Three wishes
“Are you sure this will work?” the little boy asked while rubbing another lightbulb.
“It stands to reason,” the girl said. “No one uses those lamps any longer. So where else would genies hide?”
It wasn’t the first time they had had this exchange, and this time, like the previous, it did nothing to ease the boy’s doubts or shake the girl’s conviction.
They desperately wanted to find a genie, or rather, they desperately wanted the three wishes that came with finding a genie, and while there were no ancient oil lamps in the big old house they lived in, there were hundreds and hundreds of lightbulbs.
If you can find genies in lamps, why not in lightbulbs? The two serve the same purpose, after all, and so should be equally likely to hold a magical spirit. Or so the girl had reasoned.
Thus, early in the morning, after their parents had left for work, and after old Mrs Winchester, their nanny, had fallen asleep as she always did after breakfast, the two had set out to rub every lightbulb they could find, until a genie would appear.
They started in the attic, but there were few lightbulbs there, and fewer genies still—a total number of zero of the latter.
The third floor held many more lightbulbs, but none of these contained a genie either. At least not a genie that would appear when you rubbed them.
Their luck wasn’t better on the second floor, and they were nearly through the first floor now. That left only the basement.
The boy was beginning to lose hope, and while the girl was ever optimistic, she would admit to herself, if not to the boy, that the prospects were grim.
Still, it would be foolish to stop now when they had already put so much effort into the search and only had a little more to do. Plus, genies are probably always in the last place you look, anyway. So, once they finished rubbing the bulbs on the ground floor, the girl took her brother down the stairs to the basement to complete the search.
It was a large basement, but only a single room. Two lamps hung from the ceiling, but only one turned on when the girl flipped the lightswitch.
The lamps were too high to reach, but they dragged a small table from a corner into the middle of the room and placed it under the shining light. The girl climbed on top of it and rubbed the lightbulb.
Nothing happened. No genie materialised, as no genie had materialised with all the previous lightbulbs.
Now there was only one bulb left in the house—the one in the dark lamp hanging at the other end of the room. It was their last chance to get three wishes, and however small the chance, it was the only one they had.
So, they dragged the table across the room, placed it under the second lamp, and both climbed up to stand on it.
“Do you think a genie would live in a broken lightbulb?” the small boy asked his sister.
“I don’t see why not. It’s easier to sleep in the dark, and you won’t get woken up if someone turns on the light.”
The boy nodded. That made sense. If he was a genie, he thought, he would also live in a broken bulb.
“Do you want to rub it?” asked his sister.
He shook his head. There would probably be a genie in there that didn’t want to be woken up. It was the last place they were looking, after all, which is where you always find things.
The girl got on her toes and reached up for the lamp. Holding it with one hand, she started rubbing the lightbulb with the other.
Nothing happened.
It was dark at this end of the basement, but her brother could still see the disappointment in her face, and she saw it in his.
“Why isn’t the genie coming out?” he asked. “It’s the last place we looked. Do you think he is still sleeping?”
“I don’t know… maybe there isn’t a genie at all… maybe there isn’t a genie in the whole house…”
Her lips trembled. She felt she might cry and knew that if she did, so would her brother.
Just then, in the darkness of the basement, in the depths of their despair, a light started shining above them. The dead lamp above their heads turned on.
Not all at once, as electric light would usually do. Slowly, as if someone was unrolling a black cloth from the lamp, layer by layer, and with each layer, the light shone just a little brighter.
The boy and girl were so focused on the lamp, and the growing light, that they didn’t notice that the basement around them was growing dark at the same time.
Under the lamp, above the table, the light was growing, but everywhere around them, it was fading—the room was turning pitch black.
Only when the lamp above them was shining at an average lightbulb brightness did the boy look around. But he could not see anything.
Beyond the cone of light emitted from above, there was nothing. The boy could not see the shelves on the walls that ought to be there since they had been there only moments earlier. He could not even see the chairs they had used to climb up on the table. He looked over the edge of the table and couldn’t see the floor. The light didn’t reach that far, which was odd. Light usually does.
He was going to tell his sister this. She was older and might know what had happened.
But he didn’t get the chance. Another voice, coming from the darkness, spoke instead.
“YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME, MORTALS!”
“Oh, hello,” said the girl, “where are you? We cannot see you in the dark.”
The lightcone surrounding the children expanded a little, and a small man stepped out of the darkness and into the light.
He did not look like what the children had imagined a genie to look like. He didn’t wear a turban, as a proper genie should. Instead, he was all bald, but with two small horns sticking out of his temples. His shoes weren’t pointy—he wasn’t even wearing shoes. That could be because he didn’t have any feet but hoves instead. His skin was bright red, like their father’s sports car, and not an appropriate genie blue.
“You look weird”, said the boy.
“Shh”, said his sister, who was old enough to know that you shouldn’t comment on people’s appearance.
People have different skin colours and wear distinctive clothes if they come from foreign parts, and one shouldn’t comment on it. She knew that would be rude, although she didn’t quite know why. But she didn’t see why it should be any different with genies.
“Yes,” she said, getting down to business, “we let you out of the lamp, so now we want three wishes.”
“MORTALS, I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL ZAXZLR…” the genie began, then stopped himself, and then looked puzzled. “Did you say wishes?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “That’s what genies do. They give you three wishes—anything you ask for—if you let them out of their lamp.”
“But I am not a genie”, said the not-genie. “I am a demon!”
“Then why were you sleeping in a lamp?”
“I wasn’t! I was merely resting. And that is a lightbulb.”
“It’s the same thing,” said the girl, while now secretly suspecting that it possibly wasn’t. “
“It’s not!” the demon said with more conviction, although he wasn’t that sure himself. He hid his uncertainty better.
“Well, you are a genie, we let you out, and now we want our three wishes!”
“But I am not a djinn. I am a demon.”
“Don’t we still get three wishes?”
“Traditionally, no.”
“But you came out of a lamp! You have to give us three wishes!” said the boy. He wasn’t too sure of what was going on, but he knew when he was being treated unfairly.
“I came out of a lightbulb, not a lamp. And demons can sleep either place without granting any wishes whatsoever.”
“What about two wishes then, if you cannot do three?” asked the girl.
“Of course, I can do three! I just don’t want to.”
“I bet you can’t. I bet you cannot even give us one!”
“Yes, I can!”
“No, you can’t, I bet.”
“Let’s just go,” the boy said, pulling his sister’s sleeve. “That genie is useless…”
“I am not a genie, I am not useless, and I can give you three wishes just as well as any djinn, okay?” cried the demon.
“Okay, thanks, Mr Genie”, said the girl and smiled at the demon.
The demon was not used to negotiating with children. He wasn’t used to dealing with adults either, to be honest, as he was only a minor demon, and no one had ever summoned him before. He knew that he was supposed to get a soul in return for something trivial, like wealth or power or restored youth. He wasn’t supposed to give three wishes away for free.
Yet, he had just, in some roundabout way, agreed to precisely that. And demons, while not an honest bunch as a whole, took contracts very seriously. Verbal as well as written. If people couldn’t trust a deal with a demon, where would the soul trade be? Gone is where. Who would sell their soul if they weren’t guaranteed a fair transaction?
He might have been tricked by these two tiny humans, but fair is fair. He had just promised to give them three wishes, as good as any genie could.
He sighed.
“Okay. What do you wish for?”
“That mommy and daddy still love each other!” said the little boy with a quiver in his voice.
“They are getting a divorce,” the girl explained. “It means that dad will move away and not live with us any more.”
“Yes, I know what a divorce is,” said the demon. He smiled. “It’s a sin”.
“Well, we don’t want that. So we wish that you make them love each other again!”
“I can’t,” said the demon.
He wasn’t lying. A demon would never lie about a deal once struck. He really couldn’t fulfil this wish.
“You have to! It’s our wish. You promised,” insisted the girl.
“But I can’t do love…love is good.”
That was the problem. Demons’ magic is powerful and can bend reality in unimaginable ways. But there are rules. Demons cannot create something purely and unambiguously good. And love is good.
Now, love can hurt, that is true, although the children were still too young to know this. But not by itself, not in its purest form. Unrequited love hurts, but it is the ‘unrequited’ part that hurts, not the love. Lost love likewise; it is the loss and not the love that pains you.
The demon could corrupt or destroy love, undoubtedly, but not create it. Not directly, at least. That was not within his power.
“I don’t suppose you would settle for something less?”
The children looked at him, seeming not at all satisfied by that offer.
“I can make it so that your father can never leave the house?”
“What happens when we go and visit Aunt Oliva, then?” asked the boy.
“Hmm… good point. I can make it so that he can never be more than a hundred yards from you? But still follow you around away from the house.”
“No, I don’t think I want that,” answered the boy, considering that sometimes, when he was playing with his mates, he probably didn’t want his dad around.
“We want love!” said the girl. “Make them love each other.”
“But I can’t! How about lust instead?”
“What’s lust?”
“Oh, it is almost the same as love. Almost. Maybe a little seedier.”
Neither of the children knew what ‘seedier’ meant, but they did know what ‘almost the same as love’ meant. And it was better than nothing.
“Okay,” said the girl. “Make our parents lust again.”
There was a flash of light, but no corresponding sound and the demon was gone. So was the darkness that had surrounded them. Once again, the basement was illuminated by the single lamp at the other end of the room. The lightbulb above them was dark once more.
From upstairs, they heard Mrs Winchester calling them.
“Linda? Peter? Where are you, children?”
They looked at each other and headed up the stairs…
