"At least they've learned to knock," Myrdri said, smirking and letting him go.
He answered the door, still grinning. Dirk glanced back and forth between them with a bemused smile. "Still got your clothes on, that's good. I came to tell you there's a storyteller in town. Jillan's hosting him at the guesting house, and he promised at least three stories after seeing the spread she put out for dinner."
Myrdri bounced excitedly and grabbed her shawl from the peg by the door. They conferred briefly, then Addan slipped his arm around her waist for the walk to the guesting house. Dirk continued towards the far side of the village, while they detoured north to help spread the news.
By the time they arrived, almost everyone in the village was gathered to hear the stories, but they still managed to find a bench with space for a couple to sit cozily. A few people called out greetings, but then the storyteller stood and everyone settled down to listen.
His first tale was a familiar one, about a princess who married a frog only to discover he had been a human prince in disguise all along. One little girl's reaction to that revelation was a very loud "Eeeeuw!" that made everyone, even the storyteller, burst out into laughter.
The second story was another old favorite, although the storyteller gave the lost babes a happy ending rather than the more common death in the woods. By the end, the children in the audience were yawning, and there was a pause while their parents bid everyone else good night and bundled them off to bed.
Then the storyteller ordered the lamps doused, leaving only the light and shadows of the hearth-fire to tell his promised third tale by.
This story was new to them all, and darker than the first two. It started on a wedding day, with a handsome prince who woke to find his bride bespelled by a powerful witch. She slept, untouched by any attempts to wake her, while the gruesome hag donned the bridal gown and demanded that the prince marry her instead.
Repulsed, he refused, but the witch had been prepared for that. She warned him that his beloved would lie as she was, in a sleep like death, until he changed his mind. Then she let out a blood-curdling cackle and flew away, leaving the girl as still as death and the prince heartbroken at his loss.
He stayed beside his bride for three days, holding her hand and calling her name softly, but to no avail. On the morning of the fourth day, he set aside his grief, donned his armor, saddled his horse, and set off on a quest to find the witch; not to marry her, but to destroy her.
The storyteller spoke on, pausing only to sip from his cup, and each challenge the prince faced in his quest was a story in its own right. In one, he helped an old lady who gave him a boon to use against the evil witch. In another, he was tempted by lovely maidens who attacked him as serpentine monsters when he spurned them. Finally, he found the witch and used the boons and allies he had gained along the way to defeat her.
The villagers cheered when the final blow was struck and the evil witch lay dead on the ground. They chatted a little amongst themselves, revisiting the challenges the prince had faced, paying only partial attention while the storyteller brought the prince home again to his palace and his love.
"But still she did not wake," the storyteller said, and the room fell silent.
"No," Myrdri moaned softly, still caught up in the story. Addan hugged her close, comforting himself as well as her.
The storyteller sipped from his cup again, waiting to be sure every eye was on him. Then he told them of the princess in her bower, still so deeply asleep that the people thought she was dead, and had begun to speak of burying her. The prince set off again, this time on a quest for knowledge rather than vengeance.
He searched high and low, consulting with witches and fairies and magical creatures of every kind. None of them could help him, until he came to a simple fortune-teller in the city of Saala. She told him of the one creature who might have the power to break the witch's curse. "Be careful of what you wish for, when you seek the djinn," she warned him when she told him the way to their realm, but he was not afraid. He knew what he wished for.
Once again, the prince faced a journey fraught with peril, and as he overcame each challenge the villagers listened intently, hanging on the storyteller's every word. Though it was long past time for them to be in their beds, resting for the next day's work, no one wanted to leave and miss finding out what happened next.
Finally, the prince reached the mountain home of the djinn. It greeted him, saying "By your journey here, you are granted three wishes."
The prince wasted no time. "I wish that the witch's curse upon my beloved be broken."
The djinn clapped its hands. "Of the three, two remain," it said. "The curse is broken."
Next, the prince wished to be returned to his bride's side. The djinn clapped its hands, and in an instant they stood in the prince's palace, where the princess was just waking up and greeted him with a kiss.
"Of the three, one remains," said the djinn, but the prince now had everything he had quested for.
"I want nothing more than to celebrate my wedding day as it should have been," the prince said, thinking to dismiss the djinn without making his third wish.
But the djinn clapped its hands, and the prince found the castle suddenly bustling with activity as it had on that long-ago wedding day. He himself was younger, and clothed in his wedding finery rather than his accustomed traveling garb, and when his people greeted him it was as if he had been away no longer than a good night's sleep.
"Three sought, three granted," the djinn's voice said softly in the prince's mind, then nothing remained of his quests but the memories, more vivid than any dream.
The storyteller intoned the words, "and they all lived happily ever after," and the spell of the story was broken. The villagers yawned and stretched, paid their sleepy regards to the storyteller, and wandered slowly out into the pre-dawn light.
"That was so sad," Myrdri said as Addan walked her home.
"But they did live happily ever after," he said, hugging her close while they walked.
"Yes, but she'll never know what he went through for her. He might even forget, since he has nothing to show for all his quests and adventures."
"He has her," Addan said, nuzzling his wife's neck. "I know that would be enough for me."
She laughed, and kissed him, and they went home to bed.
~~*~~
Three Wishes
No one had known that the storyteller was sick.
Addan was one of the first to fall ill, just a day after the storyteller continued on his way.
Myrdri nursed him for three days, soothing his fever dreams and coaxing him into eating broth and bread. By the time her own fever started, every household in the village was struggling to tend all the ill, and she refused to burden anyone else by asking for help.
Addan was just starting to feel better when she collapsed in the kitchen. He got her into bed and did his best to tend to her himself, but it was too late.
When she died, he refused to bury her.
He was half-mad with his own lingering fever, and obsessed with the storyteller who had brought this sickness upon them.
More importantly, he was obsessed with the story, and the fortune-teller in faraway Saala who could tell him the way to the djinn.
***
The djinn was white - white skin, white hair, white eyes. White as chalk, or as smoke. His loincloth was gray, or appeared that way. No mere fabric could look truly white against the djinn's utter lack of color.
"Greetings, seeker, and welcome. By your journey here, you are granted three wishes."
Just like the story. Addan swallowed nervously and cleared his throat, but his voice still cracked when he spoke. "I want you to bring Myrdri back from the dead."
"You have the body?"
He nodded to the long package he had carried all the way to the djinns' mountain domain, well wrapped against insects and elements. The djinn waited, motionless, so Addan hurried to unwrap his beloved wife's body, trying t
o ignore the smell of decay as she was revealed. "This is her," he said, when the djinn still did not move.
The djinn clapped his hands softly. A moment later, the body gasped, writhed, and lay still. "Of the three, two remain," the djinn intoned.
"Wait... What happened? What's wrong?" Addan grasped him by the shoulders and shook, before some unseen force pushed him away, leaving him standing by Myrdri's corpse again. "What happened," he demanded again, trying not to give in to either fear or rage.
The djinn appeared unconcerned, with either the failure or Addan's reaction. "Life returned, but the body was too damaged to retain it."
"Well, then heal the body!"
The djinn clapped softly. "Of the three, one remains."
Addan looked down, and there she was. Instead of a shrunken, rotting corpse, she looked like his Myrdri again. He smiled stiffly. It had been months since he'd smiled, and seen her beautiful smile in return. He stroked his hand softly down her cheek, the way he used to wake her from sleep. The skin was soft, firm... cold.
He felt his smile twisting, and couldn't keep himself from backing away in horror. This was worse than the corpse, worse than the brief tortured motion of the first wish. This was the night she died all over again, when he kept thinking that he was wrong, that she would wake up any minute.
"She's still dead," he choked out, holding back the keen of mourning that threatened to break through instead of words.
The djinn remained impassive. "The body is healed."
"Bring her back to life!" Addan shouted.
The djinn clapped his hands softly. "Three sought, three granted," he said.
The newly healed body inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. When Addan crept forward to touch hand to cheek again, the skin was warm against his fingers.
"Oh, Myrdri. Myrdri, my love," he murmured, clutching her tightly to his chest. "Myrdri?"
He looked up at the djinn, who was already walking away. "Wait! Why does she not wake?"
The djinn looked back at him with those disturbing white eyes and smiled. At least Addan thought it was a smile, though something about it made a chill run down Addan's back.
"My power is of this world," the djinn said, "as is that body. The body lives. The soul is not my concern."
"No!" Addan shouted. "I told you to bring her back!"
The djinn's smile widened, showing perfect white teeth set in white gums behind white lips. The grin mesmerized Addan, drawing in all his attention so that the rest of the world seemed to fade away. Then he blinked, and when he opened his eyes again the djinn was gone.
"No," he whispered, then shouted his denial to the sky. "NO!!!"
He looked around, but there was no sign of the djinn, no sign of hope. He looked to the body - breathing, warm, but still just a body without Myrdri's vibrant spirit to animate it. So close, and yet so, so far from his goal. Finally, he sat on a rock and rested his head in his hands and cried.
"What do I do now? What do I do?"
Finally, the chill of the air pierced the bleak depression of his failure. When he shifted, his legs felt numb from the cold stone under him. He stood and paced, swearing at the pain and his own stupidity, but with no target to vent it on, his anger soon died away.
He stretched, and sighed, and looked back to his wife's newly restored body. "I do what I've always done, right Myrdri? Keep going."
In the last light of the day, he set about the practical work of keeping them alive through the night. He started a fire and rigged a windbreak, gnawing on jerky while he worked. Finally, he snuggled up to the unresponsive body, sharing his blankets and his body heat to keep it warm and living.
"Right, my love? This just means our quest isn't quite over yet." He had spoken to her corpse for the entire journey here. It seemed natural to keep talking to her now, even if her soul was somewhere else. "And maybe you can hear me, wherever you are. Don't worry, love. I'll come for you."
He laced his fingers with hers, and smiled as he dozed off, dreaming of happier days to come.
~~*~~
...You Might Get It
Ella let herself into Great-aunt Tilly’s house with a sigh. The funeral was over and done with, the well-wishers had gone on with their own lives, and now the house waited, full of a lifetime of stuff to sort through.
Her coworkers knew she came here every night. They thought she was just too cheap to hire a service to box everything up and auction it all off, and she didn't bother correcting them. They all seemed content with a life of work and TV, and she didn't think they would understand if she told them she was bored. So bored that going through the remnants of someone else's life was more interesting than going home and living her own.
She would love to travel, but travel took money, and money required work, and work only gave her two weeks off a year for travel. Living vicariously through Tilly was at least something she could do every night.
She sighed again, dropped her work bag on the kitchen table and headed upstairs to the attic, binder in hand. She might be living vicariously, but the cataloging needed to be done too.
The attic was tightly packed, so she had started by moving enough stuff out into other areas of the house to allow her to reach a wall. Tonight, she planned to start sorting through all the stuff left in the room, piling cataloged items against the wall and moving her way through by relocating things into the areas she had just cleared, like one of those sliding-tile puzzles.
It was slow going, opening every box to see what might be inside, and noting everything in detail in her binder before repacking it and adding it to the growing “done” pile.
She had been working for a couple of hours when she opened yet another unmarked box to see a brassy lamp right out of Arabian Nights. She ran a finger along its side. “I remember Tilly telling stories about a genie and wishes. Let’s see, how did they go?” She stared at the ceiling, trying to remember the details. Then she smiled and started writing.
She wished for a handsome husband, but when he appeared they were still poor so she wished to be rich. Then her husband ran away with the money and another woman, and her third wish was that the first two wishes had never happened.
She smiled, closing the lamp’s box and moving it to the done pile. “A classic fairy tale, really. Explain something every-day, like the fact that she never married, with something fantastic and impossible to disprove. I think she wanted this world to have a little magic in it as much as I do.”
She sighed again, leaning against a box and closing her eyes. “Wouldn't it be nice? I wish there really was a genie, waiting around to grant incautious wishes.” A smile crept across her face as she let herself daydream. “I'd wish there were more of me. Then I could do my work and travel at the same time. I wonder if I would get along with myself.”
She froze, some piece of her mind recognizing something very wrong about the way her voice sounded. Louder than it should have been, and... She opened her eyes, and looked over, into her eyes.
“Now there’s a wish I haven’t heard before,” another voice said. “It’s my pleasure to grant it.”
She looked to the stairs - the only place left in the attic where there was room for another person. A handsome man with dark skin and glossy black hair leaned on the banister, his posture showing off the well-defined muscles of his arms and torso. He wore an embroidered vest that complimented his body rather than hiding it, and his pants were much tighter than anything she had ever imagined a genie wearing.
He grinned, obviously enjoying her reaction, and she wondered idly if this was the handsome husband who had broken Great Aunt Tilly’s heart. Her own heart sank as she realized just how incautious her wish had been. “How many of us are there?” she asked, in perfect unison with her other self. They glanced at each other, then back at the genie.
“Do you wish to know?” he asked.
She took a breath, then bit her lips, shooting out a hand to cover her double’s mouth at the same time that her double’s hand cove
red hers. They looked at each other, nodded, and dropped their hands. “We need to talk,” they said in unison.
“Of course,” the genie said, glancing her over in an admiring way that made her heart beat double-time. “I’ll be nearby, eagerly awaiting your next wish.” Then between one breath and the next, he was gone.
“Dice,” both Ellas said, and they raced for the stairs. Each paused to let the other go past, then moved, then paused again in a frustrating dance of synchronicity. Finally, they crowded down side-by-side and made their way to the game cabinet. Tilly’s old Monopoly set was in the top drawer, and they each took a die, rolling them in unison. One came up six, and the other came to rest on a two.
The Ella who rolled the six said "I was careless. I didn’t specify how many, or where, or when. I just said more. And you saw how he tried to trick us out of a wish. I don’t think we can trust him.”
“It’s like all the stories,” said the Ella who had rolled two. “Genies grant wishes, but only in such a way that they turn on the wisher. And we don’t know that we even get three wishes. He hasn’t told us any rules.”
“Right,” said the first Ella, looking into her double's eyes. She knew they were both tempted to try to game the system, to get everything they could out of their wishes. But without knowing the system, trying to take advantage of it was a fool’s game. They shook their heads in unison, then nodded to each other.
“I wish that my last wish was undone,” they said, still staring into each others' eyes.
The next instant, there was no one between her and the wall. She swayed, and sat down abruptly on the floor, suddenly remembering rolling both six and two, as well as appearing in other places with no idea of how she had gotten there.
She remembered looking around and seeing verdant jungle, a waterfall that looked just like the pictures she’d seen of Niagara, the Eiffel Tower. Other memories had been less pleasant - a snowstorm, swiftly freezing her through her short-sleeved blouse and pants, a mountain scene that seemed peaceful enough until it was torn apart by an explosion, and still more images that started to fade as she readjusted to being one person instead of dozens.