Muk-muk! cries Goldie.
A hush comes over the Great Hall. Everyone is staring at the tiny squirrel with the gold collar.
Oh, no. Did we break some sort of rule? Are animals really not allowed inside the palace? I figured Prince would have to wait outside, but this itty-bitty squirrel can fit in my pocket!
The sultan stands up. The man behind him steps forward and narrows his eyes at us again. The guards step forward.
I wait, holding my breath.
“Uh-oh,” Jonah whispers.
“Uh-oh is right,” Aladdin says. “I can forget about marrying the princess.”
Kuk! the mini squirrel says. Kuk-kuk. Then he scurries over to the sultan and hops up onto his long purple slipper.
My eyes widen. We are SO about to get kicked out.
The sultan lifts up his foot. The little squirrel stretches and fluffs up his bushy tail over the edge of the slipper.
The sultan opens his mouth and … “Awww!” he says. “I’ve never seen a squirrel like this! Look at its stripes! And its adorable cheeks! I had a pet squirrel as a child, you know.” He scoops up Goldie and cuddles him against his cheek. The squirrel licks his face and the sultan laughs.
Our offering is working! The sultan loves the tiny squirrel. Go, Karimah!
The sultan nods and nuzzles the squirrel, then notices the name tag. “And his name is Goldie! I love gold! Thank you!”
Aladdin boldly steps forward. “Sir Sultan? Is there any way you would consider my request now? To marry your daughter?”
The sultan whispers to the man beside him. Wait a minute. The man must be the vizier! The sultan’s helper. I remember from the original story that the sultan’s helper secretly wants the princess to marry his own son.
“I tell you what,” the sultan says to us after he listens to the vizier. “We will approve the wedding, but you need to give us more than just a squirrel.”
“You need to bring actual gold or jewels,” the vizier says. “Forty buckets of jewels carried by eighty beautifully dressed marchers in a parade. Bring them on Thursday at noon.”
“Then and only then can you marry my daughter,” the sultan adds.
I’m pretty sure that’s the same thing the sultan asked for in the original story.
But in the original story, Aladdin had the real genie. And we have … a rookie genie.
I think about all the jewels Karimah will have to zap up. She couldn’t even come up with one bag of them!
“What are you waiting for?” the vizier snaps. “You are dismissed.”
By the time we get back to Aladdin’s house, it’s midnight here. Aladdin’s mom opens the door and hugs us all.
“I was so worried!” Nada says.
“Sorry,” Aladdin says. Then his face breaks into a huge smile. “But the princess agreed to marry me!”
“What?” Nada’s mouth drops open. “That’s wonderful! I can’t believe the sultan allowed it. Wow!”
“Um,” I say. “About that. The sultan has demanded forty buckets of jewels carried by eighty marchers.”
“Where are we going to find eighty marchers?” Jonah asks.
I have NO idea.
“It’s late,” Aladdin’s mom tells us. “I say you all go to bed and wake up fresh in the morning to figure things out.”
Jonah and I get back into our bed, head to foot. Prince is curled up on the rug beside us.
“I’ll try not to kick you in the chin again,” Jonah says.
“Try very hard, please,” I reply.
“Abby? What are we going to do? Can Karimah even make ONE bucket of jewels?”
I turn onto my stomach. Jonah immediately kicks me in the shoulder.
“Oops, sorry!” he says.
Forget it. I can’t fall asleep. I slide the ring off and rub its side. Karimah appears in the purple haze. She’s wearing a gold jumpsuit, and her long pink hair is now in two braids.
“Oh, hi!” she says. “Everything going okay?”
I explain what happened at the Great Hall. The sultan’s demand. The deadline of Thursday at noon. Tomorrow is Wednesday. We’ll only have a day and a half to pull this off.
Karimah starts biting her nails. I didn’t know genies did that.
“I can’t just zap up eighty people,” she says. “Or forty buckets of jewels! I tried to zap up jewels and look what happened! I made a squirrel!”
Karimah looks miserable. She’s now biting the nails on her other hand.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
Jonah is already snoring.
“Okay,” Karimah says. She looks relieved. “Good night.”
I slide the ring back on my finger and Karimah disappears.
I stare at the ceiling. Yes, I assure myself. We WILL figure it out in the morning.
Because if we don’t, Aladdin won’t get his happily-ever-after.
And it’ll be all our fault.
* * *
I feel something vibrating on my finger. Half-awake, I sit up and yawn. It’s early morning and Jonah and Prince are both still asleep. My finger vibrates again. I look at the ring. It’s shaking!
Is it Karimah? Trying to tell me something?
I quickly slide the ring off and rub it. She leaps out.
“Wake up wake up wake up!” Karimah cries, waving away the purple haze. She starts spinning around, a big smile on her face. “Abby, I figured it out. At least part of it. We need to go back to the cave!”
“The cave?” Where I burned my elbow? Twice? Where the evil magician tried to trap us forever? “I hate the cave. Why do we need to go back?”
“I can’t make a jewel appear from nowhere. But I can multiply! Remember those jewel-fruits from the cave? We’ll go get some more and then I’ll multiply them!”
I jump up. “That is a great idea, Karimah! Brilliant!”
She winks. “A gem of an idea?”
I laugh. “Yes. An absolute gem.”
* * *
“Is it my imagination or is the flying carpet going a little faster today?” Jonah asks as we coast through the desert.
I’m sitting up front with him. Aladdin and Prince are behind us. Prince’s ears flap in the breeze. There was no ear flapping yesterday.
“It is!” I say. “And a little higher, too. You’re definitely getting the hang of magic-carpet flying.” We only bumped into two people on the way.
“So since I mastered that, can I wear the ring now?” Jonah asks.
“Not yet,” I tell him. “You could lose it. But I’ll let you try it once before we leave, ’kay?”
“You better,” he says, yanking the left tassel of the carpet.
We hover at the entrance to the cave and all hop off. Jonah rolls up the carpet and tucks it under his arm.
“Can I go in?” Aladdin asks.
“Sure,” I say. “You and I can go and Jonah will wait here with Prince.”
“No way!” cries my brother. “I love the cave! I want to go back.”
“Okay, fine, we all go,” I say. “But we all have to be careful!”
“Why?” Aladdin asks, grabbing the handle to the hatch.
I explain about the evil magician and OR ELSE and the star that burned me.
“So no bumping laser stars!” Aladdin says. “Got it!”
“Let’s go,” Jonah says. “Prince, be on your best behavior!”
Ruff! Prince agrees. At least, I think he agrees.
At the bottom of the stone steps, we follow the short hallway to the first room. Jonah lets Aladdin go in first. He grins and holds a finger to his lips in a shush gesture at me.
We hear Aladdin yelp. “Why are there thousands of me?”
Jonah laughs and we follow Aladdin into the room of mirrors. “Hi, thousands of Aladdins! Hi, thousands of Abbys! Hi, thousands of Princes! Hi, thousands of me!”
I imagine thousands of Jonahs. There would be a worldwide ketchup shortage.
“Come on,” I say. “We ha
ve to get to the room with all the fruit trees!”
Aladdin and Jonah wave good-bye to their thousands of selves.
I brace myself for the next room. Like last time, it’s pitch-black except for white stars all across it.
“Aladdin, this is the really scary room,” I whisper. “You have to zigzag your way through the laser stars.”
Aladdin narrows his eyes at the room. “I’ve got this. For the princess!” he shouts, and goes charging in, bending, stepping, and arching like a superstar.
“He must really want to marry her,” Jonah says before he zigzags his way through the stars.
Prince goes next. Then it’s my turn. Step, bend, arch, I remind myself.
I step. I bend. I arch.
I come to the star that burned my elbow. I step very carefully. I bend very carefully. I arch very carefully. Then I lift up and —
I’m through! I did it!
Finally, we all reach the room with the trees.
“Huh?” Aladdin says, looking around. “Where are the jewels?”
“You’re looking at them,” I say, pointing. There are at least ten trees with brightly colored shiny fruit dangling from the branches. “Those little red things aren’t pomegranates — they’re rubies!”
“And the little green ones that look like limes are emeralds,” Aladdin says, rushing over to one of the trees.
I lean over. “And the lychees are diamonds!”
Aladdin plucks a low-hanging diamond. “Awesome!”
“Pick one of each jewel,” I say, and we all get to work.
I hold out the bag that Karimah zapped up for us yesterday. Everyone drops their jewels inside. We have a diamond, an emerald, a ruby, an amethyst, and a bunch that I don’t even recognize.
“I’m taking a few extra for my mother,” Aladdin says. “She has so little and gives so much. And for my princess. These are beautiful but not nearly as beautiful as she is.”
Jonah rolls his eyes at the last part. But I think it’s sweet. Aladdin is in love!
“Okay, we’ve got enough,” I announce. “Let’s head back. Careful going back through the rooms!”
We make it through without any star burns. We race up the steps to the hatch and climb out.
Jonah unrolls the magic carpet, we pile on, and back we go through the desert to Aladdin’s house. This time the carpet flies even a tiny bit faster and higher.
“I can’t wait to show my mom the jewels,” Aladdin says when we arrive at his little house. “Soon the kitchen will be stocked with food. And she can buy clothes for us instead of having to make them out of scraps.” He smiles as he rushes inside to find his mom. I’m glad Aladdin took extra jewels for her. She deserves them.
Aladdin’s mom made us breakfast this morning, which was porridge with dates in it. She didn’t have enough for all of us. I tried to decline again, but Nada insisted on sharing their meager food. She’s so kind. Even Prince got a leftover bone from last night’s dinner.
My stomach growls.
“I’m hungry, too,” Jonah whispers as we follow Aladdin inside the house. “Is it almost lunchtime?”
“Let’s turn the bag of jewels into buckets of jewels first,” I say. “Then we’ll worry about what to have for lunch.”
I slide the ring off and rub its side. Karimah pops out.
I hold out a shiny red ruby that looks like an apple. “Ready?”
“Oh, great! You got the jeweled fruit!” Karimah takes the little apple in her hands. “Here goes nothing.”
Or everything, really.
She closes her eyes in concentration. “Fruit in my hand, give me more as I command!”
Another ruby-apple pops into my hand. Then another. In seconds, my hands are full of rubies! Then little sapphire-blueberries cover the top of the rubies. Emerald-limes start covering the rug. Diamond-lychees start covering the tattered couch!
Yay! It’s working! The entire room is filling up with jewels of every color imaginable!
“You did it, Karimah!” I say, and slip the ring back onto my finger. Karimah disappears.
Jonah scoops up a handful of brightly colored gems and cheers. “Yeah!”
Woof!
I bend down and see something round and blue in Prince’s mouth. Oh, no! He’s going to try to eat the sapphire again. I don’t think so, buster!
“No, Prince!”
I grab the sapphire-blueberry out of his mouth. It has bite marks in it. I realize I can squeeze the slobbery blueberry as if it’s a real blueberry.
“Um, Abby?” Jonah says. “Do you smell something? Something really good?”
I sniff the air. I do smell something good. Like … fruit?
Oh, no. The room is filled with fruit. Real fruit!
“They aren’t ruby-apples!” I cry. “They aren’t sapphire-blueberries. Those aren’t diamond-lychees. They are real fruit!”
“And bananas,” Jonah says, pointing at the table. “And strawberries. And raspberries.”
Oh, no. Now that I think about it, Karimah asked for MORE FRUIT — not jewels!
Aladdin and his mom come inside, their eyes wide. “What is going on?” Aladdin asks.
“At least we know what we’re having for lunch,” Jonah says, and pops a blueberry in his mouth.
We spend the next hour gobbling up fruit. Some fruits I’ve never even seen before. And who knew that tomatoes are a fruit? And pumpkins!
“Prince sure likes watermelon,” Aladdin says, laughing as Prince chomps on a rind.
When we’re all stuffed, we help Aladdin’s mom put away the rest of the fruit. We fill up every bowl and cabinet and the whole icebox!
Then we go back into the living room, and my ring starts vibrating. I slide it off and rub it. Karimah pops out. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her cheeks are wet. She’s sobbing.
“I can’t believe I messed that up!” Karimah says, wiping away tears. “I can’t do anything right!”
“Yes, you can,” I tell her, patting her back. “Let’s try again.”
Karimah sniffles. “But I can only make two more wishes today! What if I mess up again?”
“Maybe you won’t,” Jonah says. “Did you see how good I’m getting at flying the carpet? And remember when Abby burned herself on the star in the cave? Twice? But then when she had to go in again to get the jewels, she made it.”
Huh. Thank you, little brother.
Karimah stops crying. She wiggles her fingers and a tissue pops into her hand. After dabbing under her eyes, the tissue disappears. How much would I love to be able to do that?
“You know what, Jonah?” Karimah says, her face brightening. “You’re right. Abby has made tons of mistakes since she got here, and she hasn’t given up! And she messed up a lot!”
“Um … I think I like Jonah’s compliment better,” I say.
“Aladdin’s happiness depends on how I do,” Karimah says, suddenly determined. “I just need a really good rhyme.”
I suddenly have an idea. “What if you don’t have to rhyme?” I ask. “Maybe the rhyme is what’s messing it up. Maybe you need simple, no-frills instructions. Maybe you need to just say exactly what you want.”
“But rhyming makes it magical,” she says.
“No, you make it magical,” I tell her.
She beams. “I can try.” She picks up a jewel-apple from the table. “Here we go. Abby would like a roomful of jewels, please!”
We wait.
Karimah holds out her hand. A ruby appears on her palm. Then another. Then two diamonds. A bunch of emeralds. As opals fill her hand, she holds out both to catch them. The table is suddenly covered with sapphires. And garnets on top. Pearls pop up on the windowsills.
Jewels are everywhere! They are appearing on the couch. On the chair. Under the dining table. They’re not stopping.
I pick up a diamond and give it a squeeze. Yay! It does not spray lychee juice. “You did it!”
Karimah is grinning. “I did it! We did it! Woo-hoo!”
Ala
ddin and his mother rush out of the kitchen. They stare at the jewels filling every space of the room. The piles of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, sapphires, and every color jewel imaginable are leaving us with very little room to stand.
“We have to get out of the way! We’re going to drown in jewels!” Aladdin says.
All of our feet are covered in jewels. The piles are growing to our knees.
“Let’s go into the kitchen!” Jonah yells.
I slide my ring back onto my finger and Karimah disappears. We run into the kitchen and close the door. An emerald gleams on Prince’s brown fur. He shakes his whole body and the emerald goes flying, but Jonah sticks out his hand and catches it.
“Catchers keepers,” he says.
I press my ear to the kitchen door. “I don’t hear anything,” I say. “I think the jewels have stopped coming.”
Aladdin opens the door a crack. Two rubies and a diamond spill inside.
“I think the sultan will definitely let you marry his daughter now,” Nada says with a laugh.
* * *
We take the magic carpet to the market, where we find forty buckets. We stack the buckets on the carpet and fly back to Aladdin’s house.
Then I realize we have to deal with our last problem.
The eighty marchers.
When we bring all the buckets inside, everyone starts filling them up with jewels. While we’re working, I say, “How do we find eighty people who will help us?”
“We can pay them!” Aladdin says, grabbing another bucket.
“With what?” Jonah asks.
“With jewels!” I say, nodding at Aladdin. “And fruit! We have tons!”
“I know a lot of street kids,” Aladdin says. “They would definitely help if we gave them food and jewels.”
“Are the street kids the ones you were playing duckball with?” Jonah asks. “Do they live in the street?”
“Most do,” Aladdin says. “A few have homes. But they’re all even poorer than I am. We don’t have a school or many ways to earn money. I bet they would love to be in a parade.”
I cheer. “Then let’s round up our marchers!”
* * *
We take the flying carpet to the street where we first saw Aladdin. Jonah and I are each carrying two bags of fruit. Aladdin has a pouch full of jewels. To be helpful, Prince is carrying an apple in his mouth. I don’t think anyone will want a dog-chewed apple, but it’s the thought that counts.
Genie in a Bottle Page 7