The Trouble With Wishes
by Anthea Strezze
Copyright © 2011 Anthea Strezze
Cover created by Anthea Strezze using art licensed from "Fredweiss" and "Vector" via Dreamstime.com.
The Trouble With Wishes
Refuge: Tales from a Zombie Apocalypse
Zombie Variations
For the author's blog, visit https://AntheaStrezze.com/blog.
The following is a work of fiction, and all names, places, characters and events are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Dedicated to Brian, who keeps reminding me that yes, I can write; and to everyone who has followed my writing journey and encouraged me to keep going.
Thank you!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Agency
The Storyteller
Three Wishes
...You Might Get It
A Christmas Wish
Short Story Collections by Anthea Strezze
About the Author
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Agency
"I wish things were better."
Nothing happened.
Lynna turned the coin over in her hands a few times, then put it back in the display case, trying not to feel disappointed.
I shouldn't be surprised, she thought. It's not like they would leave a charged wishing coin just lying around for me to find.
She left the display case and moved on, determined to keep exploring while she had the opportunity. It wasn't often that one of her parents' fights scared all of her tutors into quitting at the same time.
She moved on quickly, heading for the disused areas of the castle, hoping to find wonders and mysteries, or at least a place to hide away. She wasn't sure which was worse; the way her parents constantly fought, or the way they fought over her whenever she was around them.
Through a sitting room and around a corner, she found one of the tapestries she was looking for. It was massive, beautifully patterned, and spelled to keep the dust and chill of the unused rooms from creeping into the warmth of the living areas of the castle. She pulled it aside and slipped past, careful to keep her lamp from singeing the cloth.
The passage beyond was heavily draped by spider webs, and the floor was coated in a thick layer of dust. She had forgotten about the spiders, and she winced at the thought of how well the dust would show her footprints. She rose to her tip-toes as she walked down the hallway, trying to disturb it as little as possible and using the lamp to break the spider webs as she went.
If I cleaned the passageway, there wouldn't be any dust to show my trail, she thought. But then someone might think it was odd that the passageway was so clean.
She sighed, realizing that the only way to keep any hiding place a secret was to keep anyone from looking for her. Which meant making sure she was back in time for supper with her parents, no matter how much the prospect made her cringe.
She set herself a nudge, grimacing as she did so. It was one of the baby-magics that she had learned in the nursery, before the question of what sort of magic she should learn came up. Her parents had fought so bitterly over that question that no magic tutor would come within a mile of the castle, for fear of being targeted by one or the other.
Everyone knew a little magic, though, if only the simple things every child learned, like how to remind yourself of something important. As for the higher magics; it was impossible not to learn about them from her other lessons, even if no one would teach her how to work them. Magic of all kinds was so much a part of their world that she found hints about it everywhere, whether she was studying history, or literature, or even simple reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Most of the time, she tried to ignore it, but whenever she used one of the small spells that she did know, she couldn't help thinking that if only she knew more, she could make her parents love each other again and stop fighting.
They must have loved each other once, she thought. Otherwise, why get married and have a child at all?
She had no idea how far she had walked by the time her nudge went off, reminding her that she needed to head back now in order to be on time for supper. She looked around, realizing that she had no idea of where she was, or of how many interesting discoveries she might have passed by.
She looked back and saw her trail stretching off into the darkness, clearly marked in the dust. It was reassuring to know that she wasn't lost, but she felt cheated by her own distraction.
"I can't go back without exploring anything," she said out loud, though there was no one there to hear the excuse. She looked around, grabbed the handle of the nearest door, and pulled it open.
The room beyond was filled with boxes. A table stood in the center, the crates piled two deep, and two chairs stood beside it, each holding boxes of their own. More boxes cluttered the room in random piles, and in tall stacks against the walls. There was dust everywhere, as thick as the dust in the hallway, but surprisingly few spider webs.
Aware that she was already out of time, she pulled the loose lid off of one of the boxes and held her lamp high to illuminate the contents.
Books.
She set her lamp down, careful not to let it tip, and lifted out an ornately bound book. "The Water Wielder's Way," she read out loud. Flipping the book open, she caught her breath at the sight of a spell diagram. She set it aside and pulled out another, and then another. "Meditations on Oneiromancy. The Summoner's Book of Dialects. Basic Spellcasting!"
She put the last book down and stepped back, hugging herself tight and trying to suppress her excitement. She was already going to have to run in order to dress for supper in time, and now she had more reason than ever to keep anyone from finding her here.
Magic! With these books, she could learn the magic her parents had denied her, and maybe find a solution to her problems.
"But not now," she told herself. "Now, I need to go to supper, and act like everything is normal." She returned the books to their box and carefully replaced the lid.
Back in the hall, she set another nudge so that she would be able to find the room again, then ran back along her trail as fast as she could go.
***
It was easy to act normal at supper. She curtsied to her parents when she arrived; one curtsy made while she was in the doorway, facing the center of the room so that neither could say she was favoring them over the other, and taking her seat at the center of the long table.
She kept her eyes down, avoiding eye contact, and responded as briefly as possible to any questions directed at her.
"I'm enjoying all of the food, thank you," she said to every inquiry about a specific dish. Even the food they had the kitchen prepare was a competition, and she had learned long ago to eat the same amount of everything, whether she loved it or loathed it.
It didn't work, though. Nothing ever did.
"She shouldn't have so many sweets," her mother said as she ate a candied almond. Her father must have ordered them, if her mother was objecting.
"She wouldn't need to eat sweets, if her mother had a sweeter disposition," her father snapped.
And then they were off, her mother screaming shrilly while her father shouted and slammed his fist into the table. Lynna pushed her chair back, curtsied to the center of the room, and fled before they could start flinging magic around.
Neither of them seemed to notice.
She went back to her room, and tried to pass the time by reading one of her history books. It was harder to wait, now that she had something to look forward to, but she had to stay put until her parents finished fighting and came loo
king for her. They never came together, but they always came, after the supper fight.
Her mother would apologize for her father's behavior, kiss her forehead, and tuck her into bed before going off to whatever she did in the evenings.
Then her father would arrive, apologize for her mother's behavior, and pull her into the warm bear hug that had made her feel safe and loved, once upon a time. Then he would leave too, and then... then she would do her best to make sure no one saw her sneaking back to the room with the books.
***
For a time, it was enough just to have a place that nobody knew about to escape to. The forbidden pleasure of learning about magic was enough to distract her from almost anything, and as she learned, she even starting using small, easy to overlook spells to make her life easier.
Magic allowed her to smooth the dust in the hall to protect her hideaway, and allowed her to sneak food to her room so that she could eat in peace, rather than trying to eat a full meal while measuring out every bite in front of her parents. Magic even allowed her to smuggle more books of magic into her hideaway to study.
Soon, she was trying more complex spells, and she started thinking more seriously about what kind of spell might work to make her parents get along.
It was clear that love spells weren't a good idea. She had found an entire book of stories about love spells gone horribly wrong.
"If only they would be honest with each other," she said to the room. "If they were honest, they couldn't take offense at every little thing and then blame it on each other."
She let her gaze wander around the room, looking for inspiration, and the summoning book from the first box she had opened caught her eye. She had tried to read through it that first night, and been intimidated by the complexity of the spell descriptions, but the spells themselves were frighteningly simple. Frightening, because the power of the spell came not from the caster's skill with magic, but from the magical being who answered the caster's call.
But still...
There had been one spell that particularly tempted her, although she had set the book aside in favor of safer tomes. She picked the book up and flipped through it until she reached the page she remembered. "An Agency to invoke truth," she read, then brought the book back to her chair and started taking notes.
The word "Agency," she had learned from her more modern texts, referred to a risky bargain with a being of power from another dimension; a demon. All summoning spells involved opening a channel of communication with another world, and then making a request, and an offer. Opening the channel was remarkably simple, so simple that literally anyone could do it, and there was a whole branch of the government dedicated to regulating the practice.
The risky part was that the being who answered was almost certain to be more powerful than the summoner, and to have an agenda of its own. It took a carefully structured spell to impose the proper limitations on the demonic agent, and to keep it from turning the situation to its own benefit and the detriment of the summoner.
Still, the thought of finally forcing her parents to simply be honest with each other, and her, instead of turning everything into a fight was too tempting. With enough study, she thought she should be safe, and if the worst happened and the demon killed her, at least she wouldn't have to deal with them fighting any more.
She studied until she thought she was ready to cast the spell, and then studied for three more months while she waited for the optimal conjunction of the stars and the moon.
Then she sought her parents out in their audience chamber and, before they could even greet her, cast her spell.
***
The demon appeared, his body remarkably man-like and clad in a strangely fashioned blue suit. His skin was a vibrant red, and his facial features, while even and symmetrical, did not fit any human standard of beauty. Lynna barely glanced at him, though, before turning her attention fully back to her parents.
"I invoke truth," she shouted, seeing their mouths opening to argue and determined to say her piece first. "Why must you fight so? Don't you love each other?"
They looked at each other, then looked back at her. In eerie unison, they said, "Of course we love each other, sweetie, but raising you right is more important than anything else, and that fool has all the wrong ideas."
She took a step back, horrified. "So this is all my fault? You would stop fighting and be happy together if it weren't for me?"
"Of course it's not your fault," they said in unison again. Then her mother glared at her father.
"It's all your father's fault for being a pigheaded idiot. Of course I know how to bring a young girl up properly; I used to be one!"
"That argument might hold water if you had done anything other than complain about your parents when we were courting. If you were raised wrong, how on earth do you expect to raise our daughter right?"
"How dare you speak against my parents! You..."
"Stop fighting!" Lynna screamed. Her parents stopped and stared at her. She had one breath in which to think that it might have worked, and then they glared at each other and started shouting accusations and epithets at each other even more violently than usual.
She ran, her hopes for a reconciliation powered by truth dashed beyond recovery.
Her feet naturally took her back to her hideaway room, her magic smoothing the dust behind her without a second thought. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, trying not to cry.
***
"Well, I imagine that didn't go the way you planned." The voice was smooth, confident, almost beautiful in its even timbre and pitch.
Lynna gasped and looked up, unaccustomed to anyone else sharing the room with her. It was the demon, of course, who she had summoned and then abandoned in her rush to get away from her parents. She blinked away unshed tears and took in a breath to end the Agency and banish him back to his own plane.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's the rush?" He caught the hand she held up to enact the spell and brought it to his lips, laying a butterfly-light kiss on the back that made her skin tingle. He brushed his fingers against her cheek and through her hair, examining her through half-lidded eyes. "It's not often I get summoned by such a vision of beauty."
Releasing her hand, he spun and took a few steps away to flip through a book. "Of course, it's not often I'm summoned at all these days. I'm told that demons are so passé. Which means you might not be familiar with one of the sub-clauses of our agreement."
"Sub-clauses?" she asked. She felt a little breathless, and very unsettled. She held her hand close to her chest, unsure of whether she was protecting it from further kisses or cherishing the kiss it had received. There had been a few suitors over the past couple of years, but her parents had scared them all away with their fighting before she could even get a good look at them.
"Of course!" The demon propped a leg on the table and leaned on his knee, grinning at her.
That's a leer, she thought, or maybe an ogle? She felt a fluttering nervousness in her belly. Why does being leered at by a demon feel so... nice?
"You see," the demon went on, "I don't currently have a bride to share my kingdom, and when you summoned me, you volunteered. So what do you say? Do you want to say your goodbyes before you go, or leave them hanging?"
She felt her lips spreading into a grin of her own, partly from the unfamiliar pleasure of being complimented and wanted, and partly at the thought of her parents' reactions when she disappeared, never to be fought over again.
Part of her mind, though, wasn't distracted by flattery any more than by screaming insults. She shook her head. "There's no clause like that," she said with certainty. "The price was defined by my invocation, and you agreed to it by appearing. Three live chickens represented by the feathers I held in my right hand, and the three fire opals I held in my left. The opals and feathers disappeared, presumably along with the chickens from their coops, and you appeared. Bargain done."
The demon laughed, a mellow, friendly laugh
. He spread his hands wide and shrugged. "Smart as well as beautiful," he said. "You're right, you're not required to come with me. But you do have the option, if you're interested in somewhere... more alive." He waved a hand, taking in the dusty room and the inhospitable whole of the castle in one gesture. "I'd love to have you with me. As a guest, if not my bride. I can show you around a bit, take a little tour of the dimensions, and then you can decide whether you want to come home with me or come back here. What do you say?" He held out a hand, palm up in open invitation.
She stared at it as if it were a snake, pressing herself back into the door. When she looked up at his face, he smiled still, but it no longer looked like a leer to her, just like a simple, genuine smile. She looked around the room, imagining the rest of the castle and her parents still fighting in the audience chamber. What was there to keep her here except no place else to go?
Escape, she thought. And maybe a friend... The demon still smiled, but she thought he was starting to look a little sad, as the moment stretched out and she still said nothing. He's waiting for me to say no, she thought. Or he's just manipulating me. He might have answered my Agency to invoke truth, but he's obviously not bound to truthfulness himself.
She examined his face, reminding herself with every foreign feature that he was an unknown power, with unknown motivations. I should say no, she thought, considering the danger. But if I say no, then nothing changes. I'm still stuck here, with my parents who will never stop fighting over me.
She eased away from the door, took a deep breath, and then took the demon's hand in hers. "I say let's go," she said, and an instant later they were gone.
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The Storyteller
Addan hummed happily while he helped Myrdri wash the dinner dishes, stealing glances at her and grinning every time he caught her glancing back. They had only been married a month, but already he couldn't imagine living without her. She had filled his life with more joy than he had thought possible, and he did his best to return the favor with interest.
When he put the last of the plates away on the high shelf, she pulled him around into a hug and leaned against him, smiling broadly. He was just bending down to kiss her when someone pounded on the door, making them both jump.
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