Wish-Granting

     "It's Zinifar's. You probably saw her earlier, though she keeps to herself for the most part," the Nimmo, Zephira, explained as she helped Skyleur step up into the wagon--that task proved significantly more difficult than climbing down had been. "She's our best scout, so she sleeps during the day and keeps watch for us at night. If we didn't have her, we'd need three or four Neopets on watch. Probably more, really. Not many have that kind of tolerance for nights like this one, so we'd have to do it in shifts without her. But she won't sleep until after breakfast, and if Amumita thinks you still need rest then, you can rest in her wagon until dinner tomorrow."

     Perhaps she was too tired to think straight, or perhaps she saw that this might be her best opportunity to propel for information about Zinifar and Sruthair and anyone else in camp who might have connections to her old life, but regardless of the reason, Skyleur found herself questioning Zephira. "You're so lucky to have a Neopet like Zinifar. Has she always been with you?"

     Zephira hesitated. "No one here has always been here. We all came from--from somewhere else. Zinifar's story isn't mine to share, but you should ask her. It's okay. It'll do her good, I think. To have someone else ask."

     A shiver ran through Skyleur at the thought. She hadn't once wondered how Zinifar had come to possess the skills she once found so useful--and these Neopets now found so valuable too--and she wished she had. But the Gelert's senses and memory were sharper than Sruthair's, Skyleur was sure, and where he had failed to recognize the Aisha, Zinifar certainly wouldn't. And Skyelur couldn't risk that, not until she was rested enough to continue on her own.

     Skyleur shoved that thought aside. "How about you?"

     They'd paused beside Zinifar's wagon. Zephira looked around them, as if to see if anyone was in earshot, and then looked up at the sky.

     Suddenly, Skyleur was aware of her racing pulse. She couldn't mean--she couldn't have been--

     Following Zephira's eyes, Skyleur saw she was looking not at the many stars that dotted the Neopian sky, but at the slowly arcing Virtupets Space Station. "I wasn't always a Nimmo," she said.

     It was all she needed to say.

     But after a moment of silence, she continued. "Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice when I decided to remake myself. Do you think--do you think it's possible to start over fresh without changing yourself entirely? I feel like I betrayed my old self, in a way, becoming this. It suits me, but I see Sruthair and some of the others who have come so far, and I wonder if the old me would have suited me better."

     Skyleur watched the stars glitter overhead and turned Zephira's words over in her mind.

     Her old self. The ruler of a tower whose libraries and vaults brimmed with powerful secrets, and who wielded them behind those stone walls in the purest quest of all, the quest for knowledge.

     Would her old self suit her better? Would she rather find and rebuild her old tower than try to reconcile her present with her past?

     She'd been the guardian and ruler of her tower for far longer than she'd lived with her found family, after all. Maybe that was meant to be a phase--maybe she was always supposed to reclaim what had been taken from her.

     It would certainly be easier. She could relearn the magic she had forgotten. It would take time, so much time, but she'd done it once before. Maybe she'd brew a new potion, turn herself into a Lenny or a Lupe so no one would suspect who she had been.

     So her family wouldn't know it was her.

     The thought of her family made Skyleur's stomach turn.

     Eviamnora would blame herself if the Aisha disappeared. They'd put their heads together in her room, but it had been the Poogle who charged the final path, and if Skyleur didn't return, she would blame herself forever.

     And Robiian. And Cabb, her brother. He was a Nimmo now too, but like the Neopet standing next to her in the cold night air, he had been something else when they first met.

     She loved them too much to give them up.

     She couldn't do it, not for anything.

     "I don't know," Skyleur finally answered. "If it is, it's harder, I think, than doing it the other way."

     "Mhmmm. You're probably right."

     From the subtle shift in Zephira's expression, Skyleur thought she found peace in that answer--acceptance of the choice she'd made, satisfaction that it had led her to this moment with the two of them under the stars.

     Jealousy bit into Skyleur's heart.

     If only it were so easy for her to find the same peace.

     For a breath, she stared up into the glittering dark.

     The night pressed down on Skyleur. It had been hers once, the quiet dark. The glittering depths of night. Now she was as much a stranger to the stars as anyone, starting at noises she couldn't identify, shivering under that pale light. The fire's crackle died down behind her. The soft sounds of a camp settling in for the night quieted in that breath too, and for a moment, all that existed in Neopia was the Nimmo beside her, and the choice in front of her--

     To keep her secrets, or to ask for help.

     "Are you headed north, by any chance?

     "We could be."

     "I don't mean--don't, not on my account, I was just--"

     "We're wanderers, Miss. We're never headed anywhere specific, unless we're called to." There was a strange emphasis on those last words.

     "Called?" Skyleur asked. She thought for the millionth time of the Lupe and the Lenny, a wish and a wish-granter. "Did you ever--" Skyleur started, but the rest of the question, spend any time as a star, caught in her throat.

     "You know. By happenstance. We go where chance leads us."

     Near Skyleur's shoulder, the Lightmite flashed. Ask, it seemed to say with that soft pulse. Ask her!

     "Is there a particular place you're trying to get to?" the Nimmo asked. "In your shape--we could go north for a few days while you recover, get you closer." Skyleur started to protest, but the Nimmo stopped her. "Nothing's out of the way for us, Miss. I have to imagine we found you for a reason, hmmm?"

     "There's an old part of the world near the north edge of the Woods," Skyleur said. "I have maps in my bag, I can show you where I mean. I'm headed there. If it's really no trouble for the camp to move in that direction, I'd certainly appreciate it." She contorted to pull Eviamnora's bag from her shoulder, but the Nimmo stopped her when she winced.

     "I know what part of the woods you mean. It's an odd place for someone like you to want to go, isn't it?"

     Someone like you. Skyleur's face burned. She hoped the fading red tinge of the firelight hid it from the Nimmo. "There's something there I need to find."

     "Oh?"

     Skyleur only nodded in response.

     "Ah. I see. Well, rest, and in the morning, we'll talk more."

     Skyleur climbed into Zinifar's wagon, her swirling thoughts plenty distraction from the aches and pains of her cold night's sleep on the forest floor.

     What more could she tell the Nimmo without revealing herself entirely? She had to pick something, or risk being rude to the Neopets who had saved her, and so kindly agreed to help her along her quest.

     She remembered too late that she hadn't thanked the Nimmo properly, but by the time she glanced back out into the camp, the Neopet was halfway to her own wagon on the far side of the fire, too far away to call to without risking waking those who were already asleep. First thing in the morning, she promised herself, and turned to settle herself in for the night.

     Zinifar's wagon, though the same rough size and shape as the Nimmo's, was stark by comparison. There were no shelves of cooking implements or anything else homely lining the walls. Instead there were weapons and shields hanging from hooks. A ragged box, half-tucked under the bed, held a stash of potions; the ones Skyleur could see she recognized at once as being the handiwork of the Healing Springs faerie, but she thought she flashes of dark shades deeper in the box too. Offensive potions. Maybe even...

     She nudged the box with a slippered foot. Glass clinked against glass.

     Maybe even a potion or two Skyleur had brewed herself, all those years ago.

     Skyleur checked to make sure the wagon door was completely closed, then slid the box out from under the bed and carefully pawed through the potions it contained.

     Crealiana's Lightmite settled on one edge of the box and watched.

     "I'm not stealing anything," Skyleur said. "I just want to see if she there's anything in here that I..."

     Her voice trailed off. The petpetpet's soft light reminded Skyleur that this kind of thinking was the same kind that had led her to the choices she'd come to regret.

     She lifted the Lightmite carefully from the edge of the box and slid the box back underneath the bed. If she wanted to know whether Zinifar had any of her old potions--if she wanted to discover what memories they held for her--she needed to ask the Gelert's permission.

     "In the morning," she said, more to herself than the Lightmite.

     A familiar sense of dread settled in the Aisha. Maybe she wouldn't have to explain. Maybe the question would jog Zinifar's memory of her, and the Gelert would understand right away why she was asking. That would make it easy, at least.

     She hoped.

     Skyleur lay down on Zinifar's bed. Despite the chill in the wagon, she couldn't bring herself to pull the blankets up over her. It felt wrong, somehow. Like she was intruding. Like lying, making herself comfortable in Zinifar's bed while she was keeping secrets was a terrible lie. Instead, Skyleur wrapped her paws around her middle, curled into a ball, and tried to quiet the stream of thoughts racing through her mind.

     What was she going to tell the Nimmo in the morning? How was she going to face Zinifar? Sruthair?

     As she drifted to sleep, her tumultuous thoughts turned themselves into a wretched nightmare. The wagon walls become the walls of her tower, and her racing thoughts turned into racing feats as she fled down the tower's spiral stairs toward the armory.

     In her dreamscape, the stairs were endless, and with each step she took, another star appeared in front of her, another looming face with moving lips. No matter how hard she tried to slow her flight down the stairs, tried to hear what they were all saying, her feet moved faster and faster, and more and more faces flew by her, twinkling, taunting.

     She recalled the names that went with a few of those faces, but far more were nothing more than hazy memories of her audience chamber, of desperate requests and cruel denials.

     At last, she reached the armory door with its great metal bands and single small window to peer inside. She reached for the keyring at her belt, but the keys there turned to sand when her paws touched them, and when she looked through the small window in the door, the potions lined up neatly on the shelves beyond started to warp and melt. She scrabbled at the lock, tried to pull the door open with all her might, but the lock wouldn't give, and she watched, helpless, as years of work turned to sludge on the armory floor, as the sludge dried to dust, as the strong stone walls crumbled.

     Frantically, Skyleur turned back to the tower stairs, and found a solid figure standing there, the first she'd encountered since she left her war room at the top of the tower.

     A Royal Aisha wearing an eventide crown. The Aisha smiled cruelly and reached, somehow, through Skyleur and into the armoury. When she pulled her paw back, she was clutching a scroll with a silver band to keep its magic locked inside. A cruel smile crossed the sorceress's face as she cracked the scroll open, and Skyleur's breath caught...

     To be continued…