The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles) (20 page)

Shea groaned and pulled herself up from the floor, standing in pain and holding her chest. She looked at her fellow fairies. They were all staring at her, wide-eyed. Why were they staring at her? Turning her gaze upward, she quickly realized. Miranda and Grayson were looking at a broken-winged fairy standing in the middle of their home.

27

Rules Are Meant To Be Broken

The sky’s dark clouds were swirling into a thick, black storm. Wind whipped through the frost bitten trees of the cul-du-sac as hail bombarded the streets. WishKeepers pushed through the powerful storm as they approached the house. Their dark green cloaks waved wildly, but they stood their ground as they hovered, wands at their side. One by one, they formed a perfect circle around the small cottage - valiant soldiers at attention about to bring light to the impending darkness.

Erebus and his thick black fog had all but covered the house creating a wall of shadow. The shadow king swam back and forth within the thick of the blackness like a demented shark awaiting its prey. The WishKeepers eyed each other in disgust and fright as sharp black hands ripped out of the fog, swiping at them, taunting them to come closer. In unison, the Keepers raised their wands, two-handed, above their heads.

The house shook and not just because of the powerful blasts of wind, but the earth itself beneath Shea rattled as she looked up into the eyes of her Makers. Explosions echoed across the neighborhood as blasts of golden light shimmered through the windows. Gates were exploding shut, closing forever. The little fairy fell to the floor, unable to hold herself up as Miranda grabbed Grayson trying to stay upright.

“Grayson!”

“I don’t know! Just hold on!” Grayson yelled back.

“Shea, get out of there!” Thane yelled. Beren held him back from diving for his friend. The WishMakers had already seen Shea, but revealing a host of fairies to them would only make matters worse. As long as Shea doesn’t -

“Miranda and Grayson! My name’s Shea.” One rule had been broken already and Shea was desperate. Shea looked at her Mom. Elanor was huddled behind the potted plant, holding the True Love Wish tight in her arms with a look of utter terror in her black eyes. Even The Captain didn’t expect this and when Shea looked at Thane, worried, hurt and fraught with his own desperation, she knew there was no turning back.

Beren, wide-eyed and trying to force any kind of idea to surface, stared at his naive yet heroic daughter standing in front of two painfully confused WishMakers. He looked out through the windows and spotted his Keepers forming along the edge of the property. Another rush of wind crashed through the cul-du-sac and screamed between the cracks of the weathered storm windows. The lights flickered and buzzed, and with another golden explosion ricocheting in the distance, the lights went out completely.

Beren took the sudden darkness as a chance to make a move. He called for Avery with a loud whisper as she scrambled to her feet, cradling her shattered arm. Bolting out from under the coffee table, she flew to her General’s side and looked out the window.

Goren and Foster were fighting the fierce storm, hovering with their wands held high. The one thing she had avoided with every bit of pained effort for the past ten years was the memory of Erebus and his torture, but there he was, in all his blackened glory. The demented WishingKing paced in front of the The Hope, daring them to try and enter. Begging them for a fight. She stared, terror-stricken, watching the inevitability of a battle. And somehow knowing she was watching, Erebus stopped pacing and quickly turned toward the window. His dark red eyes pierced her already fragile soul and a slow, black crease of a smile taunted her to join the fun. When she saw his face - that smile - every memory of her time with the traitor resurfaced like a blocked drain, bubbling up to the brink. But what she didn’t expect to come up with the sludge was sympathy. A sudden rush of pity flooded her veins and very quickly she simply wasn’t afraid anymore. She felt sorry for the old man who missed his wife. For the old man who dipped his hands too far into the jar of possibility and removed a black heart. Even Erebus could shatter his own heart if he let the pain consume him enough.

She looked at Beren, nodded and straightened her posture. After a salute above her brow - a salute that said ‘goodbye’ - she spun and whipped a spell at the window, breaking the glass. Without a second thought, she dove into the icy blackness and disappeared.

Miranda screamed again at the sudden broken window. Wind blew in through the small hole as Grayson scrambled to light a candle, flicking a lighter, flashing shadows across the living room. The candle finally lit and he swung it to the floor in front of Shea.

Beren watched as his daughter with her hands at her hips looked directly up at the curious Makers. There was no plan for this. There was nothing to do, but to wait. He was just a spectator now. There was a long, anxious pause as Grayson stared at Shea, remembering all of the strange happenings from the past day. The coincidences were clicking in his frantic brain, but he just couldn’t believe this.

“What…what is that?” Miranda asked with a quivering voice.

“Are you…alright?” he asked Shea. Seeing her broken wings, it was all he could come up with.

“Don’t talk to it!” Miranda gasped.

There was one other rule Shea had yet to break. She had already been spotted by a WishMaker as well as addressed them directly, but responding to and conversing with a Maker - she didn’t have a choice. Her mom, or whatever she had turned into, stood a few feet to her left, motionless with the most important wish that had ever been made. It was Shea’s chance to define herself as the Keeper she had always wished to be. The Keeper no one believed she could be. Disrupt the flow of momentum and turn it back around. She needed to be in control, even if it meant destroying the Gates and never returning home. She had to break the final rule - interact with a WishMaker.

“I’m not alright, no,” she said, looking up into the eyes of Grayson and Miranda. In the far off distance, more Gates rattled the ground and exploded. Closer and closer, the explosions came. Gates were closing at a rapid, domino-like rate. “You made a wish, both of you, and it needs to be granted. There are powers, though, that want to destroy your wish and I…”

Before she could finish, the earth crashed with another quake and more explosions blew with even greater magnitude seemingly right outside the window. Miranda held on to Grayson as the house was flushed with golden light, but the Makers couldn’t stop staring at Shea. The trembling subsided and Shea was determined, unfazed by the quaking ground beneath her.

“Fairies?” It was all Grayson could manage to say. Earthquakes, explosions, and a winter storm were one thing, but fairies?

“Please, listen to me,” Shea tried to continue, but Grayson could barely make anything of his own thoughts, much less the words coming from the tiny broken-winged creature standing in front of him.

“A wish?” he said.

“Yes, a wish. And I need to grant it.”

“Shea, wait! Please,” Beren called out from the windowsill. Miranda and Grayson whipped their heads in the direction of the small voice. They spotted Thane on his knees and Beren standing over him. Through the window, everything was revealed. A black, thick fog crept along the glass and other fairies were hovering in the wind, raising wands above their heads.

“What is going on?” Miranda slowly approached the window, unsure of what to examine first.

“No, Dad. I can’t wait. I’ve waited all my life, but for what? To be told that I don’t belong. That I’m not good enough. To be lied to,” she looked again at Elanor. Her deep black eyes still swirled with the curse but were drenched in tears. “It’s time to show you that I do. I do belong.” Her knuckles drained to white as she gripped her wand.

28

Avery’s Return

Avery rushed past the outstretched, black tendrils of Erebus and hurried toward Goren and Foster. As the Keepers raised their wands into the gale-force winds, Erebus arose out of the fog and towered over the circling soldiers. Like a black hooded dragon, he reared his head up and out of the darkness, high above the tops of the nearby homes, and stretched his tendril arms ready to collapse them down upon the Keepers. Rising out of the shadows of the cul-du-sac’s every corner, Lost Fairies appeared, preparing to assist their master.

“Keepers! Listen to me! Our King is nothing more than a man. A man who is just as lost as his thoughtless slaves,” Avery yelled through the wind. “A light must be brought to his lonely darkness. To save him from his sadness.”

Goren, with his wand raised high, felt that the speech sounded rehearsed. For all the time he’d known her, he barely heard Avery speak a word. He looked at his friend and watched Avery Waterstone stare into the eyes of her one-time loving king.

The man with a pure, unbroken heart was gone, but she could still see the fear in his eyes. A fear that had turned to vengeance. Her empathy was no longer fueled by ignorance as it once was, years ago. She knew, now, that the truest form of love came unconditionally and no matter how evil or angry her WishingKing was, she wasn’t going to stop loving him.

For a moment, the wind stopped and the darkness rippled, and the Keepers saw their WishingKing, standing tall but burdened amidst the retreating storm. Erebus looked into the eyes of his Regent. A long, hard look…and a smile, once again, creased the side of his shadowed face and he leaned close to Avery. She didn’t flinch or move as Erebus spoke, seemingly inside her head and reading her thoughts.

“The truest form of love, my Avery, is not unconditional, but relative to the one who has the power to control it. Only a fool relies on the blind faith of a wish. No more wishing, Avery Waterstone.”

He pulled away and stood upright again, raising his black, outstretched tendril-arms left and right. A smile that showed more confidence than the surrounding Keepers were expecting continued its grin.

“It’s time to show you just how foolish you have been,” Erebus said, and sent a wave of black fog whirling around the Keepers. The full brunt of it struck Avery and surrounded her.

The Hope closed their eyes, holding firm to their wands, but Avery kept hers open. There was a knowing deep inside, a knowing like that of the first moment she looked at Elanor. A knowing that was bittersweet. Erebus wasn’t going to win this fight, but in the end, neither would she. Sparks of charged light cracked from the end of her wand as she raised it above her head. Pure white softly beamed, filling the area, joining the blinding light of her fellow Keepers’ wands, but as the force of Erebus’ darkness rushed her, only her wand’s light was doused.

29

Going Alone

Shea stared daggers into Elanor’s weeping eyes as she raised her wand. The Captain still had control over her, but the pain in Elanor’s heart was too strong for the evil to make a move. Keeping her pointed wand extended toward her mother, Shea slowly turned her head to her father. He needed to see this. He needed to see that his daughter wasn’t going to stand idly by and watch her parents make the same mistake they made years ago. He would never allow her to prove herself willingly, so she would simply have to do so with force.

Placing her goggles over her eyes, Shea’s wand sparked and charged. “It’s my wish to grant.”

“Shea no!” Beren yelled.

BLAST! Shea exploded a powerful spell at Elanor. It crashed into her chest, knocking her against the potted plant. Elanor’s head smacked the ceramic surface and she slumped to the floor, unconscious. Just as the True Love Wish escaped from Elanor’s limp arms, a white light exploded and blinded everyone inside the house, including Shea. The combined bright spells of The Hope filled the cul-du-sac with pure, radiant light. The Lost Fairies scattered and Erebus shrieked an ugly, painful bellow of a growl. It echoed through the eardrums of every Keeper - an ugly reminder of just how evil their WishingKing had become. His fog quickly retreated, scurrying away from the light and rushed away from the brightly lit cul-du-sac street.

Shea was so intent on recovering the wish and with the help of her goggles, she was able, though barely, to keep the True Love Wish in her sights as the light shined through the windows. Miranda and Grayson cowered into the couch as Beren rushed to his wife’s side, trying to shade his eyes from the blast. He ignored the True Love Wish floating away from Elanor. He ignored the WishMakers mere feet from him. All he could see was his slumped over, scar-faced-Ellie unconscious in front of him.

Watching the wish scurry overhead, Shea planted a perfect wrangling spell around it and grabbed hold. Using its momentum, she swung up to the wish, wrapped an arm around it. She spotted Thane, crouched along the base of the window, covering his eyes. She had to leave him. As much as she wanted Thane in her life, to keep her hand firmly placed in his, she needed to do this alone. With a final look, she quickly grappled toward the back door and flung herself through the duct-taped hole in the window and was gone.

The light of the wands from the WishKeepers quickly subsided and the house and cul-du-sac was quiet, but for the distant, echoing explosions miles away as more Gates continued to close. Beren quickly looked up, searching for Shea. Thane limped to his General. Elanor was unconscious and Shea was gone.

“There isn’t much time. Thane -“

“Yes, sir. I’m right behind her.” Thane started to leave, but Beren pulled him back.

“No. I need you to stay here.”

“Sir, with all due respect, I was given an order to keep your daughter.”

“My daughter is in trouble, private. Do as I say. Please.” It was the first time since their journey began that Thane noticed a sense of true worry and anxiety in his General. Though Beren was trying to stay calm, Thane could tell he was frightened.