‘Pray you never find out.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose there’s no getting out of it.’
‘No, sorry.’
‘ So – what will you do now?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, you know how it is. You make all these plans for your retirement then, when it finally comes, you just don’t know what to do with yourself. I mean, I’m still a Djinn, if you know what I mean, but then again I’m not. I expect I’ll figure it out. After all, I’ve got plenty of time.’
‘What do you usually do with your time off?’ she asked, not because she cared, she was stalling for time.
‘Oh, you know this and that. They were just holidays you know, and I couldn’t use all of my powers then. I can now.’
There was another awkward silence.
‘Well thanks,’ said Tamaria thrusting out a hand, ‘for, you know, starting me off and everything. I don’t suppose you had to.’
‘Least I could do.’
‘Well yes!’
‘Right,’ Askphrit clapped his hands and rubbed them together like a nervous substitute teacher on his first day trying to take refuge in a business-like manner.
‘Better get in. I’ll drop you off with a decent first mark. Nice callow youth to start you off, should be no problem for you, not looking like that.
Tamaria said nothing.
Askphrit held out the bottle. ‘Er, by the way,’ he said ‘what’s your name? You never did tell me.’
‘Tamar…’ she began.
Askphrit cut her off. ‘Of what House?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Of the house of Menelaus,’ she said proudly.
Askphrit grinned. ‘Not anymore,’ he told her. ‘Now you are “Tamar The Black” Oh and one more thing, I should have told you before. Don’t know what’s happened to my memory. When you do get out, keep an eye on your bottle. Once a mortal gets hold of it, you’re his, even if you’re not actually in it at the time.’
‘Oh terrific,’ she moaned, ‘Look, just do it will you, the suspense is killing me.’
‘Djinn home,’ he said, and Tamar the Black felt her body dissolve with a horrible feeling of destiny. When she re-materialised she found herself in a nasty, untidy room with a faint smell of oil permeating the brown walls. She could not see out, which was a surprise; surely glass was transparent?
And the light seemed to be coming from within the bottle not from outside as she had expected. She surveyed her surroundings.
‘Cosy!’ she snorted disparagingly, ‘huh! What a dump. Oh well better get on with it. This could take some time.’
Thirty seconds later she was standing in an exact facsimile of the temple of Artemis that she had visited with her mother. Her – mother… she waited for the pang that she knew, in the deep recesses of her conscience, that she should be feeling about her, about the fact that she would never see her, or any of her family, ever again. It did not come. In fact, suddenly they seemed quite far away and insignificant. She had forgotten for the moment that she was not human anymore and, as such, could no longer experience human feelings of any kind. She shrugged and added a bed to the furnishings, picked up the Charter and then Tamar the Black settled down to read and wait.
* * *
Later on, Tamar’s (former) mother came bustling into the room. She was muttering under her breath in the way that mothers do. ‘I don’t know, these girls what a mess it is in here, look at this, scrolls strewn everywhere. I do wish Xanthe would go out more, make some friends or something. If only she had a sister more her own age than poor little Lydia. Someone she could talk to.
~ Chapter Three ~
Tamar was bored. She had spent the best part of several millennia feeling bored actually; Askphrit certainly had not been wrong about that.
She had considered choosing a surname, just for something to do, and to help her fit in. Suddenly everybody had a surname; it was the latest thing she assumed. She was not really sure when it had started. The truth was, she had never fitted in anywhere, even in her own family, and she just could not think of one that she liked anyway. Not that it would have mattered for long if she had. Surnames, she assumed were just another human fad. She had seen many of them come and go over the centuries. Family names had been popular before - in China for instance and ancient Rome (but only for the nobility) but these usually had some significance. Modern surnames seemed, primarily to be for distinguishing one Julie or Alan from another. The same objective could be achieved by assigning everyone a number. Indeed, since the twentieth century, this seemed to be the way things were going, with everybody having a myriad of numbers attached to their name. National insurance or social security numbers, bank accounts, medical cards and video club card numbers and so on. It would not be terribly long, Tamar surmised, before names were phased out entirely as unnecessary. In fact, give it another century or two, and people would just be given a barcode at birth, and that too would just be another fad as far as Tamar was concerned.
What humans liked best, as far as she could see, was not sex or fighting each other or making money. These were just the things they thought they liked doing best. What they really liked was organising the world, categorising people, listing them and putting them in order so that they could always lay their hands on them. Making up a huge ledger of humanity to keep everything and everyone in their place. They seemed to find doing this reassuring; all trying fervently to make order out of what was essentially chaos. It had never changed, and it was very different from what they believed they wanted. But when a man wishes for power, what he actually wants is to be the one at the top of the list, the person who draws up the ledger and organises all the rest. Those without power console themselves with organising their CD collection. It is the reason that parents interfere with their children’s marriages.
It had been, up to a point, an interesting life, which contrasts sharply I know with what was said earlier about boredom. But, in fact, although there had been enough interest and excitement to fill one ordinary lifetime, Tamar had now been around for the equivalent of several hundred lifetimes; hence boredom most of the time.
She considered that she had got off to a particularly unfortunate start. The callow youth had turned out to be a nasty cunning weasel whose first wish had been for unlimited wishes for the rest of his life, which had meant that she had been stuck with him for the next sixty odd years. Praise Allah he had not thought to ask for immortality. He had never married; there had been no need with Tamar on hand to provide hot and cold running girls day and night, and Tamar herself to perform all domestic requirements. So this meant, at least, that he had had no heir to leave the bottle to, and when he finally died, Tamar set off with the intention of hunting down Askphrit – the νόθος’ and giving him a piece of her mind.
To date she still had not found him, and sometimes she wondered if he had left the planet, which was entirely possible (she herself had run a few trips to the outer rings of Saturn). She hoped not, because now what she wanted was a lot more than a sharp word.
After the cunning weasel had died Tamar became a mermaid for a while. She had harboured this fantasy for a long time, ever since she had been a small girl. Unfortunately, the reality, as is usual in such cases, was a bit if a disappointment and she only stuck it for a decade or so. At first it had been wonderful, the freedom of the ocean was intoxicating, and it was so beautiful down there. More importantly, she felt sure that nobody would force her into her bottle in the sea. The other mermaids (whose existence had surprised her at first) were magical creatures in their own right and not interested in wish-fulfilment. They had recognised her as Djinn straight away (something about the eyes apparently) but had made her welcome anyway. And it had been fun for a while, but eventually, as with everything else, it became tedious. Mermaids, in common with Rhine Maidens, who she met later on, are not known for their intellectually stimulating conversation. Perhaps having a short attention span is an evolut
ionary advantage in such a repetitive environment, stopping them from going insane with frustrated boredom. But the real problem in the end for Tamar, was the neighbours. Not the sharks, barracudas or stingrays, any Djinn (or mermaid for that matter) can deal with that. No, it was the cursed Sirens.
A mermaids' main MO is to sit prettily on a rock, singing sweetly to lure sailors to their doom.
Likewise, the job description of a Siren, as laid out by Circe, is to sit prettily on a rock, singing sweetly to lure sailors to their doom, in their case, straight into the clutches of Circe, a sorceress who was seriously overreacting to being dumped by her boyfriend.
What began as a bitter rivalry had degenerated over time into the feudin’ an’ a fightin’ normally reserved for those clans who live in the backwoods and marry their cousins. What had started out with the marine equivalent of tipping the rubbish bins over the fence into next doors’ garden had escalated into sneaking about in the middle of the night, rearranging shark nets or breaking into the menagerie and letting out all of Circe’s pet sailors (some of which were dangerous animals) causing no end of chaos.
By the time Odysseus arrived, a big muscular chap with destiny written all over him,
and the whole thing had degenerated into a bloody free for all with the Sirens winning, Tamar had had enough. She put herself back in the bottle and hitched a ride with the hero. It was either that or join the sirens – she felt she would have made a good siren, she was alluring and she had no morals, but, unfortunately, she had no singing voice to speak of. Besides which, she did not like them.
* * *
The three wishes of Odysseus were: -
One, ‘Get that damn song out of my head.’
Two, ‘Get my ship safely past that monster and the whirlpool from hell’ (Scylla and Charibdis)
Three, ‘Help me to string this blasted bow; my arthritis is playing me up.’ (Well he had been at sea for ten years.)
It was all far too easy and, sooner than she could have believed, she was free again; though somewhat disappointed. Anybody, she thought, manifesting destiny all over the place like that, should have had more ambition. She had sincerely hoped that he might be the one; it was the only reason she had not turned herself into a seagull and got the hell away from there.
“The one”, the ultimate sucker, had proved frustratingly elusive. Nobody, it seemed was prepared to be as stupid and greedy as she had been. How many times had she wheedled, ‘You could have all the power that you want, if you knew what to ask for,’ to those who had seemed amenable? Mainly those who had started off by wishing for more wishes and there were a depressingly large number of these. But they never did get the point. It is forbidden in the Djinn Charter to directly suggest a wish to a client, but nobody could say that she had not done her best. Enlarging on the amazing powers that she possessed, just as Askphrit had done to her (the νόθος). But they were all either too stupid or too wary to fall for it. Even the foolish Prince, who had come so close and then had inadvertently wished for impotence. She had always felt that it served him right. His first wish had been to become King, and his father had immediately died.
And always, always she ended up back in the bottle; Askphrit had been right about that too. Djinn genetics dictated a fatal flaw, a tendency to get suckered back into the bottle by even the most obtuse of humans, or even – and she had done this herself once or twice – a penchant for saying to themselves. ‘I’ll just get back in for a while to get away from it all.’ And of course, once inside it takes a mortal to get them out – another thing Askphrit had failed to mention. There is a strong link between a Djinn and her or his prison. It calls to them as irresistibly as any Siren to a boatload of sex starved jolly tars. There is no escape; it’s probably psychological.
Tamar, on making her first escape had, quite predictably, smashed the bottle. She had not really expected it to work; nothing’s ever that easy. It had not; she had smashed it three times and every time she turned round, there it was. And every time she turned around for evermore, there it would be.
She had watched the world change; intermittently naturally, she had missed bits and had had to catch up later. Although, being a clever girl, she had spent more time out than in. She had been all over the world and had been slaved to many different types of people. She had spent time with the Vikings and the Hun and other assorted warrior types until they all began to look the same, fierce, drunk and waving a bloodstained sword. With Kings, not so many of these, royalty tend to have people to open bottles for them. Sorcerers, although they seemed to have become extinct now. Come to think of it, she had not seen a dragon for a hell of a long time either.
Mostly though, she had met ordinary people, some of whom had become Kings or Sorcerers (and even one dragon, but he had been killed shortly afterwards by a chap named George, she seemed to remember) soon after they met her.
She had seen history being made, then changed, and then forgotten as the centuries piled up, and now she had arrived in the twenty first century; a time when technology was threatening to make magic redundant, something she had never thought she would see.
Technically, she was not seeing it now, since she was once again back in the bottle. (Since nineteen ninety-two, in fact, when her last master had refused to use his last wish saying he was saving it for an emergency. He had then had inconsiderately gone and died on her, leaving her trapped) more than ten years and she was bored.
She tended these days (that is for the last two centuries or so) to spend her time in the bottle, in between redecorating and experimenting with her appearance, (even a million years would not see her tire of this) thinking about how to make the world a better place for human beings.
Because, unlikely as it seems, she had become quite fond of them. Something she had never been when she had been one. Even the worst human always had some redeeming quality (even politicians, who were there, apparently to give the rest of the population someone to blame now that the gods were gone)
Until she turned up, that was. Getting rid of all the Djinn, she had decided would be a good start. But so far nobody had thought to wish for that and she could not suggest it (rule seventeen) but if she were only free… As it was only humans are free and have the power to change the world – shame.
The elimination of all evil was not the answer. It is never that simple, there has to be balance. Without evil, there cannot be good – a cliché but true nevertheless, like all clichés. Getting rid of the Djinn, however, would definitely be a step in the right direction. It would stop them from popping out of bottles, barging in on some poor mortal’s life and downright buggering it up; like she always did. Sometimes she hated herself, but she could not help it, it was not as if she could pop out of the bottle and say ‘Your wish is my command – but I wouldn’t recommend it.’ And even if she did, no one would listen. If mortals have a fatal flaw, it is wanting something for nothing. Not one of them so far had resisted temptation; she could not blame them; that is the whole point of the Djinn/Master set up.
She had been over this a thousand times (at least). It was only increasing her frustration. She was trapped; all she could do was carry on trying to get free at someone else’s expense. She wished (ha) that there were another way. But if she ever did escape… ha, if!
In the meantime – there was only boredom.
There was a familiar rush of air above her head, and her body started to dissolve. Here we go again!
~ Chapter Four ~
Denis Sanger was in a good mood, Denny to his frie … as he was known informally; to his boss, for example, although his boss also variously called him Pete, Mike, John and even sometimes just “Hey man”.
Also to the Landlord of the “Fiddler’s Elbow”, and to Barry, Mosh and Skinner who he sometimes met in the aforementioned Fiddler’s Elbow; he did not, however, regard these last mentioned as his friends. The last person he had regarded as a friend had been Timmy White in
Junior School. (He had had “cronies” at high school, of course, of the Barry, Mosh and Skinner types, who had tolerated him for his “wicked” sense of humour. A sense of humour which had included, wearing his school tie around his head instead of his neck, filling his mouth with maggots in biology class and leaping around on tables playing air guitar.) Since his definition of a friend was a person with whom one had interests in common and who was unlikely to kick your head in if he inadvertently offended them, Denny now had no friends that he considered worthy of the name.
So far, however, Denny’s head remained intact and Barry, Mosh and Skinner were useful contacts whose housebreaking proclivities had provided Denny with some interesting items of cult memorabilia, the true value of which they were entirely unaware.
Not that he approved of their methods of course, but he did not want to offend them by saying so. So he pretended to believe what they told him, that they were in the “house clearance” business, which, in a manner of speaking, was true. They just did not bother to get the owner’s permission first.
For their part, he knew, they regarded him as an easy mark, to offload all the “geek rubbish” onto, or rather, they now targeted stuff that they knew he would be willing to buy. He could think of no way to dissuade them from doing this without losing his kneecaps.
Denny’s cheerful mood today was on account of their latest acquisition. A mint condition original Millennium Falcon still in the packaging. And the fact that he had once again got away with his arms and legs still attached.
Of course, he had, as usual, had to buy a whole box load of rubbish along with it, in what Barry referred to as a “job lot”. But it did not matter; he had still paid far less than it was worth. The lads were delivering it to his flat for him, while he was at work. They did not have a key, well they did not need one and Denny knew for a fact that when he got home, a small but significant amount of minor items would be missing and he would have to re-stock the fridge with beer. It was a small price to pay.
He wandered back to work, singing “Don’t Fear The Reaper” under his breath, and made a mental note to call in at the off license on his way home.
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