The Wishbreaker

by Tyler Whitesides

  “I’m not lying!” I said. And I meant it. Seeing Tina bravely striking out to steal the string from Thackary only confirmed my feelings. Once and for all, I was ready to move on from the questions that had bothered me.

  “If you truly don’t care,” said Chasm, “then why do you cling to the one thing from your past?” He pointed at my hand. “I know about your little card.”

  The ace of hearts card was pinched between my fingers. I must have pulled it out of my pocket without realizing it. That explained why there was a rat on the floor. The card was my nervous habit. My link to the past.

  “Oh, this old thing?” I unfolded the card and held it up for Chasm to see. “Actually, I’m kind of tired of it.”

  I ripped the card in half—and that was when things got really interesting.

  Chapter 24

  Samuel Sylvester Stansworth looked at his genie, despair on his face. “Only one hour left,” he said. “I guess that’s goodbye to all silver cars.”

  “I don’t know,” Dune replied. “A lot can happen in an hour.”

  “Yeah, like getting pulverized by angry gorilla chefs,” said Sam. The creatures pounding on the bathroom door had appeared the moment Sam picked up the saltshaker trinket. There were at least a dozen gorillas, each wielding a fiery spatula of doom. Sam had done his best to wish their way out of the restroom, but the ex-Wishmaker who owned the diner apparently had other trinkets in place to prevent such magical escapes.

  “We’ll have to fight our way past them,” said Dune. “But we’ll have to move that boulder you wished for.” The huge stone was doing a decent job of blocking the bathroom door.

  “They’ll destroy us!” Sam cried. “You know how many wishes it’ll take to get out of here alive?”

  “Well, those guys aren’t going to give up until we complete your quest,” Dune reminded him.

  The gorilla with the floury apron had said as much. Yeah, it talked. Not great, but it got the point across by saying, “We smash Wishmaker. We stop quest.”

  “Finish your quest and the gorilla monsters go away,” Dune encouraged.

  Sam threw his hands up hopelessly. “Even if we get out of this diner in the next hour, the Grand Canyon is halfway across the country. We’ll never get the saltshaker emptied unless I wish for it directly.”

  “That’s usually not a great idea,” warned Dune.

  Sam shrugged. “Maybe worth a shot if it keeps us alive.” He took a deep breath. “I wish that my quest would be complete.” The hourglass popped out on his wrist, but he didn’t even glance down at it.

  “If you want your quest to suddenly be completed,” said Dune, “then everyone we know will have their head replaced with a soccer ball.”

  “What?” Sam shrieked, his voice echoing through the empty diner bathroom. “Won’t that kill them?”

  “Strangely, no,” Dune answered. “They’ll still have a functioning brain in there. But they won’t have eyes, ears, mouths, noses. . . .”

  “That’s horrible!” cried Sam. “Everyone I know?”

  “Everyone we know,” corrected Dune.

  “But, I know a lot of people. My mom and dad. My little sister. My grandma and grandpa. And what about my teachers and my friends? And then there’s everybody in the neighborhood. . . .”

  “I don’t think you can list everyone you know in thirty seconds,” Dune said, pointing at the hourglass on his Wishmaker’s wrist. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been out on a quest, so I really only know you.”

  “So that means my head will get replaced with a soccer ball, too?!”

  “And mine,” said Dune. “Since you know me.”

  “I can’t . . .” Sam mumbled. “I obviously can’t accept this. Better for everyone to lose their cars than their heads. No way.” His hourglass folded out of sight.

  Dune sighed. “Too bad you know so many people. That consequence wouldn’t have been so bad if you didn’t know anybody.”

  Sam stared at his genie, a wild idea striking him upside the head. “I think we can get around this,” he whispered. “I think I can trick the Universe!”

  Sam crossed the diner bathroom, searching for something. He stopped next to a frame on the wall by the paper towel dispenser. The Wishmaker smashed the glass with his elbow and withdrew the contents of the frame.

  It was a playing card. An ace of hearts.

  “Vandalizing the artwork is your big idea?” Dune asked. “That was probably signed by someone famous.”

  “It’s just a random decoration, I think.” Sam held out the card for the genie to inspect it.

  “Oh, so you’re going to do a card trick?”

  “Sort of,” answered Sam. “And I hope it works.” Carefully pinching the corner of the card, he looked at Dune. “Trinket. I wish that this card would store all of our memories as soon as it is folded and release our memories once it is ripped.”

  “Now, that is a good trick!” Dune said. “As a consequence, you will have your back stuck to the ground for an hour after the card is folded or ripped.”

  “What if we fold it more than once?” Sam asked.

  “You’ll only take the consequence the first time it’s folded,” answered Dune. “That’s when the magic will kick in.”

  “So if I happen to unfold it and refold it a bunch of times, nothing new will happen?”

  Dune nodded. “You can only lose all of your memories once.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” Sam said. “I wouldn’t want to keep forgetting what I was doing.” He tapped his chin in thought. “Bazang.”

  For a brief second, the ace card shimmered magically in Sam’s fingertips. “Great!”

  “Wait, I’m not sure I see your plan here,” said Dune.

  “Once I fold the card, we won’t know anyone,” Sam explained. “And if we don’t know anyone, then I can wish for my quest to be completed and dodge the consequence.”

  Dune grinned. “If you don’t know anyone, no one’s head will be replaced with a soccer ball.” Then he frowned. “But I see a big problem. How will you remember to make the wish for your quest after you fold the card?”

  Sam scratched his head in thought. “I’ll make the wish first,” he said. “Then I’ll fold the card right as I say, ‘bazang.’”

  “You’ll have to time it just right,” Dune said.

  “I can do it,” he answered. “Now I wish that my quest would be complete.”

  Dune’s eyes went wide as the hourglass appeared again. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “What?” moaned the Wishmaker.

  “If you want your quest to be completed,” Dune said, “then everyone you don’t know will have their heads replaced with a basketball.”

  “Why?” Sam cried. “Why did it change?”

  “The consequence isn’t always the same,” answered Dune. “If you make the same wish more than once, sometimes the consequence changes to something equally awful. Probably the Universe’s way of stopping you from doing tricks like you were about to pull.”

  “This is stupid!” Sam yelled, throwing the ace card down on the hard floor. “I guess we’re just going to get cooked up by the gorillas!”

  “Hey,” Dune tried. “Don’t give up. You’ve still got wishes.”

  “No!” he said. “I’m done making wishes. I’m done taking consequences. This has been the hardest week of my life. Just look at me! My shoes are too small, and my shirt is freezing cold. Anytime someone clears their throat, I have to slap the bottom of my foot. I smell through my ears, and I break every chair I sit on. I have to do five pushups each time I go outside. If anybody screams, I fall asleep, and when I try to whisper, it sounds like I’m yelling. I’ve got crumbled-up potato chips in my socks, and my legs got stuck facing backward for a whole day. Hot water feels cold to me, and cold water feels hot. The wind blew my hair off, and I had a slice of onion stuck to my forehead. Every time I yawn, a bug flies in my mouth!”

  He sat down, right there on the bathroom flo
or. Dune nodded sympathetically. “You forgot about when your hands got replaced with hooves.”

  “Ha!” Sam cried. “Of course! How could I forget about that day?”

  “I know it’s hard,” Dune said.

  “But you don’t know. You’re a genie. You don’t have to make the hard decisions and live with the consequences.”

  “It’s not that great being a genie, either,” Dune rebutted. “I might actually like to make my own choices.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sam went on. “Now we’re going to get smashed because I wasn’t clever enough to get us out of here.”

  “Technically,” Dune said, “the gorillas are only going to smash you.” He changed his voice to imitate the sentence that the gorilla chef had spoken. “We smash Wishmaker.”

  Sam looked up, his eyes suddenly glinting with hope. “That’s it!” he said. “They’re only after me because I’m a Wishmaker.”

  “Aha!” said Dune. “Once our time runs out, I’ll disappear and you’ll no longer be a Wishmaker. The gorillas should leave you alone. All you have to do is survive another hour.”

  Something suddenly burst through the bathroom door. Dune turned abruptly. It was a hairy hand clutching a burning spatula, dangerous flames dancing in the dim bathroom light. Sam’s defensive boulder wasn’t going to help if the gorillas punched through and climbed over the top.

  “Survive another hour . . .” muttered Sam. “That’ll take too many wishes. Too many consequences. I can’t do it. Unless I wish . . .” He took a deep breath and looked directly at his genie. “I wish I wasn’t a Wishmaker. I wish I didn’t have to make any more wishes.”

  Dune looked up sharply. “Sam,” he whispered. “That’s crazy. You’ll fail your quest.”

  Sam just waved him off. “I basically failed it already. Losing some cars isn’t the end of the world. I’d rather stay alive. What’s the consequence?”

  “It’s . . . it’s unknown.”

  “Unknown?”

  “The Universe isn’t telling me anything about it. I don’t know, Sam. This has never happened to me before.”

  “Is it going to hurt people I care about?” he asked. Another gorilla arm punched through the door.

  “I don’t think so,” said Dune. “From what I can tell, you’d be the only human affected.”

  Dune bent down and scooped up the fallen ace card. There was no practical use for it now, but they had to be careful not to let it bend.

  “You’re not seriously thinking about accepting the Unknown Consequence, are you?” Dune asked, seeing Sam seated in the middle of the bathroom floor, staring at the sands pouring through his hourglass.

  “I don’t want to wish anymore,” whispered Sam. “I’m done.” And then he said the magic word. “Bazang.”

  Chapter 25

  The torn halves of the ace card fluttered to the ground, and I suddenly knew exactly what I needed to do.

  “Umm . . .” I said to Chasm. “I changed my mind.” I tossed him one end of the string. “Does your offer still stand?” I took the other end of the string and tied it in a simple knot around my wrist. “I’m ready to be your Wishmaker.”

  Chasm stooped and picked up the loose end of the string while I held my breath in anticipation. The wall of fire around us was beginning to dwindle, but it was still enough to hold back the others. I wondered if they could see what I was doing.

  “I thought you’d come around,” said Chasm, holding out his wrist. “But you know I can’t tie the tether around my own wrist. It must be your choice. So, come let old Kaz make your greatest wish come true.”

  I must have been holding still, because my feet had sunk into the floor. Squirming, I pulled them out and stepped forward, taking the end of the string from Chasm’s hand. I made a simple loop and cinched it tight around Chasm’s wrist, a ripple of glowing magic passing down the line between us.

  “Yes,” Chasm said. “Yes! You were every bit as foolish as I expected.”

  The genie’s big hands shot out. One of them snatched the dagger from my grasp, while the other shoved me backward.

  “Hey!” I called. Guess I should have realized that getting close enough to tie the tether on Chasm would also be close enough for him to steal the dagger.

  “Oh, you feel betrayed? Tricked?” Chasm laughed. “Boo-hoo! What did you expect? I’m the bad guy!”

  “Ace!” Ridge’s voice called out from behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at him. I was still invisibly tethered to Ridge, but now I had a second genie. The Wishbreaker.

  “Can we move things along here?” Chasm said. “I’ve got other stuff to do today. Let’s take care of this free wish nonsense.” He held out a cordial hand to me. “Go ahead and make your wish, Ace. You should know that you can’t wish to have more wishes without consequences. I wished against that when I was created three thousand years ago.”

  “I’m not interested in more free wishes,” I answered. “I only need one.”

  “Right,” said Chasm. “You want to find out your past. . . .”

  “No,” I said. After what I’d just learned from tearing my ace card, I knew that this wish had to go to Ridge to save him and to make things right. And glancing at Vale beyond the ring of flames, it occurred to me that I shouldn’t stop there. I remembered asking her how she liked being a genie.

  “We’re just pulled along because we have to be here.”

  Well, it was time to change that.

  “This one is for my genie friends,” I said to Chasm. “I wish for Ridge, and Vale, and all the other genies to turn human. To no longer be genies.”

  “Really?” Chasm said. “I see what you’re trying to do here, and it’s not going to work. Sure, this will save your little genie friend from fizzling out of existence, and give all those other weakling kid-genies a chance to live like pathetic humans. But it won’t stop me. I am not a common genie. I am the Wishbreaker, and my power cannot be wished away.”

  “Bazang!” I said.

  From behind me I saw a blinding flash of light as my wish was granted, turning Ridge into an ordinary human kid. Another burst shone across the cave as the wish reached Vale. I knew it was happening all around the world, young genies suddenly popping onto Earth as regular kids.

  I felt a little smile creep onto my face. I’d done all I could for them. Their service as the Universe’s middlemen was over. Now they’d see what it was like to live free and choose their own fates.

  But Chasm was right about the Wishbreaker. My free wish hadn’t stripped away his power. I hadn’t expected it to, and I was okay with that. You see, I had a special ace up my sleeve for this guy.

  “Ha!” shouted Chasm. “Now you’re mine! You wish to have no voice. And the consequence is . . . Wait a minute. I can’t wish that? Why can’t I take away your voice?”

  “Even the Wishbreaker can’t wish against a wish,” I said, a knowing smirk on my face. “If you took my voice, you would stop me from rapping. And I specifically wished to be unstoppable.”

  And with that kind of lead-in, I pretty much had to finish this off in style.

  “Let’s start by thinking back to what the Universe told you,

  The trinkets we were seeking could bind you and hold you,

  The first was unmistakably that spool of string,

  But you were kind of clueless ’bout the second thing.

  We thought the ocean blade would catch you off guard,

  But all this time the second trinket was my ace card.

  By tearing it to pieces I have learned about my past,

  The memories returned in blast, at last,

  Let me spell this out, I hope it’s not too soon,

  Ridge is Samuel Stansworth, and my name is Dune.”

  Chasm stared at me in thought. He reached up and stroked his chin. “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I’ve been calling you Ace this whole time. But your name is actually Dune?”

  Chasm was puzzled. I, too, had spent three years utterly confused. But the
Unknown Consequence wasn’t unknown to me anymore. You see, I used to be Ridge’s genie and Ridge used to be Samuel Sylvester Stansworth. When he’d accepted the Unknown Consequence in that bathroom, it had caused us to switch places. That was the Unknown Consequence. It turned the genie into a human. And it turned the Wishmaker into a genie, taking away his or her ability to make choices, fulfilling the wish for no more wishes. It just so happened that the ace card had been in my hand at the time, and the force of the switch had caused me to fall and bend the card, accidentally deleting all our memories.

  At the same time, I must have hit my head hard enough to knock me out for a couple of days. I woke up in the hospital. Still not sure how I got there, but that’s where my new memories began. You pretty much know the story from there on.

  To think I had carried the answers in my pocket all these years.

  The Genieologist’s words suddenly made sense. “Sometimes, if you give up what you always wanted, the Universe gives you what you truly need.”

  That ace card had meant everything to me. But only when I was ready to give it up, did I find out who I really was. And with that came the knowledge I needed to take down Chasm for good.

  I tossed my backpack to Ridge. “Eat up,” I said. “We’ve got a pointless quest to complete.”

  Still lying on his back, paying for the trinket consequence, Ridge reached into the pack and pulled out the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had made in that parking lot. It wasn’t in great shape, the bread totally smashed and peanut butter leaking out the sides.

  “Do I really have to eat this?” he asked hesitantly.

  “For the good of all red roses,” I replied. Ridge began to chow down and I knew that Jathon and I had both completed our quests. Yes, Tina was still captive, but Jathon had done what the Universe had asked him to do. Using the dagger, he had forcefully separated not just one but twelve Wishmakers from Chasm.

  “Quests complete!” I announced.

  The Wishbreaker stepped toward me. “Why are you wasting my time?”