by Julie Berry
I thought of the globes of fire and water colliding and extinguishing each other, and decided not to press this point further. It was not a comfortable thought.
“You mentioned brothers. How many do you have? Are you the oldest, youngest, or middle?”
He snorted. “After five thousand years, it scarcely matters.”
I waited.
He turned to face me again. “I have two brothers. They were born before me.”
I nodded. “Once the youngest, always the youngest. I’ve got three older sisters, and I know.”
Mermeros tucked his vial of ointment back into the sash around his waist. “You know nothing. When will your weak female brain understand at least that? You know nothing.”
I jumped up off my cot and looked him in the eye. “I know a lot more than I knew before about djinnis and wishes. So there.”
A wicked light gleamed in his eyes. “Here is what you do not know,” he said in a voice of velvet that made my flesh crawl. “Your wishes will destroy you.”
I laughed. “You’re mad.”
His eyes shone with a toxic light. “They will be your undoing. Before you’re done, your spirit will beg you to release me, but you won’t be able to let go. Greed will take hold. Gold lust will consume you. It will infiltrate you like a cancer until it owns you, body and soul, and drives you to madness and ruin.”
I took a deep breath, and then another. The hot retort I wanted to make seemed stuck on my lips, and my heart pounded in my chest. Goodness knew why. He was babbling nonsense, so, why should I care?
Finally, I composed myself and confronted the djinni.
“You don’t know me, if you think that’ll be my fate,” I said. “You don’t know me at all. You don’t even know my name. I’d never be so stupid as to let wishes turn me into someone else—someone greedy and horrible. I can see how it might happen to others, but it won’t ever happen to me.”
Mermeros’s smile stretched from one green ear to another. With a hiss like air escaping from a rubber balloon, he deflated in size and poured himself back into his sardine tin.
“That,” he said, “is what they all say.”
He uncurled the lid over himself tightly, and sealed it with a little ping. The loose metal key shot to the edge of the tin and squirmed underneath until it, too, pinged into place.
Mermeros was back in his sardine tin, with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him.
I sat on my cot in the darkening cellar, alone with my own thoughts as well.
Chapter 9
Gold lust will consume you.
Madness and ruin.
Mermeros’s words echoed in my ears. My tongue felt as though I’d just tasted foul medicine.
Greed? Madness? Ruin? Balderdash. This was me.
Gold lust? My mother would suspect it was a dirty word. She, in her way, was the queen of gold lust, always hinting that Daddy ought to be earning more money. Greed comes in all sizes.
But not Maeve sizes.
It wouldn’t be so. I wouldn’t let it be so. Neither wishes nor any other thing could make me become something I didn’t want to be.
But that look in his eyes…
After so many years of past experience, could he, in fact, see the future?
Should I, perhaps, just bury that sardine tin somewhere no one would ever find it and go on with my old life? Submit to stuffy Miss Salamanca and stuck-up Theresa? Appease my family by behaving like a priggish, boring young lady should?
No.
No, no, no!
I had found a djinni.
Out of all the swarms of people in London, in Britain, in the entire world, I had found a djinni. Me, Maeve. Me! How could I give up a truly one-in-a-million chance like this?
I had two wishes left, and I’d use them well. I’d wish myself into a life of freedom and adventure, the likes of which no British girl had ever known. I’d travel the world and live by my own rules for what young women could say, and play, and wear. And I wouldn’t sell my soul in the process, no matter what Old Greenskin had to say about it.
I nodded. Defiantly. In a dark cellar, with no one watching. Take that, Mermeros.
Mermeros. Now there was a mystery for you. I tried to remember all that I’d learned about him. Youngest of three brothers. Born a prince of an empire of splendor and majesty. Turned into a djinni by a sorcerer. What did you do, Mermeros, to anger a sorcerer? Judging from his charming personality, probably quite a lot.
Let’s see, what else did I know about him? He said he was five thousand years old. Egads. Did that make him the oldest creature on the planet? It must! Unless there were lots of other djinnis. He’d witnessed most of human history go scrolling by. Empires rising and falling.
What had he said? An empire of splendor and majesty.
There must be pots of buried treasure near the tombs or the ruins of his ancient palace. The newspapers were full of stories of explorers digging up priceless antiquities from the ancient world in archaeological digs in far-off places.
Maybe there were other ways to find the fortune that would pay for my dreams besides just wishing for it. Wishing for money felt dull compared to wishing to be led to an ancient fortune.
Besides, I wanted to know more about Mermeros. Born a prince, made a djinni, given incredible power, and fated to live until the world’s end.
You’re a story yourself, Mermeros, I thought, patting the sardine can. A story I plan to read. While I raid your ancestors’ tombs. Which would just serve you right.
But when?
Not just yet. It needed planning. But soon. Very soon.
And now what?
Time slithered on like a maggot on a cabbage leaf. It was going to be a long night. And I was much too fidgety to sleep.
I decided to investigate the nearest window. I found some old crates nearby that seemed sturdy enough for me to stand upon and climbed up to inspect the window. It was firmly secured by iron bars on the inside. Apparently, I was not the first girl to be imprisoned here. I moved on to another window and found the same thing. No escape.
Rattling the bars and casements, I didn’t notice the noise at first. Then a horrid rustling, snuffling sound reached my ears. I turned. Right there on my cot was a gigantic rat! Its fangs gleamed wet under its pointy snout, and its ghastly yellow tail whipped this way and that. It had made short, crumbly work of my stale bread and was now gnawing on my lolly.
I jumped. My crate collapsed. The rat hissed. I twisted my ankle.
Worst of all, I screamed.
I loathe rats.
A second rat jumped up on my cot and seized my lolly from the first. I froze, trapped in the skeleton of the wooden crate, and watched the rats claw and snap at each other over my sweets. Perhaps, I thought, if I stayed motionless, they’d creep off after a time, after they’d gotten all that could be eaten, and they’d leave me alone.
They waged a squeaky, bloody war over my lollipop. One knocked the other off the cot, then nosed through my handkerchief of belongings and noticed the sardine can. Before I could scream a second time, it seized the tin in its frightful jaws and waddled off into the blackness with it.
No!
What I’d give for my cricket bat. And a lamp. And a hungry stray cat. Could I actually chase after that loathsome, scuttling rat and seize my sardines back? No telling where the rat might burrow away with my tin. I shuddered. What might it do to me with those claws and fangs?
Had rats ever killed people? I was sure I’d heard stories of rats attacking prisoners.
But my wishes! My cricket team, my Grand World Tour, spirited away between a rat’s teeth!
I had no time to spare. I kicked the broken crate away from my feet, grabbed a sturdy spar off its bent frame, and followed the rats into the dark.
I couldn’t see. I heard their scratchy claws, crunc
hing on the moldy cellar floor. The dark was suffocating.
Something brushed against my leg. I swung my makeshift bat.
An unnatural cry split the darkness. Like a wailing ghost.
I dropped my bat. The rats squealed.
Something whooshed in front of me. I felt it rather than saw it. I cowered, covering my face with my arms.
Something clattered to the floor. Something small, solid, and metal.
My sardines! I groped around on the filthy floor, searching for the tin. Instead, my fingers found greasy rat fur. I gasped.
Rat fur that wasn’t going anywhere. A dead rat. Still warm.
I fought back an urge to retch, wiped my hands on my skirt, took a deep breath, and plunged onward.
A spark of dim light wavered across the floor. I turned. Behind me, a safety match flickered. A face appeared in the gloom, and then a candle.
It was Tom, the orphan boy. And before me, ripping shreds of its dinner off a warm rat carcass, was a huge gray owl.
Chapter 10
Tom. What was he doing here? How did he get in?
After Mermeros, no doubt.
I turned in a panic and scrambled across the filthy floor for the sardine tin. The light of Tom’s approaching candle gleamed off something. It was my tin, all right—pinned into place under the owl’s ferocious, taloned claw. The creature had claimed it like a prize.
I’d seen stuffed owls lots of times in people’s parlors. But I’d never seen a live one. Its great eyes blinked at me, but what I stared at most was the deadly curve of its beak.
I sidled away, seized my wooden spar, and rose to face Tom.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Tom’s eyebrows rose. “What are you doing here?” He gestured toward my cot and disheveled things. “New bedroom?”
I was too angry to answer, and too worried about my sardine tin. I knew that was why he’d come. To lose my wishes to one rat, and now another! Not today, thank you.
When I said nothing, Tom knelt and made a clucking sound toward the owl. “I see you’ve met Morris.”
The great bird swiveled its head toward Tom, then began the oddest ungainly hops and shuffles toward him. He bounced on his feet and flapped one wing while the other dragged behind him on the ground. Several long pinions were missing from the dragging wing.
As soon as he was off my sardine tin and a safe distance away, I darted for my prize and wrapped my fingers tightly around it.
“Morris?” I asked.
Tom pulled a packet from his coat and offered something to the great bird. Whatever it was, the owl found fresh rat more tempting. “For the little Morris dance he does to move about.”
I wouldn’t say so much to Tom, but that was a clever name. We had our own Morris dances in Luton at Whitsun Fair time. I loved seeing the dancers, all in white, hopping and skipping about in unison, waving their handkerchiefs.
Morris the owl only waved a rat’s tail from its beak. Ugh.
“How did you get down here?” I asked Tom.
He seemed reluctant to answer, then pointed to the rear of the cavernous cellar. “Through the back door. Figured out how to pick the lock last summer when we found Morris.”
I squinted into the darkness. “We?”
“My mate Jack and me. From the home. We found Morris in the park. He was young and had broken his wing. He would’ve died.”
I turned to look at the owl once more. He swallowed the rat’s tail in one gulp, and blinked at me.
“How does Miss Salamanca not know there’s an owl down here?”
Tom grinned. “Nobody comes down here much,” he said. “For the most part, Morris is pretty quiet.”
“So, you and Jack come down here to take care of him?”
Tom shook his head. “Jack’s gone. Went to work in a cotton mill up north.”
“A free man, eh?”
His expression was grim. “That’s where they send all of us once we’ve hit fifteen,” he said. “They come each season for their new shipment of orphan lads.”
Shipment. Like livestock. I remembered, then, my father speaking of conditions in those mills. Workers toiling from early in the morning till late at night, year-round, healthy or sick, with only Sundays to rest. He said they often employed children, and barely paid them enough for food and the roughest housing. The air was so full of fluff that many of them took sick in the lungs at a terribly young age.
A cold current of air brushed over me from the open door. “How old are you, Tom?” I asked.
Candlelight flickered over his face, throwing deep shadows under his nose and eyebrows. “Fourteen.”
Only a year older than me, yet not much time left. I didn’t know what to say.
“Are they punishing you?” Tom asked. “Is that why you’re down here?”
I nodded. There was no point denying it.
“And is it because of…”
“They punish me all the time.” I didn’t want to talk about sticking my neck out to help him. That might make Tom think we were friends. We were not friends. We were rivals. Rivals for Mermeros, who was now safely back in my hand, thanks to Morris the owl.
I went back to my cot, set it up straight again, and sat on it, trying not to think about the rats that had just battled there. Tom knelt and poured the contents of a canteen into a flat dish I hadn’t seen. As he did so, I slipped my sardine tin underneath my skirts.
“Is that for Morris to drink?” I asked.
Tom shook his head. “He likes to have a splash now and then,” he said. “Owls get their water from the blood of their prey. We didn’t know when we chose this place to hide him just how well he’d fare on all the rats here.”
“I wish he’d pick up the pace,” I said. “There are still too many rats here for my liking.”
Tom screwed the cap back on his canteen and rose. “Funny finding you here,” he said. “I was just going to stop down here and feed Morris, then go and wait for you in your back gardens.”
I turned away. “You would have had a long wait,” I said. “Even if I wasn’t stuck down here, I wouldn’t have come. Why should I?”
Tom grinned. “You’d’ve come.”
In truth, I probably would have, but I didn’t like admitting it. “Why should I?”
Tom sat down on the dirty cellar floor and clucked at Morris. The owl hopped over to him and perched upon his knee. It seemed as if those talons should have pierced Tom’s leg awfully. But maybe there wasn’t enough flesh on that long, skinny frame to feel the sharpness. Tom dripped a few wax drops onto the floor, then jammed his candle into the puddle.
“What’s your name, then?” he said.
I’d forgotten he didn’t know. “Maeve,” I said. “Maeve Merritt.”
“Maeve,” he repeated, trying out the sound. He stroked Morris’s back with one long finger. “Well, Maeve, I have a proposal for you.”
“Not interested.”
“I propose,” said Tom, “a truce.”
I waited. That self-assured expression on his face needed a wallop, I thought, but I had to play fair. No punching until truly provoked. “I’m listening.”
“Good.” He took off his cap. Even in the darkness, the candlelight shone off his flaming red hair. “Now, here’s what I figure. You’ve got a djinni.”
“A brilliant observation.”
“That means you get three wishes. Everyone knows that’s how it works.”
“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”
“Well, isn’t that how it works?”
No point in picking a fight over this. “Yes.”
He nodded. “And how many have you used?”
“Why should I tell you that?”
He held up his hands. “Never mind. Let’s say you haven’t used any of them yet. Let’s say
you’ve got three left. Now, I told you I was going to try to steal your djinni. But why do that? It’s hardly sporting. Why be enemies?”
There was nobody I trusted less than an enemy suggesting friendship.
“Here’s what I say. You share your three wishes with me—”
“What?” I knew it. The greedy mongrel. “Not a chance!”
“Share your wishes with me,” he persisted, “by letting me come along on your adventures. Then, when your wishes are used up, you give the djinni to me, and I’ll share my adventures with you.”
I stared at him.
“That way, it’s like we each get six wishes. Allies instead of enemies.”
Morris hooted softly. He seemed to like Tom stroking his back.
“What do you say?”
Sharing wishes? This would keep Tom from sneaking around me all the time, trying to steal my sardine can. If he meant it. If he was sincere.
He seemed like he was. After all, if he wanted to rob me, he could’ve easily tried already. We were alone here in the cellar. He had the advantage of size, knowledge of the surroundings, and a candle.
But I couldn’t give him Mermeros when I was done with him, because after my third wish, he’d disappear to who-knows-where. I couldn’t make this promise, even if I wanted to.
But Tom didn’t know that.
Hmm.
I needed to stall for time. “What makes you think I’ll be wishing for adventures?” I said. “How d’you know I won’t wish for…dresses and things?”
Tom laughed. It erased his sneering expression. “Girl like you? I doubt it.”
I sat up straighter. “What do you mean, a girl like me?”
He was still laughing. “You know what they call you across the street?”
My fists were forming already. “What do they call me?”
“Fast-bowl Franny.”
I jumped up off my cot. “They what? Show me who dares to call me that!”
Tom pantomimed a pitch. “The lads say that if you knew how to play cricket, you’d be a mighty fine bowler.”
“Oh.” I sat back down. They must’ve seen me throw a ball around here and there at recess. Before Miss Rosewater forbade it for being unladylike. Fast-bowl Franny, eh? I’d fast-bowl their wet-nosed noggins and show them a thing or two.