Trigger Warning

‘Some things aren’t meant to be kept,’ I told myself.

The next morning, I put the ring into the glove compartment of my old car. I drove the car to a wrecker, and I watched, satisfied, as the car was crushed into a cube of metal the size of an old television set, and then put in a container to be shipped to Romania, where it would be processed into useful things.

In early September I cleared out my bank account. I moved to Brazil, where I took a job as a web designer under an assumed name.

So far there’s been no sign of Mother’s ring. But sometimes I wake from a deep sleep with my heart pounding, soaked in sweat, wondering how she’s going to give it back to me next time.

October Tale

‘That feels good,’ I said, and I stretched my neck to get out the last of the cramp.

It didn’t just feel good, it felt great, actually. I’d been squashed up inside that lamp for so long. You start to think that nobody’s ever going to rub it again.

‘You’re a genie,’ said the young lady with the polishing cloth in her hand.

‘I am. You’re a smart girl, toots. What gave me away?’

‘The appearing in a puff of smoke,’ she said. ‘And you look like a genie. You’ve got the turban and the pointy shoes.’

I folded my arms and blinked. Now I was wearing blue jeans, grey sneakers, and a faded grey sweater: the male uniform of this time and this place. I raised a hand to my forehead, and I bowed deeply.

‘I am the genie of the lamp,’ I told her. ‘Rejoice, O fortunate one. I have it in my power to grant you three wishes. And don’t try the “I wish for more wishes” thing – I won’t play and you’ll lose a wish. Right. Go for it.’

I folded my arms again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean thanks and all that, but it’s fine. I’m good.’

‘Honey,’ I said. ‘Toots. Sweetie. Perhaps you misheard me. I’m a genie. And the three wishes? We’re talking anything you want. You ever dreamed of flying? I can give you wings. You want to be wealthy, richer than Croesus? You want power? Just say it. Three wishes. Whatever you want.’

‘Like I said,’ she said, ‘thanks. I’m fine. Would you like something to drink? You must be parched after spending so much time in that lamp. Wine? Water? Tea?’

‘Uh . . .’ Actually, now she came to mention it, I was thirsty. ‘Do you have any mint tea?’

She made me some mint tea in a teapot that was almost a twin to the lamp in which I’d spent the greater part of the last thousand years.

‘Thank you for the tea.’

‘No problem.’

‘But I don’t get it. Everyone I’ve ever met, they start asking for things. A fancy house. A harem of gorgeous women – not that you’d want that, of course . . .’

‘I might,’ she said. ‘You can’t just make assumptions about people. Oh, and don’t call me toots, or sweetie, or any of those things. My name’s Hazel.’

‘Ah!’ I understood. ‘You want a beautiful woman then? My apologies. You have but to wish.’ I folded my arms.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m good. No wishes. How’s the tea?’

I told her that the mint tea was the finest I had ever tasted.

She asked me when I had started feeling a need to grant people’s wishes, and whether I felt a desperate need to please. She asked about my mother, and I told her that she could not judge me as she would judge mortals, for I was a djinn, powerful and wise, magical and mysterious.

She asked me if I liked hummus, and when I said that I did, she toasted a pitta bread, and sliced it up, for me to dip into the hummus.

I dipped my bread slices into the hummus, and ate it with delight. The hummus gave me an idea.

‘Just make a wish,’ I said, helpfully, ‘and I could have a meal fit for a sultan brought in to you. Each dish would be finer than the one before, and all served upon golden plates. And you could keep the plates afterwards.’

‘It’s good,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’

We walked together through the town. It felt good to stretch my legs after so many years in the lamp. We wound up in a public park, sitting on a bench by a lake. It was warm, but gusty, and the autumn leaves fell in flurries each time the wind blew.

I told Hazel about my youth as a djinn, of how we used to eavesdrop on the angels and how they would throw comets at us if they spied us listening. I told her of the bad days of the djinn-wars, and how King Suleiman had imprisoned us inside hollow objects: bottles, lamps, clay pots, that kind of thing.

She told me of her parents, who were both killed in the same plane crash, and who had left her the house. She told me of her job, illustrating children’s books, a job she had backed into, accidentally, at the point she realised she would never be a really competent medical illustrator, and of how happy she became whenever she was sent a new book to illustrate. She told me she taught life drawing to adults at the local community college one evening a week.

I saw no obvious flaw in her life, no hole that she could fill by wishing, save one.