by Julie Berry
She handed me the tin, and I immediately felt sorry for doubting her. What a strange jealousy that had been! I threw my arms around her. “Thanks, Alice. You’re a dear.”
I began tearing through my own things, building a small survival kit. A penknife, some paper, and a pencil. A lolly and a few toffees. Polly’s licorices would’ve surely come in handy! As it was, I had hardly enough to keep me alive if Miss Salamanca chose to starve me. I bundled it together into a large handkerchief, along with the sardine tin.
Downstairs, the bell for supper began to ring. Alice sat down on her bed and watched me tie my bundle to the waistband of my underskirt. Apart from a little rattling, no one would ever know it was there.
“How was your visit with your grandmother?”
She sighed. “Too short. How I miss home! And Grandfather!”
Even though I’d met Mrs. Bromley, whenever Alice talked about her grandparents, I pictured them living in a house made of gingerbread and candy, like something out of a fairy tale.
“But,” Alice went on, “Grandmother had news. She’s heard back from a vocal coaching clinic in Vienna that I auditioned for. It’s next spring, and I’ve been admitted! We’re going to Vienna!”
“Congratulations!” I said. “Vienna sounds marvelous. Too bad you have to sing to get there.”
Alice laughed. “We don’t all hate music like you do, Maeve.”
“I don’t hate music,” I told her. “Give me an Irish jig any day.”
I looked around the room once more, making sure I had everything I needed.
Alice’s face grew serious. “Maeve, you’re not going to use your djinni to do something bad to Miss Salamanca, are you?”
I laughed. “Revenge didn’t do me any good last time I tried it.”
A new thought worried Alice even more. “You won’t leave, will you?”
I hesitated. Using my djinni to run away had occurred to me. I didn’t want Alice to know that, though.
I shook out my skirts. My bundle was well hidden.
She knew I hadn’t promised to stay, and she shook her head sadly. “This wretched school is only just bearable when you’re here. If you left…” She sighed.
“I won’t,” I told her. “Not today.” That much, at least, I could promise.
“Be careful, Maeve,” Alice said. “Do I dare ask why you insulted Mr. Treazleton?”
I could hear Miss Salamanca’s step bearing down the hallway. I gave Alice’s hand a squeeze. “He deserved it, Alice,” I said. “He deserved it.”
Chapter 8
Even if I’d had any wish to meet up with Tom that night in the garden at ten o’clock, I couldn’t have done it. Miss Salamanca was so terrified of the damage I might have done to her school by offending Mr. Treazleton—and after my cruel attack on precious Theresa, no less—that she was too rattled to flay me alive. For once, words failed her. But not actions.
She locked me in the cellar.
If she thought girls were bound to be terrified of the spiders and shadows in the dark, damp dungeon underneath her school, she hadn’t reckoned properly with Maeve Merritt. I admit I would have preferred not to sleep down there, with only bread and water, but I’d die before letting her know it. I marched cheerfully down to the little cot she’d set up for me, and sat upon it.
“What was that clinking sound?” Miss Salamanca asked.
I pressed my knees close together. She mustn’t find the bundle I’d hidden in my skirts. “Nothing.”
She thrust a plate of bread, a jug of water, and a painfully itchy wool blanket at me, then headed for the stairs.
“The door will be locked. You are to remain here until summoned. You are to think about your misdeeds and your vile conduct. When I return—an event which may be prolonged to no end, given your recent scandalous behavior—I shall expect to find a reformed young lady where once a wild hellion had been.”
“You shouldn’t curse like that, Miss Salamanca,” I said.
Miss Salamanca had had a long day. She pretended not to hear me and closed the door tight. The bolt of the lock shot into place.
So be it.
I sat a moment longer upon my cot, and looked around.
The basement’s sour, musty smell assailed my nostrils—mildew and coal dust and burst bottles of ancient wine, with a dank, earthy barnyard smell mixed in. A smudge of light filtered through a filthy window at street level. Twilight was sinking fast, and the lamplighters had already done their work on our street. What light did manage to trickle into the cellar was pathetically pale and weak, and it only served to illuminate a small region near my cot. Beyond it were miles of cavernous lavender-black darkness. The sound of my own scuffing feet echoed back to me from walls much too far away.
I set down the plate and rose, first hitching up my skirts to untie my secret bundle. It was a relief not to have the items poking my thighs.
Should I eat my lolly? Better save it.
I picked up the sardine tin and felt again the throbbing, leaping sensation, as though there were living fish inside. What a tiny prison for a giant djinni. I’d been waiting for a private place and time to confront Mermeros again. Why not here and now? Miss Salamanca couldn’t have done me a bigger favor if she’d loaned me her personal drawing room.
I wrenched off the key again and fitted the tab through the slit on the key. One twist, and then another, and soon the damp cellar smell was overwhelmed by Mermeros’s foul fishy odor. In the darkness, I couldn’t see his billowing clouds, but I smelled them.
Mermeros himself appeared. A dim light gathered around his green skin. The darkness made his bulbous eyes, glimmering fish scales, and shocking white mustache and brows all the more startling.
“The dungeon,” Mermeros observed. “It is fitting. At last we have come to your proper home, have we not, Girl Hatchling?”
With two rotten older sisters (not counting Polly), a gang of unwashed cricket-playing rowdies back home, and the likes of Theresa Treazleton and her tribe here in town, I knew how to let jibes and jeers roll off me. But that didn’t mean I needed to let Mermeros’s barbs pass by altogether.
“You know, you don’t have to be such a fiend,” I said. “Better manners wouldn’t kill you.”
He twisted the tips of his mustache between his fingertips, first one side, then the other. “Tell me,” he said, “about your father. He obviously is no sultan, no pasha, no caliph. Is he a serf? A slave? Does he beat himself each day in shame at siring such a daughter as you?”
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “How about you?” I said. “Does your father gnash his teeth at the humiliation of rearing a green fish-man of a son who must spend eternity doing the bidding of masters like me?”
Mermeros pumped himself up, double in size, and smacked his head on the rafters.
“You do not dare to call yourself my master,” he said. “You are nothing more than my temporary nuisance.” He yawned. “Come now, Hatchling Girl. Have you thought of it yet? Your next wish? Perhaps you would like me to arrange a marriage for you with the wealthiest prince of your land?”
Marriage! Yuck!
I laughed out loud. “There aren’t any princes to be had,” I said. “The Prince of Wales is an old man and married. His son, Prince George, got married himself a few years ago. So, you’re out of luck. No, wait, come to think of it, the Queen has a few grandsons around my age. But, not for me. No, thank you.”
Mermeros crumpled his nose and bared his sharp teeth.
“Princes aren’t good enough for the soft-brained hatchling, eh? Then what idiot wish will you squander today? Hurry and be done with it, for when your three wishes are spent, I leave these cramped confines and move on to a vessel more suitable for one of my rank.”
This intrigued me. “You mean the sardine tin won’t hold you anymore after my third wish?” I said. “Who decid
es where you’ll go next? Think you’ll be promoted to a can of corned-beef hash?”
He snapped at the air in front of my face with his fishy fangs. Chop, chop. “The hatchling girl is a jester! A spell cast eons ago will find me a new home, of its own caprices. It changes with the passing years. This curious enclosure,” he peered disdainfully down at the sardine can, “was nowhere in existence when last I served a master. I do not prefer it. A priceless porcelain vase, on the other hand, or a lamp of bronze and gold would suit me well.”
I considered this. “Vases and lamps aren’t as portable as a sardine tin,” I said. “You fit perfectly in my pocket. Much more convenient that way.”
“Another thing that would suit me well,” Mermeros said, “is a master worthy of me. Give me a warlord, a maharajah, a necromancer, and watch me work. Together, a bold master and I can bring an empire to its knees, or raise an army of the dead. But a girl child? It is an insult to my dignity.”
I jumped up off my cot. “You’re a fine one to talk about your dignity, Mr. Sardiney Djinni,” I cried. “You stink worse than a London sewer, and I eat sardines for a snack. So, I’d keep a civil tongue in your head if I were you, and remember, I’m your master, like it or not.” A thought struck me. “Wait. Did you say an army of the dead?”
Mermeros ignored the question. “Oh ho, and what will you have me do next time? Turn other little females’ hair pink? Soil their dresses and stomp on their playthings? Pah!” He spit upon the cellar floor and shook his head. “If my brothers should see me, reduced to this… My shame is the shame of a thousand donkey-carts filled with rotten figs.”
“The shame of what?” I shook my head. Too much time in a sardine can had addled his brain. “You and your shameful figs—or is it your shameful donkeys? All of you can just get yourselves comfortable for the time being.”
I paced slowly around him. He rotated in midair, keeping an eye upon me always, as though I might stab him in the back somehow. Stab what, I wondered. A being made of vapor?
This made me pause. Was he solid? Or was he nothing more than smoke?
I poked him in the tattooed arm. My finger went right through his green-and-silver skin, and it burned. I yanked my hand away.
“What was that for?” demanded Mermeros.
“Nothing.” My finger was fine now; no lasting damage. Was he made of enchanted fire?
I kept on pacing, and tried to think. I’d learned quite a bit already. I only got three wishes, as I’d always suspected, but it didn’t hurt to hope otherwise. And once the third wish was done, he’d be gone, out of reach forever.
There was more that I needed to learn.
“Do you ever wish you didn’t have to be cooped up in that can?” I asked him. “Quit being a djinni, get out of the wish-granting business?”
He sneered down at me over his thick white mustache. “I wish for that as much as you wish for death.”
“Huh?”
He rolled his eyes. This fellow was a great one for making dramatic faces. “My vessel is my life and my power,” he said, “and wish-granting is my existence. Take them away, and I am no more.”
Interesting.
“And if someone were to wish for you to be free of the spell that binds you?”
“That is not freedom,” he said. “It is murder. In any case, it is forbidden. The wish would not be granted.”
“Sounds like you’ve got quite a lot of elaborate rules,” I said. “Let me get this straight. A master gets three wishes…”
“Any attempt to wish for more than three wishes will backfire upon the master most gruesomely,” he said. He smiled a ferocious, fishy smile. “You should’ve seen what happened to the master who tried it.”
Noted. I tried not to think about blood.
“Only three wishes, then,” I said. “A fixed number.”
“Only three, for life, forever.”
I chewed on that statement until a glimmer of meaning shone through. “You mean that if, say, someone made a wish or two, then lost you—maybe you were stolen, stands to reason people would try if they knew…” Images of Tommy and Theresa filled my mind. “If someone stole you and became your new master, and then the original master got you back—”
“No additional wishes,” said Mermeros flatly. “Three is all anyone will ever get. If you were to lose me after one wish, and then retrieve me—a highly unlikely event—you would still have your remaining two wishes to use. But no more than that.”
Darn. So much for the new idea I’d been turning around in my head. “That means you can’t get a group of people together and just pass the djinni around, taking turns with the wishes forevermore.”
Mermeros barked out a sarcastic laugh. “A group of thieves tried that once,” he said. “They all went mad and murdered each other.”
I shivered. How would a group of thieves even try it, if one only got three wishes? This needed more thought.
“People start out believing they will keep their word and trust their comrades,” Mermeros went on. “But most find that when it’s time to pass me along, they’d much rather take what they can get than remember their promises.”
I considered this. It made sense.
“Strangely,” Mermeros said with a smirk, “the betrayed comrades often don’t take kindly to being cheated.” He ran a sinister finger across his throat.
I shuddered, and returned to my review of the rules.
“No master can wish to release you from captivity.”
“I am not a captive.”
“Fine. No one can wish you free, because it would kill you, so it’s not allowed.”
“Correct.” He yawned. “Can we be through? Make a wish, or leave me alone.”
I gazed at his oily, fishy face. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” I said. “Why should I trust a thing you say?”
He snorted with contempt. “It is always the same. The questions, every time.” He unclipped his earrings and polished them on his scaly vest. “I am not permitted to speak untruths to my master.”
Oh ho! Excellent!
“So, every word you tell me is true?” I said. “You’re not allowed to deceive me?”
“I cannot speak an untruth to you.”
I smiled. I knew the difference between not telling a lie and not deceiving someone. I’d have to keep a close eye on Mermeros.
“If I could lie to you,” he said, “why would I tell you I can grant your wishes, and then do it?”
I laughed. “You have an excellent point,” I said. “You wouldn’t do anything nice for me unless you had to. You’re not exactly flowing with the milk of human kindness.”
He scowled and wiped his arms and shoulders briskly, as if there might be some sticky milk of human kindness dripping there.
There was something else I needed to know, and judging from Mermeros’s nature, there was one sure way to get the information out of him. His pride. A bully’s a bully, green or not.
“How do I know you’ve got the power to grant any wish I might demand?” I said. “There must be limits to what you can do.”
A thundering growl reverberated from Mermeros’s chest. Off in the remote corners of the cellar I heard scuttling, shuffling sounds. Probably mice fleeing in terror.
He flung out his hands. A roiling globe of water appeared above his right hand, with a whirlpool snaking its way through it. Waves lashed, and ocean water sprayed my face. I saw ships—Phoenician galleys and Greek triremes, with rows of slaves tugging desperately at the oars—tipping to their doom in Mermeros’s maelstrom.
In his other hand, the djinni had conjured a globe of fire. And not just fire—liquid fire, seething with chunks of melting rock. Lava! He held a volcanic eruption in his hand. I peered closer, despite the heat blasting my face, and saw whole villages and cities engulfed, forests of trees sizzling like matchstick
s.
Mermeros’s green eyes blazed with fury. With a mighty heave, he crashed the two globes together. An explosion of steam blasted me back onto my cot, but once again, I was not injured by the heat. When I rubbed the damp and the debris out of my eyes, Mermeros was still there, but turned away from me, with his arms crossed over his chest like a pouting child.
The show-off.
I know how to handle their kind.
“That was impressive, Mermeros.”
He cocked his head but said nothing. His back was still toward me.
“Your power,” I cooed. “It’s beyond all imagining.”
Slowly, slowly, he rotated in midair until he could see my face. He still kept his lower lip thrust out in sullen indifference, but I knew I had his attention.
“Have you always been a djinni? Will you always be one?”
He took a little flask from his waistband and uncorked it, then shook a few slugs of thick fluid into the palm of his hand. He began rubbing himself all over with the ointment. It reeked of eucalyptus. I wondered if lady djinnis liked that sort of thing.
“Well?”
“No, and no,” he said.
“No and no what?”
He glopped the stuff right on his shiny bald head. “No, I was not born a djinni. I was born a prince in an empire of such splendor and majesty that a common little female hatchling like you could never begin to fathom it.”
I was too busy thinking about his second “no” to take notice of the insult.
“Then who turned you into a djinni?”
This question, I could tell, had awoken a sleeping monster inside his memories. “A sorcerer,” he finally said. I had the feeling he wasn’t telling me the whole truth, but the look in his eyes made me let it pass.
“Will you someday cease to be a djinni?”
“When the world ends.”
“So, basically, never, then.”
His bushy eyebrows rose expressively. “Stupid hatchling.”