Not Just Voodoo

by Rebecca Hamilton

  He pulled the bar away from his ear and looked back at me. “That was a call from a recruiter. I got offered a job. At the top video game company in Jacksonville.” He put a hand on his forehead. “I must be dreaming. They make sports games. It’s like a—”

  “—wish come true?” I supplied.

  He stopped and looked at me in bewilderment. I gave him an encouraging smile, glad that he finally understood, that he finally believed me.

  “I spoke the truth, James Hoover,” I said. “I am your servant. And I can grant any wish you make.”

  He licked his lips again, watching me. “A djinni,” he whispered breathlessly. “You’re real?” That last part came out as a question, and I felt my own blush in my cheeks. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe me now. It was that his entire perspective had changed.

  He now knew magic existed.

  I was sure this revelation shook him to his core.

  He looked around, and his eyes landed on the people clacking away at their contraptions. “Can we go somewhere else?” he asked quietly. “I thought you were crazy, but…”

  I nodded. “As you wish.”

  He shook his head and held out a hand to me. “No, I’m asking if it’s all right.”

  If he had been any of my previous masters, I would have thought he was trying to be absolutely certain nothing he said could be interpreted as a wish. In James’s case, however, it seemed he was trying to be polite by asking me.

  I found myself grinning as I took his hand. “Where were you thinking?”

  “There’s a park nearby that people don’t go to very often. I tend to go there when I want to be alone. Which has been a lot lately.” He hesitated, seeing my bare shoulders. “Will you, uh, be cold?”

  “I’m a djinni. I don’t get cold.”

  “Right.” That condescending tone was gone now when he said that word. “In any case, though, I don’t want to look to other people like you’re freezing.”

  To my utter surprise, he took off his overcoat and settled it around my shoulders. I could smell him inside the jacket and it was remarkably warm from his body heat.

  “Won’t you be cold?” I asked, looking at his thin shirt. He was, after all, human. And I didn’t have to worry about things such as the cold.

  But he shook his head. “I’ll be fine.” He grabbed the bottle off the table, and I felt its stranglehold pull on me lessen. I sighed in relief. He didn’t pick up on it, but he grabbed my coffee cup and handed it to me. Our eyes connected, and he gave me a gentle smile.

  “Let’s go.”

  3

  The park he took me to was as quaint as the coffee shop. There were a few trees, a wide-open space, and a few benches for someone to sit down and relax. True to James’s word, no one was around; here, it felt like we were the only ones in the world.

  The grass felt rough underneath my bare feet as I walked beside him. Every once in a while, I looked up to see if there was something wrong, if there was a reason why he said nothing during our trek. His eyes were trained forward while his jaw clenched and unclenched as if he were mulling over the very idea of me.

  As we passed by a tree, I saw the swing.

  “Oh!” I whispered. I broke my pace with him and strode up to the swing, running my fingers down the length of the twine holding the white plank of wood aloft. One of my old masters had a swing in his garden long ago. He had the worst trouble settling on the wishes I should grant him, so for months, I explored his castle, and I found myself going to the garden to sit on the swing every chance I had.

  He was a good master. He was very careful and considerate of both me and those his wishes impacted. He was probably long dead by now, and I felt the prickle of a tear sting my eyes.

  “Hey, you okay?” James asked.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “It has been so long since I’ve seen a swing. One of my masters had one.” My throat closed up at the last sentence, and I realized how lost I felt in this new world. Two wishes down and it was only morning.

  Before I knew it, James would make his third wish and I’d be back in the bottle. And I wouldn’t get to enjoy something so wonderful as a swing for another few millennia.

  James frowned, but nodded towards the swing. “You can sit on it, you know.”

  I looked up at James and felt my heart swell. “Can I?”

  “This is a public park.”

  Taking great care, I turned away and sat down the white wooden plank. I sighed happily, feeling the sway of the swing as my feet left the earth. I really could do this for forever. If only my bottle had such a swing in it.

  James watched me silently for a few moments, his expression unreadable. I tried ignoring his stare, but I found after a while that his scrutiny became too intense, and I peered up at him.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  He flashed a quick, lopsided smile. “I was wondering if you truly were real,” he said. “That maybe this is all a dream and I’ll wake up tomorrow without having been offered a job.”

  “And without your cup of coffee,” I pointed out.

  A short laugh burst from him. “Yes. That too.” He put his hands in his pockets as he kept watching me, and I was about to ask him if anything was wrong, but he broke the silence himself.

  “How did you become a djinni?”

  It was a question many of my masters had asked in the past. One I was accustomed to, but it did strike a chord within me when it came from him. “I’ve always been one.”

  “Always?”

  I nodded. “I was born of smoke and fire,” I said softly. “I was my own entity long ago, much like you humans are. We lived in harmony then, you humans and I, in our respective dimensions. And then I was imprisoned in a bottle.”

  “This one?” James held it up.

  I nodded.

  “How long?”

  “Too long.” I shuddered looking at. “At least ten thousand years. If not more.” I hated to admit it out loud to him. Because he watched me now, shocked, and I didn’t want to do that to him.

  “Why were you imprisoned?”

  “Well, a few humans—your kind—decided they wanted to harness the power of the djinn for themselves. We were always able to grant wishes. Humans wanted that power for themselves. So they took whichever djinn they found and put them in…there.” I shuddered, turning away from it.

  James looked down at the bottle in his hands, as if it expecting it to turn into a snake and bite him. I watched as he visibly gulped down his nervousness.

  “Itty bitty living space,” James said in a falsetto, and I got the impression it was some sort of reference. One I couldn’t possibly understand. His voice dropped back down into its normal register. “Sounds like a horrible thing to have happened.”

  I nodded. “It was.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about it. Wasn’t your fault. And you’ve been a relatively easy master. Your wishes have all been easy to fulfill.”

  He smirked. “Coffee was probably the easiest wish ever, wasn’t it?”

  “Close.”

  A long pause stretched between us, and I looked down at the ground, seeing how far my foot was from touching it. I could easily morph my corporeal form to do so. Humans had grown larger since my last master; I based my appearance on the typical body types of the world five thousand years ago.

  I pointed my foot towards the earth and swayed slightly.

  Then again, I liked this body.

  I never wanted to go back into that bottle.

  “What happens to you once I make my third wish?”

  I looked up at James’s question and hid my grimace from him. “The bottle summons me back to its confines, and I’m cast out from your hand across the world.”

  James swallowed visibly again. “And that’s what happened with your last master? I’m guessing you were cast out into the ocean and that was how I found you on the beach?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe so.”

&
nbsp; I imagined floating among the waves in the ocean, the sea life swimming around me. One giant whale could have swallowed the bottle whole and I wouldn’t have known the difference. If that was what happened, no wonder it took five thousand years for someone to find me again. I hoped and prayed to the gods it wouldn’t happen a second time. Not so close to my last long wait.

  I closed my eyes and wished it. Unfortunately, I had no djinni to make that wish. I wasn’t my own master. I could grant the wishes of others, but never my own.

  “How can I set you free from that?”

  I snapped my eyes open and looked at him wide-eyed. Dare I hope? I had masters ask me that before, always out of curiosity and never for my own good. I would tell them, and once they found out the price—that it would cost them one of their wishes—they quickly retracted their question and never brought it again.

  I’d had that question too many times to believe it.

  In the end, I didn’t dare hope. “You are full surprises, James Hoover. Please don’t do that to my heart.”

  “I’m being serious,” he insisted.

  My djinni heart thrummed frantically in my chest, betraying the fact that I still hoped, even though every fiber of my being screamed otherwise. “My master must wish for my freedom.”

  James hesitated. “So it takes up one of my wishes.” He said it slowly, like he didn’t like that fact.

  There was the problem. I nodded.

  To my utter surprise, he chuckled and looked down at the bottle. The fact that he was so insensitive as to laugh at my plight made me bristle, and I glared at him. This was how it always happened.

  Why did I expect anything different?

  “Figured that was the case,” he murmured softly. “All of the movies have it that way.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What’s a movie?”

  He grinned. “Something you’ll have the opportunity to watch,” he said. “Among the many, many other things the twenty-first century has to offer you.”

  My thoughts roared in my head, all at once, creating a cacophony of contradictions. No, don’t believe it. It’s not true. He’s being cruel, don’t think of it…

  But I held my breath.

  He held the bottle in both hands, and then looked up at me. “Djinni,” he said softly. “I wish you were free to live your own happy ending.”

  I thought my whole world turned upside down, because my chest tightened and my entire body seized up. Tears began flooding my eyes and flowing down my cheeks, and I couldn’t have stopped them even if I wanted.

  I had to hear it again. Just once more.

  “What?” I choked out. “What did you say?”

  He held the bottle out to me. “You’re free.”

  A great weight lifted off my shoulders. My entire body started to glow from within with a purple light. He stepped back and shaded his eyes with his hand, but he watched as the transformation took place.

  My transformation into freedom.

  I gasped as the light left me, along with the surge of power. I could barely hold onto the swing any longer. I felt the tipsiness overtake me as nausea swept through me. The ground rushed up to meet me as I fainted on the swing.

  But I never hit the dirt. I blinked up at James’s face as he held me, having caught my limp body. I heard the distinct crash of the bottle as it shattered into a million pieces. Now that magic no longer held it together, it was a simple glass vessel, millennia old, unable to keep its shape.

  Remorse flitted through my mind at first. But then I brushed it away.

  After all, I was free.

  “Sorry,” I told James. “I didn’t think the magic would do that to me.”

  “Well, I couldn’t let you spend your first few moments free on the ground. Are you…different?”

  I took stock of my body. I still felt like myself. Nowhere near as powerful, but there was still some magic there. “I think I’m still djinn. Perhaps part something else, as well. But I no longer feel the pull of the bottle.”

  James grinned widely. “Think you can walk?”

  I wasn’t sure of that, but I nodded anyway. He helped me to my feet and I gingerly put weight on the right, then the left foot. I felt odd, as if I were only half the person I had been a few moments before. The strength was gone from my body, filled with aches and pains and…

  Cold.

  My teeth started chattering instantly.

  “Uhm, let’s get you some warmer clothes, okay?”

  “Yes, please.” I said.

  He took my hand in his. I marveled at it, how warm it felt against my own skin, which was rapidly turning blue.

  “I should have something that will fit you back at my place. If you don’t mind seeing a messy apartment without any furniture. That is, if you trust me. This random guy you just met on the beach.”

  I nodded with a laugh. He combed a hand through his hair distractedly, and before I could say otherwise, he started walking in one direction.

  But I held him back, wanting to say one last thing.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you so much, James Hoover. I can never repay you for your kindness.”

  He looked back at me. “That’s the great thing about having your freedom,” he said. “You don’t have to. It’s a gift.”

  I smiled. There was going to be so much that I’d have to learn. Everything from cars to movies to coffee. And I was certain there were millions of other things, things of which I never would have dreamed.

  This was my wish come true. Granted by the one person I never thought would be able to.

  “Say, uh,” James said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I never caught your name, djinni.”

  “Oh,” I said. I supposed I would need a name with my freedom. “That’s because I forgot it long ago.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” James agreed. “Well, the good thing is, with your freedom, you can name yourself anything you wanted.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  I thought back to everyone I had met since I was summoned from the bottle. I knew of two names that seemed appropriate to this era. One was James, which would be awkward to take. But there was another one I remembered. Elaine from The Java Junkie and her life-giving coffee. It was the first wish I granted for James, and I liked the significance of it, even if only I understood it.

  But I couldn’t simply take Elaine. I had to make it my own, and give myself my own identity.

  So I changed it up a little.

  “Elain…a…” I said, trying out the name on my lips. Then I tried it all together. “Alaina.” It didn’t sound bad, to my relief. If anything, it felt like it fit me, and it settled into my bones, making itself at home as part of who I was becoming.

  James’s lips curved upward. He knew where I got the name, but he nodded. He didn’t care.

  “I think that’s perfect. All right, Alaina,” he said, and I loved the way he said it. “What do you want to do with your freedom?”

  4

  “So you’re Alaina? Alaina Hoover?”

  I looked up to see a woman standing next to me. She was wearing a shirt and a pair of shorts I now knew were called khakis. She had a warm smile and her dark blond hair was tied back from her kind, expressive face.

  I smiled back. “Yep, that’s me.”

  Alaina Hoover.

  I borrowed James’s last name for the time being. I’d tried many different combinations and last names, but none sounded right until I said “Alaina Hoover”. Then it stuck for me.

  James, of course, thought it was hysterical. “Some people take their spouse’s last name if they get married. You’re not supposed to take a friend’s last name.”

  “But you were my master,” I had told him, as if that explained everything.

  It didn’t, and that only made him laugh harder. “Whatever you say.”

  So, I kept it, partly out of spite, and more because it made him laugh whenever I said it. He had a great laugh.

  It had
been two months since I was freed from my bottle. Two months living among the humans as one of their own. With his new job, James helped me get a roommate from a magical forum called Craigslist. I lived with an elderly woman who never questioned why I stared in awe at the television. Movies truly were awe-inspiring, and my favorite was one called Star Wars. I had watched all of the Star Wars movies repeatedly and they never got old.

  I soaked up as much of their culture as possible in order to appear human.

  James saw me every day after work, to check in and make sure I was doing all right. Sometimes we’d go out for dinner. Sometimes we’d get a cup of coffee, which would then make me stay up all night talking with him. Caffeine might be life-giving, but it sure extended the hours in a day.

  I could tell he was courting me. And if I admitted it to myself, I wanted him to court me. Not only because he was the one who set me free. But because I could tell there’d been no one like him in the five thousand years since I’d last been free from my bottle. And there wouldn’t be anyone else like him for another five thousand.

  It also posed a bit of a problem, though. He’d been helping me with my finances—the new job his wish granted him paid better than his old one, and he called it a loan. But I couldn’t keep taking money from him. That was its own kind of prison, and I wanted my freedom.

  That was how I found myself at this place called Neptune’s World. I applied for a job and got an interview to be one of their performers.

  Nervousness was an understatement. I was buzzing with energy.

  “I’m Christine Driver, the head mermaid,” the woman said. She held out her hand.

  “You don’t look like a mermaid,” I said dubiously, taking it. I’d met some mermaids in my past. They were secretive creatures, always keeping to their realm. They never really liked humans, but they treated the djinn as their equals.

  Christine tinkled with laughter. “That’s because I’m not in the water yet. Have you ever swum with a tail before?”