* Authors : J. R. Dawson and John Wiswell 
* Narrator : John Bell
* Host : Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes
*
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Previously published by Haven Spec


Rated PG
This Mentor Lives
by J.R. Dawson & John Wiswell
 
Abraham was rushing through his miracles. He drew out the rune-etched broadsword of young Haddad’s great-grandfather and laid it in the boy’s hands, along with the elegant sheath that lunar moths had woven from their own silk. Then came the maps that would send Haddad on the next leg of his journey: those that told how to navigate mountains by constellations of the sky, and those of the eight oceans that could only be read amid sea breeze.
Underneath that pile of iron and parchment and enchantment, the little Haddad wriggled. He was barely visible under the pile of destiny he held.
“Wait! What do I do with this one? Does it re-dead zombies?”
Abraham couldn’t see which item he was holding up and asking about, not under that mess of rainbow folds and sacred cartography. Did he have time to help the boy sort all this out? He fished around his robes with his gnarled hands until he felt the chill touch of the astral pocket watch. He flicked it open and gaped. He was three hours behind.
Haddad’s head poked out from under the cloak and broadsword, his brown eyes wide and imploring. “Wait! Just one more minute. Which way do I take through the Forest of Tombstones?”
“You’re the hero. You need to figure these things out on your own.”
“I’ve been trying, but assembling my party is hard and nobody has escaped the Forest of Tombstones alive. They all come back zombified. Please, I just need to know whether to go east or south.”
Oh, the Forest of Tombstones. Abraham had been through that blighted place twice in his younger years, on other business trips with other heroes. He really ought to install a signpost at the entrance.
“Go south,” he said. “The real trick is to go slowly. If you try to rush through the Forest of Tombstones, its curse will wake more of the residents. It’s like quicksand, but with ghosts.”
“Is there quicksand?”
“Yes. But again, you . . .”
“I need to figure these things out myself. Yes, sir.”
Then Abraham flicked the astral pocket watch closed, and its enchantment opened the gateway. Light spilled into the clearing, splitting open a circular portal in the murky air. Its radiance drove every bug and rodent from its sight. Even Abraham had to shield his eyes from it. He needed new glasses.
As he stepped through, he thought the boy thanked him. It went too fast for him to be sure.
As soon as the radiance faded, he stepped into the next world, a humid bog where his shoes sank into the earth, and the drooping willow trees blocked out the moon and brushed the point of his hat. Immediately the young heroine Rania darted close, getting nose-to-nose with him, her green eyes bloodshot and furious. Her voice was hoarse and phlegmy, as though she had a cold that, with her proximity, he’d soon enjoy as well.
“Where have you been? I’ve been almost dead for a week out here.”
Before he’d met Rania, she’d been under a curse and forced to live the life of a stable boy. She broke the curse on her own, reclaimed her name, found Abraham, demanded he mentor her, and they’d gone on many adventures since. She’d always known exactly what she wanted.