Wishes and Wellingtons

by Julie Berry

  My voice trailed off as my eye caught the dull glint of something dusty, but metallic, dangling against the king’s bony wrist. I reached for it: a bracelet with carvings that looked like they might be writing of some kind. It made me shudder to see the king’s bones bump and rattle as I slid it off, but I took it anyway.

  “Maeve,” Alice insisted. “You shouldn’t. You’re not a thief.”

  “I’m an archaeologist,” I said. Another way of saying “thief,” but with credentials.

  The distant noise swelled. Breathing, beating, running? I couldn’t be sure. But I didn’t like it. And neither did Mermeros.

  “Something’s coming,” I told the others. “We’ve got to go.”

  We picked our way hurriedly across the dark gallery floor, heading for the hole in the ceiling that led to the ground above. The sounds of pursuit pressed in on us like a tourniquet. We heard the call of a hunting bird and a predator’s growl.

  As we reached it the hole, a huge, glowing thing swooped into the cavern and cut off our escape. The peacock!

  Behind us, from a long, tunneling corridor, came the tawny form of the wolf.

  The peacock screamed at us. Malice glinted in his beady black eyes. The wolf’s growl reverberated through brick and stone.

  “Maeve?” whispered Alice. “What do we do now?”

  Down here, in the dark, there was no mistaking the sinister pulse of their luminous glow. The peacock, a poison green, and the wolf, a deadly yellow.

  “They can’t get to us, remember?” I prayed it was true.

  But it wasn’t.

  The peacock’s feathers singed my face as it flapped the air before us. The wolf closed in on us, pacing in a circle about our feet.

  “Who are you,” came an ancient voice from the depths of the peacock’s throat, “to disturb our father’s rest, and plunder his treasures?”

  “Who are you,” echoed the wolf in a ghostly snarl, “to dare to bring our traitorous brother here?”

  Alice whispered like one in a trance. “They’re talking to us,” she breathed. “They speak.”

  “Come forth, brother,” commanded the wolf. “Show yourself, and pay for your crimes.”

  “Confess,” shrilled the wicked voice of the peacock, “and beg for mercy.”

  The wolf’s yellow eyes left me trembling. “Give him to us, little girl,” he said, “and return the things you stole, and we will let you and your friends leave in peace.”

  Inside my pocket, Mermeros went as still as a corpse. As quiet as his father.

  “Maeve?”

  I heard Alice’s voice from far away. I saw the peacock’s cruel beak and its wicked eye. The wolf paced back and forth before me, pawing the ancient dust with its clawed foot, then tensed as if to spring.

  Perhaps I ought to give them the sardine can.

  But Maeve Merritt doesn’t listen to bullies. Not on the cricket field, and not at Miss Salamanca’s school. Why should Persia be any different?

  I seized a lit torch and swung it at the wolf. It stepped back in surprise, then snarled. I swung it at the peacock, and it screamed.

  “Maeve!” Alice cried out in terror. “Don’t make them angry!”

  “They’ve made me angry.” I slashed the torch through the air like a sword. “We’re stuck down here either way, so I see no reason not to fight back.”

  Tommy got a torch, too, and stood at my back, with Alice clamped to our sides.

  But something was happening to the wolf and the peacock. They began shifting in shape, the peacock growing taller, and the wolf’s body moving upright. Whatever they were becoming, it was far more terrifying than the vicious beasts they already were.

  They were becoming human.

  Glowing human forms, made of wind and fire instead of flesh and bone. Or maybe bone as well, I realized. Skeletal teeth grinned at us from underneath their glowing, shifting faces. From their ancient lips, a chant began its drumbeat march. Words, words fell from their mouths. I couldn’t understand the language, but I could feel the malevolence steaming off them like fumes off burnt porridge. In my pocket, Mermeros’s tin jerked to the ugly beat of their words. They were summoning him.

  “Give him to us,” hissed the one that had been the wolf.

  “Hand him over,” said the other, “and we’ll kill you less painfully.”

  “Leave in peace” was no longer an option. If it ever had been.

  A nasty pair of brothers will gang up on you, whether at wrestling or jacks in town, or whether they’re thousands of years old and reeking of dark power. We wouldn’t survive, but I wasn’t going to make things any easier for these two.

  “I won’t hand him over,” I shouted. “Not unless you let my friends go.”

  The ghostly forms nodded. I pushed Tommy and Alice away from the terrible specters. “Run, you two! Run!”

  Alice took off, faster than I’d have thought she could go, but Tommy hesitated. “We’re not leaving you, Maeve!”

  At times like these—not that I’ve faced many of them—my fists are more persuasive than my words. I popped him hard in the face, right across his pointy cheekbone. “Go! Help Alice! Go!”

  Tommy’s eyes flashed, then he took off running. Mermeros’s tin tugged hard against my dress and against his will, searching for the way out, in response to the deathly brothers’ call.

  I pictured Mermeros’s big ugly face and his nasty fishy teeth, his fish-scale vest and his blue tattoos. These two were going to tear him to bits. And I hadn’t even gotten my third wish! I was sick of people trying to steal my djinni from me. I’d found him, fair and square.

  “Tommy!” I hollered. In the distant bit of light near our entry, I saw him shove Alice up through the hole in the tunnel and into the sky. He turned toward me.

  I ripped the sardine tin out of my pocket and bowled it at him. Just like a cricket ball.

  My form was excellent. So were Tommy’s reflexes. He snagged the tin from where it skidded across the floor, then pulled himself up and out of sight.

  The wolf brother and the peacock brother screamed in rage. They reassumed their animal forms, leaped forward, and raced for the opening. I ran after them, swinging my torch and singeing their tails with it. They hissed and growled, but ignored me. When the animals reached the hole leading to the outside, I dropped my torch and grabbed hold of the wolf’s tail. His lunge for my friends carried me right up out of the hole with him, though the touch of him sent a painful shock through my body.

  We tumbled out and onto the blinding sand. I saw Tommy and Alice running helter-skelter away from the creatures, with the peacock in pursuit and the wolf not far behind. I figured I’d slowed him down a bit. I grabbed a rock from the sand, scrambled to my feet, and ran after them.

  When I was in range, I hurled the rock at the peacock, clipping his wing and making him stagger a bit. He hit the sand, then mounted up once more on his chase. Of course I couldn’t seriously injure an immortal. But I’d slowed him down. Tommy and Alice pulled ahead a bit, Tommy dragging Alice by the hand.

  I held my breath.

  The peacock and wolf peeled away sideways in their pursuit. They’d come to the invisible barrier they could not cross. Tommy and Alice stumbled to freedom. They’d made it! Mermeros and all!

  The snarling beasts whirled about and headed for me.

  Not quite all.

  But I hadn’t fought this far to surrender now. I ran straight forward, charging the beasts. They howled in rage as they galloped toward me. I saw Tommy stand, frozen, with the sardine can in his hand. He had it now. If he wanted, he could open it and claim his place as Mermeros’s master. He could leave me here, and I’d never be able to snatch it back from him.

  But he didn’t.

  He hurled the can back at me. I snatched it out of the air just as the wolf knocked me down and the peacock sank
its claws into my legs. The wolf’s huge jaws opened wide and snapped at my hand that held the tin. He didn’t get me, but I felt the shock of contact with his wet lips.

  Before I could cry out, the air burst around me with a tremendous bang and a sulfurous cloud of stink. It was Mermeros, larger than life, and furious. At the sight of him, the wolf and the peacock screamed in rage. He bowled the wolf aside with one huge arm and batted the peacock aside with the other. They tumbled over, snarling and hissing. They leaped up and began to assume their fearsome human forms. Dark, blood-chilling words shot out from their skeletal mouths.

  They were too late. Before they could complete their transformation, Mermeros had scooped me up and whisked me toward Alice and Tommy, then gathered us all up and took off soaring through the air, northward and westward, to London and safety and home.

  Chapter 17

  “Mermeros,” I asked him, somewhere over northern Italy, “why did you rescue us?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I rescued myself.”

  We’d been flying for some time, perhaps ten minutes, in a curious reversal of the trip that brought us to Persia. Now, instead of racing toward the morning sun, we were… Well, come to think of it, racing toward the morning sun again. Leaving midmorning by the Tigris River and hurtling backward through the stages of sunrise to reach the darkness before the dawn. It would still be nighttime in London, but only just. Miss Salamanca and the other girls and ladies at her dismal school would be just waking up when we got back. With luck, we’d slip back before they found us missing.

  “If you were only going to rescue yourself, we’d be back there on the sands, being eaten by your family,” I pointed out. “A jolly good time that would be.”

  “Your proper fate is the one thing my brothers and I agree upon,” said my heartless servant. “Little girls should be eaten and not heard.”

  “I’m not little!”

  “Are you of marriageable age?” the djinni asked.

  “Don’t be revolting,” I told him.

  “Then you’re little.”

  “She saved you, too, you know, you big ungrateful fish,” said Tommy.

  “How many fish do you know that are grateful?” was Mermeros’s snide reply.

  I hadn’t yet figured out what to say to Tommy. Somehow it was easier to harass Mermeros than to thank the orphan boy. He’d given me the ring and crest for safekeeping. That was very trusting of him. But why did he throw me the sardine can? Even if he’d wanted to save me, which was stout of him, he could’ve done it as Mermeros’s new master. I knew Tommy wanted this power I controlled more than anything. Without this chance at freedom, he was one birthday away from a lifetime in a cotton mill. A short lifetime, if the stories I heard were true. He needed Mermeros far more than I did.

  Yet he gave me my sardine can back. I couldn’t understand it, and it irked me. In his mind, we had made a truce. I never agreed to it, but he assumed I had, and I hadn’t corrected his error. Not every boy would let a truce bind them when a djinni lands in their outstretched hand. Tom must be one of those typical boys who took sportsmanship so seriously. The British cultivated them like sheep.

  And now I owed Tom a favor.

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Mermeros,” I said.

  “Is it your wish that I answer you?” His voice was soft, almost gentle.

  Only just barely did I catch myself. I almost nodded. What a beastly trick! What a rotten way to spend my last wish. That odious creature would probably abandon us here, in midair, over the French Alps, if I’d spent my third. The bright snow on the sunlit mountaintops looked soft and puffy beneath us, but I was pretty sure landing in it from this high up wouldn’t feel so nice.

  Alice shivered in the cold air, and I pulled her close to keep her warm. Her face burned. She was bright pink with sunburn. This would take some explaining in a London December.

  “Poor Alice,” I told her. “We’ll get you home and put some salve on your burnt skin.”

  Tommy watched over Mermeros’s shoulders as the Channel rushed toward us. “So, they really were your brothers, those two, er, things we met?”

  Mermeros nodded.

  “What would they have done to you?”

  It was dark now. The spray of the Channel misted our faces. Mermeros’s speed slowed down to a languid pace, and we followed the silvery curves of the Thames toward London.

  “My brothers think our father was too lenient when he cursed me and made me a djinni,” he said at length. “They think I should be tortured to death.”

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  “Maeve!” cried Alice. But Tommy grinned.

  “To answer your question, puny girl-child,” said Mermeros, “since I don’t care one way or another what you know, I am permitted to remove myself from danger, so long as I take my master with me.” He sniffed at the word master.

  “Then why did you bring Tommy and me?” asked Alice.

  I knew Mermeros liked Alice far more than he liked me, though that still wasn’t saying a lot. “You don’t weigh much.”

  Tommy laughed. “You just didn’t want to deal with an angry Maeve if you didn’t.”

  Mermeros drifted down in lazy circles toward the courtyard of the abandoned grand home near Miss Salamanca’s school. He didn’t confirm Tommy’s statement, but he didn’t deny it, either. Well, good. I hoped I’d given the spoiled fish at least a little reason to avoid my displeasure.

  He set us down on the paving stones. “I warned you, hatchlings.” He cranked himself down to size and curled into lazy loops of smoke that siphoned back into the sardine can. “You have one wish left. Use it wisely.”

  His eyes met mine, and he smirked. I heard his words echoing through my brain: “Your wishes will destroy you… 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.”

  They hadn’t yet, had they? Was it so greedy to want to travel the world, and form a cricket league for girls?

  He was nearly gone now, but his gaze fell upon his father’s carved bracelet, still on my wrist, and my pocket, where I’d put the ring and the royal crest.

  “You’re playing with fire, little girl,” he said. “You have no idea what dangers you’ve just unleashed. What things you’ve stolen, and whom you’ve stolen them from.” With a nasty smile, he blinked out of view. “Sweet dreams.”

  I snuck Alice up the servants’ back stairs so she could dive into bed before morning light, so housemaids or Miss Salamanca couldn’t discover her missing. Whoever had locked the door last night had done a poor job of it. When she was finally situated in her room, with her face slathered with ointment, Tommy and I shimmied down the pipe once more, and he showed me his secret entrance to the cellar.

  Morning sunlight had begun to crawl across London’s smoky skies, and I was in a hurry to get to my cot before Old Sally discovered it empty. I tried not to think about the bloody feud the rats had fought over my bits of food on that very cot. Morris hooted softly at Tommy and waddled over to see what treats he’d brought. He had to settle for more licorice. He seemed content.

  We weren’t a second too soon. I’d barely reached my cot and sat upon it before the raspy door was wrenched open, and Miss Salamanca descended the rickety stairs, holding a lantern next to her face. It illuminated her long nose and hollow cheekbones to hideous perfection.

  Tommy didn’t even have a chance to get away. He melted into the shadows and flattened himself against a wall. I braced myself for Old Sally’s scolding, and wished Tommy wouldn’t be there to hear it.

  Maeve Merritt isn’t afraid of anything, I told myself, but having a new pal watch me be torn to ribbons by a vulture of a headmistress offended my pride. Not ashamed to admit it.

  But there was no scolding. Not a stitch of what I’d bee
n expecting.

  “Well, Miss Merritt,” she said, “I trust we’ve learned our lesson this night?”

  I bowed my head so she couldn’t see my face. “I’ve learned quite a lot, Miss Salamanca.”

  “As I predicted.” She fanned the dank air from before her face. “Now, hurry up and come upstairs. You need to wash and eat quickly. I’ve received a letter from Mr. Alfred Treazleton, requesting a private conversation with you this morning.”

  “With me?”

  “Yes. Odd though that must seem, with you. No doubt he wishes to address your shocking behavior toward him yesterday during visiting hours.” She sucked in air around her big teeth. “I trust your night in the cellar will serve as a caution to you? If you are inclined to respond to the illustrious Mr. Treazleton, a great man of commerce in the city, and a principal benefactor of this school, with the sort of impertinence you displayed yesterday, your days at this school shall be numbered.”

  I suspect I must have smiled then. Or failed to hide my joy. Leave this nightmare of a school? Yes, please! Though I would miss Alice.

  Miss Salamanca scowled. “They’ll be numbered long, I mean to say. And you’ll spend each of those nights down here.”

  Good, I thought. Then I shall have free rein every night to roam the city as I please. Until I make my final wish that gets me out of this dump forever.

  Old Sally wasn’t satisfied. She leaned down closer. “I know you’re up to something, Maeve Merritt,” she hissed. “You think you’re so fearless. But all you are is an unruly, undisciplined hoyden of a girl who needs putting in her place. I’ve seen your kind before. And putting girls like you in their place is what I’m famous for.”

  Famous? Hah! Yet in spite of myself, a chill ran down my spine. I hoped Tommy couldn’t see it.

  “I shall join your meeting with Mr. Treazleton this morning, to personally ensure that your behavior is exemplary,” she said. “Now, move along. If you repeat my words to your parents, I shall denounce you as the liar you are. Whom do you think they’ll believe?”