The Jinni waited impatiently for the sounds of battle that never came. After some time, she paced the sand outside the tent, waiting for her master to emerge.
When her master trampled out, her lips pulled tight into a thin smile. When the tent flaps opened again, the young priest emerged alive and well. Her jaw fell agape.
“Well, this is truly a miracle. I-” she began.
Her master looked displeased, but his voice was hardly intimidating, sounding more like a whimper than anything else, “You are a curse, Sephora!”
“Well, I-”
“This er… dude is going to take you in his possession,” he decreed.
She stepped up to her master, looking him up and down. “Oh, will he now?”
“Yes, he will!” The unbeatable champion folded his arms, and the priest inched away from their confrontation.
The monster continued, “I’m sick of you treating me like a loser, even when I’ve proven myself to you over and over and over.”
“Psht. You know that was my magic and not you… and if you’re just going to pass me off like property, then I can finally say it… You are a loser!” She made the shape of an L with her hand and pressed it to her forehead.
“Be gone, you wicked Delilah! Go hang out with the cool, ripped hunk from the freaking Arabian Nights! I don’t care!”
“Fine! I will!” She folded her arms, and stamped her foot.
“But one last wish?” he simpered.
She looked down her nose at him, as if he were a slug. “What is it?”
“Change me back? Put me back to normal. In my world. In my time. Please, for old time’s sake?”
Her lower lip stuck out a little. “Fine. Say the words.”
“I wish…” was all he said.
And the giant beast shrank into a small man with a Def Leppard t-shirt. He slipped off the ring.
“I guess this is goodbye.” Looking a bit dejected, she said, “It was going to happen no matter what, so...”
“Hey.” The little man lifted her pointed chin. “Don’t frown because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
“Don’t you... forget about me?”
He reached up and touched his thumb to her lips. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
The priest stood there confused, his mind circling around references he was too far away, in both time and space, to ever grasp.
“Okay.” The little man handed the ring to the bewildered young hero. “Here.”
He stretched out his hand, and a silver ring tumbled into his palm. It had a large ruby-red gemstone, around which was stamped NHS Lions 1987.
“Just say I wish, and she’ll fill in the rest,” the once unbeatable champion said.
“Er…” He knew better than to leave a wish in the hands of the Jinni.
Jinn, or when they are not imprisoned, Djinn, are notoriously tricky, even when a wish is explicitly worded.
There was no turning back, so he did it anyway. He thought of the strange, little man’s last request, and without knowing the details of when or where the Jinni’s former master called home, he said aloud, “I wish…”
And the little man was gone.
The Jinni, Sephora, turned away, trying to secretly wipe a tear from her eye.
“If you cared for him… why did you..?” He gestured vaguely.
“It’s complicated,” she snapped. “The Jinni curse - it only allows the vessel to stay with someone so long before it gets lost or stolen anyway. It was better this way than if he had gotten stuck here in this world, in this time.”
Our hero only nodded. “So, you are a curse?”
Her back to him, she took a deep breath to calm her tears. Then, she turned to face him with an unconvincing smile. “When is a woman anything other than a curse to a man?”
Remembering the goddess, he said, “I wish I knew.”
Her smile became taunting. She tutted at him, pointing to the ring in his hand.
His brow furrowed in confusion for a second. Then, as he realized he had just made a wish, he waved his arms wildly. “No. No. No. I didn’t mean it!”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ve had enough practice to control the wish reflex when it’s a small mistake. Try not to make big mistakes though. Those compulsions are not as easily redirected.”
He nodded, and she walked him to the tent, which he wished clean of all the armored corpses of slain warriors. Then, he wished for comforts like bread, fruits, and wine, and nothing else.
She told him fantastic tales from her world, the world of Djinn. The Djinn were a pious and serious race. No magick was allowed inside the citadel of their land. Each Djinn had phenomenal powers to forge wills and bend reality; powers which needed to be contained. When a young Djinn came of age - which, due to their nearly immortal life spans, took several hundred years - they entered the rite of Holy Servitude. The rite was developed to send the adolescents out into the universe as Jinni, and made them agents to the whims of fate and desire. The Holy Servitude was a religious quest to learn of the dangers and temptations of the infinite powers inherent to the Djinn. The lesson was a torment to learn, but had enchanting side benefits.
She told him tales of other worlds and different times - like the time her last master was from, called “the 80′s.” She spoke to him of ancient and future wars. The kindness of strangers and the cruelties of friends. Her stories taught him more than he had ever learned inside the walls of the temple.
He told her of his short life as a priest and its troubles.
She offered to fix the past for him, no tricks, as a favor from a stranger. He thanked her, but no, he didn’t think that would be right, and he was too heartsick to return.
She told him of the injustices which had befallen her, the evils people wished for. Her retellings made her shiver, made her cry, and she told him those were the tales easiest to tell. There were worse, far worse memories she couldn’t bear to utter.
She was shackled to this fate until an unknowable time. The universe would decide when she was ready to return home, having fully learned the dogmatic lessons of her people. But, if she was wished free, that would mean another must take her place, and then she would never be permitted to return to the land of her people. For, to sacrifice another to save oneself was the ultimate sin of the Jinn.
He held her. They kissed. They made love, and he wished her free of course, but not before having a long conversation about it.
“You’ll have to take my place,” she cautioned.
“I know,” he said.
“You’ll become a Jinni.”
“I know.”
“You might be doomed for thousands of years before you find freedom again. You will face horrors that you must, in turn, pass to another if they wish to take your place.”
He grabbed her hand, “I understand.”
He had no idea.
The priest had learned too young, and too passionately, how to devote his life to a cause, to a person, with complete undying loyalty. The exile and betrayal were not enough to undo all that learning. He had devoted himself to this girl like she was his new religion, and she knew it. But the more she protested, the more sincere became his proclamations.
Until she held his hand and asked, “Are you really going to do this?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
She gripped his hands tighter and tears of shame, and love, and freedom filled her eyes. “Thank you.” The words barely came out as a whisper.
Hand in hand, he tried to look into her eyes as he said the words, “I wish you free.” Her knees buckled as he said it, and the tears ripped through her in piercing, soul-tearing sobs.
She was free. She had betrayed her religion and her people. And this man - this stupid, sweet, naive, beautiful boy - had just damned himself to save her wretched life.
“Take it back!” She heaved and sobbed as her fingers slipped from his. “Take it all back! Take the wish back.”
But magick was warping around him like a sand storm. It roared, and whipped, and stung. The magick became so thick, his hands were disappearing through the opaque cloud of dust.
He could barely make out Sephora crumpled in her garments and bangles in the sand.
He called to her and reached out, but there was only black…
After the magick faded and she could breathe through the sobs, Sephora looked up. Wet sand clung to her face where it had mixed with the snot, and the drool, and the tears, from where her heart had ripped her open.
She saw the ring a short distance away in the sand. Sensing no time to stand, she crawled and dug her way toward it, but it was too late. A gray hand swept across it like a shadow. Sephora lifted her reddened eyes to the three old crones before her.
“Let me undo it? Please…”
The three sisters named Fate towered above her like three gray obelisks. Their eyeless sockets bore down at her with fearsome finality. Their shrouds pooled heavily onto the sand. The thinnest sister pulled out a string from her shroud, and three echoing voices in unison said, “This is the only peace you will meet in the freedom which you seek.”
The eldest sister pulled a pair of metal shears out from her sleeve.
Sephora released one last quivering sob. She shook her head, and grasped for comfort that was not there. The sand slipped through her fingers.
“We are grateful for your aid. By this snip our debt to you is paid.”
Then, came the sound of grinding, rusted metal. The severed string drifted to the desert floor, and the girl lay her head down in the sand. She was free.
