Emma and the Blue Genie

by Cornelia Funke

  For Kerstin Meyer, and for Anna and Ben,

  who came along for the entire journey on the carpet.

  Oh yes, and for Luna as well, of course,

  even though she doesn’t look anything like Tristan.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2002 by Cornelia Funke

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Oliver Latsch

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Vivienne To

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2014 by Kerstin Meyer

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. Originally published as Emma und der Blaue Dschinn by Cecilie Dressler Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg, Germany, in 2002.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Funke, Cornelia Caroline.

  [Emma und der Blaue Dschinn. English]

  Emma and the blue genie / Cornelia Funke ; translated by Oliver Latsch ; illustrated by Kerstin Meyer.—First American edition.

  pages cm.

  “Originally published as Emma und der Blaue Dschinn by Cecilie Dressler Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg, Germany, in 2002.”

  Summary: Eight-year-old Emma and her little dog, Tristan, take a magic carpet ride to the distant land of Barakash to help a genie recover his stolen magical nose ring.

  ISBN 978-0-385-37540-5 (trade)—ISBN 978-0-385-37542-9 (lib. bdg.)—ISBN 978-0-385-37543-6 (ebook)

  [1. Genies—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 4. Dogs—Fiction.] I. Latsch, Oliver, translator. II. Meyer, Kerstin, illustrator. III. Title.

  PZ7.F96624Emm 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013029268

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  1. The Bottle in the Moonlight

  2. Karim

  3. The Palace of Wilted Flowers

  4. No Friendly Welcome

  5. The Yellow Genie

  6. The Palace Beneath the Sand

  7. A Cool Wind

  8. The Battle of the Genies

  9. Three Wishes

  1

  THE BOTTLE IN THE MOONLIGHT

  Emma loved the ocean. The house where she and her family lived stood right behind the dunes, and at night you could hear the waves rush over the sand. To Emma that was the most beautiful lullaby in the world. Her four brothers, however, thought that it sounded like a growling sea monster, and it made them dream of giant octopuses that pulled them out of their beds with wet arms.

  Brothers are strange. During the day they fight and scuffle, and at night their fear of the dark won’t let them sleep. Nearly every night one of Emma’s brothers crawled into her bed to hide from sea monsters and octopuses, only to immediately start snoring so noisily that she couldn’t hear the rush of the sea anymore.

  It was on nights like those that Emma put on her bathrobe and snuck out of the house to trudge through the dark and down to the water.

  The salty wind whispering across the waves, the beach stretching from one end of the night to the other, it all belonged to her alone. It was wonderful. Four brothers can be quite hard work for one girl, so every now and then she really needed a little solitude.

  The darkness never scared Emma. After all, she had Tristan with her. His legs might have been as short as bratwursts, and his tail might have looked like a twirly noodle, but he also had lots of pointy teeth in his mouth.

  Sitting on wet sand is not very comfortable, so Emma always took a cushion with her to the beach. On that cushion Emma and Tristan sat side by side, and the sea breathed at their feet like a living thing.

  On clear nights, when the moon poured a silver highway onto the water, Emma imagined that at the other end of that highway lay the most beautiful and wondrous land on earth. People rode on camels, and palm trees swayed in the warm breeze. There were no brothers in that land, or maybe a few teeny-weeny ones who were very gentle and only wanted to scuffle on Saturdays. Nobody went to school or had to work. The sun shone every day, and there was just enough rain to water the oases, which lay like shimmering diamonds at the edge of the desert.

  Who knows?

  Maybe the moon likes to eavesdrop on the thoughts of girls who sit alone by the sea with noodle-tailed dogs. Maybe he listens to their dreams and tries to make them come true. Maybe . . .

  One night, when Emma again came trudging down the beach with Tristan and their cushion, there was a bottle floating in the moon-silvered water. It bobbed just a few steps away from the water’s edge. It shimmered and flickered as though someone had stuffed it with a thousand glowworms. Emma tried to pull the bottle from the water, but her arms were at least a couple of feet too short. So Tristan waded into the cold waves.

  “I wonder what’s in there,” Emma said, as Tristan dropped the bottle in front of her feet. “Do you think I should open it?”

  The glimmering and glowing made her feel a little uneasy, but Tristan just looked at her and smacked his lips, which meant something like, “Of course you should open it!” If he’d meant, “You better not!” he would have turned his backside to her.

  “Fine. If you say so,” Emma said. “But it’s your fault if something bad happens.” Then she pulled the stopper from the bottle.

  KARIM

  Cornflower-blue smoke billowed from the bottle. More and more of it. Emma stumbled back, and Tristan stuck his head in the sand. The blue smoke grew arms and legs and a head so bald and shiny that it reflected the moonlight.

  “Sssaaalaaaaam aalaaaikum!” the ghost from the bottle whispered. “Greeeeetings, oh my fair savior! My name is Karim, Karim the Beardless.” And he bowed so deeply that his bald head touched the sand.

  “Very . . . pleased to meet you!” Emma stammered. She also bowed (though not quite so deeply). When she straightened herself up again, she noticed that the genie was only a head taller than her.

  “I am sorry,” Emma said (after all, she didn’t know whether genies were easily offended), “but are you still growing? I mean, as far as I remember, the genies in my fairy tales are always huge.”

  Karim sighed so deeply that the sand stirred up and covered his naked toes. “Ooh, you are so right, my mistress!” he called out dolefully. “And I once was indeed much bigger. I could shake the hand of my caliph while he stood on the highest tower of his palace. His dromedary would sleep in the palm of my hand. Yet now I am as small as a desert hedgehog and as weak as a nosebug.” With these words, the genie began to sob so hard that his tears dropped on the sand like rain.

  “Oh dear!” Emma said comfortingly. “And how did you become so small?”

  Tristan pulled his head out of the sand and sniffed Karim’s toes, which Emma thought was not very respectful.

  “Can’t you see?” the genie sniveled. “My nose ring is gone! Stolen in a heinous act of treachery. Without the ring I am nothing—a maggot, a mere mouse, a snail being scorched and shriveled by the sun.”

  “Ah!” Emma exclaimed. She looked at Karim’s blue nose. It did look rather naked. “Who stole the ring?” she asked.

  Karim r
ubbed his hand over his eyes. “Sahim!” he breathed. “Sahim, the Master of Evil. The most dastardly of all yellow genies. He stole my ring, he stuffed me into that bottle, and he threw me into the sea.”

  “Hmm . . . ,” Emma murmured. She dug the tip of her shoe into the sand. “So I guess I’m not getting my three wishes? I mean . . . those three wishes all the fairy tales always talk about. You know, the wishes you get when you free a genie?”

  Karim shook his head glumly. “Without the ring, I can’t grant you even the tiniest, bug-sized wish, my mistress!” he said. “You should just throw me back into the ocean so that I can drown myself in my tears!” And he started to sob again.

  Emma quickly held out a handkerchief. It was a bit crumpled and smelled of dog biscuits, but the genie accepted it gladly.

  “That’s really not a reason to cry,” said Emma, while Karim dabbed the tears from his lashes (and even his lashes were blue, by the way). “I wouldn’t have known what to wish for anyway.”

  “You are too generous, my mistress!” the genie sniffed. He smiled sadly as he handed Emma her handkerchief. “I shall be in your debt forever and three thousand days.”

  He leaned down and picked up his bottle. He shook it and something dropped out of it, something that looked like a crumpled piece of fabric. Yet when the genie gently blew on it, the cloth started to unfurl like a flower, and it was suddenly a carpet. It looked a little tattered, but it was very, very beautiful.

  The genie shuddered as he shook the cold, damp sand from his feet; then he sat down on the carpet with a deep sigh. “Farewell, my mistress!” he said with a quaver in his voice. “I shall fly back to my homeland to free my caliph and all of Barakash from the yellow genie. But you have Karim’s solemn vow: I shall return as soon as my ring is back on this wretched nose. By then you will definitely have thought of three wishes.”

  He clapped his hands, and the carpet rose and carried him out over the sea.

  Emma stood there and looked after the genie. She had no idea why she was suddenly so sad. The wind blew her hair into her eyes, and Karim’s figure slowly melted into the darkness. “Oh, Tristan, I hope he really does come back,” she said. “Not because of the wishes. Really. I mean, yes, I definitely could have thought of some. But I would like to hear more about that yellow genie.”

  Tristan shoved his nose against her knee. He looked up at her expectantly.

  “Of course!” Emma called. “Why didn’t I think of that? Karim! Karim, wait! Tristan says we’re coming with you!”

  The night had already all but swallowed Karim’s blue figure, and at first Emma thought he hadn’t heard her. But then she saw the carpet flying back toward the beach.

  “Yallah!” the genie shouted. He pulled at the carpet’s tassels, but still crashed down so hard next to Emma that he rolled headfirst into the sand. “Apologies, but I am a little out of practice!” he huffed as he stood up. “Did I hear you right? You want to accompany me? That is . . . ahem . . . certainly an honor, but . . .” Karim cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “You are still very young,” he whispered to Emma, “and your dog is barely bigger than a desert rat. How is he going to challenge the Master of Evil? Either he has the heart of a lion, or his mind is a little weak.”

  “Oh, his mind is perfectly fine,” Emma said a little crossly, “and believe me, we are used to trouble. I have four brothers, and Tristan has to deal with dogs twice his size all the time. So I don’t think he’s going to be scared by some yellow genie.”

  Tristan seemed to agree, for he strutted toward the carpet, gave it a little sniff, and then rolled himself up on it.

  Karim looked at Tristan as though he’d never seen a dog. “By the beardless chin of my caliph!” he shouted. “Dogs are not valued very highly in Barakash, but from this day on I shall bow my head in respect to every one of them.”

  “Good. That’s settled then,” said Emma.

  Before they took off, Emma quickly wrote a note to her parents:

  Don’t worry. I’m off with a pretty big genie to find his nose ring. And I have Tristan with me. Love, Emma

  The “pretty big” was of course an exaggeration, but Emma felt it made the whole thing sound a little less worrisome.

  “How far is it to your caliph?” she asked Karim as they flew out over the ocean.

  “You will see his palace at sunrise,” the genie answered.

  “Ah!” Emma sighed. She just realized she was still wearing her bathrobe. That was a little embarrassing, since she was flying to see a genuine caliph.

  Tristan didn’t have to worry about such things. He had already tucked his nose under his tail and was sleeping soundly.

  But Emma didn’t want to sleep. After all, this was the most exciting night of her life (and being eight years old, she’d already lived through nearly three thousand nights!).

  But then, over some strange ocean, her eyes fell shut.

  3

  THE PALACE OF WILTED FLOWERS

  When Emma opened her eyes again, she saw a bright red sun hanging above a very, very strange-looking country. There were palm trees and towers and domes and white houses stuck together like a giant honeycomb.

  “Oh, Barakash! So I finally see you again!” Karim crooned. He wiped a tear from his nose. Then he began to dissolve into blue smoke. “My return should remain a secret for now!” he whispered to Emma. “You should land in front of the palace. The palace is right behind those palm trees there.” And with that he disappeared into his bottle.

  “Land? What are you talking about?” Emma cried out. The tassels of the carpet only barely missed snagging on a spire. “Karim!” she hissed into the bottle. “Come back! I can’t do this.”

  “Pull the tassels and call ‘yallah!’ ” the genie whispered. “The carpet usually obeys quite well.”

  And truly, after Emma had pulled three tassels of the fringe and had shouted “yallah!” five times, the carpet landed as lightly as a feather in front of the caliph’s palace. The streets and alleys lay deserted. Only an old woman was dragging her donkey across the square. The sight of a flying carpet did not seem to surprise her at all.

  “And what now?” Emma whispered into the bottle. Tristan jumped off the carpet and made straight for the next palm tree to lift his leg.

  “This may feel a little wet!” the genie whispered.

  And before Emma could ask him exactly what he meant, it had already happened. “Yuck!” she hissed angrily. “Did you just spit in my ear?”

  “Forgive me, my mistress!” the genie whispered. “But now you can understand our language. Go to the guard by the main entrance and tell him you have a message for Maimun, the caliph of Barakash. You must insist that you can deliver it only to Maimun in person.”

  Emma did as he said, though she was still angry about the spitting. She tucked Karim’s bottle into her bathrobe and rolled up the flying carpet before waving Tristan to her. The dog had been giving the palace wall a good sniff. Her heart beating wildly, Emma went to the gate.

  The guard had a giant scimitar, he wore the tallest turban Emma had ever seen, and he looked quite cranky.

  “Excuse me,” Emma said. She tried to look as dignified as possible (which wasn’t very easy in a bathrobe). “I have an urgent message for Maimun, the caliph of Barakash.”

  “And what is that message, you little flea?” the guard asked. He ran a thumb along the blade of his hideous saber.

  “The message is from Karim, the most powerful of the blue genies,” Emma answered. “And I can deliver it only to the caliph himself.”

  “Karim?” the guard grunted. “He’s gone. There’s only one genie in Barakash now, and that is Sahim the Insatiable.”

  “Really?” Emma replied. “If you don’t bring me to the caliph right away, Karim will put a knot in your saber. Then you’ll see that he’s not gone.”

  “Will you listen to that!” the guard growled. He leaned down toward Emma and smiled, exposing five and a half gold teeth. “
Listen, you obnoxious daughter of a sandmite!” he whispered into Emma’s ear. “All of Barakash would rejoice if Karim returned, but nobody has seen him in more than a hundred days.”

  “I have,” said Emma.

  The guard again smiled his shiny, gold-toothed smile. Then he called a servant who was so big that Tristan could have completely disappeared in his slippers. Without giving Emma a glance, the servant opened the gate and led her into the palace.

  Emma had never been in a palace before. Where she came from didn’t have too many palaces. But she was sure there couldn’t have been a palace more beautiful than this one anywhere in the world.

  Sadly, Tristan didn’t seem to notice any of this. Emma had to constantly stop him from peeing on the pillars.

  Yes, the palace of the caliph of Barakash was indeed beautiful. But it felt as if sadness itself lived there. All the servants Emma saw kept their heads bowed low. There were no smiles on their faces, and as they walked through the gardens, Tristan’s paws sank deeply into a layer of wilted flowers. “Sahim dried up all our wells!” the huge servant whispered to Emma. “He hates water, because it is cool and because it reflects the blue sky. Yellow genies hate everything that is blue and everything that is cooler than their hot yellow skin. They even hate the night, because it is cold and makes them stiff. That’s why Sahim only comes at midday, when it is so hot that even the lizards hide in the shade, and when the air you breathe burns your tongue.”

  “Does he come every day?” Emma asked with worry.

  The servant shook his head. “Sometimes we don’t see him for several days,” he whispered. “But he sends his scorpions. They are his eyes. They used to hunt only during the night, but Sahim taught them to love the burning sun as much as he does.”