The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles)
Read The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles) Online
Authors: Maximilian Timm
Tags: #true love, #middle grade, #Young Adult, #love, #faeries, #wish, #fairies, #wishes, #adventure, #action, #fairy, #fae
Contents
Chapter 3 - The Other Side of Bittersweet
Chapter 5 - The Wingless Wonder
Chapter 12 - Fairies Don’t Make Wishes
Chapter 15 - Those Three Words
Chapter 18 - A Flash In The Dark
Chapter 20 - The Truth Comes Out
Chapter 26 - Lightning In Winter
Chapter 27 - Rules Are Meant To Be Broken
Chapter 34 - Return Of The WishingKing
Chapter 35 - Like Father, Like Daughter
Chapter 38 - When The World Ends
Chapter 39 - Exclamation Point
Chapter 41 - At The Edge Of A Memory
Chapter 43 - The Pain Of A Wish
Chapter 45 - The Point Of A Kiss
LOST KING ENTERTAINMENT
The WishKeeper: Book One of the Paragonia Chronicles
Maximilian Timm
Copyright © 2013 by Maximilian Timm
Cover Design: Dan Howard
www.danhowardart.com
All rights reserved. This book was self-published by author Maximilian Timm under the press, Lost King Entertainment. No part of this book or front or back cover may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, or any future means of reproducing text.
Published in the United States by Lost King Entertainment
ISBN 978-0-9910632-3-9
eBook/MOBI file version 1.0
File conversion supported by Calibre
For Dad and Carrie. The best storytellers I will ever know.
The Author is Forever Grateful to
These Very Special WishMakers
May all of your Athletic Wishes come true.
Chris Tongue
Melissa DeBuck
Sharon Premo Cox
Jennifer Rayfield Smith
Liz Duggan
Scott Leuffen
Debbie Marcum
Joe and Jennifer Buchholz
Angel Ku
And my amazing artists:
Dan Howard (cover)
Abigail Larson and Wylie Beckert (promotional)
Nathan Maurer and Mary Gutfleisch (poster promotions)
Preface
Grayson and Miranda were born in the same room of the same hospital, two months apart. Miranda was the one who arrived early. Miranda was always the one to arrive early, being much more eager and adventurous of the two. They grew up in quaint, neighboring ranch homes on a small cul-du-sac at the northern tip of a town named Abdera. A throwback little town, Abdera’s main street was paved with bricks that unevenly rushed past an old Five & Dime store that was renovated into an antique shop. The town was a tourist attraction simply for its purposefully kept historical feel - a town that never aged, only its inhabitants did. For a kid, it was a perfect place to grow up and by the time Miranda turned nine years old, she had scouted every inch of the woods at the end of her little cul-du-sac. Miranda was always searching for something. There was always a door that needed opening, an empty hallway that called her name, or an expansive forest that begged for her exploration.
Grayson was an introvert that would rather consider his own thoughts and musings than consider someone else’s. Not that he ignored his parents’ love or guidance, he simply listened and took it all in. His father would secretly wish that Grayson would talk back or pout or throw some form of a tantrum just to see a spark of life within his son. As his parents would ready themselves for bed, Grayson would overhear them chatting; worried about their son and wishing he would show the same adventurous spirit as other kids his age. While he didn’t feel there was anything wrong with him, Grayson knew through some mysterious innate knowing, his life was merely on hold and it was going to be worth the wait.
When Beren and Elanor transferred to The Other Side for their first wish wrangling session, they didn’t need to search very hard to find their WishMakers. As they flew along the edge of the cul-du-sac, the two fairies found Miranda and Grayson sitting alone on their respective front porches thinking, dreaming…wishing. Not only were the children unknowingly waiting for their WishKeeper, but their wishes were as well. The cul-du-sac was a sea of wishes that only the WishKeepers could see. An overflow from their homes poured the excited, bug-eyed, brightly lit creatures into the neighborhood. All of their Athletic Wishes, Ladder Wishes, Purity Wishes and Money Wishes owned this little corner of The Other Side. And all Beren and Elanor could do was smile.
In the first nine years of their lives, Miranda and Grayson never had a wish granted. Their wishing lives, however, were about to begin.
1
Goggles, Goggled
“Wings tucked, Private!” Shea’s mother playfully ordered.
The frozen sap of the evergreen clung to Shea’s bare feet as if the icy tree was trying to keep her in one place. It was Wishing Eve in the Makers’ world - The Other Side, as the WishKeepers called it. A night when all WishKeepers would leave their secret world of Paragonia and cross through the Gates to tend to their WishMakers in celebration of opportunity; the opportunity to collect millions of wishes and sustain the harmony between their world and the Makers’. It was, generally, the most important night of the year, but for Shea, it was a night that would define her.
It was the night a True Love Wish was destroyed. It was the night her wings were ripped from her delicate shoulders. It was the night her mother died. And the sap of the evergreen tugged at her toes, begging her not to move. She should have listened.
She played along with her mother’s orders as Elanor stood in front of her little fairy daughter, fists at her hips. Shea was breathlessly eager and excited as they stood along a branch high above a small park.
“Check! Yes, ma’am,” Shea replied, standing upright and tucking her wings straight behind her.
“Goggles goggled?” her mother asked, stern.
Shea adjusted over-sized aviator goggles around her eyes, “Check!”
“Wishes made?”
“Wishes granted!” she said as she stiffened a salute at her forehead.
Shea eyed an identical smile that rimmed her mother’s lips. The setting sun of The Other Side silhouetted Elanor’s graceful wings.
“I have to go to work,” Elanor said. It was her daughter’s first time on The Other Side, and Shea could sense that her mom regretted not being able to stay with her all night.
Shea loved the feeling of the slow, gentle swipe of her mother’s fingers as they gently tickled her forehead, moving the thick red mane out of her eyes. Despite never wanting to admit it, there was an immeasurable eagerness within Shea’s little body to become her mother. Every ounce was desperately impatient to be just like her. Shea watched her mom buzz her wings and prep for a quick launch.
“Hey…Mom?” Shea stopped her. She felt compelled to say something, but the words dangled from her tongue.
Elanor waited for one last peep from her eager daughter.
“I…I mean. Never mind.” Shea smiled, bashful.
“I won’t be long,” she said, noticing the eagerness of adolescence pouring from her daughter’s eyes. “You are going to be a wonderful WishKeeper someday. But it’s not today, honey. Please…promise me you’ll stay here.”
The little fairy nodded as wishes darted through the park behind Elanor. The impulse to fly after each and every one of them was overwhelming as Shea watched her mother zoom out of the tree and into the sea of colorful wishes. Purple, blue, pink and green - the wishes danced and darted through the park. Their playfulness was intoxicating. The evergreen did its best to keep her little feet stuck to its branch, but as much as she wanted to be a good fairy and follow her mother’s orders, Shea couldn’t deny her innate impulse to explore.
It was ten years ago, but the edges of her nightmares had only sharpened. There are signposts to every memory; checkpoints that Shea forced herself to remember so that the in-betweens of that night were never forgotten. The little goggles game. The bleeding red of her father’s tunic as he said goodbye to his wife. How the wind that swirled around her was black and wet, and the face that stretched out of it…the skull-grey color of their WishingKing’s face. How easily her beloved wings were torn from her back as the bright red explosion of the True Love Wish blinded her.