by Ahmet Zappa
“Welcome to Wishers 101,” the teacher said. An older woman with piercing blue eyes and fading purple hair, she was draped in colorful star-covered clothing and clutched a blue staff. She was hunched over and very wrinkly. “My name is Professor Elara Ursa and I am a former Wish-Granter, with the greatest number of wish missions of any Wish-Granter in Starland history,” she said in a raspy voice. She was quite intimidating.
“Wishlings and Starlings look remarkably alike,” the professor began. “Wishlings have a range of different skin, eye, and hair colors, just as we do. But their natural tones are not as vivid as ours. And their skin does not have our sparkling glow. But never fear. Once you have graduated and are on your way to your first Wish Mission, this will be easily adjusted by putting your hand on your Wish Pendant and repeating these words: “Star light, star bright, the first star I see tonight: I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”
Sage repeated the words to herself. Just for practice.
“There are many other differences that you must be aware of to be able to blend in seamlessly on Wishworld,” the teacher cautioned. “Clothing is one. Each Star-Zap comes with an outfit changer so you can select Wishling clothing. Their clothing is made from materials found only on their planet, and they do not have access to the stain-free fibers that grow in abundance on Starland.”
A girl with short bright orange hair raised her hand.
Professor Elara Ursa pointed to her. “Yes, what is your name?”
“Tweela,” said the girl.
“What is your question, Tweela?”
“Does that mean Wishlings actually have to wash their clothing?” Tweela asked incredulously.
Professor Elara Ursa nodded. “They do. Also, their clothing eventually wears out and often needs to be replaced.”
The room buzzed. That was so very strange!
“Wishlings also have to clean their homes,” Professor Elara Ursa continued. “They do not have self-cleaning houses like we do. Wishlings may spend many hours a week keeping their surroundings dirt free.”
Another student raised her hand. “So does that mean they don’t have vanishing garbage?”
“Sadly for them, they do not,” said the professor, trying unsuccessfully to hide her disgusted expression. “None of their trash disappears. People driving giant loud trucks ride around, grab cans full of garbage, and dump it into a massive crushing machine.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Absolutely disgusting!” she muttered under her breath, but Sage, sitting close by, heard her.
Collecting garbage? What a strange thing to do! Sage was surprised. Life on Wishworld sounded a lot more primitive than she had imagined!
A girl in red raised her hand. “What is the weather like on Wishworld? How will we know how to dress to blend in?”
“An excellent question,” said Professor Elara Ursa. “Wishlings have four seasons, as we do. But they have different names. They call the Time of New Beginnings spring. The Time of Lumiere is called summer on Wishworld. They call the Time of Letting Go fall, and the Time of Shadows is known as winter. The temperatures vary widely depending on where you are, and your outfit changer will only access weather-appropriate outfits.”
Interesting, thought Sage. She’d never be able to keep all that straight!
“Do they celebrate the same holidays we do?” a serious-looking girl with purple pigtails asked.
“They do not,” answered Professor Elara Ursa. “Wishlings celebrate the new year in the middle of the Time of Shadows. This is followed by a holiday celebrating love and affection, called Valentine’s Day. They give each other paper cards expressing their admiration for each other and gifts shaped like the heart organ. Some of these heart shapes contain a delicacy called chocolate—and Wishlings think it’s delicious, but it’s really dreadful. If you ever are offered a chocolate, I highly recommend turning it down. This is followed by a holiday when many Wishlings wear green and march in parades and men in skirts play noisy instruments. There are also holidays celebrating eggs and rabbits, and one when they eat a lot and say thank you. Wishlings place large fir trees in their homes, which bloom with attractive ornaments. Then they place colorful wrapped boxes underneath.”
The girls laughed. How bizarre!
“Yes, Wishlings and their holidays can be quite strange!” the professor concluded.
Sage thought that Wishling holidays sounded interesting, but she felt sorry that they didn’t know anything about Starland holidays. Imagine not celebrating the Festival of Illumination, when family and friends got together to eat cocomoon fritters and set off light rockets at night. Or Starshine Day, held on the warmest starday of Lumiere, with hiking, rock climbing, games, and sing-alongs of traditional songs. Or going door-to-door with her brothers on Light Giving Day, then returning home for zoomberry cake. She couldn’t imagine life without any of those special days.
Sage’s head was spinning. There was so much information to take in. Life on Wishworld certainly was different! She hoped it would all be absorbed by her brain overnight, because she was having trouble concentrating at the moment.
“There is so much for you to learn about Wishling culture,” said Professor Elara Ursa. “Wishworld is a complicated, very odd place.” She smiled. “But don’t take my word for it. As part of this class, we will routinely go to the Wishworld Surveillance Deck and do some Wishworld Wishling watching! Come, let’s go right now!”
“Wishworld Wishling watching!” the girl named Tweela repeated with a laugh. “Try to say that three times fast!” And then she did. Unsuccessfully.
Sage tried it herself as she stood and joined the others filing out of the classroom, but she couldn’t do it, either. She followed the group down a long hallway, to a Flash Vertical Mover that was waiting for them, its glass doors open. They stepped inside and the doors whooshed shut. Sage’s ears popped as the mover gained speed, taking them up, up, up the enormously high tower. She swallowed hard as the ground below and the buildings of Starling Academy became tinier and tinier. Luckily, she wasn’t afraid of heights.
Ding! They had arrived. By neatly dodging around the other students as they exited the mover, Sage was the first to push open the glass doors and step outside onto the surveillance deck. She froze. She had never seen anything more spectacular. The sky was so clear she could see for floozels.
Stars twinkled, distant planets glowed, and every so often a white-hot shooting star streaked across the sky. She wondered if someone was on the way down to Wishworld at that very moment. Sage finally understood the true meaning of the word breathtaking.
“Welcome to the Wishworld Surveillance Deck,” said Professor Elara Ursa. “Find yourself a telescope and start observing!” On the ledge of the deck were dozens of large telescopes. Although there were more than enough for everyone, the students bumped into each other in their excitement to get to them. Sage found a free telescope and placed her hands on its cool metal surface. She put her eye to the eyepiece and peered through. Then she jumped back in surprise—everything was so close—before leaning forward for another look.
The telescope was so incredibly powerful that it was as if she was right there on Wishworld, not on a distant star mooniums of floozels away. She could not believe her eyes. It was so shockingly magnificent that for a starsec she thought it might be a dream.
She saw a female Wishling walking with a small furry animal in a park. She had a sudden start as she realized just how similar Starlings and Wishlings actually looked.
“I see a Wishling animal!” she cried. The other students rushed over to take a look and marvel at how adorable it was. Sage thought it was almost as cute as her brother’s pet glowfur.
“That’s called a dog,” said Professor Elara Ursa. “Many Wishlings keep them as pets and take them on walks several times a day.” She went on to explain that many Wishworld animals did not live together as harmoniously as the plant-eating creatures of Starland, which was a lush place with an abundance of plants
for the animals to eat. But there were still some similarities. Flutterfocuses were akin to Wishworld butterflies, and globerbeems a lot like Wishworld lightning bugs. Wishworld horses were the closest animal to galliopes. And the glion was a gentle and distant cousin to the Wishworld lion.
Sage moved the telescope a tiny bit and next spotted a young male Wishling tossing an oddly shaped brown ball. She paused for a moment to watch the ball arc through the air before a second young male Wishling caught it in his hands. They really do look a lot like Starling boys, she thought. Just not as sparkly, but still cute. She next noticed a group of small Wishlings in a circle holding hands as they sang. To her surprise, they suddenly collapsed on the ground. Was something wrong? But they almost immediately jumped to their feet, laughing out loud. It was a game! It didn’t look like such a fun one to her, but it certainly seemed as if they were enjoying it.
As she moved the telescope this way and that, watching Wishlings at rest, work, and play, she listened to Professor Elara Ursa’s lecture. She learned that Wishlings were hopelessly behind in technology; their computers and communications devices were shockingly old-fashioned. In addition, their modes of transportation were slow and cumbersome, plus they actually had to be operated by Wishlings themselves! Oh, how the girls laughed when they saw the funny vehicles Wishlings used to travel. Life on Wishworld was very interesting indeed.
“Sage! Sage!” said a voice. Sage tore her gaze from her view of Wishworld and turned around reluctantly. Professor Elara Ursa was shaking her head. “I’ve been calling your name for five starmins!” she said. “Class is over!” Sage looked around, blinking. The Wishworld Observation Deck was deserted. She muttered her apologies and took off hurriedly for her next class. She slipped into the last remaining seat right before the teacher closed the door and turned around with a scowl. “My name is Professor Lucretia Delphinus and above all I value timeliness!” she announced. Her eyes flashed behind her large black glasses. She was small and intense and immediately began pacing the room.
Sage gulped. Way to make a good first impression, she thought.
“This is Wish Identification class,” said the professor. “Once you arrive on Wishworld, blend in, and find your Wisher by using your Wish Pendant, the most difficult part of your Wish Mission begins—making sure you identify the correct wish. This is obviously quite critical to your mission and will be the difference between collecting wish energy and returning home empty-handed.”
A student with long, straight midnight-blue hair and eyes the color of the sky at night raised her hand.
“Yes?” said Professor Lucretia Delphinus. She attempted to hop up to sit on the corner of her desk. As she was tiny, she didn’t make it at first and had to try a couple of times. Finally, she dragged over a chair and used it to climb onto the desk. She settled herself, then stared at the girls as if daring them to giggle at her. The students, completely intimidated, did not.
“You had a question?” she asked the blue-haired girl.
The girl, nonplussed by her professor’s odd behavior, stared for a moment. “Um, won’t the wish be obvious?” she finally asked.
“Not necessarily,” replied Professor Lucretia Delphinus. “Here’s what happens: When you arrive on Wishworld, your Star-Zap will give you directions to find your Wisher. When you are near your Wisher for the first time, your Wish Pendant will light up. It will be faint when you are in their vicinity and glow brightly when you make actual contact. That is when you can start trying to identify the wish. This is very tricky, because there is often nothing to indicate that you are correct. It’s just a feeling you have. Some very perceptive Starlings will get a burst of energy when the wish is identified, but many will not. This coupled with the short time frame to complete the wish results in a fifty percent failure rate.”
Sage was shocked. She’d had no idea the failure rate was so high.
“My goal is to teach you how to ask the right questions, become more perceptive, sharpen your senses, and be good listeners,” the professor continued.
“Have you ever identified a wish on the first try?” a girl in the front row asked.
Professor Lucretia Delphinus nodded. “Sometimes it is easy. Once I introduced myself to a Wisher and she said, ‘Boy, you’re friendly. I wish I could be as friendly as you.’ And I knew that my mission was to build her confidence and help her make friends. But most times it is not so simple.”
She put her hand to her chin. “On one mission I went on, I was fully convinced that my Wisher wanted to learn how to tap-dance.”
“How to what-dance?” asked Sage.
Professor Lucretia Delphinus smiled. “It’s a Wishling pastime in which they do special dances with very small metal plates attached to their shoes. Very noisy.”
“So what was the real wish?” Sage asked.
“Her actual wish was to get the courage to tell her parents she wanted to quit taking piano lessons. Boy, did she hate them,” Professor Lucretia Delphinus said, remembering. “I’m still not quite sure how I messed that one up. But luckily I discovered it in time.” The next thing the class knew, she had hopped off the desk and started doing a strange shuffling dance. “And I did become quite the tap dancer!”
The professor finished the dance by extending her arms and shaking her hands, her palms forward and fingers splayed. “Jazz hands,” she explained. The students just stared. Professor Lucretia Delphinus was certainly a character!
She cleared her throat and continued her lecture. “What makes wish identification so difficult is that the Wisher may have multiple wishes at the same time. They could even have several good wishes. So you must be sure to identify the correct wish. Here is why so many Wish Missions fail: the Starling assumes that the first wish they uncover is the correct wish. You really have to take the time to get to know your Wisher to make sure you grant the wish that is their heart’s desire.”
The students paid close attention. Wish granting was much more complicated than they had realized!
Professor Lucretia Delphinus looked at all the confused faces in front of her and softened. “Since it is your first day, we’ll go back to the basics. We’ll talk about good, bad, and impossible wishes. That will be a good way to ease into wish identification.
“So tell me this,” Professor Lucretia Delphinus said. “What exactly makes a wish impossible?”
The arms of nearly half the class shot up. “Yes,” said the professor, pointing to a girl with magenta hair.
“Wishes that are not within the Wishling’s grasp,” the girl answered.
“Good. Can I have some examples?” Professor Lucretia Delphinus asked.
Girls started calling out.
“Curing diseases!”
“Reading minds!”
“Flying!”
“All good examples,” the teacher said with a nod. “We all wish that things like world peace and curing diseases were not impossible wishes.
“And how about bad wishes?” the professor prompted.
“Bad wishes are selfish,” Sage said.
“Yes, anything else?”
“Bad wishes harm other people and don’t take their feelings into consideration,” offered another student.
“Correct,” Professor Lucretia Delphinus said. “And last but not least, what is a good wish?”
“Good wishes are those made for something positive with no ulterior motives,” Tweela said slowly.
Professor Lucretia Delphinus rubbed her hands together. “Excellent, girls. Now let’s try this: I am going to give you three wishes to choose from. Listen carefully and pick the wish which is not only good but is also possible.” The girls nodded.
“Wish number one: a Wishling wants her coworker to perform badly at an upcoming presentation so that she will look better to their boss.
“Wish number two: a Wishling wishes for the courage to try out for the neighborhood baseball team.” Puzzled expressions appeared, so Professor Lucretia Delphinus described an activity that involv
ed a large padded leather glove, bats made of wood or aluminum, and something called a “home run,” leaving the girls more confused than before.
“And wish number three: a Wishling whose grandmother is very sick wishes she could do something to make her all better.”
A girl scoffed. “That’s easy,” she said. “It’s the Wisher who wants to impress her boss.”
“No, no, no,” said the teacher, wringing her hands. “Why would wishing for another to fail be a good wish?”
The girl shook her head. “I think this is a trick question!” she said confidently. “It’s about her job, so it has to be a good wish!”
Professor Lucretia Delphinus put her hand to her head as if she had a sharp and sudden headache. “I see we have some work to do,” she said. Sage agreed. It was pretty clear that while everyone seemed to know which wish was which in theory, when it was put into practice, it was an entirely different story.
Luckily for everyone, the bell rang. It was time to head to the next class of the day.
Sage was dismayed when she entered her Wishful Thinking class and spotted the girl with the pale blue bangs sitting in the front row. It turned out her name was Vivica, and—no surprise—she was a bit of an obnoxious know-it-all. Sage decided not to let it bother her. Wishful Thinking was an important class. Up until then, none of the students had had any formal training in wish energy manipulation. It was something you practiced at home with your family. Now that they were at the Age of Fulfillment, they were ready to hone their skills.
“As you know, positive wish energy is around us at all times. Not only does it power our lights and cars, but we can use it to manipulate things around us with our minds,” said the teacher, a short, stern woman named Professor Dolores Raye. She wore sensible shoes with stars on them, and her illuminated glasses were on a glowstring around her neck so she wouldn’t misplace them. “We fully expect you all to be on markedly different levels. This is not a competition. By the end of the term, you will all be skilled manipulators. But first we have to assess your skills so we know where to begin.”
