh?” she smiled as only a knowing mother can. Shea couldn’t help but blush. It was the only answer she could come up with.

42

The Death Wish

A Death Wish is not always a wish for someone to die. That’s far too short-sighted and the Keepers learned early on that every Maker is capable of a negative wish. A wish of hatred, vindictiveness, jealousy or any type of unkind act toward or for another Maker is the basic construct of a Death Wish. There is an innate irony within any Death Wish as it is technically a selfless wish, at least in that it is a wish for someone else to fail, or lose or, yes, even die. While it may, at the surface, be selfless, the major difference between a Death Wish and a True Love Wish is the unattached selflessness. When a Maker casts a Death Wish, it is inherent that they gain something from the negative wish even though it is made for someone else. A True Love Wish, therefore, carries the quality of detachment and in no way does the Maker intend to gain anything - even a returned measure of love - upon the wish’s fulfillment.

As Avery approached the dark corner of the forgotten realm of Paragonia’s woods, the light of the Wishing Pool cut weak streams of light through the scrawny trees. It was on purpose that the Keepers hid the Death Wishes within a cave so close to Exclamation Point. Before Erebus’ treachery, the light of The Pool and the power it held over the land helped keep the wishes calm and obedient. Like a tranquilizer, The Pool sedated the powerful wishes otherwise the Keepers would not have been able to control them. Removing a Death Wish from the cave was always done in secret, never publicly reported and done with a full force of armed Sentinels ready to support the WishKeeper’s retrieval.

Standing in front of the hidden cave, Avery studied the jumbled mess of rocks, boulders and outcropping of vines and vegetation. The entrance to the cave was small enough only for a fairy to enter and exit, and therefore very nearly impossible to see with the naked eye unless you knew where to look. Nothing more than a rocky bulge at the top of the mountain, very little upkeep had been done on the cave over the years, and yet Avery knew it all too well.

Since the destruction of the True Love Wish, Avery would wake in the middle of the night and unconsciously remove herself from her soft, feather bed and go to The Cave. The first time it happened, she woke from the dreaming flight and suddenly found herself standing in front of it, terrified and speechless. She could control it at first, but as the years progressed, a darkness clouded her mind more and more. By the time Grayson and Miranda had made their second True Love Wish and Shea was crossing over in an attempt to retrieve it, she had lost count as to how many Death Wishes she’d retrieved for her WishingKing. A wave of panic would engulf her every time she thought of it while awake. To think her body was somewhere else at night without her knowing, taking the wish to The Other Side and blindly handing it over to Erebus. How many times had she done it? How much power had she unwittingly given her deceitful king over the years?

Staring at the small hole just beneath an overhang of moss, and above a sharp granite rock shaped like a pointed finger, Avery was aware of everything. Usually she was here unconscious, sightless and thoughtless, but this time she was fully aware of everything she’d done and everything she was about to do. Somehow the curse had dug so deep within her little heart that the pure Avery she once knew wasn’t just pushed away, but instead converted, changed. No longer was she resisting the curse, but instead, embracing it. The hatred curdled inside of her. She could taste the deep determination to have what she wanted. To no longer be a pawn in her WishingKing’s game. It was time to end it. All of it. It was time to bring death into the light. Time to bring an end to her pain. Floating toward the small entrance, she ducked her head and entered.

Pitch black, not an inch of space in front of her could be seen. A constant, low buzzing hummed through the cave as if she’d entered a sleeping hornets’ nest. As she floated into the darkness and set her feet lightly upon the stone floor, the cave buzzed with a resonant wave. The wishes knew someone had entered and they expectantly awaited retrieval.

A snap from the end of her wand sizzled and Avery held it up, using the soft blue light to illuminate her surroundings. Every inch of the wet, shimmering cave walls were covered with Death Wishes. They weren’t in any kind of casing or jar, but clinging to the walls like bats, fluttering and buzzing a natural hum. Though Avery’s wand cast its light around her, the cavern ran so deep within the mountain, the light of the wand was unable to span the full size of it. Even larger than the Nursery’s main hall, the Death Wish Cave had an endlessness about it.

A Death Wish buzzed toward Avery and zipped past her ear, leaving a thin, red scratch across her cheek. Another wish spun around her head and scraped across her forehead. Blood lightly trickled over her brow, and yet Avery didn’t move. One by one, the Death Wishes swooped and bombarded the little black-haired fairy and swarmed her. The humming buzz of the wishes was deafening as they swirled around her. Thousands swallowed up the light of her wand and consumed her.

BLAST! A force of purple fog protruded out from the center of the swarming wishes and pushed back the onslaught. Avery stood at the center of the force with her wand held high above her head, gripping it with both hands. The wishes slowed and moved into a synchronized swarm, zooming around her in a perfect circle. Thousands upon thousands of Death Wishes suddenly controlled.