by Judi Fennell
“The natives got restless.”
Two questions, one answer. It was a good thing that Kal had covered her hand with his to keep her from falling off the edge of the carpet, but with the impossibility of what she was seeing, not to mention the flying thing, plus the kiss, plus the fact that he was a genie, plus the dragons and the gnomes and the leprechauns and the unicorns and the—what was Orkney? An ogre? Or a troll? Which ones were taller?
Was she really contemplating a correct answer for that question? Why? What difference would it make if he was an ogre or a troll or even an island bum with that hair? None of it would make her feel any steadier.
And then Kal put his arm around her and tucked her against him.
Now that, on the other hand, would.
But then the fox flew by, dangling from the fairies’ ribbons, and any steadiness went flying off with the breeze that had turned the little thing’s ears inside out. Then her knees gave out from under her, and she sank onto the carpet. The flying carpet.
“Uh, Kal? Iph you woul-n-t mind…” the fox said around the ribbons in his mouth.
Kal drew his scimitar and cut the ribbons so that the fairylike peris could deposit Dirham on the rug. Samantha scooted out of the way—though not too far. The carpet wasn’t that big, and she doubted the fringe would hold her.
That sentence would have made no sense a half hour ago.
Dirham bounced to his feet—the only surprise there was that he didn’t bounce higher—and shook his head. His ears flipped right side out again.
Kal knelt down and tapped him on the snout. “Settle down, Dirham. I was just about to explain to Samantha what all of that is.” He waved his hand toward the melee in the street.
“Ooh! Ooh!” There went Dirham bouncing again, one paw in the air as if he were in a classroom. “I know! I know! Let me tell her! Let me!”
Kal smiled, and Samantha’s heart stuttered.
Sheesh… She rolled her eyes. This was neither the time nor the situation to find a guy attractive. Even if she was single. Newly single. So newly that her ex didn’t know it yet. But definitely single—and Kal was definitely attractive. Combine that with his genie-in-shining-orange chivalry, and Kal was already light years beyond Albert in the Prince Charming department.
“So what happened is this.” Dirham settled down with a halfhearted and half-heighted bounce. “Maille—the dragon—insulted the peris, and since peris are related to gnomes, Fritz took offense. Seamus did, too. Leprechauns are very particular about their gold, you know, especially because they think gnomes are beneath them.” Another bounce had Dirham’s tail flicking Samantha’s cheek. “Actually, considering gnomes live underground, I guess that’s true.”
Samantha brushed a tiny fur ball off her eyelash. “I am so not in Kansas anymore.”
Dirham cocked his head to the side. “But you weren’t in Kansas before.”
She couldn’t help smiling at his earnest confusion. “I know. I was in my father’s office.”
The fox grinned—and there was so much wrong with just those three simple words, she ought to keep a running list of wrong things she and everyone else around her said. It’d probably end up being longer than that dragon’s tail—
And there was another one.
“We were there, too, you know. We were inside the safe.” Dirham stopped bouncing long enough to scratch one of his ears with his back foot.
“And you know that that’s not a normal sentence, right?”
“But it’s the truth.” The fox looked confused.
Samantha patted him on the head. “So you guys live in the lantern?”
“Oh, not me. I just visit,” said Dirham. “But Kal does.”
“Not if I can help it,” the genie muttered.
The tone was what surprised her. Didn’t living in a lantern go with the whole genie gig? “You don’t like your lantern?”
He glanced at her, then away. “It’s not that. It’s just that the outside world isn’t as… solitary.”
“And it’s bigger,” the fox added with a bounce. “Prettier.” A higher bounce. “And the air is better.” He almost landed off the carpet.
Kal caught him and set him in the middle. “That, too, Dir.”
The “solitary” part struck Samantha because she knew exactly what he meant. With Dad gone, she was alone in the house, even with the staff there. The closest thing she had to a family was Wanda, the housekeeper who’d practically raised her. But Wanda went home to her own family. It just wasn’t the same. Albert was supposed to have filled that void, but that obviously wasn’t going to go as planned. Not that she wanted it to anymore.
But she did want someone in her life. Someone she could laugh with and make memories and a family and a future with. Someone who cared about her wants and needs because he cared about her, not because he wanted her to toss a bunch of stock shares into his portfolio. Looked like she was back to square one on that front.
A flame of purple smoke singed the tips of the gold fringe, grabbing Samantha’s attention. She looked over the edge of the rug. Orkney’s hair was singed, too. Or was that one of his cousins? She couldn’t tell because they all looked alike. “I really wish someone would explain all of this to me. In terms that make sense.” A definite pipe dream, but then, a girl could always hope.
“As you wish, Samantha.” Kal waved his hand, and the carpet behind them folded itself to resemble a step. He removed his sword and laid it on the rug, then brushed aside the orange glitter that seemed to accompany his magic and sat down. “Please make yourself comfortable.”
Comfortable? On a flying carpet? She raised her eyebrows but leaned back when he waved his hand again. The “step” gave way, contouring to her back and cradling her with just the right amount of support. She didn’t even have any sensation of flying; if not for the wind blowing in her hair and the fact that they were thirty feet off the ground, she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But they were and she did, and oh God—they were flying.
“I have a feeling I’m never going to be comfortable again.” She gripped the lantern in her lap with both hands.
“They all say that at first,” Dirham said, his bounce somewhat subdued.
“They?”
“My masters,” Kal answered, leaning back and stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“But then they start making wishes and pretty soon they’re very comfortable.” Dirham circled around and settled down, the tip of his bushy tail flicking like a metronome keeping time for “Flight of the Bumblebee.”
“So.” Samantha set the lantern on the rug beside her thigh. “You’re a genie. Like Aladdin’s.”
Dirham squeaked and his fur bristled. “Kal? Like them? I think not.”
Kal patted the fox’s head. “Thanks, buddy.” He scrubbed his jaw. “Aladdin’s genies were women. That history got lost in translation.”
“You mean the mythology did.”
“Mythology?” Dirham hopped to his feet—nothing new there. “Mythology? You can say that? Take a look down there.” He leaned so far over the edge that Samantha was afraid he’d fall off. “You call them mythological?”
Orkney howled when the dragon singed his hair again. Now he had a bald spot above the mullet he had going on behind his left ear.
“Good point.” Samantha strummed her fingers on the carpet—something normal at last. Not common, but normal. Would wonders never cease?
And then a gnome went flying straight up in the air on a plume of purple smoke like a whale’s spout, his little legs pinwheeling without a bicycle.
No, apparently they wouldn’t.
“So how do you know the mytho—er, history is wrong? You didn’t actually know Aladdin, did you?” Although… Kal had mentioned something about a century. When had Aladdin lived?
Had Aladdin lived? Wasn’t he just some story Scheherazade came up with to save her life?
Samantha wouldn’t mind having a story like that to save her sanity right now.
“No,” said Kal. “Thank the cosmos, Aladdin and I never crossed paths. And before you ask, I didn’t know any of the forty thieves either.”
“What about Scheherazade?”
A tiny smile crept across his face. “Yes. I knew Sherry.”
Something twisted in Samantha’s belly. It made no sense, but that was the least of the things that didn’t make sense right now.
He shook his head. “But that’s ancient history, Samantha.”
Really ancient. So ancient Samantha didn’t even want to contemplate how ancient it was. Or how he could have known Sherry, and she didn’t mean in the biblical sense, more the chronological one because she really didn’t want to know if he knew Sherry in the biblical sense, thank you very much.
“For now, while my lantern is in your possession, you are my master, and I’m here to serve you. Is there anything you wish?” He waved his hand and a mug appeared in it. “Coffee?” Another wave had some breakfast pastries magically appearing. “Croissant? Or what about this?” A bowl of fruit was next, followed by a four-course meal.
Each one appeared in a shower of orange glitter and the blink of an eye as if they weren’t there one second, then, the next, they were. Which actually was what happened, but that didn’t explain why it happened or how it happened, and she didn’t really think there was an explanation, which put the suddenly appearing food back in the insanity category again—
Just like the leprechaun that went flying on the dragon smoke this time, him going one way, his hat the other.
“I wish that guy could have his hat back.”
Yes, that was what she wished. Not for unicorns or magically appearing biscotti, but that the mythological creature should get his hat back.
She had to be losing her mind. Had to be.
But if she was, then the leprechaun had to be, too, because when he fell back to Earth, he had his hat clutched in his hands.
She watched him go all the way down. He slid off the phoenix’s gold wing, landed on the centaur, who bucked him off like a bronco—which technically, she guessed, he was—then flopped sideways over the dragon’s back, sliding down the tail to land on top of another leprechaun, and his hat went flying again.
She glanced at the half-naked hottie. The genie. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen?”
Kal shrugged. “You only wished for him to get it back. Not keep it.”
As if that made any sense. Samantha rolled her eyes. “Semantics? You’re going to focus on semantics?”
“It’s my job.”
Everybody with the job thing. Like they were waiters or doctors or parking attendants instead of talking animals and fantastical myths come to life. She shook her head. “This is surreal.”
“Tell me about it,” said Dirham, curling his tail around himself at the corner of the carpet. “The place has changed a lot since I was here last.”
She reached for a piece of the biscotti and then remembered that it had appeared out of nowhere and snatched her hand back. “Where exactly is here?”
“Ah.” Kal crossed his legs and waved his hand. The food disappeared with a tiny crackle—or maybe that was the coffee mug clanking against the dinner plates as they flew off to wherever magically appearing foodstuffs disappear to—and an old map appeared on the rug in front of them. Kal lifted it to shake off the glitter.
“What’s that? A pirate’s treasure map?” She leaned forward. The map looked more brittle than parchment, but there were decorations on the side, pictures of monsters undulating beneath the waves, and intricate drawings of strange plants and beings. No big red X, though.
She was buying into this whole fairy tale way too much.
You have another explanation for the flying thing?
Yeah, that was a problem.
“Pirates would give all of their bounty to get their hooks on this.” Kal tugged the map closer. “No, it’s a map of Izaaz.”
“Is what?”
“Izaaz. Otherwise known as Madeenat Al-saqf Al-zojaajey. The City of the Glass Ceiling.”
“Glass ceiling? Why would anyone name a city after an antiquated, sexist corporate structure?”
Kal raised an eyebrow. “Because we’re under one?” He pointed up.
Samantha followed his finger. All she saw was sunshine. “I don’t see anything.”
“Try a pair of sunglasses.”
“But I don’t have—” Any sunglasses was what she was going to say, but before she could, he waved his hand and two display shelves full of designer glasses materialized out of thin air in a sparkle of orange.
Thin air. That was why she was having trouble catching her breath. The air was thin. That explained it.
Um… no.
She was half afraid to touch the glasses. Like gnomes and talking foxes, these shouldn’t exist. Not floating in the middle of the sky. Then again, she shouldn’t be floating in the middle of the sky, so what was one more thing?
“Go on, Samantha. Try some on,” said Dirham.
Hesitantly, she took a pair and put them on, and instantly she got a perspective on exactly what Kal meant.
Off in the distance, walls ringed the city. Walls of sand that stretched to the sky, the tops of them in a perfectly straight line—
As if they had a lid on them.
A glass lid.
“Is that… You mean that’s… It can’t be…”
And then a huge bird flew overhead. It looked like a giant pterodactyl.
Not that she knew what a pterodactyl looked like, since they were, you know, extinct, but that was no ordinary bird. With tail feathers like a peacock on steroids, the claws of a lion, and the head of a dog, it made the platypus look like a beauty pageant queen. And when it skimmed that supposed ceiling, its dog head, long neck, and rounded back—not to mention its wings—all flattened for the few dozen feet it coasted along the glass.
Samantha looked at Kal, then pointed up. Words just weren’t happening.
Kal conjured a glass of iced tea. He took one of her hands and wrapped her fingers around the glass. “Drink this.”
She didn’t even think not to drink it. Prehistoric dog-bird? Glass ceiling? The sugary, minty beverage went down, if not easily, at least without choking her. “What happens if it falls?” And she could be talking about either the sky or the bird—that thing was no Chicken Little.
“It won’t. The glass has been there for longer than anyone can remember. And considering I’m over four thousand years old, that’s a long time. I think you’re safe.”
The glass slipped from her fingers, and she barely noticed that she and the lantern were now wearing sweet mint tea. “Four… thousand?”
Kal waved his fingers again, and she was once more holding a glass full of tea. Another wave of his fingers and the wet spot on her djellaba disappeared.
“Nice,” she muttered. “I wish you could get rid of these extra ten pounds as easily.”
“As you wish.”
He waved his hand again, and if Samantha wasn’t above imagining such things, she would have sworn the waistband of the skirt she had on beneath her djellaba slipped a few inches.
Actually, given what was going on around her, she wasn’t above imagining such things, so she stood up. Her skirt fell down.
She almost did, too, but elected to gulp the rest of the tea instead. She gave half a thought to wishing for more of that water/wine he’d given her earlier, but figured sobriety was the better part of valor here. “Well that’s handy.”
Kal stood up and took the glass from her, poofing it into nothingness. “Your wish is my command, Samantha.”
If only Albert had prescribed to the same train of thought.
No, not really. Samantha didn’t want someone to be at her beck and call; she just wanted someone who wanted to share his life with her. Equally. Who wanted the same things she did.
Maybe she ought to wish for Kal to conjure up Mr. Perfect for her—though in that outfit, he was looking pretty perfect himself.<
br />
When something jostled the carpet and he grasped her elbow with a “hold on to me, Samantha,” perfect was exactly the word that came to mind.
“The wind currents are all over the place when Maille turns up the heat,” said Kal, his breath warm beside her ear.
The dragon wasn’t the only one turning up the heat.
So not what she needed to be thinking about thirty feet off the ground.
She adjusted her stance on the carpet that was shifting like quicksand beneath her feet, and almost kicked the lantern into that aforementioned thin air.
She looked over the edge of the rug. The leprechauns were still fighting the gnomes, and Wayne was having a tough time with four of the under-the-hat garden variety clinging to his legs, plus another two on his tail, and one with a double-fisted grip on the mane that ran down his back. The gnome was flopping from side to side while Wayne tried to shimmy him off.
Then a blast of dragon fire collided with the spontaneously combusting phoenix about ten feet off the front right corner of the rug, the heat forcing Samantha back, and, of course, thanks to the skirt at her feet, she tripped.
Right into Kal’s chest.
She would like to thank her skirt. And Kal for zapping those ten pounds away. And the dragon for being oh-so-helpful in getting her into the vicinity of Kal’s arms, and Fate for presenting the situation in the first place.
So much for not thinking about it…
Samantha fought for her balance. And her dignity. This was a mess—and she could be talking about the fracas going on below the carpet or the humming hormones above it. Or the fact that she was practically half naked beneath this robe.
“Samantha? Are you okay?” Kal’s breath tickled her temple, causing her to shiver.
She was more than okay, and that definitely wasn’t a tickle. It—he—felt good. Better than good. He felt so much more more than anyone had before. Plastered against her back, his warmth seeping through the djellaba, making her hotter. Wetter—
She pulled away. She was thirty feet in the air, for God’s sake, dodging dragon fire. Practically naked from the waist down, and if not for this heat melting her brain, Kal and his magic fingers wouldn’t be sidetracking her. She needed to do something about that.
