‘Regulations,’ said the genie. There was a malevolent gleam in his eye. ‘Whoever opens the bottle only gets three wishes and then that’s it. Curtains. Finito. Otherwise I would be utterly fatigued, running here, going there, fetching and carrying. I mean, I’ve got to have some time to call my own.’
‘Yes, but how can I have used up one of my wishes already?’ asked Cy. ‘I only asked if I could have a wish.’
‘Well that in itself was a wish,’ said the genie. ‘Just because you didn’t use the words “I wish” doesn’t disguise the fact that it was a wish that you made.’ The genie shook his head and the wall of the prison vibrated. ‘Tough luck, kiddo,’ he said to Cy. ‘There are two ways to learn: the easy way and the hard way. One wish gone. Two to go. Get on with it. I don’t have all day.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ said Cy. ‘You’re taking advantage of me.’
‘Stop bleating!’ The Dream Master was now hopping from foot to foot with impatience. ‘Make the wish to get us out of here!’
‘Yes, but,’ said Cy. ‘I wish I understood how—’
With a scream the Dream Master leaped up and smacked his hand over Cy’s mouth. ‘Take care that you don’t lose another wish!’
Cy shook him off. ‘I’m only asking a question,’ he said crossly.
‘You were not!’ The Dream Master snarled. ‘Didn’t you listen to what the genie said? You Incompetent Ignorant Idiot! Words are the tools of your Imagination, which is the most powerful force in the Universe. Be careful how you utilize them. They have the capacity for immense good and terrible destruction. At the moment, the way you are using your language means that you are actually expressing a desire for something. Check your thesaurus when you get back to school. If you get back to school,’ he added darkly. ‘There is some doubt in my mind that we will ever return to the twenty-first century. You don’t seem to know how to wish for something useful.’
‘I wish you’d put a sock in it!’ snapped Cy. ‘Put a sock in it and, and, vanish! That would be extremely useful. I would be able to get some peace to think and . . .’ Cy’s voice tailed off.
The genie gave a mocking laugh, and in the exact same instant the Dream Master disappeared. One minute the little man was there, berating Cy, the next minute there was empty space and a muffled echo of his voice. Cy’s mouth opened and then closed like a goldfish.
‘Well,’ said the genie. ‘Now you’ve painted yourself into a corner.’ And as Cy’s mouth dropped open again, the genie raised one finger. ‘A word of advice. If you want your small-sized chum to reappear then you have to use your last wish to get him back. So think before you speak.’
Cy stared at the spot where the Dream Master had been. There was nothing there, not even a puff of dust.
The genie folded his arms triumphantly. ‘I take it that your last wish is to return the quaint little fellow to your presence?’
Cy stared at the genie without answering. His brain was beginning one of its awful slumps to the bottom of his head. This often happened in class or when someone, usually an adult, was asking him something really important.
‘Whaaa-?’ he said.
‘Your third and final wish,’ said the genie, ‘will be to restore your diminutive companion. Quickly now. Make it and we’re done.’
‘I, I, I . . .’ Cy hesitated.
‘Come along,’ urged the genie. ‘You want him back, don’t you?’
Cy opened his mouth once more to speak and then stopped. For once in his life he saw that being slow to reply might be an advantage. Why was the genie pushing him to agree to the third wish? If he made that final wish then the Dream Master would reappear, but they would still be trapped in the prison. At the moment, although lost, the Dream Master was safe. And . . . Cy thought carefully, if he used his last wish to get out of prison then he would be free and could then think of a way to find the Dream Master. Cy shook his head. He grasped the bottle firmly in one hand and spoke very distinctly.
‘I wish to return to my own Time and Space immediately.’
The genie drew his eyebrows together. ‘This is not the way I planned it,’ he said irritably. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Cy firmly, even more convinced that it was the right thing to do now that he knew the genie was unhappy about it.
The genie sighed. ‘Such an amount of energy I have to use for this,’ he said. ‘And all for a scrap of a boy.’ He folded his arms, and his eyes grew large in his face – great pools of smouldering flame, which spread deeper and wider until they lapped around Cy. The walls of the prison shuddered silently and then fell away, melting to reform in a different colour, a different material.
Cy pulled his gaze from that of the genie. He shut his eyes and rubbed them hard. When he reopened them he was in his own garage, the Ali-Baba basket tumbled on the floor, in the same position as he had left it before beginning his journey on the magic carpet.
‘I—’ Cy began.
‘It’s done and that’s it.’ The genie spoke very fast before Cy could continue. ‘Three wishes. All gone. Bye-eeee!’ And with a floop! he disappeared back inside the bottle.
Cy replaced the stopper in the bottle and sat down on the garage floor to think about his situation. He had managed to get rid of the troublesome Princess Shahr-Azad but was now also minus his Dream Master. Where could the little man be? Cy resolved that he would go into school early the next day and look up information in the library. He needed to know more about genies if he was ever going to recover the Dream Master. He was also a bit uneasy at the way he had left the Princess Shahr-Azad. She had been a very angry princess indeed. Something told him that their paths might cross again and he wanted to be more prepared for that meeting when it came.
Cy took the piece of dreamsilk from his top pocket. It was completely transparent. He decided that he was not putting it under his chest of drawers in his bedroom again, not now that his whole family knew that to be a good hiding place. He looked around the garage and caught sight of the little enamel teapot that had once been part of a doll’s tea set. He put the piece of dreamsilk inside and flipped the lid shut. Then he reached up and placed the teapot and the little bottle containing the captured genie on the window-sill. As he did so his hand brushed against the old sheet which hung there covering the panes of glass. Cy adjusted the drapes so that no one would be able to see through the window and into the garage. But as he closed and locked the garage door the make-shift curtain moved a little in the breeze from outside. In his haste to pin the sheet up earlier Cy had not noticed that the garage window was unfastened.
IN THE SCHOOL library the following morning Cy typed ‘Arabia’ into the library computer catalogue under the keyword menu. Then he scrolled down through the pages on the screen. There was a huge amount of literature about Arabia: non-fiction, travel, religion, history, geography, and many fiction books. Some of the stories Cy was already familiar with – the one about Ali-Baba, tales of genies, often known as djini, and the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor. If he had paid more attention to these, Cy thought, then he would have been better equipped to deal with Shahr-Azad and the genie. Many of these stories featured clever tricksters. Cy couldn’t find anything specifically on genies, but on a library shelf he found a book entitled One Thousand and One Tales of the Arabian Nights. He sat down at a table and began to read.
Now he knew why the Dream Master so admired and respected Shahr-Azad. She had been incredibly brave, offering to sacrifice her own life to save all the other women in the kingdom. Cy could understand why she wanted to stay a while in the twenty-first century. She must be bored and frightened, telling so many stories for so many nights, on and on and on, one after the other, never knowing whether she would live through the next day. Cy found an illustration of a giant roc. Cy shuddered as he recalled how close he had come to being eaten last night.
‘Cy, do you realize the bell has gone for the first lesson?’
Cy looked up. It was his class teacher Mrs Chalmers. �
�What are you reading?’ she asked. And when Cy showed her she said, ‘Oh. The Arabian Nights? That is a fascinating book. So many different types of story: twists in the tail, jokes, thrillers, romances. You know, if it hadn’t been for the Tales of the Arabian Nights,’ said Mrs Chalmers, ‘then we would not have so many great stories today. They are the basis of many of our well-known plays and books.’ Mrs Chalmers checked the book out of the library and gave it to Cy.
‘Stories lead you where you cannot otherwise go,’ Cy began absent-mindedly, then stopped suddenly. He realized he was repeating word for word something he had heard someone else say quite recently.
‘Go on, Cy.’ Mrs Chalmers was smiling at him.
‘You place yourself in the shoes of the character and go with them to experience things from their point of view.’
‘There is a saying from native North America,’ said Mrs Chalmers, ‘that you do not know another person until you walk one mile in their moccasins.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We’re going to have to finish this discussion now and get on with some class work. We have a lot to get through this term.’
By the end of the school day Cy and his friends were completely exhausted.
‘Do you think we should try to get a TALENT TV competition registration form tonight?’ Cy asked the others as they left school together.
‘I’ve got a violin lesson this evening,’ said Basra. ‘But if I’ve got time afterwards I’ll go to the field and see if they are handing them out yet.’
‘I’m going home to collapse,’ said Innis. ‘My fingers and shoulders are aching and my brain has gone kerplunk.’
Cy could sympathise with Innis. His own brain was a bit overstrained and it was good to hear that someone else felt the same.
‘I want to spend some time practising riding my cycle on my own,’ said Vicky. ‘How are your magic tricks coming along, Cy?’
‘My dad said we could use our garage all this week for rehearsing,’ said Cy. ‘I’m making up my props there, away from Lauren. I don’t want her looking through my things. She’s convinced that I’m brewing magic potions.’ Cy laughed as he walked out the school gate with his friends.
Behind them, out of sight round the corner of the school wall, stood the Mean Machines. Eddie nudged Chloe. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked her. ‘They’re using Cy’s garage to keep their things for the TALENT TV competition.’
‘I heard,’ said Chloe. ‘That might be worth investigating.’
As Cy walked through the school gate and crossed the road to meet his Grampa, who was chatting to the lollipop lady, he did not notice that the Mean Machines were watching him with scheming eyes.
‘WE’LL GO TO my house today, if that’s OK,’ Cy told his Grampa as they both said good-bye to Mrs Turner, the lollipop lady. ‘Mum knows that’s where we’ll be. Me and my friends are going to enter the TALENT TV competition at the weekend and I want to practise in my garage at home. I’ll need lots of rehearsals to get my own part of the act right.’
‘What are you thinking of doing?’
‘Basra and Innis and Vicky and I are putting together a variety show. And I’d really like to do some magic tricks for it, but when I mentioned it to my friends they . . .’ Cy’s voice tailed off.
‘What?’ Cy’s Grampa reached out with his hand and allowed his fingers to gently brush the top of Cy’s head.
‘Well, they didn’t actually say anything out loud, but I know they think I’m too clumsy to be any good.’
Cy’s Grampa looked down at him and held his gaze directly with Cy’s own. ‘Would you like to try doing magic?’
Cy nodded. ‘I’d love to be able to perform a really neat trick. It would be so cool to make something appear and disappear.’
‘Did your friends say that they didn’t want you to do it?’ Cy’s Grampa asked him.
Cy shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Well then,’ said Grampa. ‘Give it a go and see how you get on. If it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out. But at least you’ll have tried.’ He smiled at Cy. ‘You owe it to yourself to make the attempt. I told old Monty that a few times when he stopped by my tent in the desert during the war. Don’t give up before you begin.’
An hour later in the garage Cy was almost ready to give up.
He had studied the magic books he had borrowed from the public library and chosen the tricks that he thought he could perform best. One involved making an object appear and disappear inside a piece of cloth. Cy rummaged among the shelves in the garage until he found something suitable. It was an old-fashioned key. He tied one end of a length of elastic through the hole in the top and, using a safety pin, he secured the other end of the elastic inside the sleeve of his dad’s old dinner jacket. He put the jacket on and adjusted the elastic so that the key hung just above his wrist. Then he pulled the key down into his hand and displayed it to his imaginary audience. He then pretended to wrap the key inside the red spotted scarf from the Ali-Baba basket, but did in fact loosen his grip on the key so that it shot right up his sleeve. He then opened up the scarf and the key seemed to have disappeared!
Well, that was how it was supposed to happen . . . Cy kicked the Ali-Baba basket gloomily. He’d been practising for ages, but no matter how often he tried, his fingers either caught on the elastic or his hands fumbled awkwardly with the scarf. He wasn’t going to fool anybody with this one.
If only his Dream Master was here, Cy thought, then he would be able to get some input from him. Cy decided to check his piece of dreamsilk. Inside the teapot the small scrap of cloth lay as he had replaced it last night: unmoving, almost transparent. It would be days before there was enough energy to allow him to go searching for the little man. And anyway – Cy’s heart lurched – where would he look? It came to Cy that he had not thought about the problem properly. Within the vast realms of Space and Time, where should he begin his search? Cy enjoyed reading history but knew that there was much more than he could ever possibly learn. His knowledge came from what he had been taught in school, some books of his own, and TV programmes he had watched. But there was more, much, much, more. And somewhere, among all of it, his Dream Master was trapped, or . . . Cy’s head spun with a new idea . . . perhaps not . . . Maybe the little man was lost in the terrifying unknown, the place the Dream Master himself referred to as Uncharted Land . . . the Future.
Cy left the garage and went to the small room downstairs where the family computer was kept. He looked up ‘Genie’ on the Internet. Trawling through the main search engines didn’t turn up anything that shed any light on how to find his Dream Master. There was loads of information about the stories from The Arabian Nights and the Princess Shahr-Azad, whose name was spelled several different ways, but nothing of any practical use to him.
That night in bed, Cy took his school library book from his rucksack and ran his eye down the contents page of the Tales of the Arabian Nights. He turned to the story about the old fisherman who found the bottle in his net. The fisherman had been lucky to escape with his life! This genie was not kind, or willing to grant favours.
After a while Cy put the book aside and settled down to sleep. His dreams, the ordinary run of the mill kind he had most nights, were particularly confused and chaotic. He was sailing the seven seas. Alone. Cy searched the whole ship but he could not find Sindbad the Sailor. Suddenly he was shipwrecked on a tiny island and the boat sank without trace. Then a massive earthquake disturbed the ground and revealed that the island was not an island after all. It was a huge whale. A killer whale! Its cavernous jaws opened. Cy saw the long tunnel of its throat and tried to swim desperately to safety. He awoke in the morning in a welter of bedcovers with a very sore head.
It was only when he was half way through school the following day that it struck Cy that nowhere in any of his dreams had he heard the voice of his Dream Master.
AT LUNCH-TIME IN school that next day, Cy, Vicky, Basra and Innis got together to discuss their plans. Some of the staff had volunteered to help
pupils rehearse their acts in the assembly hall. The noise was terrific. Violins screeched, trumpets brayed, and the babble of voices rose and fell as children recited poetry and teachers gave instructions.
Eddie and Chloe had commandeered the stage and were singing loudly and dancing about together.
Basra had managed to get a registration form for the competition. Cy sat with his friends while Innis, who had the neatest handwriting, filled it in.
‘We need to decide on a name for our act,’ said Basra.
‘We could use the capital letters of all of our names,’ said Innis. He scribbled on some scrap paper trying out different combinations.
‘Bivc, Vicb, Civb,’ Vicky read out.
‘That’s not working,’ said Basra.
‘I read an article in a magazine,’ said Vicky, ‘that to create a good stage name you should use names that have some meaning for you.’
‘Like what?’ asked Cy.
‘They suggested the name of your pet combined with the name of your gran, or your favourite uncle.’
‘For me, that’s coming out as Tiddles Bob,’ said Innis. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘We had a hamster once,’ said Vicky, ‘but I’ve forgotten its name. What about you, Cy?’
‘What?’ Cy blinked. He had been miles away, thinking about his lost Dream Master. ‘Sorry.’
‘Everyone has to come up with at least five suggestions by tomorrow,’ Basra declared as the bell for the end of the lunch break rang. ‘Out of twenty suggestions we should be able to find one that will do.’
* * *
Later that evening Cy asked his mum and dad if they had any ideas for a catchy name for the act.
‘It has to be something that interests the audience,’ said Cy’s mum.
‘Keep it short and simple, that’s my advice,’ said his dad. ‘What name are you giving your group?’ he asked Lauren.
Dream Master: Arabian Nights Page 7