The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles) (25 page)

“Let’s go get your mom.”

By the time they found their way back to Elanor and Avery, Elanor’s bout with the curse had subsided. While far from perfectly healthy, she was at least able to stand on her own, despite the wicked wind of the blizzard. Avery still felt she needed to offer a helping hand, and Elanor didn’t complain about having one.

Beren grabbed Elanor’s hands upon landing and looked her in the eyes. They were much blacker than when he left her. Looking at Avery, he could tell they were hiding something and decided to keep it between them. Shea didn’t need to know her mom could be leaving them shortly, and firing another explosion of light, even just at her feet, could break her - and not just of the curse. She was far too fragile to try such a thing. Their only hope was to find a Gate, get back home and stop Erebus from consuming the wish. Not exactly an easy task.

“I’m assuming the worst,” Elanor said, not meaning to be so foreboding.

“You OK?” Beren asked.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“I went back to the house,” Beren continued.

The others waited during Beren’s long, drawn out pause. Why was he pausing for so long?

“It was empty,” he finally said, after a deep breath.

“But Thane. And the Makers?” Avery asked.

Beren shook his head. Shea didn’t understand what that meant. Were they just missing? They left on purpose? Dead? After everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about her friend. How could she forget about Thane?

“We have to find a gate and fast. Without a WishRadar, it won’t be easy.”

Quickly snatching her pack, she removed the WishRadar Thane stole and handed it to Beren. “What do you mean empty? What about Thane?”

“Your friend is in trouble, Shea, and I won’t ask how you got this,” he said as he flipped the radar device on. It buzzed and blinked. “Plans have changed.”

“What do you mean trouble? You just left him at the house? With Grayson and Miranda?” Beren wasn’t listening and Elanor and Avery weren’t much help either. “Would you just tell me he’s OK, please? What’s going on?”

It was an unexpected kind of panic. The kind that was trying to cover up a mistake that she inevitably knew had everything to do with her.

Beren slapped the side of the radar as it continued to buzz and blink. The cold was keeping it from switching on, but finally the screen came to life. He wasn’t listening to Shea, instead intent on finding any remaining Gate, hopefully nearby.

The screen didn’t show any red dots, much less any other color. It was a basic, grey map of the town with a small triangle indicating their position. Sweeping through the screen, searching, Beren finally found one little golden dot. A Gate a few hundred yards away on the other side of the woods.

“One gate left,” he said with a worried sigh. “Worse than I thought.”

“Dad! Please!” she looked at Elanor and Avery for a little help. Weren’t they just as worried as she was? “Is Thane OK?”

“No, Shea, he isn’t! I’m sorry, but we won’t be either if we don’t find this gate and find it fast.”

“We can’t cross over without him! We can’t just leave him here,” begged Shea.

“Thane isn’t here. And neither are the Makers,” Beren said, impending danger squeezing past his tongue. He continued measuring the distance between them and the last gate - studying the screen and then the forest around them. Elanor and Avery finally perked up. If they weren’t here, then that meant they were in Paragonia. And that only meant Erebus took them.

“He took them. I can’t believe he’d do that,” Avery said, staring at nothing in particular.

“I can,” Elanor said. “He’s not going to destroy the wish. He’s going to consume it, and he needs them in order to do so.

Shea waited for some kind of answer or solution, even a plan, but nothing came. Her dad just searched the woods and the radar.

“Well we have to do something!” Shea finally cracked and broke the silence.

“We are, honey,” Beren said. “We’re finding the gate and getting that wish. You better be ready to fly.”

It was the first time her father had ever called her anything other than her name. It was odd to hear the term of endearment fall from his lips and, in a way, it frustrated her. It made her feel like a little fairy again and she didn’t want to feel that way anymore. She needed them to see her as an adult. As a force, not just some little fairy girl.

Avery could tell this angered Shea, and patted her on the back. She gave her a wink and smiled. It was so opposite of what the situation called for, but somehow it calmed her down a bit. “As frustrating as it seems, we have to do this one step at a time. Get ahead of yourself and you lose sight of your goal. We’ll get Thane back. I promise,” Avery said, calm, and even if she was faking the confidence, it worked. Shea took a deep breath and followed her father.

“Ellie, we’ll have to carry you,” Beren said, as he tried to put his arms around his wife. She swatted them away.

“Carry me? I said I was fine, Beren,” Elanor said.

He smiled at his stubborn wife, and nodded to a tree branch above them. “Let’s go then.” Beren, Avery and Shea lifted off the ground and Elanor fired a grapple spell into the tree. They were off.

36

The Last Gate

“I have brought you all here today, to come clean. I must tell you something I am rather ashamed to admit,” Erebus said as he stood in the middle of his chambers.

Grayson and Miranda were tied to two chairs at the far end of the stone-walled room. Through the window, the WishingKing’s fog was thick across the valley and covered every inch of the landscape. Thane was tied up next to the True Love Wish, which was still stuck in the gyro sphere with its light all but dimmed.

Erebus turned dramatically around, his black, dusty cloak swinging behind him like a snake, and calmly raised his right hand. His back was to his captors as he continued.

“I must admit that I cannot complete this mission of mine without your help. I know it is surprising, but it won’t be that way for long.” He smiled under his black hood and waved his hand to the right, motioning for something to open. Grayson and Miranda were beyond comprehending anything at this point and looked to Thane for answers. He was just as clueless.

As his hand finished its slow wave, the vast wall of books at the other end of the room vanished. A secret room was revealed behind the wall, but it wasn’t the crude magic trick that struck his captors.

A seemingly endless corridor appeared in front of him. It was lined with shelves upon shelves, hundreds of thousands that went beyond the eye’s capability and on each shelf, huddled closely together, were millions of glass jars. Each jar was filled with a wish.

Thane was awestruck. Outside of the Nursery, he’d never seen so many wishes all in one place. As he looked closer, he noticed that not all of the wishes were alive. Many were grey and lifeless, but nearly half were still buzzing bright with life.

Erebus turned back around and once again addressed them. “You see, I may consume all of the wishes to my heart’s content. One by one, adding a little dash of power here and a little drop of strength there. In the end, however, it’s futile.”

“What’s futile?” Grayson asked. He couldn’t believe the words came out, but he also couldn’t believe what he was seeing or experiencing. He was ready for some answers, even if they were asked of a crazy old man wearing fog as a cloak.

“Ah. The WishMaker speaks and not without a very good question,” Erebus said. “I wished for true love once. I expect you didn’t know that,” Erebus looked at both Miranda and Grayson. All of this wishing business was still new to them, but they were surprised, nonetheless, to hear such a thing come from the monster in front of them. “The only True Love Wish I was able to make and what happens? My wonderful Keepers deem it to be impossible and what do they give me as a reward instead? The throne of a useless world. Destined to be nothing more than a manager, an organizer of other people’s wishes. To sit back and watch as two Makers somehow get a second chance at true love. Their cruelty knows no bounds. And yet, they did give me some miniscule amount of power. But not enough.”

He walked into the long, dark corridor, the light of the wishes being the only source of illumination, and fondled a few of the jars. “My true love wish will never be granted. That much even I cannot change. But the Keepers of Paragonia owe me. They owe me something in return. The only thing that can match the granting of true love? The power that resides within it. You see, a wish is an interesting creature,” he said as he removed a jar from a shelf. Opening the lid, a bright purple Ladder Wish huddled in the corner, shaking, avoiding Erebus’ reaching hand, but he easily snatched it up. Cupping it in his palm, he continued. “Pure intent just waiting to be set free. It is my intent to do just that. To set such intent free. What happens, though, when intentions collide? The more powerful of the two consumes the other.”

There was a crack as loud as thunder and Grayson and Miranda turned away. A flash of black fog stretched through room, and then quickly reversed course. It flowed into Erebus like a vacuum, pulsing through him as he consumed the wish’s power. Breathing in, absorbing it like a drug, he sighed deeply and dropped the ashes of the dead wish from his palm. Wiping his hands together, he casually stepped back into his chambers.

“The reason I have brought you all here today is because a True Love Wish is a tricky wish to consume. I need the power of your intent as well. Inside of you resides the source of not one True Love Wish, but two. Now that is powerful. Don’t you think?”

Miranda and Grayson looked at each other and though they couldn’t shake the blur of everything that was happening to them, deep down they did know that they were special, but how had it come to this?

“The remaining question, however, is how powerful is true love, really?” he asked of no one in particular. “Tonight, I intend to show you that it is not as powerful as me.”

Thane’s eyes were wet with rage. There has to be a way out of this. He can’t win. He just can’t. “You’re not stronger than true love, and you know it,” he growled.

Swooping through the room, his black cloud swiftly revolved around Thane. Out of the darkness, Erebus stretched his evil face and smiled.

“Not yet.”

*       *       *       *

Huddled within an evergreen, Shea, Avery and Elanor awaited Beren’s next move as he stared at the radar. The screen was stuttering with static - the cold taking it over. Elanor’s grappling was, admittedly, slowing them down and they needed to rest in every other tree just to regroup. Even without the driving blizzard, the search for the Gate was painfully slow.

Beren slapped the radar again, hoping it would become unstuck, but the screen went dark. He placed it in his side pocket. “Damn. We’re not far though. It’s just through…”

KABOOM! A blast of golden light suddenly filled the forest, though much weaker than the other blasts. They ducked and managed to hold on. The force of the blast wasn’t strong enough to blow them out of the tree, thankfully. A loud hum pulsed, emanating from the source of the explosion. HUMM…HUMM…HUMM.

“The gate!” Avery said.

“I don’t think it closed. That blast wasn’t as strong as the others, and the humming. I think it’s hanging on. We have to go. Now,” Beren ordered.

They launched out of the tree and Elanor fought through every ounce of physical pain trying to keep up. Shea weaved through the branches and for a moment, forgot her mother couldn’t fly. She stopped and turned back.

“Shea!” yelled Avery.

“My Mom! Just go!” she yelled back, pushing into the wind.

Elanor’s grapple wrapped around the branch of a leafless oak tree and in mid-flight, let go and whipped another, swinging her way to a neighboring tree. Landing hard on the slick branch, she cringed at her broken ribs. Kneeling and trying to catch her breath, Shea jumped behind her and pulled her up.

“Come on, Mom. We can do this,” she said, out of breath.

“Shea! You need to go. I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not fine and we don’t have time. Please. We can do this together.” Shea flashed a strong grapple around a tree and looked at Elanor. “Connect your grapple spell to mine and hold on to me!” she yelled through the wind. Hesitating out of pride for her heroic daughter, she looked at her little red head and nodded. Following her orders, their grapple spells wrapped around each other, Elanor grabbed Shea and they jumped. Using her wings and the pull of the grapple, they soared through the winter air faster than Avery and Beren could. The speed in which they flew sent a shiver through Elanor - they were out of control, at least she thought. The vibrating hum of the Gate was getting louder, and they could feel the pulsing of its energy as they sped through the air. Firing a grapple behind them, Shea caught a branch and like a parachute, slowed their flight and made a perfect landing at the base of a giant oak. High above them, the Gate pulsed with golden light. Its hum almost deafening.

Beren and Avery caught up, landing next to Shea and Elanor. Beren pulled his wife in close and smiled at his daughter, thankful but surprised. He realized he hadn’t seen his daughter fly since she was little, with or without wings. Avery, out of breath, smacked Shea on the shoulder and yelled through the din, “So much for needing those wings, huh?”

Shea smiled and blushed, or at least as much as the frigid winter air could allow.

Looking up, the Gate was waiting along the edge of a thick icy branch. Still pulsing with golden light, the Gate fired out lashes of wild energy. Even if they got up there, it won’t be easy.

“We can’t wait any longer. Ready?” Beren looked at his companions, wind battered, frost bitten and exhausted. This was it. Elanor raised her wand and fired a grappling spell high into the tree, launching herself up. Beren flew just beneath her as she swung her way up. Avery and Shea dashed off to either side of the tree and sped toward the Gate.