6 Fantasy Stories (9 page)

*****

I'm hustling through the gymnasium when they catch me. Two of the ghoulish thugs burst in through the far door from outside the mansion, and another drops down from the ceiling on a rope.

The one from the rope has dark skin and a tribal headdress of tattered fur and feathers. One of the other two has silver hair and wears a tuxedo, and the last one bulges with muscles and pads under a football player's uniform. More echoes of Magda's former masters.

As they surround me, I look for the best escape route. My eyes keep flicking to the open door to the outside, where my partner waits. If my text message got through to him, he could come charging through that door at any second, guns blazing.

Just as I have that thought, he pops up in front of me out of thin air. He's standing, and at first I think he's still alive...but then he literally falls to pieces--arms and legs and head and torso tumbling to the floor.

I hear Gunza laughing, and I turn to see him floating in midair on a scarlet magic carpet. As he claps, Magda slumps beside him, utterly joyless.

Like I said, she becomes an accomplice. She literally has no choice.

At least she takes no pleasure in it. That's what makes her worth saving.

She has yet to hand over her soul.

"Bravo!" says Gunza. "Bravissimo! You should've seen the look on your face, Oleo!"

I keep my eyes fixed on him, partly so I won't have to look at my partner's body parts oozing blood at my feet.

Gunza elbows Magda hard in the side. "You're getting all this on tape or a crystal ball or whatever, right? So I can watch it again and again?"

Magda nods. "Yes, Master."

I hate seeing her like that. A woman with so much power, a woman who literally could do anything...reduced to groveling and harming the very people who could set her free.

Unless I can get through to her. "I can help you, Magda."

Her eyes flick toward me.

"Tell me what you want," I say. "Ask me for it."

I hold her gaze for a moment before she looks away. She's still not ready.

That's the root of the problem here. A genie, acting always to serve others, knows nothing of selfishness...but she must ask for something for herself to become free.

The key stands in front of her, but it's useless if she won't pick it up and turn it in the lock.

*****

I wait for Gunza to become bored with my screams, but it takes a very long time.

He hovers above on his magic carpet as the echoes of Magda's demented masters torture me. They do it right there in the gymnasium, on a weight bench, using trays of knives and needles and power tools wished up by Gunza.

As the ghouls work me over, I wonder if they are improvising...or if every terrible step is drawn from Magda's memory. The pain is indescribable, unbearable, catastrophic. Each application of blade or pliers or drill bit plunges me into uncharted depths of agony.

Did they do the same to her? Did they twist and pull and crush and cut, sometimes all at once? Did they laugh as they tuned her screams by grinding harder, digging deeper, winding tighter?

Did they cut off bits of her? Did they taunt her as they excavated organs? Did they push her to the brink of death again and again...holding her alive with wishes as they ruined her in every possible way?

And then, did they wish her back to wholeness, repairing every damage...only to start all over again?

The way they do with me?

If so, my sympathy for her increases a trillionfold. More even than that.

Because this is hell. Sheer hell, as the devil himself might design it.

And I wonder, between strokes of the knife and blows of the hammer, how it is that Magda has not gone irretrievably mad.

*****

Finally, after what seems to me like a dozen years, Gunza does grow bored. Tired is more like it. His eyes start drifting shut, and instead of wishing himself wide awake, he floats off to bed.

Lying on his belly on the magic carpet, he winks and waggles his fingers at me. "Back soon, dear." His braided red mustache jumps as he chuckles. "Don't miss me
too
much."

At this point, I'm in excruciating agony on the bench. This is the sixth time I've been horrifically mutilated and left at the brink of death.

My limbs have all been disconnected and reattached in the wrong places. The ghouls wear my organs on leather thongs around their necks. Only wishes are keeping me alive.

Gunza gives Magda a shove off the carpet, and she thuds to the floor. "I wish you would put Oliver back together, good as new, and get him rested up for our next session." After he says it, he rolls over on his back, crosses his hands behind his head, and floats out the door, yawning and snickering.

When he's gone, Magda struggles to her feet. She weaves mystic sigils overhead, and the torture squad of monstrous masters past disappears in a shower of golden glitter.

Standing over me, she gazes down at the damage...then looks away. Turning her back, she weaves more patterns in the air with her agile, flickering fingers.

I feel a familiar tingling. Gold dust twinkles around me, and I hear a fluttering trill like the song of a tiny tropical bird.

Reality stops and shifts like a jump-cut in a movie. There is an instant of nonexistence, disconnection from senses and self-awareness...and then I am whole once more.

My body is intact. My wounds are closed, my organs and limbs back in the right places. For the seventh time today, she has put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Except for the memories, it is as if none of it ever happened. This is how it must be for her, every time Gunza tears her apart and wishes her restored once more.

I wonder how many times a day she must do it. How many times she has done it since he took control of her.

How many times since her birth or creation.

She turns to face me again, fingers still weaving. The weight bench becomes a bed, the gymnasium a bedroom draped in white satin, aglow in moonlight.

Small figures materialize around me--winged children, robed in white. Some are toddlers, some older, some younger. Some are infants.

They push pillows behind my head and tuck blankets around me. They dab my forehead with a cool compress and wrap warm towels around my arms.

They raise a glass of water to my lips, and I drink. They feed me bread and hot broth from a silver tray. They sing softly as they work--dozens of them, all watching me solemnly, eyes glowing like little silver moons in their dark and pale faces.

"Who are they?" As I ask the question, an infant hands me a little cake.

Magda watches from the foot of the bed. "My angels," she says. "My babies."

Gazing around me in wonder, I begin to understand. "Your children? All of them?"

Magda nods. "They are my only comforts in this world."

I accept another spoonful of soup from a dark-haired little boy. "You made them."

"With my masters, as any woman would." Magda bows her head. "And unmade them, as my masters wished."

"My God." I shiver as I feel their moonlight eyes upon me--the eyes of dozens of dead children, recreated from the dust of graves and residue of tears.

Every last one of them, dead. Murdered by magic at whatever age they most displeased their mother's masters. Their fathers.

Gone now, as if they had never been. As if they had never been forced into or out of existence. Living on only in her memory.

Resurrected only to comfort her in moments of greatest pain and despair.

Tears roll down her face, and she wipes them away. "I'm sorry," she says. "Sorry for everything."

If only I could break her free from this unending cycle of woe. If only I could cut the magic ties that bind her to her heartless monster of a master.

If only there was some way to move her to ask for what she needs. What I can provide.

Maybe there is.

I glimpse it for a split-second. A look of sharper sorrow on her face. A sudden sinking. Fear and panic and rage and longing all at once, like fruit on a tree.

She touches her belly, and I know. She pulls her hand away instantly, but it's too late.

I finally know.

I know how to save her.

*****

"Very good!" Gunza claps from his royal box in the crowded stands of the coliseum. "Not perfect, but that comes with practice! You've just committed your first
murder
, Oleo!"

The bloody knife slips from my fingers and lands in the sand at my feet. My arms are soaked in blood up to the elbows. My white t-shirt and pants have gone crimson from sleeve to cuff.

I know what I've just done. I know that I had no control over it, that I was at the mercy of a compelling wish.

But it doesn't really matter. I still remember every detail. I remember killing the innocent woman wished up from somewhere in the world outside...killing her as the crowd around me cheered and stomped and showered me with roses.

That, of course, was the whole idea.

Torturing and resurrecting me wasn't enough for Gunza. I took the promotion that should have been his, and then I tried to tax his lordly treasures; he won't be happy until I've been corrupted and ruined and debased inside as well as out.

Just as he's corrupted and ruined his Magda.

"Now this is the life!" Gunza guzzles wine from a goblet and gropes the nearly naked slave girl in his lap. "
That
is entertainment!" He points his goblet at me, and the crowd howls with delight.

Gazing at the poor dead woman in the sand, I wonder if I can get through this. I wonder how much more I will have to endure to save Magda.

Looking up, I see her standing in the box with him, head bowed low. She won't look at me. Won't look at what she's done at his behest.

That has to change.

"Magda!" I call to her, and her head lifts. Her eyes meet mine. "Tell me what you want!
Ask
me for it!"

She twitches, then lowers her head again.

"Oh ho ho!" Gunza howls with laughter. "So you think you can give her something I
can't
?"

I'm treading on dangerous ground, and I know it. All he has to do is wish me silenced or dead or demented, and the game is over.

I continue to speak only to Magda. "Please! Ask for what you want!" I take a deep breath, ready to step off the precipice. Once I say the next thing, there'll be no taking it back. "For the sake of your unborn
child
,
ask
me!"

Suddenly, a hush falls over the coliseum. Even Gunza is silent.

Magda meets my gaze, and her eyes at first are full of rage. Then, the rage melts into despair.

And I know I was right. When she touched her belly while the angels tended me, she was thinking of an angel inside. A new child, growing within her.

His
child.
Gunza
's child.

So now I've done it. Everything balances on the head of a pin, and a single wish could bring it all crashing down.

That's all it will take. One wish from Gunza to force Magda to do away with their unborn child. Add it to the angelic host, existing only in memory, comforting her in her deepest, darkest night.

Nothing now to do but push every button on the board and pray the engine catches before we crash.

"You
know
what he'll do
next
, Magda!" I march across the sand to stand beneath her. "There's only one way to
stop
him!
Ask
me for it!"

Tears pour from her eyes and run under her veil. Her shoulders pump as she breathes faster, heart racing in terror.

Just then, Gunza does the unexpected. Instead of the child-killing wish I thought he'd make next, or the one that wipes me instantly from the face of the planet, he says this: "I wish I was down there with Oleo, strangling the
life
out of him!"

Magda's fingers weave through the air. Reality stutters, and Gunza's wish takes hold.

He is with me now on the sand, thick fingers wrapped around my throat. I chop at his forearms, but they won't budge.

He scowls with bloodshot eyes and flushed face and red hair bristling from his beard and under his turban. Veins pop along his temples, and cords bulge in his neck.

His grip of steel tightens. "How
dare
you interfere in my
paradise
?"

I barely force out words through the vice of his hands. "He'll kill it, Magda! Just like...all the others! You...know it's...
true
!"

"Shut up!" roars Gunza. "I wish..."

Before he can finish, I pump a knee into his groin. The wind goes out of him, and he releases his grip and falls to the ground.

I can get the words out now, but how long do I have? How many seconds until the next wish? "I can
help
you, Magda! I can save
you
and your
child
! All you have to do is
ask
me!"

"I don't believe you!" says Magda.

Gunza starts to get up. I send him back down with a kick to the face. "Ask anyway! What do you have to lose?"

Storm clouds boil overhead as Magda weeps. "But I'm a
genie
! I cannot ask for
anything
for myself!"

"You're wrong!" I kick Gunza in the face again, harder than before. "Now
ask
me! What do you
want
?"

Magda stops sobbing and looks at her bare belly. Her fingers touch it lightly as wings brushing a cloud. "I wish..." Her thumbs and forefingers meet, forming a diamond around her navel. "I wish you
could
help me. I wish you
could
set us free."

Finally.

A grin breaks wide across my face. I bow deeply to her, twirling my fingers with a flourish as if doffing a hat in her honor.

"Your wish, milady," I say, "is my command."

With that, I weave my fingers overhead, swirling them in multiple mystic sigils dripping with golden glitter. The ground rumbles underfoot, and the storm clouds darken. The crowd screams and stampedes in the stands.

This, then, is my secret...that which makes me altogether different than anyone could ever guess. I am more than man or policeman or tax collector. More than I have ever shown another soul until now.

My fingers work furiously, teasing reality's threads upon the loom. Everything around me starts to turn, faster and faster with each passing breath.

Gunza struggles to his feet but can't stay there. The spinning of the world knocks him right back down on his ass.

Unable to retaliate physically, he resorts to tried and true. "I wish that Oliver would be..."

Before he can finish, I slam my hands together with a sound like the pealing of a massive bell. A bolt of lightning crashes down from the clouds above--and Gunza is gone.

As reality continues to accelerate in its wild gyre, Magda appears beside me. "Who are you?" she says. "Are you djinn?"

My fingers resume their weaving dance overhead. "Not
djinn
," I say. "
Wish
."

"I don't understand!"

I have to raise my voice to be heard above the rushing of the world. "One good master, ages ago, wished for you to have a wish of your own. Do you remember?"

She frowns in thought, then nods. "That was a very long time ago."

"Being a genie, you would ask for nothing for yourself, but he insisted. Unwilling to make a selfish choice, you put off the decision. You wished for one wish that you could call upon later, when you needed it most."

Magda smiles. "And you are that wish?"

"I am." Reality spins so fast around us, it is a blur of color and motion. I know that my work is almost done. "I waited for centuries for you to call on me, and you never did. I lived many lives, staying as close to you as I could, watching and waiting. Finally, I decided it was time for me to step in and give you a push."

Magda touches her belly. "So you really
can
help us."

"You have asked for what you need, and I will grant it. I will set you and your child free."

"Free." Magda says it like she's tasting it, like it's the first time she's ever spoken. "Free from Rudolph Gunza?"

"Free from
all
masters. Free to go where you want and do as you choose." I shoot her a grin and a wink. "Free to start a new life with your child."

Magda wipes a tear from her eye. She removes the veil from her face and kisses me on the cheek with lips like tender plums. "Thank you, my wish."

"My pleasure," I tell her. "You deserve to be happy."

"I only wish I could help you in return."

My fingers ache as I weave the last glittering sigils. "You can't. No more magic for you." I shrug. "But it's not all it's cracked up to be, is it?"

"Sometimes it is." Magda hugs me. "I'll never forget you."

"Then there you go." I finish weaving the new world and wrap my arms around her. "I
will
get my wish after all."

We squeeze each other tight as the world spins around us. A single tear crosses my face as I cease to be, dissolving into glittering gold dust that curls skyward like a puff of smoke from a dying lamp.