“Wow,” Ridge said, as the four of us stood staring out over one of the Great Lakes.
“Yeah. This is a big lake.” I couldn’t help but state the obvious. The only lake I knew was a community fishing pond just outside town. It was a puddle in comparison.
I squinted across the horizon of water. There were plenty of boats out, but none was close enough to identify a yellow flag.
Tina turned to Vale. “I wish to know which boat is red with a yellow flag.” She was wasting no time, and I felt like Tina had a steely determination after our conversation.
“If you want to identify the boat,” said Vale, “then every time you hear the radio playing, it will turn to static.”
“What about downloaded music?” Tina asked.
“Nope,” replied Vale. “Just the radio.”
“How long will it last?”
“You’ll have static radio forever.”
Tina took a deep breath, her face scrunched up in thought. “Okay. It’s all about streaming, anyway. Bazang.” I saw her hourglass watch close as Tina raised her arm to point across the water. “That’s the one.”
“Which one?” I asked. From my perspective, she was pointing aimlessly into the distance.
“I’ve got it figured out,” Tina assured me. “We just need a way to get out there so I can give directions.”
“Better you than me,” I said. “I can’t read, and I don’t know left from right.”
“We’ll need a boat,” Tina continued, pointing toward a nearby marina. It would be awfully convenient to borrow one without having to wish for it.
As the four of us drew closer, we realized that the docks were nearly empty. Only a single boat was lashed in place. And standing next to it were two despicable characters that I immediately recognized.
Thackary and Jathon.
“Ahoy, ye scallywags!” Thackary Anderthon shouted as we made a hasty approach. “I be commandeering this here vessel!” His pirate accent was actually quite fitting for our current situation. Although, I doubt historically there were pirates in Lake Michigan. Or motorboats.
Jathon stepped into the boat, taking his place at the controls as Thackary struggled with the lashing rope. I was the first to reach him, drawing to a halt when I was an arm’s length away.
I scowled at Thackary in the evening light. The man’s hair was stringy and damp, the black strands laid across his forehead like worms stretched out on the sidewalk after a rainstorm. His face seemed hollow and long, his chin ending in a cleft full of whiskers. He was rather pale, except for his ear, which looked puffy and red.
“Give us the boat!” I said. Behind me, I felt Ridge shrinking nervously. I tensed, preparing to transform my genie, though I wondered if he would be any braver in shark form. A cowardly shark would be just what I needed.
Thackary looked me in the eye, his face cracking into a smirk that exposed jagged gray teeth. When he spoke, his breath smelled like garlic. “You must be the ace of hearts.”
I felt my body begin to tremble and I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Me son told me all about ye,” Thackary went on. “Poor little Ace. A story with no beginning.”
My teeth were grinding together in an attempt to hold back my fury. Then I thought, Why hold back? This was as good a chance as any to complete my quest.
I lunged at Thackary. He took an agile step backward and dropped something to the dock. It made the unmistakable ping of a coin and I glanced down to see that it was a nickel. The second before I hit him, Thackary’s foot came down on the coin and a column of silvery light erupted around him.
I hit the wall of light with a jolt that made me think I’d been electrocuted. The contact sent me reeling backward to collide with Ridge.
“Har-hardy-har,” Thackary taunted, still encased in the column of protection with his foot on the coin. “Ye shan’t be completing yer quest today, lad.”
“How’d he do that?” Ridge muttered, propping me up as I glanced to Tina and Vale for support. But after that show of force, neither of them seemed anxious to take a swing at Thackary.
“’Tis called a trinket,” Thackary said.
“Actually, it’s called a coin,” I corrected. I didn’t know why his had magical powers, but at least he could call it by the right name.
“A trinket,” Vale said. “It’s a different kind of pay-as-you-play wish.”
“Like Ridge’s shark form?” I asked.
“The Wishmaker can wish for the trinket to have a special power whenever it’s used,” she explained. “They just have to agree up front that they’ll pay the consequence every time someone uses it.”
“Why am I just hearing about this now?” I cried. “It’s day five!”
Vale shrugged defensively. “I’m not your genie.”
I glanced at Ridge, who mouthed the word sorry.
“How can he use a trinket?” I asked, pointing back at Thackary. “He’s not even a Wishmaker.”
“Aye,” Thackary said. “Trinkets can be mighty handy. And they be available for any scurvy sea dog to use. Not just Wishmakers. I have only to put me foot upon this here nickel and the Universe shields me from danger.”
“But you had to pay a consequence,” I said, hoping there was some fairness in the Universe.
“Nay,” answered Thackary. “The Wishmaker pays the price.” He pointed back to the motorboat. “And I gets the reward fer free!”
My eyes followed his gesture to the motorboat where Jathon stood at the prow. The boy was slapping himself in the face over and over again. Even from this distance, I could see that his cheeks were bright red as his flat palm smacked one cheek, then the other, at a steady pace.
I turned back to Thackary, my opinion of the man dropping even lower. If that was possible. “You’re a monster,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I couldn’t be anything else,” he answered. Thackary stepped off the nickel, bending to scoop it up as he leaped into the motorboat, the mooring rope falling to the dock.
“Onward to sea, boy!” Thackary shouted at his son. “Let that devil genie out of her jar. ’Tis time to take a wee dive!”
Jathon, breathing heavily and grimacing, grabbed the motorboat’s wheel. With a spray of water across the docks, the Anderthon pair sped away.
“We’ve got to go after them!” Ridge shouted.
I saw Tina scanning the empty marina, muttering, “We need a boat. . . .”
“Or do we?” I asked. A grin spread across my face as a plan came to mind. I stooped to pick up a coil of rope on the dock.
“Ready?” I asked Ridge.
“For what?” he asked.
“Muumuu,” I said. As the genie transformed into a shark, I flopped onto my stomach on the wooden dock. “We can tie ourselves to Ridge,” I explained with my face on the planks. “He can swim us out to the red boat so we can make the dive.”
“There’s just one problem,” shark Ridge said. “I can’t swim.”
“Of course you can,” I encouraged. “You’re a great white shark!”
“Umm. You wished for an air shark,” Ridge said. “So that’s what the Universe gave you. If I go underwater I’ll drown.”
“Seriously?” I blew out a frustrated sigh.
“It might still work,” Tina said. “We can tie the rope to his tail and hold on to it. Ridge can just . . . fly above the water and tow us along behind him.”
“Let’s do it!” I said. “Is that okay with you, Ridge?”
The genie shrugged with his fins. “As long as you think I’m strong enough.”
“Definitely,” I said.
Tina stepped forward and looped the rope around Ridge’s tail. Then she offered me the other end of it while she turned to Vale, lip balm jar in hand. “The fewer people Ridge has to tow, the easier this will be.”
Vale nodded, though her expression made it clear that she didn’t love the idea of spending time in her jar, either.
“Vale,” Tina ordered, “get into the
jar.” The redheaded genie disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Tina slipped the little glass jar back into her pocket, making sure it was secure.
I grabbed hold of the rope, Tina’s hand just above mine. Ridge tried to glance behind him, but it turns out that’s rather difficult for a shark to do.
“Don’t let go of the rope, Ace,” I heard him say. “We could both drown if we snap the tether in the middle of the lake.”
I was about to say, “Good point, Ridge,” when the air shark lurched forward, dragging me and Tina off the end of the dock. The water felt cold as I plunged into it face-first.
I gasped, kicking my feet and trying to keep my head up against the pull of my belly being drawn downward.
“You’d better pick up some speed,” Tina said to Ridge, “or your Wishmaker’s going to sink like a stone.”
Ridge sped forward and I felt the rope go tight in my hands. It almost slipped through my grasp, but I managed to hang on. Tina’s body slammed against mine as we both dangled from the end of the rope.
You’ve seen a person water-skiing, right? That’s what we looked like. Except, instead of a boat pulling us along, we had an airborne shark skimming across the lake’s surface. And of course we didn’t have skis. Instead, our bodies skipped painfully along behind the rope.
So, I guess we actually looked nothing like a person water-skiing.
“To the left!” Tina shouted. I didn’t know how she could see anything in that spray of water. Ridge corrected his course to the side, though I wasn’t sure if it was actually left or right.
After a while, my entire body felt like one big welt. And I was surprised there was any water left in the lake, because I could have sworn I’d swallowed it all. Tina called a few more directions to Ridge, and then, finally, he began to slow down.
I started pumping my arms and legs, doing a strange variation of the dog paddle to keep myself afloat.
“Hey, Ridge,” I called. “Can you swim?”
He clucked his tongue at me. “Of course I know how to swim, Ace.”
“Muumuu,” I said. There was a loud splash as Ridge fell into the lake. At the same time, I was finally able to get my legs beneath me and found it much easier to tread water that way.
Ahead of me, Ridge seemed to have quite a bit of difficulty swimming. He floundered with his arms, head bobbing in and out of the water.
“I thought you said you knew how to swim,” I said.
“I do,” answered Ridge, as he thrashed. “It’s just really hard when you have a rope tied around your ankles!”
“My bad!” I called as I swam over to him. “Let me help you.” But Ridge finally seemed to have gained control.
“I got it,” he said. “My shark tail is a lot bigger than my ankles. I just had to kick the rope loose.”
“Hey! There’s the boat!” I said, finally spying the red vessel with the yellow flag floating just a few yards ahead. There was no sign of the Anderthons. Had they already completed the third task?
“That’s why I stopped,” Ridge said. “Looks like there’s a fisherman onboard.”
I squinted at the figure on the boat, who seemed to be squinting back at us.
“I see you swimming there!” the angler called. That’s when I realized it was actually a woman—a fisherwoman with a thick brown beard. And there was something off about her. Besides the beard. Like the man with the pink mustache, she somehow seemed . . . artificial.
“Diving is not allowed here!” The burly woman pulled back her arm and cast with a stout fishing pole.
Have you ever been fishing? All you have to do is put a little worm on a little hook, toss it into the lake, and wait for the fish to bite. Except this wasn’t a little hook. The one that she cast was closer to the size of an anchor. And the worm on that hook was the most gigantic creature I had ever seen. It looked more like a python!
The oversized hook and monstrous worm splashed between Tina and me, rocking us back with the waves as it sank below the surface.
“Hey!” Ridge screamed at the fisherwoman. “That could have hit us!”
“I think that was the point,” Tina muttered.
“She must be guarding the bottom of the lake,” I said. “We better start diving!”
“This lake is deep, Ace,” said Tina.
I heard Vale’s muffled voice from inside her lip balm jar. “Two hundred and eighty seven feet.”
“Two hundred and eighty-seven feet?” Way deeper than I’d thought! “How do you know?”
“I read it on a sign at the marina,” Vale’s voice answered.
Of course she did. . . .
One thing was sure, I’d need a wish to dive that deep. I had a hard enough time reaching the bottom of the deep end at the public pool.
Aboard the red boat, the large fisherwoman was preparing to cast with another sturdy pole.
“Ridge,” I said, thinking of how I could complete the third task without making a direct wish for it. “I wish I could hold my breath for the next hour.” I didn’t know how long it would take to swim down two hundred and eighty-seven feet and back up again, but an hour seemed like enough time.
“If you want to hold your breath for the next hour,” said Ridge, “then every time you walk directly under a lightbulb, it will explode.”
“Whoa,” I said. “That seems kind of dangerous. Won’t broken glass fall down on my head?”
“Not if you move out of the way,” said Ridge. “Besides, you can always weave around them so they don’t explode.”
“I’ll always be looking up at the ceiling,” I said. “What if I get a stiff neck?”
“Definitely don’t look up,” Ridge said. “Broken glass could fall in your eye.”
“So how do I weave around lightbulbs if I can’t look up to see where they are?”
Ridge pointed to my hourglass. “You’ll have to work that out later. Besides, this will only last the rest of the week.”
“Fine,” I muttered. “Bazang.”
Sure, exploding lightbulbs meant I’d be spending some time in the dark, but if accepting the consequence allowed me to keep up with Thackary, then don’t you think it was worth it?
I turned to Tina, treading water beside me. “Did you wish for air?”
In response, Tina held up her little genie jar. “I didn’t have to wish. Vale has enough air for both of us inside the jar. When I need to take a breath, I can put my mouth to it and breathe some of the air inside.”
“Seriously?” I shouted. “That’s going to work?” I suddenly felt as though I’d be destroying lightbulbs for nothing. I hadn’t thought about air inside the peanut butter jar.
Tina drew in a deep breath and ducked under the water’s surface. I reached around and unzipped my soggy backpack.
“Oh, come on,” said Ridge. “You’re going to jar me?”
“I didn’t wish for you to be able to hold your breath,” I pointed out. “And if the lake is really as deep as Vale said, then you’ll have to come down with me.”
Ridge nodded in understanding, and I quickly muttered, “Ridge, get into the jar.”
Poof. He disappeared.
Down we went.
Chapter 29
Tina was already swimming downward. I saw her, maybe ten feet below, lifting Vale’s genie jar to her mouth and taking a fresh breath of air. She might have been smart enough to come up with that trick, but my method seemed more foolproof.
I was holding my breath, and I felt perfectly fine. I could do this for an hour. That had to be a world record!
The water beneath us looked dark and foreboding, but things were going swimmingly.
And then I got hooked.
I was diving peacefully when my shoulder brushed past a cord of invisible fishing line. I ducked sideways through the water just as the huge hook passed me by.
I thought I had successfully escaped, when the massive worm suddenly lashed out like a sea serpent, winding its slimy body around my arm. There was a sharp tug and then I felt myse
lf being reeled upward.
Since I was holding my breath, there was no possible way to get Ridge out of his jar to make a wish. Even if I could get him out, I knew talking underwater would mostly sound like “gurgle-gurgle-gurgle blub.”
I punched the nasty worm, but if you’ve ever tried underwater punching, you know that it’s not very effective.
I tried going limp and playing dead with the hope that I would slip through its grasp. While I was in this flaccid state, I saw Tina off to my left. Or maybe my right. She appeared to be having some trouble of her own.
Another hook and worm had found her, too. She was wriggling like a fish desperate to get free, but her demon worm had managed to wrap itself tightly around one ankle.
At last, I broke the water’s surface. The bearded fisherwoman was leaning against the railing of the red boat, straining against the bent pole.
“It’s a good one!” she shouted. “Look at the size of him!”
“Ridge!” I shouted, as the fisherwoman eased me closer to the boat. “Get out of the jar!”
The genie appeared in the water beside me, floundering for a moment as he realized where he was. “What happened?” he cried.
“What does it look like?” I shouted. “I need you to muumuu us out of this mess!”
At the mention of the trigger word, I rolled stomach down in the water, giving up my last bit of resistance against the worm and the fisherwoman. At the same time, Ridge became a shark and shot through the air, his razor teeth snapping the line that was pulling me in.
The fisherwoman stumbled backward, slipping on the deck of the boat. As soon as the line was severed, the worm that held my arm seemed to dry up and unravel, sinking with the massive hook to the bottom of the lake.
The bearded woman recovered quickly, grabbing another fishing pole from a mount on the rail. “Fish on!” she cried, reeling hard. A second later, Tina broke the surface of the lake, gasping for air.
“Ridge!” I shouted, struggling to swim while facedown. “Cut her loose!” The air shark genie spun around, biting through the line that held Tina captive.