Growing horns.
Strange though the idea was, it nestled in his chest and became a soft, encouraging warmth. For all the time that had passed, Kaj was still so young. Still growing. There was still time, time for it to matter.
And for everything Sajar could still take from him, there was just as much he could give.
He closed his eyes and imagined seeing Kaj every day, not glimpsed through a hedge but standing right next to him as they tended the trees together. One family helping others grow. He pictured them laughing, talking, fighting, reconciling. Smiling.
What would it be like to look in the mirror in the morning and see himself smiling? What would Kaj look like when he smiled?
As the thought crossed his mind, the expression settled over his face, and determination drove the last of the doubt from his heart. Sliding an arm around Kaj’s shoulders, he turned him toward the house. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
Kaj hung his head and his whole body seemed to wilt. “I don’t have a home anymore,” he murmured, rustling his wings. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
And still Sajar’s smile would not fade. “I think there’s something I can do about that.”
The Djinni and the Accountant
Hal J. Friesen
“NEVER TURN A client away,” Mr. Almasi had said to Charlotte on her first day at work. His hand swallowed Charlotte’s when he shook it. Charlotte had searched for an accounting job for almost a year—she was determined to move out of the youth shelter and into her own place—so she would have heeded his advice even if his goliath size hadn’t frightened her.
The entrance to the Al-Hambra Accounting Firm sank into the middle of a back-alley in an Edmonton industrial area whose tenants had long since moved on. Dust clouds nearby took the shape of trucks, horses, and legless pedestrians. The Firm felt out of place, a leaning townhouse in the middle of a swath of abandoned concrete, a building someone had dropped on their way somewhere else.
Every time Charlotte walked to work from the bus stop, she experienced a disquieting loneliness blended with the sense of many eyes watching her. The loneliness was familiar. The sense of being noticed was not. Every morning Charlotte shrugged off the feeling with a shiver, cleaned her dusty glasses, descended the steps below street level, and entered the crooked door to the office.
Both Mr. Almasi and the dark oak-panelling of the office smelled of old library books. The space was sizeable and the arms on the desk chairs sat just a bit too far apart, the wooden legs just a bit too tall. Although they fit with Mr. Almasi, they didn’t fit with much of anything else, and gave the whole room a sense of being off-kilter every time Charlotte walked in.
It was a job though, and Charlotte intended to keep it no matter what. Alicia and the other girls at the youth shelter were happy for her, but Charlotte found herself turning down their offers to socialize. If she wanted to move on, she’d need to distance herself from them anyway. So she lost herself in her work, content in the task of putting everything in its proper place, accounting for every penny of a client’s portfolio. For eight hours a day, five days a week, the world made sense to her. Then she’d head back to the shelter, enduring the nights by counting the days until she had enough money to move out on her own—just one more month.
When Mr. Almasi left for vacation Charlotte was ready to prove herself. After working hard all morning she sent Alicia an e-mail turning down an invitation to go to a free concert that night and eyed the clock, debating whether to take her lunch.
The door creaked open, and she turned.
A blue figure floated through.
His body tapered to a glowing ember inches above the ground and his skin was cut from star fire, white wisps drifting across, bobbing in the same way his entire form did. His cheeks were purple, and his eyes glowed brilliant pearls. He had no hair, and if he had ears, they were swathed in flame. The oak-panelling and door smouldered where he had brushed by them, and Charlotte tasted ash. Shadows raced to escape his luminescence, but could find nowhere to hide.
“Whatever this is,” she muttered to herself, wringing her hands, “must be a clerical error, a joke—a mistake. No reason to be alarmed, Charlotte. Nope, because it can’t possibly be here for me.”
Mr. Almasi’s hearty voice echoed in her mind: “Never turn a client away.”
“Can’t do that, can I?” She searched for more pens to put away on the desk, paper clips out of order, and eventually just rubbed her palms on the surface frantically. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blue figure drawing closer, reeking of burnt espresso.
“He’s got the wrong place,” she mumbled. “This’ll be over in a heartbeat.”
“Do you ever talk to someone besides yourself?” the creature said, his voice a crackling wood stove.
Charlotte cleared her throat and straightened. She took one look at the intense fire floating in front of her, then looked abruptly down again. “Do you have an appointment?” She scooted to the notebook and glanced at the entries.
“What?”
“I don’t see anything here,” Charlotte said, flipping back and forth through the entries. “Did you set something up privately with Mr. Almasi? He does that sometimes.”
“I never require an appointment, and especially not for Almasi.” He folded massive arms across his chest. His cheeks burned a deeper purple. Had his burning cores for eyes narrowed?
“Unfortunately Mr. Almasi is on vacation,” Charlotte said. Any time now this will be someone else’s problem, something for someone more important. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her fingertips tingled with heat. She knew what Mr. Almasi would want her to say, though, and remembered how badly she needed to keep this job and get out of the shelter. “Maybe I can help you in his place?”
The creature waved an arm. A tower of papers materialized and slammed onto the desk on top of the appointment notebook. Charlotte jerked back, whispers of wind from the papers still on her hands.
“You think you can manage this? Do you have any notion of the responsibilities, the weary trials of tallying all that I bring into this world? That”—the creature pointed to the stack—“is but from one year. You mortals desire more wishes, but cannot comprehend the paperwork—the import taxes—that burden me for every infernal thing you wish into the world.”
Oh my God. He’s a djinni.
She swallowed and adjusted her glasses. Breathe. Import taxes. Breathe. “We have experience with those types of claims,” she said, grateful she could grasp this point of familiarity. “We can help you with that right away, even without an appointment. Mister . . . ?”
“Maimun. Maimun will suffice, child.”
Even with the giant paper barrier blocking some of the djinni’s intensity, sweat trickled down Charlotte’s neck. “My name’s Charlotte. I’m not a child.” She wasn’t sure whether it was the heat, the taste of ash, or the stifling smoke that made her speak the words. She clasped her hands together, feeling even smaller in Mr. Almasi’s office chair.
“Charlotte,” Maimun said, letting the word hang.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, keeping her mouth moving as much as she could. “As I said, I can help you out with your import taxes right away.”
“I should hope so,” Maimun said. “Almasi made a vow for prompt service.”
“I wish Mr. Almasi would come back and take care of this mess,” she muttered.
“What did you say?” Maimun said, tilting his head and leaning in.
“Uh—around here our service is the best,” Charlotte said.
She ushered the djinni into a side room, her head feeling lighter with each step she took. With the djinni behind her and out of sight she could almost forget he’d come, until her back tingled and singed from his star fire. She shot glances back to make sure he hadn’t set the building ablaze. A black trail snaked across the ceiling behind him along with the scent of campfire, but it hadn’t ignited yet.
Deep breaths did nothing to calm her as she
took a seat behind a large mahogany table and smoothed out the folds of her dress. Each inhale ushered in a wave of acrid smoke from the djinni, who floated closer to the ground and made the fumes worse. Wherever he went, it seemed he burned but somehow also quenched the fire.
“Let’s take a look at your records, then, Maimun,” Charlotte said, her hands shaking as she reached for the papers. The smouldering eyes behind the massive stack were finally starting to seem real. She trembled at the sudden shift in the universe, wondering whether she would be a sacrificial lamb for the djinni’s greatness. She had never been part of anyone or anything’s plan, ever since her mother had given her to child services and disappeared. If she had a father, he didn’t want her in his plan, either.
“I am surprised Almasi hired someone so weak,” Maimun said, folding his arms again. As they tucked into his armpits, sparks burst from the seams.
Charlotte’s hand clutching the first file stopped mid-air. “I’m not weak,” she said, holding his fiery gaze for the first time. She may never have been included in anyone’s plans, but that didn’t imply weakness.
Maimun snorted, and his body surged a brighter blue.
She read through the first file, lifting the pages to block Maimun from her sight. “Early in the year you granted wishes to Mr. And Mrs. Vandermere. The first was for $9,999—”
“That’s the most I can give,” Maimun said. “You humans always wish for inordinate sums of money, and are so surprised when there are limits. I thought your society understood inflation.”
“The second was for a lifetime supply of macarons.”
“Most of them spoiled after the first month.”
“The third was for every modern tool on the planet.”
“They filled his garage and he couldn’t do any work after that.”
“So they weren’t very happy,” Charlotte said, scanning the declared amounts of imported goods.
“That’s irrelevant to your job,” Maimun snapped.
“How do you pay taxes, anyway?” Charlotte asked. “Can’t you just magic the money into being?”
Maimun shook his head. “I cannot abuse it this way. I pay with money I’ve saved and earned along the way, as you or anyone else would.”
“People pay you?”
Maimun straightened. “They tip.”
Charlotte continued reading, scanning the first few files to get a sense of how long the job would take. Part of her enjoyed making Maimun wait, while another part recognized this approach imprudent to her survival.
The stack of files seemed to thicken with each page she scanned, each file detailed and long.
“Maimun, this is going to take . . . some time,” she said. “If you like I can call you when it’s ready.”
Maimun spread his arms and raised himself, making every surface of the room smoke. “I am not yours to summon,” he boomed.
Charlotte choked and coughed on the smoke. “Fine.”
She read through the files while Maimun floated and stared. She wondered if she would die from smoke inhalation before she finished the work. Maimun differed so greatly from the images of servitude she had read in fairy tales that she wondered whether he would even let her live.
In the files she learned about a wide assortment of wishes he’d granted in the past year. A little girl had wished for a cat, a pony, and a field to play in. The last of these had resulted in the displacement of a soccer pitch and rearrangement of the local streets that ended in a number of traffic incidents. Someone else had wished for several wives, another for several husbands. Both resulted in large dowries being paid to the bewildered families or former spouses in order to account for their sudden disappearance. The dollar figure couldn’t possibly account for the damage done, but it was marked on a receipt nonetheless.
Other wishes involved more abstract concepts, like happiness, satisfaction, and self-confidence. Those resulted in vouchers for therapists, social clubs, walks in nature, and a variety of other solutions specific to the person’s individual needs. It was strange to see a $9,999 price tag on a receipt for “Contentment”.
Charlotte would have wished out of the shelter if she’d been given the chance, but she suspected Maimun was about as likely to grant her a wish as he was to go swimming. His eyes upon her were unrelenting, and she felt him study her every movement as she worked through the files.
A pegasus, a pegasus that could fly, then a pegasus that could fly that still looked normal. Wishes that showed revisions, continued iterations revealing short-sightedness after the first words spoken. The ability to breathe underwater, breathe underwater and still breathe on land, breathe underwater and still breathe on land and not look like a frog. In many ways it resembled the evolution of a contractual arrangement, where the terms grew more specific but certainty was never granted.
Charlotte was tallying the animal costs of a backyard zoo and the associated rezoning permits when she felt Maimun’s heat more intensely on her face. She struggled to keep a professional demeanour under his scalding FBI-lamp. His smoke had taken on a burnt weed smell.
“Charlotte,” he said.
She wanted to lose herself in the files and the numbers, find a way to straighten all these loose ends out. Account for everything. “Yes?”
“You are different from other humans,” he said. “Have you no desires? Nothing that burns inside, seeking, wanting more? I sense no fire in you.”
Charlotte wiped her brow. Fire was the last thing she wanted right now. She felt like she’d spent the last three hours in a boiler-room. But Maimun remained where he floated, his eyes both staring and not staring at her.
“It’s never mattered,” she said at last.
“So you’re wasting my time. Someone who cares so little is unlikely to do a thorough job on my taxes.”
Charlotte stood and pushed back her chair, fists curled at her sides. “I care about my job. I care about the things over which I have control.” Her head throbbed from the sweltering heat, and she sensed her internal fuse burning. “Have you never wanted free of your wish-granting duties? Have you no ambition, djinni?”
“You will call me Maimun.” He extended his arms and leaned in until small pyres lit at the edges of the table.
Charlotte had endured far too much to be bullied by a creature she was trying to help. “Maybe I will do as you do, and define you only by what I see in front of me, which is a being of utter servitude. Djinni.”
The table ignited, and Charlotte fell back against the wall. She kept her gaze fixed on Maimun. The papers had vanished, and the table now burned an orange fire with blue tips. The scent of burnt plastic filled the air. At any moment, the whole building would light up.
“Do I look like a being of utter servitude?” Maimun thundered.
“Maybe,” Charlotte said, struggling for breath, “you should show more compassion to those helping you. Be more understanding, given your experience.” The words poured out of her with little thought to self-preservation.
Maimun placed his fists on the table and vaporized holes in it. Charlotte’s thighs burned and the tips of her shoes melted around her feet.
“I could destroy you,” he said.
“And you would have nobody to help you.” Charlotte tried to fall back on her sense of unimportance, but the thought of burning alive made her insides knot. She prayed it didn’t show.
Maimun glared at her. Between them, the desk crumbled and fell apart into a pile of glowing embers.
“You have no strong desires,” he said, showing no reaction from having demolished the table. “But you have strength.”
Maimun backed off and with a wave of his hand the smoke vanished, though the faint tendrils from the floor beneath him remained. The change felt like a cool breeze. Another wave of his hand and a desk appeared atop the ashes with the pile of papers. Along the edge next to the computer monitor stood a family of troll dolls, each with its neon hair pulled straight up into a point. Sticky notes pasted to the monitor reminded of a w
oman named Margaret’s birthday next week.
“Whose desk is this?”
“Does it matter?”
The trolls gazed vacantly into the distance. “Do you like these things?”
Maimun lifted his chest. “They’re more accurate than most of your folklore.”
“Oh—okay.” Charlotte wiped her forehead and brushed sweaty hands on her dress. She scooted closer to the stranger’s desk. “I will need more time to get through this, and having you loom over me isn’t helping.”
“Your care is selective,” Maimun said, floating back and forth with his massive arms clasped behind his back. “You guard it so closely I cannot see deeper. Most curious.”
If you think I’m going to share it with you, Charlotte thought, you’ve got another think coming. “I care about doing a good job. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’ve never met a human quite like you,” Maimun said.
Charlotte frowned. Of all the people who could grant her attention, a pompous, selfish djinni was not on her list. And despite his attention, he didn’t seem to be hearing anything she said. “What do you want from me?”
Maimun stopped his float-pacing. “You think it strange I see you as special. Few—or none—have recognized this within you?”
As he spoke the words, water in a well in Charlotte rose until her breath drew short. Of course she wasn’t special—her own mother had vanished when she was seven, leaving her to bounce from one foster-parent to another. She was a secondary character in everyone’s eyes, an afterthought. She’d been left in grocery stores, forgotten outside of schools, and locked out of houses on countless occasions. Child services barely paid her enough attention to give her file even the lowest priority. She’d eventually run away in search of her mother whom no one acknowledged had ever existed. After years of travelling as a vagrant, stealing library books and scraps of food, Charlotte had ended up in a youth shelter which paid her a sliver of enough attention to let her finish her certification as an accountant.
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