Three Wishes

Chapter One Sarah, Fazire & Rebecca

April 1943

Sarah read the telegram in her hand again and sighed.

She would only allow herself a sigh. No use worrying about what she didn’t know. Not yet anyway. That’s what Jim would tell her. She had enough to worry about today. She would allow herself to worry about it tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe (she hoped) there was nothing to worry about at all.

She walked through the house Jim had built her with his own two hands, well most of it anyway. A sweet, somewhat rambling, Indiana limestone house surrounded by ten beautifully lush acres. Smack in the front yard there was a large pond. In each windowsill, even though the house was nowhere near grand enough to carry them off, were slabs of marble. Jim had wanted her to have something spectacular and elaborate. The only bit he could afford to make elaborate on his teacher’s salary were those Italian marble slabs and by damn, he got them for her.

She entered the back bedroom, walked to the crib and stared down at Rebecca who was taking her afternoon nap. Her baby lips were puckered into a sweet frown as if she too knew the contents of the telegram.

Sarah felt the tears crawl insidiously up her throat and she swallowed them down with determination.

Jim would not like it if she cried.

She would worry about it tomorrow.

Maybe.

May 1943

The package came and it was battered so badly Sarah was certain whatever it carried would be broken and useless.

This upset her tremendously because it was from Jim.

Sarah thought the arrival of this package was a good sign even though the letter he’d written was from months and months ago, weeks before his plane had been shot down over Germany and he’d gone missing. They still didn’t know where he was, if he survived and was captured or if he was struggling to find a way home or if… something else.

To her surprise, the item in the package was safe and sound, a pretty, fragile-looking bottle made of swirly grape and turquoise-coloured glass. It was elegant, elaborate and spectacular. It had a full base, a thin stem that led to a wide bubble which went into another thin stem and up to another, smaller bubble then a slender neck on top of which was an extraordinary twirly stopper.

It was beautiful.

Jim wrote a letter to go with the bottle and told her he found it in a market somewhere in London and thought she simply had to have it.

Jim, as always, was right.

Sarah loved it.

However it could have been the most hideous piece of bric-a-brac on earth and Sarah would still have loved it.

She set it, pride of place, on the chest in the dining room.

Every time she cleaned, she’d carefully dust the beautiful, exotic, fragile bottle.

And she’d think of Jim.

And she’d hope he was all right and that soon, he’d come home.

December 1945

The war was over and a lot of the boys were home.

Not Jim.

Sarah waited but no word.

She phoned, still no word.

She wrote and no word.

She visited the War Office.

No word.

Jim, she feared, was gone.

She cried as she dusted the bottle, his last present to her, the last thing that he touched that she would also touch. Sarah had lost weight, her eyes were sunken in her head and deep, dark circles had moved in to stay underneath them.

Three year old Rebecca played on the floor in the dining room as blindly and not as carefully as normal, Sarah dusted the bottle. She rubbed it frantically, maybe a little madly, almost like she wanted to rub the colour right off of it.

The dust rag fell out of her hand and she didn’t notice it. She just kept rubbing the bottle with her hands, her fingers, rub, rub, rubbing it. She thought a little hysterically that she might just rub it forever.

The stopper fell out and she didn’t even notice.

Rebecca, seeing the pretty stopper, toddled over, grabbed it and immediately put it in her mouth.

But Sarah didn’t notice her daughter, she just kept rubbing.

And then she stopped rubbing because in a grand poof of grape and turquoise-coloured smoke that shot out of the neck of the bottle, a shape had formed.

The shape was a fat, jolly-looking man, wearing a grape-coloured fez with a little, turquoise tassel on the top. He had a bizarre outfit of turquoise and grape with an embroidered grape bolero vest and billowy turquoise trousers. The trousers ended in purple shoes that had little curls at the pointed toes. He had long gold bands affixed to his wrists that went up his forearms heavily embedded with blue and purple jewels and thick, gold hoops dangled from his ears. He had a shock of jet black hair and a jet black goatee pointed arrogantly from his chin. He had sparkly brown eyes that tilted up at the corners and looked like they were lined in black kohl.

He floated in the air, his arms and legs crossed, and he stared down at her from his place about two feet below the ceiling.

Sarah thought she’d finally gone mad. Perhaps she should have worried about Jim the minute that awful telegram came. Perhaps she should have quit wishing and hoping and thinking everything would be okay for Jim, for Rebecca and lastly, for Sarah. Maybe she should have come to terms with losing her dearest Jim, being alone, sleeping alone, eating alone and raising a child by herself on her own, single, teacher’s salary. Maybe, since she didn’t, it all crept over her through the years and made her insane.

Because only crazy women saw men floating in their dining room wearing fezzes, curly shoes and sporting goatees.

“You, my mistress, have three wishes,” the man said.

Sarah’s mouth dropped open and if she had been looking, she would have noticed that Rebecca’s did too and the stopper dropped out of Becky’s toddler mouth and rolled, unseen, under the cabinet.

“Who are you?” Sarah breathed.

“I am Fazire. I am a genie. And I am here to grant you three wishes,” he stated grandly and rather pompously.

Sarah stared. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head as she mumbled to herself, “I’ve lost my mind.”

“You have not lost your mind. I am a genie. I am here –”

“I heard what you said!” Sarah snapped at the astonished genie and then leaned down and snatched her child from the ground and held Becky protectively to her trembling body. She backed away slowly, whispering, “Go away.”

“I am Faz… er, what?” he started to say in his overblown genie voice but stuttered to a halt at her words. No one had ever told him to go away before.

Ever.

They were usually very happy to see him and quite quick with their wishes. Great wealth which he could do, it was a snap, literally. Long life, a bit harder and eternal life was not allowed in the Genie Code. Vengeance, he didn’t like to do that but a wish was a wish. And so on.

But no one had ever told him to go away before.

Ever.

And no one had ever snapped at him.

Unless, of course, they wished for something silly and it backfired on them but that wasn’t Fazire’s fault.

He tried again. “You have three wishes. Your wish is my command.”

She was still backing away. And blinking. A lot. Every time she closed her eyes and then opened them again, it seemed she was shocked to see him.

Then she ran from the room.

He floated after her, repeating over and over again the many statements of introduction that he’d been taught in Genie Training School. She was ignoring him. So much so, hours later, she packed her bags, took the pretty child with her and got in her car and drove away.

Two Days Later

Sarah cautiously approached her pretty limestone house. It seemed quiet and normal.

She and Rebecca had stayed with her mother. Sarah had ranted and raved and even, somewhat to her horror but she couldn’t stop herself, blasphemed.

Then she’d cried, a whole day and a whole night.

And then she’d slept while her mother cared for her daughter.

And now she was home.

And her heart was broken.

Because she knew Jim would never be home.

And she decided that if Hitler wasn’t already dead, she’d hunt him down herself and wring his silly, little neck.

Invading Poland, what kind of a fool idea was that? Didn’t he know the trouble he’d cause? So many lives, destroyed. Entire families, gone.

And Jim, vital, strong, tall, clever, wonderful Jim. He’d never again play tennis like he was doing the first time she saw him. He’d never again turn the rich, dark soil in the garden. He’d never again present her with one of his luscious Indiana tomatoes. He’d never hold her in his arms. He’d never lay eyes on his beautiful daughter.

She had to blame someone so she blamed Hitler. He was, of course, to blame for a lot of things and Sarah was happy for her religion (even though she’d cursed God only the day before). She was happy for it because her religion meant she could visualise, quite happily, Hitler stretched over a charcoal pit, twisting on a rotisserie, roasting in agony for eternity.

Regardless of her vengeful thoughts, Sarah was still weary, immensely sad and forever and ever broken, such was her love for Jim.

But, she thought, she was no longer crazy enough to see genies floating around in her house.

She no sooner opened the door and got herself and her daughter inside when the genie floated forward and shouted somewhat peevishly, “Where have you been?”

She started and then whirled to go right back out the door again.

“No, don’t go! Just give me your three wishes then I’ll grant them and go back in the bottle.” She hesitated and the genie forged on. “That’s how it works. I go back in the bottle. You put the stopper on and then you give me away, or sell me or… whatever. It just can’t be to a member of your blood family or a friend and you can’t tell anyone what the bottle does. I have to go to someone you don’t know and they can’t know what I do. And you can never tell anyone I was here or a thousand curses will fall on your bloodline forever. Those are the rules.”

Sarah had never thought genies would have rules. She’d never thought genies existed at all.

No, she shook her head, she still didn’t think genies existed at all.

Fazire watched her and realised she was still not going to believe in him.

Tiredly, because usually his task took him about five minute, not days (people knew exactly what to wish for and didn’t dally about getting it), he said, “Just wish for something, I’ll show you what I can do.”

Sarah didn’t hesitate. “I want Jim back.”

Fazire’s levitated body came down a couple of feet as he saw the raw pain on her face.

Magically, of course, he knew exactly what she was wishing and he shook his head.

That, unfortunately, as well as world peace and the eradication of all disease, poverty, ignorance, bigotry (which was also just ignorance), pestilence, plague, yadda, yadda, yadda, he could not do.

Those were the rules. The Big Rules in the Genie Code that no one broke.

The Jim he could bring back, if he broke the rules, would be no kind of Jim she actually wanted back.

“I want Jim back!” she shouted when Fazire didn’t respond. “I wish for my Jim to come back! That’s what I wish. That’s all I wish… for Jim to come back.”

After she shouted at him, her voice half an ache, half a passionate scream, she collapsed to the floor and cradled her toddler in her arms, rocking the child back and forth as the pretty, little girl’s lips began to quiver with fear at her mother’s breakdown.

Fazire found himself floating lower to the floor (he didn’t like to float low and it had been years since his feet actually touched the earth, the very thought made him shiver with revulsion). Still, something about her forced Fazire to come close to her.

“Woman, I cannot do what you ask, your Jim is gone,” he told her gently, “I cannot bring him back. You must wish for something else.”

She shook her head mutely.

“Fame, maybe?”

More shaking of the head.

“Riches beyond your wildest dreams?”

Still she shook her head.

“Good health?” Fazire tried.

She simply shook her head, still holding her child carefully and rocking the toddler back and forth.

“I just want Jim.” Her voice was broken and Fazire was at a loss. He’d not come across this form of human before. Usually he just saw the greedy ones or ones who turned greedy and grasping and hateful the minute they realised they could have anything they desired.

This was an entirely new experience for Fazire.

He didn’t know what to do. He thought about going back to his bottle and channelling the Great Grand Genie Number One to ask but instead Fazire followed his instincts.

And, as the years slid by, there would be many a time when he thought he regretted this but in reality it was the best thing he ever did in his very long genie life.

He reached out and stroked her pretty white-gold hair.

He’d never touched a human in his hundreds and hundreds of years.

To his utter shock, she turned her face into his hand and rubbed her cheek against his palm.

“I miss him,” she whispered.

“I know,” he whispered back even though he didn’t know as he’d never missed anyone but he could tell by the awful tone of her voice.

“I’ll give my wishes to Rebecca,” she said softly.

Fazire reared back an inch and stared at the small child.

“But she can barely talk!” Fazire objected.

Sarah stood up, let the child down to toddle off in some child direction with some unknown child intent in mind as, in horror, Fazire watched her go.

Then Sarah straightened, squared her shoulders and looked at Fazire.

“Well, I guess you’re going to be around for awhile,” she said quietly.

July Many Years Later

Fazire was sunning himself in the front yard holding the tri-panelled, cardboard-backed mirror Sarah got for him under his chin to get double sun access on his face. The golden rays were glinting happily off the pond and it was hotter than the hinges of hell and Fazire knew this to be true. He’d had a friend who visited one of his masters in hell and he’d described the excessive heat to Fazire during a channelling and humid Indiana heat in July sounded exactly like what his friend described.

He’d been there years and neither Sarah nor Becky had used a single wish nor had they shown any signs of doing this.

At first most of his genie friends thought this was hilarious, Fazire being stuck with a family in a small, farm town in Indiana, of all places, and they poked great fun at him.

Fazire, walking on the ground like mere mortals.

Fazire, wearing real clothes like humans did.

Fazire, eating blueberry muffins and strawberry shortcake just like people.

Fazire, getting a stocking filled with goodies at Christmas time.

Fazire, taking his young Rebecca on the bus to baseball games (Fazire liked… no, loved baseball and Becky absolutely lived for it).

Then Fazire would explain to them what homemade blueberry muffins, fresh from the oven and slathered in real butter, tasted like. He also went into great detail about what he received in his stocking. And he could wax poetic about a grand slam home run for more than fifteen minutes.

When he told them these stories, his genie friends got a little quieter when they were making fun. Then they got jealous. Then the settled in and couldn’t wait for Fazire to channel to tell them what he was up to next.

And Fazire was always up to something, usually with Becky.

Fazire leaned to his left and picked up the dripping wet, sweating glass of sweet, grape-flavoured Kool-Aid, his most favourite human drink – that was to say, in the summer, he loved Becky’s hot chocolate with marshmallow fluff melting on top in the winter. He slurped a big swallow out of the cool glass and spied Becky walking down to him.

She was round and jolly, just like him, and very tall. She was also very lovely with pretty green eyes and her mother’s white-gold hair. Fazire, although he would not admit this out loud to anyone, genie or human, thought of her a little bit like his child. He had helped to raise her in a way, if getting her into trouble and coaxing her to do naughty things was raising her which Fazire preferred to think it was.

Now she was a part-time photographer (she’d won a few awards and she’d even taught Fazire how to take photos) and she was married to Will Jacobs who thought the sun rose and set in her.

Fazire liked Will. Will had moved in with them rather than taking Becky away from them and Fazire approved of this. He found he very much liked having lots of people around the house and lots of conversation and more food on the table. Will was a bit intense but only in the best ways. He loved deeper, thought harder and cared more for people than, well, almost than Sarah and Becky did. He also could hold a pretty mean grudge so Fazire tried to stay on his good side.

And he knew what Fazire was and he didn’t mind a bit.

And, lastly, he liked baseball.

Yes, Will was okay in Fazire’s Book and Fazire did, indeed, have a book.

Becky waved at Fazire and then collapsed into the grass beside him. She was barefoot and wore a pretty dress. She smiled such a quirky, sweet smile it almost took your breath away. She also liked the sun, just like Fazire, and they used to spend hours outside in the summers baking away.

“Good day, Mistress Becky,” Fazire greeted cheekily.

“Quit calling me that,” she said but it wasn’t in a nasty way. In fact, she had a smile in her voice. He only called her that because it annoyed her and she was very easy to annoy. And sometimes when she was done being annoyed, it made her smile or giggle and even Fazire’s best wish granted was nothing to one of Becky’s smiles or giggles.

She was his mistress though and he tried to explain this to her so often, he lost count.

“You’re getting brown,” she observed, looking down at Fazire’s nicely tanned, suntan-oil-slicked, very-rounded body exposed by the swimming trunks.

“Do you want to go swimming?” he asked hopefully. He and Becky had gone swimming in the pond more times than he could remember. And today, such a hot day, he felt it was the perfect idea.

She turned on her side and shook her head. He noticed for the first time something was on her mind.

He threw aside his sun reflecting mirror and turned on his side too.

When Becky had something on her mind, Fazire was always there to listen.

He didn’t say a word. He just waited.

“Fazire…” she began and then looked away, “I’m scared even to ask,” she whispered.

“You can ask me anything, Becky.” And it was true. He didn’t know much and she’d figured that out years ago, considering she was very clever and she realised he spent most of his existence living in a double-decker bottle, but he would do his best.

She nodded and looked back at him, her green eyes warm but, indeed, frightened.

“Will and I have been trying to have a baby for years.”

“I know,” Fazire nodded sagely, she’d talked to him about this before. She talked to Sarah about it too. She’d tried and tried to have a baby but each time she tried, she lost it. Sometimes this was painful, sometimes she would bleed. A lot. Sometimes, no, actually every time, this was very scary for Will and Sarah and Fazire.

Losing a baby always made her sad and it was worse and worse every time.

“I want to have a baby,” she said in a rush, almost as if she was afraid of the words, afraid to hope, to wish. “I won’t be greedy, just one. I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. It doesn’t even have to be perfect, just someone to love, someone that Will and I made, someone –”

Fazire went quite still.

All these years…

“Are you asking for a wish, Becky?”

She looked at him carefully, silently then she nodded.

He couldn’t believe it, after all these many, many years. She was older than most women who had babies these days but this, this was a wish he could grant.

He smiled at her and he reached out and touched her belly.

He looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Your wish is my command.”

But Fazire didn’t do exactly what she said.

He did make her perfect.

He made her bright and funny and very, very talented.

He made her sweet and thoughtful and very, very caring.

He made her generous and kind and very, very loving

He decided not to make her beautiful, at least not at first, because she should know humility and not grow up with conceit.

Though, she would become a beauty, a splendid beauty beyond compare.

Just… later.

Chapter Two Fazire & Lily

October, many more years later

Fazire watched Lily as she pushed her bike up the lane which was awash in the vibrant autumn colours he liked so much in Indiana.

He was frowning and he was doing this because he saw that Lily was sad.

He didn’t like Lily sad but Lily was sad a great deal of the time these days.

She never used to be sad.

She was so very loved, so loved that the minute she was born – well, a couple of hours later because luckily Fazire had not been present at the birth, he’d heard stories about it and felt his absence was a wish granted to him – Becky had given her two last wishes to her new daughter.

Lily was so smart, she walked before other babies did, she talked before they did. Later, she read before other children did. Now she was two grades ahead of the other kids at school, she was so smart.

And she was supremely vivacious, happy, smiley and loving. One hug from Lily and your whole world turned golden. She gave the absolute best hugs.

And the minute she could string three words together, she started to tell stories. And they were always the best stories… ever.

If she was talking about something that really happened, she could make the most mundane happening entertaining. But it was even better when she made up stories from scratch, those were the absolute, most bestest, best.

And she was funny. She could make even old lady Kravitz laugh and old lady Kravitz never laughed.

Everyone loved Lily, even old lady Kravitz.

There was a lot to love. Lily was, quite simply, perfect.

Except…

Fazire had to admit that he had made a wee, little mistake when he healed Becky’s womb and made it fruitful and set the wish that would be Lily.

He should have made her become beautiful a little quicker.

Or, at the very least, pretty.

He used the excuse to himself that he didn’t know.

He’d been created by the Divine One as a full grown genie. Then he’d gone to Genie Training School where you had to pay attention because if you didn’t and you messed up a wish or didn’t follow Genie Code, well, the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

Fazire had never been to human school. He didn’t know how cruel children could be.

And Lily, although not ugly, was plain. And being so smart made other children think she was strange. And they made fun of her.

Sarah, Becky and Will worried about Lily. Well, Sarah and Becky did, it made Will madder than the dickens (this, a phrase Sarah had taught him and Fazire still didn’t know what “the dickens” was but he figured it was pretty bad by the way Sarah said it).

As the school years went by, more and more Lily would come home like she did today.

Sad.

He hid himself as she came into the house (as he did most days) and watched her surreptitiously steal the three Baby Ruth candy bars (named after one of Fazire’s heroes, Babe Ruth, a great baseball player who was nearly as round as Fazire).

She grabbed her ever-present book (another in a hundred romance novels that he knew she read) and ducked back out of the house. Fazire watched as she walked down the sloping lawn to hide herself in the trees at the bottom by the curve of the gravelled lane.

He knew exactly what she’d do. She’d eat the candy bars. She might even steal a few more. Then she’d have a big dinner and dessert. She would also, maybe, steal something else to eat before she went to bed.

Fazire liked his food but Lily didn’t. She didn’t eat because she liked it, she ate because… well Fazire didn’t know why.

And Lily was getting heavy. Not getting heavy anymore, she was beyond chubby.

And she read those books like, well, he knew why because Becky told him. They were her escape.

Somehow, Fazire knew, this was all because of the kids at school.

Now was the first time he ever wished one of his mistresses would ask for vengeance. If he even heard one of children saying cruel things to her like what Will told Fazire they were probably saying, he might do a wish for himself (which was outside of Genie Code) and blast the consequences.

Stupid, ignorant, jealous children.

He waited until she’d eaten the candy bars and hidden the wrappers like he knew she did then he walked down to join her.

She was sitting in a bed of dried fallen leaves the colours of red, brown, yellow and orange, some of the leaves even had all four colours, in one single leaf. Her back was pressed to the trunk of a tree. Her white-blond head was bent over her romance novel.

But she wasn’t reading, she was crying.

“What’s happened, Lily?” Fazire asked quietly.

She jumped and stared up at him, the tears glistening wet on her face.

“Fazire!” She tried to hide behind her smile but it was shaky. He’d seen her don her mask of false happiness a hundred times but he caught her before she could slip it firmly in place.

“Don’t you try hiding from me, Lily-child. This is Fazire you’re talking to. I know all,” he stated grandly in his best genie-in-a-bottle voice.

To his shock she didn’t make a joke or a further attempt to hide. She burst into uncontrollable, body-wracking, fourteen-year-old girl tears.

“Oh, Fah… Fah… Fazire. It’s was awful.”

Without hesitating he sat down next to her in the leaves (oh, his genie friends would just be horrified at him putting his greater-than-the-earth genie bottom on a bed of dead leaves), pulled her in his arms and let her cry it out.

“Tell me about it Lily. Get it out. Your Grammy said to me that she didn’t talk about her Jim missing in the war and she should have right when she knew it happened. Don’t bottle it in, my lovely. I know what being bottled in is all about!”

She giggled just a little and shook her head, getting herself under control.

“It’s silly, Fazire.” She tried to be brave but wasn’t succeeding. “Just, a boy at school said something about me… about, well, about me being fat.” She gave a little shudder and continued to look at the ground.

“You aren’t fat!” Fazire snapped in outrage although, it wasn’t exactly true, she was past chubby but he’d never describe her as fat.

Her eyes flew to his and her mouth did some funny movements as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I am fat, Fazire,” she said quietly and then pulled the Baby Ruth candy wrappers out of her jeans pocket and showed them to him.

“Oh Lily-child,” he moaned and did a little bit of genie magic, magic that was allowed for no one liked litter, not even genies, and in a snap of his fingers the wrappers were gone.

She stared at her hand. She knew he was a genie but it was always a bit shocking to be confronted with magic even though she’d seen it dozens of times before.

“Do you want to use one of your wishes so I can do something to this boy? Give him horns and a tail? Make him big as a blimp?” Fazire asked hopefully.

She shook her head, her mouth moving definitely in the way of one of the quirky smiles she’d inherited from her mother.

Her eyes, which had always been pretty no matter what anyone said (they were pale blue on the inside of the iris and dark, smoky, midnight blue on the outer edges) became thoughtful. Fazire thought her eyes were startling and lovely and Will swore they were from his side of the family though Fazire liked to take most of the credit for all that was Lily, he just didn’t tell Will that. Now he looked into her extraordinary eyes and waited.

“I do want to make a wish though,” she whispered.

Fazire was shocked.

Two wishes!

If she made a wish that would be two that were used, leaving her with only one.

This meant, if she used the last one he’d have to go away.

“Lily, think about this, my lovely. Think about it before you go wishing one of your wishes away on some, stupid boy,” Fazire warned rather sagely, for Fazire.

She continued to look into his eyes. “That boy today who called me fat, I liked him. As in liked him, liked him. He’s the cutest boy in school. The most popular. The…” She stopped and for some strange reason she picked up her romance novel then held it to her chest like a shield that might ward off evil.

Fazire had read a lot since becoming a human-sort-of-genie. He’d never read a romance novel though. He preferred Louis L’Amour.

“Fazire, I wish –” she began.

“Lily-child –” he interrupted but it was like she didn’t hear him, she kept talking.

“One day, I wish to find a man like in my books. He has to be just like in one of my books. And he has to love me, love me more than anything in the world. Most important of all, he has to think I’m beautiful.”

“Lily, I need to tell you something.” Fazire was going to tell her about Becky’s wish and his mistake and let her look forward to something, let her look forward to the incomparable beauty she was going to be.

Most of all, he had to stop her wish now. He didn’t want her wasting it on some fool idea. He wanted it to be special, perfect, to make her world better like she had made Becky and Will’s and, indeed, his.

But again she didn’t hear him. Her eyes were bright and they were steady on his.

“He has to be tall, very tall and dark and broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped.”

Fazire stared. He didn’t even know what “narrow-hipped” meant.

“And he has to be handsome, unbelievably handsome, impossibly handsome with a strong, square jaw and powerful cheekbones and tanned skin and beautiful eyes with lush, thick lashes. He has to be clever and very wealthy but hard-working. He has to be virile, fierce, ruthless and rugged.”

Now she was getting over his head. He didn’t think there was such a thing as impossibly handsome. How cheekbones could be powerful, Fazire didn’t know. He was even thinking he might have to look up “virile” in the dictionary Sarah had given him.

“And he has to be hard and cold and maybe a little bit forbidding, a little bit bad with a broken heart I have to mend or one encased in ice I have to melt or better yet… both!”

Fazire thought this was getting a bit ridiculous. It was the most complicated wish he’d ever heard.

But she wasn’t yet finished.

“We have to go through some trials and tribulations. Something to test our love, make it strong and worthy. And… and… he has to be daring and very masculine. Powerful. People must respect him, maybe even fear him. Graceful too and lithe, like a… like a cat! Or a lion. Or something like that.”

She was losing steam and Fazire had to admit he was grateful for it.

“And he has to be a good lover.” Lily shocked Fazire by saying. “The best, so good, he could almost make love to me just by using his eyes.”

Fazire felt himself blush. Perhaps he should have a look at these books she was reading and show them to Becky. Lily was a very sharp girl, sharp as a tack (another one of Sarah’s sayings, although Fazire couldn’t imagine a tack ever being as clever as Lily) but she was too young to be reading about any man making love to her with his eyes. Fazire had never made love, never would, genies just didn’t. But he was pretty certain fourteen year old girls shouldn’t be thinking about it.

Though, he was wrong about that, or at least Becky would tell him that later.

Then Fazire realised she’d stopped talking.

“Is that it?” he asked.

She thought for a bit, clearly not wanting to leave anything out.

Then she nodded.

“Are you sure you want this to be your wish?” Fazire asked.

She looked at him straight in the eye. Hers were sombre and direct.

Then she nodded again.

“Very well,” Fazire said on a sigh.

He opened his mouth to speak but she put her hand out to stall him, resting it on his arm. “Don’t forget that part about him loving me more than anything on earth.”

He lifted his goatee’ed chin in acknowledgement.

“And!” she burst out, squeezing his arm for emphasis, “The part about him thinking I’m beautiful.”

“Lily, you will be beautiful, you already are.”

Her chin quivered and he knew she was about ready to cry.

“Just don’t forget those parts, they’re the most important,” she reminded him, her voice shaky and, Fazire thought, terribly, unforgettably sad.

His hand covered hers on his arm.

“I won’t forget any of it.”

Then Fazire lifted his hand, put it on her head and said softly, “Lily, my lovely, your wish is my command.”

Chapter Three Fazire & Lily

Eight years later, Lily was now twenty-two…

It was, quite simply, the worst time in his entire genie life.

And as Fazire had lived millennia that was saying quite a lot.

He thought the worst was when Sarah slipped away two years ago.

Fazire had never known anyone who’d died and he’d known Sarah for decades. She was his roommate, his protector, his friend.

He’d had a good, long time with Sarah and he was lucky to have it. He knew that.

It didn’t make him miss her any less.

She was kind to him, took care of him even on her teacher’s salary. She kept him fed, clothed, happy and showered him with baseball tickets and suntan lotion. Sarah never, even though it was her right, asked a thing from Fazire in all her years. She just gave and gave and gave.

The first and only human any genie in the entire History of the Genie Race who had been entitled to but hadn’t asked for one single wish.

Sarah, in Genie Land, was a legend as Fazire thought she very well should be.

She’d at least, before she died, seen the outrageous beauty Lily had become, the now well-rounded perfectness that was just simply Lily. Off gallivanting across the world, or at least England where she went to university and then decided to stay. Becoming sophisticated and cosmopolitan but never losing her down-home, Indiana-girl charm and spirit.

Lily’s gold-white hair had changed. It was still golden with strands of white but also, unusually, had strands of strawberry blond as well as copper. And just to make it that bit more interesting, not that it could get much more interesting, here and there were strands of auburn.

She’d been awarded a scholarship to go study at some place called “Oxford” in England after she won some writing competitions, creating magnificent stories that it seemed everyone wanted to read.

Once in England she became more interested in what she called “footpaths” and tramping around in cathedrals and castles and every museum in London (and a fair few shops) and writing more of her wonderful, entertaining stories, than eating. She was busy, busy, busy and the weight just melted off.

Tall, like her mother, father and grandfather before her even though Fazire had only just seen photos of the handsome, slender Jim, Fazire knew he was tall, Lily was curvaceous with a very small waist and a lovely hourglass figure.

She’d matured into her plain face. Her skin was always impeccable but once the baby fat left it, her intelligence and humour fixed it with extraordinary elegance and beauty.

And now, with those miraculous eyes, well…

She was, quite simply, stunning.

Lily was the pride of all of them, Sarah, Becky, Will and Fazire.

And she had absolutely no idea. None whatsoever.

Lily looked in the mirror and saw the old Lily not the beauty she’d become.

So really Fazire had done his job, she definitely had humility and not the barest hint of conceit.

But now Lily looked beaten and he was very certain that this was the worst time in her entire human life as well.

She was sick every morning, he could hear her vomiting in the bathroom and he’d go in just like he did when she was a little girl and had the flu or one of her awful headaches that gave her so much pain she would get violently ill. Then he would stroke her back and hold her long, thick, glorious hair.

Fazire understood why she was ill, she was heartsick at losing her parents so close after her grandmother.

A plane crash. A horrible, hideous plane crash. They didn’t even have the bodies.

One day Becky and Will were in Hawaii for a much needed vacation. They were taking a day trip to another island on a small twin-engine aircraft (this, Fazire could not imagine, a plane, he thought, always needed a lot more than two engines).

The next day, they were gone.

Fazire had had to use the phone to call Lily in England. He knew how to use it, of course, he hadn’t been living like a human for years and not learned how to order a pizza. But it had taken a long time to track her down. She had some job in a shop and bought a rundown house in some seaside town in Somerset called Clevedon for what she called “no money at all” which, Will said, laid testimony to just how rundown it was. A house which she was determined to restore to its full Victorian beauty.

Call after call, she didn’t answer and Fazire finally decided she was not at her ramshackle abode.

She’d graduated from Oxford and declared she could not leave England. She loved it there. Fazire could see why from the pictures she sent home. It looked beautiful.

Nevertheless Fazire hated it. It took away Lily and he wanted her home.

And now she was home, though he would never have wanted her home like this.

After contacting one of her friends who Becky had in her address book, a woman named Maxine, Fazire had eventually found Lily. Maxine said she was staying somewhere in London and gave Fazire the number.

Lily had answered the phone and had been so excited to tell him something, her voice just dripping happiness. He couldn’t bear it, the sound of her happy voice while he was carrying his terrible news. He’d cut her short before she could put three words together and told her his grim tidings.

She’d, of course, taken the first flight home.

She sat next to him at the memorial service wearing a very smart, black suit that looked stylish and cultured and all the people around her didn’t know what to make of her. She was very much not the Lily who had left at sixteen to go to Oxford. She was like a modern day princess, graceful, beautiful, refined and untouchable.

She held herself in a regal way that made Fazire so proud to have her on his arm it nearly edged away his bitter sadness at losing his Becky and Will.

Lily was very brave and kind to people, she nodded and smiled. After the service they went back to Sarah’s limestone house which was now Lily’s and she played hostess beautifully, making people feel comfortable and at home even though Fazire knew from her pale skin and sunken eyes she was exhausted.

There was so much food, it was everywhere and the first time in his life he didn’t eat a bite. Nor did Lily.

Everyone knew Fazire, he’d been around for decades and, of course, not aged a single day. They thought this strange but they figured he was from some foreign land and many of them never left the Midwest so what did they know about how foreigners aged? So they’d accepted him. Being a genie and thus above mere mortals, he didn’t mix with them very often and now he did it only as his duty to Becky and Will and, of course, Lily. He helped Lily by playing host and kindly uncle-type figure (“uncle” was the term Sarah had come up to explain his presence in the family and Fazire liked it, always had).

Finally, hours after he thought it was seemly, the last of them left and Fazire cleaned up with a snap of his fingers because he knew Lily was too spent to do it. He put her to bed and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

“Fazire?” she whispered right before she fell away to dreamland.

“Yes, my lovely?”

When she replied, she was still whispering but her voice held a deep sadness that scored Fazire’s heart. “I’m never going to wish my last wish so you’ll stay with me forever.”

For the first time in his life he felt tears prick his eyes and maybe he finally understood a little bit of what Sarah was feeling when he first met her.

“That’s fine by me,” Fazire whispered back but her exhaustion had already melted to sleep.

The next days she got up and was immediately sick. Furthermore, any time the phone rang, her face lit up with a strange mixture of expectation and relief and she’d rush to it. But it was always clear it was not who Lily was hoping it would be just a friend or family member wishing to give their condolence or asking how she was doing. Her face would fall dramatically, as if the caller had told her the world was about to come crashing to an end.

The days turned to weeks and Lily’s phone rushes became more desperate. She was also making quiet calls time and again but whatever was said made her all the more desolate.

Fazire found himself concerned.

Lily nor Fazire did a thing to work out what to do next. Neither of them had gone into Becky and Will’s room, they couldn’t face it. And there were a great deal of Sarah’s belongings still there that should be sorted.

Lily had told him she didn’t want to move back to Indiana and he, well, he’d never been in a plane. Nor did he want to after Becky and Will’s awful demise, not that he could die but she could. He could and did (very often, mostly in order to channel his genie friends) go back into his bottle and he could travel that way. But after they had this brief conversation, no plan came about.

Something else was disturbing Lily, something that had something to do with the phone and her early morning sickness that still came every day.

Finally he could take it no more. She’d been home over a month and they were both drifting through the house, Lily reading most of the time, Fazire fretting.

This just wasn’t Lily.

She’d always had purpose, kept her room tidy, helped with the housework, got her homework done on time, pushed forward to submit her writing for competitions, helped with the cooking. She was a very good cook but then again she was very good at everything, Fazire made her that way. She was a well-reared, polite, industrious Indiana girl.

Now she was tired all the time even more cranky than Fazire (and Fazire was the King of Cranky, at least that was what Becky had called him), short-tempered and completely unmotivated.

This new behaviour, Fazire thought, was not going to do.

Someone had to take care of him after all. He couldn’t be expected to do it.

He decided it was high time to confront her. He knew she still had to be hurting about her parents, as was he, but they couldn’t carry on like this forever. She wasn’t even writing anymore.

“Lily, we have to talk,” Fazire announced one day when he’d come upon her reading again.

He’d decided to float during the conversation. He did this on occasion so he wouldn’t get out of practice. He also did it when he intended to put someone in their place, like he was going to put Lily now. He knew she was grieving but life had to go on. Sarah had said that after coming to terms with losing Jim and Becky had said it after coming to terms with losing Sarah so, considering Fazire thought Sarah and Becky the most intelligent of humans, he figured it must be true. And, he realised rather shockingly, he was the only family she had left. There was no one else to snap her out of whatever state she was in.

Just him.

“Fazire, I’m in the middle of a good part,” she murmured distractedly not even looking up at him and twirling a strand of hair around her finger like she’d done while reading or watching television since she was a little girl.

He used his magic to flip her book out of her hands, levitated the bookmark sitting on the table, slapped it in her place in the book and then the book flew across the room and set itself down well away from her.

She shot bolt upright on the couch. “Fazire!”

“You must tell me what’s going on,” he demanded in his best commanding-genie voice.

“I was reading,” she replied, being deliberately obtuse, her elegant face settling into a charming disgruntled look that did not, at all, work on him (it would have worked on Will, her father was a pushover where Lily was concerned).

“I don’t mean now, I mean with you.”

A shadow crossed her eyes. A shadow that was only part about losing both her parents in a plane crash six weeks ago.

“Lily,” he went on, “I don’t know if you realise this but I’m stuck in this world and it is not my world. Since you don’t intend to use your wish then I can’t go to someone else. I don’t even want to. But in the meantime I depend on you to take care of me. I can’t float around this house watching you read your books and twirl your hair forever. We have to have a plan and since I don’t know anything about you mortals, you are going to have to make the plan.”

“You know a lot more than you let on,” she accused.

He got down to brass tacks (another one of Sarah’s sayings that Fazire used but did not understand). “Indeed, I do, Lily-child, you would be wise to remember that. What’s troubling you?”

Her beautiful face closed down rebelliously. Fazire had forgotten that she could be the slightest bit rebellious and more-than-a-little stubborn. Fazire didn’t give her that, that she got from her mother and her father.

He floated closer. “Lily, tell me.”

“I… I, Fazire, I don’t know what’s going on. He was supposed to call. I had to leave so quickly and I wrote him a note, gave him my number here, told him what happened, told his brother what happened so he could tell him and he hasn’t called.” She stopped looking at Fazire and stared at the floor. “I can’t believe he hasn’t called, not after what I explained happened to my parents. And I’ve called him and the number isn’t working. I know it’s the right number but it’s been disconnected. I called his office but he isn’t returning my calls.” She finished, speaking as if to herself.

“Who?” Fazire asked.

Her incredible blue eyes lifted to his and there was a world of worry and hurt in them.

Then she said, “Nate.”

“Who, pray, is Nate?”

She fidgeted with her hands, dropping her head to stare at her nails.

“You remember my wish?” she asked.

How could he ever forget the most complicated wish ever?

“Yes,” Fazire answered.

Her eyes lifted again and in them was something that made Fazire’s genie heart beat a little faster.

“Well, it came true. His name is Nathaniel McAllister and he’s the most wonderful man ever. And, I think… Fazire, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have his baby.”

Fazire immediately stopped levitating and dropped heavily to the floor.

Then he screeched, “What?”

Lily shook her head and bit her lip before saying, “It was… I don’t know. I can’t think straight. It all happened so quickly. One second I was just, well, in London doing my normal London things. Going to museums, a little shopping…”

Fazire doubted it was a “little shopping”. Lily could shop like Jackie Robinson could steal a base.

She kept talking. “The next thing I knew I was going to fancy dinner parties and he was taking me out to romantic restaurants and midnight walks in the park and we made love again and again and again and it was so, it was…” she leaned forward, her eyes lighting before she whispered fervently, “spectacular. Mind-boggling. You cannot even imagine.”

Fazire tried floating again but could only get three feet off the floor. This was mainly because most of his concentration was spent on keeping his ears from burning and possibly dripping blood at his Lily-child talked about mind-boggling love-making.

“Then Mom and Dad…” She couldn’t finish. They both still could not talk about it.

“He hasn’t called,” Fazire finished for her.

“No.”

“Has he called, maybe, your thingie-ma-bobbie?” Fazire tried.

“My what?”

“The thing that records voices on the phone.”

“My answering machine?”

“Yes, that.”

“I picked up my messages, none were from him. He doesn’t know my number anyway. I was always in London with him, he never had to phone me and I’m not listed.”

Fazire thought for awhile. He was, although out of practice, very good at what he did. Sometimes genies could go for years and years without having their bottle rubbed so they knew there might be magical delays and any good genie prepared well for them. Fazire, if he did think so himself, was very, very good with his wishes.

And he’d made absolutely certain sure Lily’s was the best of all.

Something else must be happening with this… Nate.

Fazire peered at his mistress and made his decision.

Decision made, he declared, “Then we must go and find him.”

Fazire walked up the short staircase to the beautiful white house that Lily told him was something called “Georgian”. It had black shutters and in every window there were window boxes filled so full with startling red geraniums, you couldn’t tell where one flower stopped and the other started. Each box was trailing lacy, green ivy. There were fancy wrought iron fences in front of each house all were painted a shiny, perfect black.

All the houses looked exactly the same. It was almost as if they had a pact that everyone on the whole street would have the same coloured geraniums with trailing ivy so the street would look tidy and splendiferous.

Fazire very much wanted to hate this place called England and he was pretty certain he’d really hate London for although Jim had found his bottle in a market in London, Fazire had actually come from a bazaar in Morocco and never been released in Europe at all. But even though some of London was rather shocking, busy, grimy and graffiti-filled, this street was quite lovely.

During their terrifying plane ride (neither Lily nor Fazire had a good time on that plane after what happened to Becky and Will, and it had far more than two engines), Lily told him some people lived in this house that knew her Nate, a man and woman named Victor and Laura. She said they were nice people, kind and caring and they’d taken care of her after Nate had saved her life. Or, she’d understated the story when Fazire had been struck dumb at the idea that her life was in danger, and she explained this Nate saved her and her purse from a purse snatcher.

Lily was nervous, he could see her shaking and he stood two steps behind her. He was certain everything would be all right. This Nate had come to her through Fazire’s wish so of course it would be all right.

She knocked, using the hoop that went through a brass lion’s face nose. Fazire thought that was peculiar, he’d never seen a lion with a hoop through its nose but he figured he’d mention that titbit later maybe use it as an opening gambit to some future conversation with Lily’s Nate.

A dark-haired woman answered the door. Fazire was surprised that she was young, not much older than Lily. She was also crying, her face wet with tears and a mottled red with the force of her emotion. Fazire thought she might have been pretty without the tear-stained face but then decided she was not when she looked at Lily and her face contorted with repugnance and her eyes filled with hate.

“Oh, hello, Danielle, I was…” Lily paused then asked, “Are you all right?”

Lily stopped speaking and Fazire heard her voice was concerned as she lost all track of their quest and asked after the girl who was looking at her with such venom. Fazire wanted to grab Lily back but he stayed where he was in order to let her do what she needed to do.

“No, I’m not all right,” the girl snapped. “What are you doing here, Lily?”

Fazire found himself thinking these people who lived here weren’t very kind and caring at all.

Lily hesitated, somehow not surprised at this reaction from the woman, then she went on. “This is a little embarrassing but I had to leave town unexpectedly and now that I’m back, I went to Nate’s and his doorman says he doesn’t live there anymore. I was just –”

The woman didn’t allow her to finish, her face changed to what looked somewhat sly and scheming to Fazire but he lost those thoughts at the next words she said.

“Nate’s dead,” Danielle informed them coldly.

Then, without further ado, she slammed the door right in Lily’s face.

Lily stood staring at the door, frozen to the spot.

Fazire stood behind her, just as frozen.

And then, after what seemed like an age (and Fazire had lived many of them so he knew exactly how they felt), slowly she turned and stopped and simply stared down at him, every bit of colour had drained from her face.

Two years ago she’d lost her beloved grandmother. Barely two months ago she’d lost her parents. Now her new beloved boyfriend, the romantic hero that was supposed to sweep her off her feet and at the sound of their meeting and courtship he certainly did that, and love her more than the earth was dead.

She was twenty-two years old, pregnant with only a genie to call family.

And the expression on her face showed every bit of that pain and agony.

Fazire ascended the two last steps and carefully put his arm around her fragile, tense shoulders.

“Let’s get home,” he murmured to his Lily-child.

She didn’t move. In fact she seemed rooted to the spot.

Then she whispered, “But Fazire, where’s home?”

He had no answer for that, for he didn’t know.

Then it came to him.

“Wherever we make it, my lovely.”