Limited Wish

by Lawrence, Mark

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘We’ve come to rescue you, Mercuron.’ Hacknslay advanced on the man, sword in hand, while Fineous worked to lock the heavy door behind us.

  ‘Rescue me?’ Mercuron’s tufty white eyebrows rose. ‘You mean I can go home to Malda?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Hacknslay drew the word out. ‘That’s the retirement plan, but first you’ll be doing a little work for the Guild of Golden Truth.’

  ‘So, you’re kidnapping me and selling me to new owners?’ Mercuron gestured with his ladle, and the black drips that fell from it ate through the workbench before him, vanishing into deep smoking holes.

  ‘Well . . . yes,’ Nicodemus admitted, since the truth was hard to deny.

  ‘To get yourselves out of here after . . . how long?’

  ‘Months!’ Fineous stood with a long-suffering sigh, having finished relocking the door.

  ‘I’ve been working for the guilds for nineteen years!’ Mercuron shouted, his face reddening. More drops of the black liquid fell and hit the flagstones, sizzling into the stone. ‘Nineteen years! You’ve been here months and you want to trade me into a new prison?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Nicodemus didn’t need to go back and ask Sir Algernon the rights and wrongs of the situation. He knew exactly what the paladin would say.

  *BOOM*

  The great door behind us shuddered beneath a massive blow. One of the iron bolts securing the long black hinges pinged across the laboratory, missing Sharia by inches before demolishing a row of test tubes. The mechanical guards had recovered and wanted back in.

  *BOOM*

  Long splinters of wood broke free this time, and the hinges sagged on screws already half out of the doorframe.

  ‘We need to go!’ Hacknslay advanced on Mercuron, but the old man tossed his flask into the warrior’s path. A great cloud of misty fumes billowed up and from it came a serpent of glowing smoke. In two heartbeats it wound itself about the warrior. Thick as a man and longer than a tree is tall, the serpent took him to the ground. Their struggles became lost in the mist, which in turn took up the serpent’s glow, releasing it as a diffuse light of fluctuating colour.

  From the two far exits Mercuron’s assistants returned mob-handed, boiling through the doorways in their thickest aprons and furnace masks, all of them armed with bottles and flasks, no doubt containing the most noxious of all their alchemical workings.

  *BOOM*

  The door Fineous had locked surrendered to the pummelling of metal fists. The thief leapt clear but by remarkably bad luck, the very lock he had been working on shot out from the cloud of debris to hit him in the back of the head.

  ‘One!’ Simon exclaimed. ‘I rolled a beeping one. A beeping two or more would have saved me!’ Simon never swore. He very rarely got worked up enough to need to, and when he did he used ‘beeping’. His mother swore like she was practising for the Olympics when she thought none of us were listening, but Simon had not inherited the talent.

  ‘Fineous collapses to the floor not far from the edge of the cloud that Hacknslay is in. He lies there, limp, blood pouring down both sides of his head.’ Mia looked up from her notes at me. ‘What now?’

  ‘I pull out the lamp.’

  ‘Half-lamp.’

  ‘Rub it quickly and—’

  ‘Poof!’ Mia used her hands to mimic the half-genie’s smoke. ‘Your limited wish is my command, oh master.’

  ‘I wish . . .’

  Mia edged the figures on the map closer, closing from all directions.

  ‘I wish . . .’ What should I wish for? I wanted it all. I wanted John’s character free of the serpent, I wanted Simon’s character whole again. I wanted Sam’s character back with us and on his feet. I wanted the attackers turned to dust. I wanted some way to free Mercuron from his contract, not because I suddenly cared about him but because that was me right there, in the grip of Guilder’s money. And in the game we were acting out, the role filled by Rust and the other goons on Guilder’s payroll. I wanted a way to get our characters through this, graduated and out of that endless university, back following our own star. I wanted it all and I knew that whatever I got, it wasn’t going to be all of it.

  CHAPTER 19

  It occurred to me that since Dr Pritchard had announced that my cancer was back I hadn’t had any near-death experiences. Even Rust’s manhandling, painful as it was, didn’t trigger any of the effects I associated with the universe trying to rid itself of me before the moment of paradox. Of all the incidents so far, it had been the sword thrust that had come the closest to successfully ending me. Then came the diagnosis. And now . . . nothing. The dice had even stopped rolling ones. Almost as if the universe knew the cancer would do its job and had stopped trying.

  If the leukaemia was going to kill me before the ball arrived, then things would have to go downhill for me pretty damn quickly. But I honestly felt more than half dead already, so it seemed to be on track.

  I lay in my hospital bed waiting for Mother. Rain pelted the windows and the morning sun refused to show its face. I felt like crap. The chemical sludge they’d filled me with was clawing at the insides of my veins. The sour stink of vomit hung around me. I’d grown used to it, but I saw the nurses wrinkle their noses each time they came to take the sick bowls away. I’d been there two days and for most of that time it seemed that doctors had been hovering grim-faced around the end of my bed, discussing my chart in quiet voices. And, given that doctors are actually quite a rare sight in hospitals, to have two or three of them on my trail like vultures following a lame mule . . . well, it wasn’t a good thing.

  For the first time since this whole leukaemia business began, I had actually seen worry behind those brisk professional smiles. Doubt behind usually calm eyes. As if the doctors saw something new when they looked at my charts, when they took my pulse, when they peered into my eyes. As if for the first time they saw their enemy staring right back at them. Cancer. No longer lurking but laughing, its teeth deep in me, daring them to do their worst, or their best – it didn’t matter. There had even been talk of moving me ‘upstairs’. Upstairs was where they had taken that girl, Eva, just a few days before she died. All prospects of making it to the Trinity ball that evening had vanished, along with Eva and Demus, neither of whom I’d seen in the two days since being admitted. Something had gone seriously wrong inside me. My body had started to close down.

  ‘How are you feeling, Nicky?’ It was Lisa, the gorgeous redheaded nurse I knew from my previous stay. Don’t believe the TV shows; nurses in general are no more attractive than any other random group of women, but Lisa could have walked into a spot in any episode of General Hospital. That didn’t stop her ‘Nicky’ grating on me, though.

  ‘Not too bad,’ I lied. It surprised me to find that I wasn’t quite far gone enough not to sit up and pay attention whenever she came by. The day I gave up on that, I guessed it would mean that either puberty was truly finished with me, or they should start measuring me for my coffin, or both.

  ‘How are you feeling, really?’ she asked.

  The kindness in her voice made my cheek twitch, and ridiculously I found myself on the edge of tears. I felt hollowed out, weak, sick, burning up, ready to curl in about myself and die. ‘Been better.’

  ‘Well enough for visitors?’

  ‘My mother’s here already?’

  ‘No.’ Nurse Lisa pointed to the end of the ward where a familiar face was peering in through the small window in the door. ‘Shall I tell her to come in?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ But Eva had already pushed through and was advancing on my bed. I leaned back into my pillows and spotted Helen behind her. ‘Oh, nurse, could you . . .’ Suddenly self-conscious, I waved towards the sick bowls.

  ‘Of course, Romeo.’ Lisa grinned and hurriedly picked up the worst of it, along with my untouched breakfast, taking them with her as she left.

  ‘Helen!’ I looked past Eva as she took her seat. ‘What on earth are you doing he
re?’ Suddenly I felt stronger. Not strong, but at least on the right side of half dead.

  Helen reached my bedside and exchanged amused glances with Eva. A tension ran beneath the smiles though – I must have looked like shit. ‘He’s a charmer, isn’t he?’ She set a box of chocolate brazils in my lap. ‘Eva says you like them.’

  ‘I do.’ Though right then the idea of eating one made me want to hurl. ‘How—’ I was going to ask how Eva knew, but Helen herself must have told her when she was growing up. It was so strange to see mother and daughter sitting beside each other. Instead I asked, ‘You two know each other?’

  ‘We met on the early train,’ Helen said. ‘Piers had a football match in London today. A university thing—’

  ‘Football? I thought he’d play rugby!’

  ‘Oh, he does. He’s on the uni first team for that, too. But it’s football season.’

  Of course he did . . . I looked at my thin white arms and tried to imagine how long I’d last on a rugby field even at my best.

  ‘So,’ Eva took over, ‘we met on the train and it turned out that we both knew you. And when Helen heard you were in hospital she wanted to come with me to visit.’

  ‘Won’t Piers—’

  ‘Oh, he won’t care if I don’t watch him.’ Helen shook her head. ‘He always has an entourage whenever he travels. He just sort of attracts followers, I guess.’

  Piers definitely had that whole maximum charisma thing going on, but I manfully resisted saying so in order to conceal the true extent of my nerd credentials. ‘So, you can see why I mistook Eva for you at a distance.’

  Helen frowned and looked at her daughter. ‘Well, I mean, we have the same colour hair . . .’

  That coaxed a laugh from me. ‘I guess you’re right. Completely different apart from the hair. Don’t know what I was thinking.’

  Eva’s bag started beeping in a most unusual manner. She reached in and pulled out what looked like an oversized, rather clunky pocket calculator. She pressed one button and held the thing to her ear. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Yes. Yes. Not yet. Uh huh. Meet you there then.’

  ‘That’s a phone?’ I asked, amazed.

  ‘It’s one of those new cell phones,’ Helen said, eyes widening. ‘Piers’s dad has one. Very expensive.’

  ‘I have to go and help another of your visitors find their way in, Nick.’ Eva always hesitated for a fraction before saying my name, as if she were having to push the word ‘Dad’ from her tongue. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ She stood quickly and strode away.

  That left me and Helen rather surprised at finding ourselves alone, or at least as alone as you can be in a room full of sick kids lacking entertainment.

  ‘So . . .’ I found myself smiling despite the awkwardness of not knowing what to say. I met Helen’s eyes and, although it wasn’t that electric thrill that Sam had been describing, there was definitely something there. The way she looked back, unguarded, knowing, echoing my smile. I didn’t feel like an invalid any more. I no longer noticed that I was lying in a bed propped up on pillows. My body’s complaints dwindled to whispers and then to nothing. ‘Not a fan of football then?’

  A slight frown wrinkled the smoothness of her brow. The wrong thing to say. Piers was already casting a long enough shadow over both of us. ‘Not so much,’ she said. ‘Eva tells me you’re coming to the ball?’ Her eyes travelled doubtfully along the shape of me beneath the thin green hospital blanket.

  ‘She did?’ I looked around as if there might already be a doctor bearing down on me, ready to forbid it. ‘I don’t think they’re going to let me.’

  ‘Eva said she already busted you out of one hospital . . .’

  ‘Yeah, but this is a bit more serious.’

  ‘Being hacked with a sword isn’t serious?’ Helen gave me a stern look and somehow in that moment I really wanted to go. But with her. ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘Well . . . I mean . . . I only just met you. I don’t even know how to call you.’

  ‘There’s phones in the hall of residence! The closest to my room is in the corridor one floor down. Just ring and ask for Helen in three-oh-seven.’ She rummaged in her bag and produced a biro to write down the number. ‘You arrived mid-term, younger than all the rest – it’s hard to get to know people. Especially in a place like Cambridge, full of landed gentry and other posh bastards.’ A grin.

  ‘So, how did you meet Piers?’ I couldn’t stop picking at that particular scab, but I did manage to avoid starting with ‘speaking of posh bastards’, and to be fair nothing I’d seen had suggested he was a bastard.

  She gave me a look that said, ‘Really? You really want to talk about this?’

  I stared her down. I was the one the doctors were shaking their heads at. The one they wanted to move upstairs. I didn’t really have time for beating around bushes, even though in my natural state I would have waited an age before straying onto such ground. And by an age I mean forever.

  Helen gave in first. She looked away. ‘He just loomed out of the crowd at a party last month. I don’t even know why he chose me. We didn’t have any friends in common. I just got swept along, I guess. He’s like that. It’s a kind of gravity.’

  ‘Chose you? You make it sound like all the choice was on his side.’

  A sigh. ‘I don’t want to sound like an empty-headed Disney princess . . . but the guy is perfect. You know? He’s kind, caring, compassionate, funny . . . The only thing to complain about is not having something to complain about. How stupid is that?’

  I shrugged. ‘My dad used to say that he didn’t love my mum because she was perfect, he loved her because her imperfections were a good match for his. Like a lock and a key, he said. I guess I’m not exactly an expert, but it seems to me that perfection is hard to live with. I’d definitely need someone who could forgive my failings, and I’d feel a lot better about that if they had some I could forgive back.’

  Helen gave me a crooked smile. ‘I get that. Piers is great and everything, but everyone wants a piece of him. He’s always busy. Sometimes I think he only has a girlfriend to point at so he can keep all the other girls at arm’s length. People are always trying to fix him up with someone.’ A frown. ‘Anyway, I refuse to talk about him another second. How did you meet your last girlfriend?’

  ‘My last and only girlfriend,’ I said, and, seeing her look of surprise, added, ‘I went to a boys’ school! Also, yeah, I’m a slow starter.’

  ‘How did you meet your first girlfriend then?’ she asked.

  ‘My friend John. He’s our D&D group’s speaker-to-girls. Without him I literally need to be running for my life, maybe from a punt full of drunken toffs, before I even come close to a pretty girl.’

  ‘Ha,’ she said. ‘Even then I had to make the first move.’

  We chatted for a while then. I’m not sure about what. I just remember the warm rush beneath my skin every time her dark eyes met mine. The time slid by easily and other visitors came and went. It was the sudden shuddering of the light that made me aware of Eva returning, Demus in her wake.

  ‘Hey,’ Eva said. ‘We’ve come to bust you out of here.’ The lights dimmed, then steadied.

  Demus held up a dinner jacket and black trousers. He had a pair of black shoes in the other hand. ‘Something tells me these will fit you.’ He tossed them on the bed. ‘I’ve called Mother as you and told her I feel great and I’m going to the ball.’

  ‘I . . .’ I wanted to tell them that I really wasn’t well. That I couldn’t make it.

  ‘Shit! Is that the time?’ Helen jumped to her feet. ‘I have to run.’ She paused, looking at me. ‘See you at the ball tonight, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘See you there.’

  She smiled and turned to go, hesitating as she saw Demus, glancing between him and me. Another look at her watch and she shook off her confusion, then headed off down the ward swearing colourfully all the way.

  Demus tossed the clothes onto my bed and helped himself to a handful o
f chocolate brazils. ‘Love these things.’

  ‘You guys just set me up, didn’t you? You’ve been waiting in the foyer the whole time so I could talk to Helen.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’ Eva said.

  ‘It’s what you’d do if you were me,’ Demus said.

  ‘Let’s get you out of here.’ Eva came to help me up.

  I fended her off. ‘I need to get dressed.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Alone.’ I waved them both off, though what I thought I had to hide from Demus I don’t know. I drew the curtain around my bed and got dressed, moving like an old man, or a young one who has been badly beaten. Eventually I emerged clutching my bag. ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Demus grabbed my arm. ‘It’s the chemo making you ill. You’ll feel better for getting out.’ My skin buzzed where he touched me, an uncomfortable resonance. Right there between his fingertips and my arm was the strangeness that had somehow been woven into our timeline. Stars had died to make it real.

  ‘What, no wheelchair?’ I looked hopefully towards Eva.

  ‘You need to be tripping the light fantastic tonight, so let’s get those legs working.’ She moved to take my other arm. As she made contact it was as if a circuit had been completed, linking the three of us. The world seemed to flex around me, time fragmented and fragmented again, a dozen images overlaid, each becoming a dozen more, almost but not quite the same. The three of us seemed the only constant thing, like a nail hammered through scores of paper-thin realities, anchoring them one to the next.

  All of us felt it, and the other two let go of me as if I were scalding hot.