Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 - Goggles, Goggled
Chapter 2 - Forget Me Knots
Chapter 3 - The Other Side of Bittersweet
Chapter 4 - The Recruit
Chapter 5 - The Wingless Wonder
Chapter 6 - The Babysitter
Chapter 7 - Unfulfilled
Chapter 8 - Another Chance
Chapter 9 - Bent, Not Broken
Chapter 10 - The Beacon
Chapter 11 - The Captain
Chapter 12 - Fairies Don’t Make Wishes
Chapter 13 - A General’s Plea
Chapter 14 - The Hope
Chapter 15 - Those Three Words
Chapter 16 - Avery’s Secret
Chapter 17 - The Street Lamp
Chapter 18 - A Flash In The Dark
Chapter 19 - The Promise
Chapter 20 - The Truth Comes Out
Chapter 21 - A Mother’s Curse
Chapter 22 - No Pixie
Chapter 23 - The Lost Fairy
Chapter 24 - True Love’s Home
Chapter 25 - A World In Need
Chapter 26 - Lightning In Winter
Chapter 27 - Rules Are Meant To Be Broken
Chapter 28 - Avery’s Return
Chapter 29 - Going Alone
Chapter 30 - Safe And Sound
Chapter 31 - Shea’s Choice
Chapter 32 - Ingredients
Chapter 33 - Drifted
Chapter 34 - Return Of The WishingKing
Chapter 35 - Like Father, Like Daughter
Chapter 36 - The Last Gate
Chapter 37 - When Avery Died
Chapter 38 - When The World Ends
Chapter 39 - Exclamation Point
Chapter 40 - Avery’s Wish
Chapter 41 - At The Edge Of A Memory
Chapter 42 - The Death Wish
Chapter 43 - The Pain Of A Wish
Chapter 44 - Pieces
Chapter 45 - The Point Of A Kiss
Chapter 46 - A Light Returns
Chapter 47 - A Wish Destroyed
Chapter 48 - Paragonia Please
Epilogue
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.
Bouncing between signposts allowed her to fill in the gaps of her memory and strengthen the anger, resentment and frustration as she lay in bed, fighting sleep. And though her thoughtful run from checkpoint to checkpoint always started with the relentless tug from the sap of the evergreen, the fire that fueled it all was not an image but an incessant reminder.
Had Shea known that was to be the last time she would have a conversation with her mom, she might have said it. She might have pushed through the little barrier in her heart that kept her safe - safe from expressing anything remotely vulnerable. She might have fought the urge to hold back the three words that, for years to come, she would grow accustomed to hating. Instead, every night she would wonder if saying those three words would have made a difference.
It was impossible for Shea to release such imagery from her mind. It was impossible for her to forgive her parents for destroying a True Love Wish. And it was impossible to forget that she never told her mom she loved her.
2
Forget Me Knots
You are going to be a wonderful WishKeeper someday. But it’s not today, honey. Please…
Shea’s frustrated response would always echo as she woke. If not today, then when? It was ten years ago, and someday had yet to come. The pain from her cramped, stiff wings in the morning would brush the dusty echo away, and reality would return. Her broken wings would always stiffen up at night and she got used to waking with an aching back.
On this particular morning there was a different kind of pain in her back. She needed to pull double-duty - work at the Wish Nursery in the morning and manage a Gate as a GateKeeper in the evening. She had recently been promoted to GateKeeper and was relieved to no longer need to serve the Nursery on a full-time basis. However, it was the final day of practice runs before the Keeper Performance Trials for all new recruits and her father needed a helping hand in the Nursery. It would be another day within another year that she would have to watch other subpar fairies (as far as she was concerned) attempt to become WishKeepers.
Since ‘the accident’, as her father called it, she and her dad had to find a new cottage to live in. Their previous home was the General’s quarters, a relative mansion compared to the rest of the fairy cottages in the forest. Sprawling out over the top of a high arcing oak tree, the General’s quarters were impossible to reach for any fairy that couldn’t fly. Being the father of the only fairy that couldn’t, Beren made the decision that a cottage at the base of the oak would be the safest place for his handicapped daughter. Handicapped daughter. Shea refused to admit such a thing, but when sideways glances and crooked eyeballs of her fellow fairies would glare at her mangled wings, it was difficult to forget.
Shea tried to make the most of her new grounded home, and for months begged her father to build the turret she now called her bedroom. Her large picture window was at the top of the turret and looked out into the open green valley. A wonderful view in most respects, but Shea purposely built a long overhang at the top of the window to shield her view of the fairies flying through the trees above her.
Walking to her window, Shea stopped, stretched and yawned. With loud red hair streaked with bright blonde highlights, the fairy’s knee-high striped socks and green plaid skirt were stained with dirt and dried mud. She removed her tank top, pulling it up and over her head, and cringed as it slightly tugged on one of her broken wings. All that was left of her wings were dark, skeletal remains; mere remnants of the once silky extremities she loved as a child.
She stood at the window, topless and secretly exposed to the world just for a moment, and took a deep breath. Toned arms fell to her side and revealed two large tattoos dashing up the sides of her left and right biceps; the tattoos were of stripped, broken wings and something she was proud to show off, especially since her dad hated them.
She strapped a worn, soft leather, high-collared, sleeveless vest around her - brass buckles were covered by a thick silver zipper, which she pulled up to her chin. Standing up straight, lean and athletic, she was quite a bit taller now - ten years older and on the verge of adulthood, some might say. She looked out at the peaceful valley through her wide picture window. A nose ring glimmered and reflected the morning sunlight. Models of flying machines hung from her bedroom ceiling, and ropes she would use to swing herself from corner to corner dangled throughout the room. It was Shea’s little world, and she did everything she could not to be tied to the floor.
A knock at the door startled her from her little meditation. She groaned knowing who it was.
“Shea…? You up?” her dad called out from the other side of the door.
“Yes, my doting father. Can’t wait to embrace this lovely day.” There was no better way to have her morning ruined than to receive a check-in call from her father…and it happened every morning. She never fell asleep long enough for her to actually sleep in. Could he, just once, not worry about her and start his day without slapping that dumb door?
“Well, before you go, stop down in the kitchen.”
She listened to his footsteps creak the floorboards of the nearby staircase. Stop by the kitchen? Since when did her dad want to have breakfast with her? Snatching her wand from under a pile of dirty socks, she stopped at a mirror to make sure she looked just as awful as she felt. She pulled her thick hair back into a puffy, frizzed ponytail and took another deep breath. Unable to look too long into the mirror, she made sure not to make eye contact with herself. Despite all of her attempts to color her hair, cover her body with ink or jewelry, she was the spitting image of her mom and moments at the mirror never lasted very long. Aviator goggles dangled from the corner of the mirror. She grabbed them absent-mindedly, and placed them around her neck.
She smelled something surprisingly good wafting from the kitchen as she approached, and when finally creeping in, she couldn’t help but snicker at the sight of her father wearing an apron and cooking breakfast over the stove.
“What in the world are you doing, Dad?�
�� Shea said.
“Just because I’m a General, Shea, doesn’t mean I can’t cook a damn fine breakfast for my daughter.”
Her snickering stopped, and she released a melodramatic sigh, realizing her dad was most definitely up to something. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? I haven’t seen or spoken with my daughter in almost a week. We both have a busy day ahead of us, so I thought…”
Shea knew that her dad saw her expression change, otherwise he would have continued mumbling about needing to spend time with the daughter he barely knew.
“Now, Shea, just listen for a second,” he tried, but Shea wouldn’t have it.
Hurrying through the kitchen, Shea knocked the two small glasses of cherry juice from the table, albeit accidentally though it had a nice effect, and stormed toward the back door.
“Shea, wait! Please,” Beren called out.
She whipped around, enraged.
“I told you I was done with this! I told you I didn’t want to and here you are!” Shea yelled, anger brimming.
“You owe it to her to celebrate,” Beren pleaded. “To remember her.”
“I remember! And I don’t owe her anything!” She wanted to scream it, but the unwanted and sudden emotion gripped her throat. “And if there is anyone who owes something, it’s her.” She turned and stormed out of the cottage, broken wings and all.
As she pushed through the green, soft grass of the valley, she didn’t care if her father was upset. She didn’t care if he didn’t have anyone to celebrate with. As far as Shea was concerned, there wasn’t anything to celebrate. Her mother was dead, and that was that. Bounding through the rising morning sun, she was more upset that she couldn’t shake the sadness of forgetting her mother’s birthday.
3
The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles) Page 1
