“I know. I don’t want you to try it.”
“Then what...?”
“I want you to teach me to try it.”
“Impossible!” He rose to his feet, he looked offended. “If you were the hottest talent in your local high school—if you were the hottest talent in the whole city—you’d still be years away from that kind of wonderwork.”
“And I’m not the hottest talent.” She paused. “But I might be the neediest.”
“By the smelly gas clouds of the universe—I can’t believe I’m listening to this. In fact the only reason I am listening is because of your wish! The universe is being benign toward you, which feels like it’s being mean to me. You know the story of Florence Nightingale?”
“Of course—”
“Florence Nightingale was a talented twenty-year-old when she tried a Class A. She wished to form a global community of healers. She aged twenty years in a moment—”
“I know—”
“And half the people she had in mind died! Half! She never would say how she phrased her wish, but if a benign universe dropped that little result on her, it must have been a doozy.”
“Yet the Wishful Healers still work.”
“Half—died—” he bit the words off.
“And that’s why I need a tutor. Teach me, Mr. Corwin. My father is dying! Don’t you understand?”
“No. No, I really don’t. I never knew my father.” He sighed. “But I’m a sucker for intensity. I’m a sucker for need. Have to be, in this line of work, but it leads me astray sometimes. I don’t know about tutoring—but—what do you want to know?”
“Your ritual. Teach me your ritual.”
“You have to have your own.”
“I know. But I can learn from you.”
He shook his head. “I think there must be a law against this. But. Okay.” And then he muttered: “I should have wished that wish away right at the start.”
In one intense day, Alanna learned how to think deeply and feel deeper, how to put boundaries around the power, tricks of phrasing and movement, metaphorical thinking and literal description. She learned to open channels to the universe, though Corwin wasn’t satisfied; it should be easier, he said. They talked through the wish ritual, not magic, of course not, but a way of asking, of humility. “Picture the universe, vast and gleaming with a thousand thousand clusters each composed of a thousand thousand galaxies, and then realize that’s only a drop in the bucket to the reality. Impossible to picture, and then there’s you, a little bitty consciousness on a little bitty speck of matter. Channel every bit of need into asking, and none at all into demanding. Who are you to demand anything?”
“But the universe is benign.”
“The universe is benign except for fools who take it for granted!”
At last Alanna said, “I think I’m ready.”
“Ready!” Corwin snorted. “Just saying that means you’re not ready.”
“I’m going home. I have to do this in my own home.”
Corwin nodded. “Probably a good choice.” He stuck out his hand. “I sure wish you success.”
“Usually we avoid the word ‘wish.’”
“No. I mean I’ll do what I can here.”
She tried to hug him but he pushed her away. “It won’t be that much. You’re the one with the need, not me. I don’t know if you’ve got the talent and I know you don’t have the training. But...yeah, you’ve got the need, and you’ve got the capacity for gratitude. The universe likes you. I’ll add a little wish for success over here. But it’s on you.”
“I’ll come back to say thank you.”
“I’ll look for you.”
But the look on his face said, if you get through it.
Alanna sat on the plaid couch, in the sanctuary of her living room, and turned on the reading lamp, thinking I’m not old enough for this. I’m not good enough for this.
She wondered where her daddy was. She put the thought aside.
She breathed in, held the breath, breathed out.
She pictured her mother and was surprised when her father stepped into the image. They held each other, frail hands joined against decay.
Suddenly flame enveloped them and the flame burnt away something. Something was causing the disease and Alanna burned it away somehow; not a picture she had planned, but a gift from that deep part of her that connected to the universe.
Holding the image she readied her Neediness Drill and drilled the picture deeply into her mind, some part of her mind that she didn’t even recognize. Then the flood came, the flood of sorrow and anger at her loss and the love taken from her. But yes, also gratitude at what her father had given her, what he’d tried to do for her. Gratitude at the universe for giving her life and maybe giving her a second chance to know her father and love him. Gratitude for the memory of her mother.
All this and it wasn’t even a wish yet, it was just a ritual.
The ritual was not the wish! Suddenly she realized it. Of course it wasn’t; that was self-evident; yet the idea seemed new to her.
That meant words were not the wish either. The wish was pure need meeting pure grace, and pure gratitude meeting pure help. In her dreamy state, she held the wish and cuddled it. Her wish would be a timeless moment of connection with Daddy and Mother and Corwin and all other things. And Alanna waited though she didn’t know why.
“What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?”
And it was her daddy, he opened the front door and came in, and he swore again but that was okay and it was what she needed to hear, his voice.
She released the wish.
Her daddy fell to the ground! His body enveloped by flame for real this time, but the cold flame didn’t hurt him. It was healing him, and he grew strong and healthy, and she watched in wonder. Wonder. Wonderworking.
And then Corwin’s voice. Release it. Release it now.
She hesitated; soaking up the wonder of it, the beauty, the sheer life sweeping through her father like the fires of creation, like the waters of life.
As you love life, let go now! said the master’s voice.
She clung to it greedily; she held it a moment too long. As she finally released the wonderwork, the flame licked her daddy on the way out, then flashed through her, not hot at all but she felt something burning cold, burning out. It was not her life, just her talent, but her talent was gone.
She had to complete her work. She had to give the universe her gratitude. Could she give the universe her gratitude?
She crawled to her daddy and touched him. Alive. And well. But his hand—the flame had touched it. For the rest of his life, that hand would yearn for the touch of his wife, and never feel it.
Alanna breathed deeply. Though her talent was gone, it had given her all she could ask for. She paused for long moments, downcast as inside her the Tree of Knowledge withered away, taking her talent. And she discovered she was nonetheless profoundly grateful to a benign universe.
Blame It on the Ghosts
Annie Reed
Annie Reed’s a frequent contributor to Fiction River, appearing in sixteen of our volumes so far, including our two previous young adult volumes: Sparks and Superpowers. She also has stories in WMG Publishing’s newly revived Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. Annie’s short fiction also appears regularly in the ground-breaking Uncollected Anthology, quarterly themed collections of original stories by some of the best writers working in urban and contemporary fantasy today. Her recent work includes “Faster,” a superhero novella, in the anthology Hiding Behind the Cowl.
Annie added ghosts and pets (lots of pets) to her Wishes story. She writes, “I’d been noodling around with the idea for Perri and her peculiar predicament for some time. One of those things I knew I’d write someday when the time was right. When I got the assignment for this anthology, the theme just seemed like a perfect fit for her story.”
My name is Perriwinkle Winterhaven, and I see ghosts.
And their pets.
Who also happen to be ghosts.
And you know what? It’s actually kind of cool now that I’ve gotten used to the whole walking-through-walls thing. Or it was until Howie Love, ghostly child star, and his equally ghostly Siamese cat showed up.
I’d better explain.
I used to be a normal (boring) high school sophomore who lived in a normal (boring) house in Brentwood, California, with my parents and my bratty little brother. My social life consisted of hanging with my best friend Stacy and talking about boys, doing homework while thinking about boys, and wondering why one boy in particular—Zach—didn’t have a clue I existed.
One night while I was holed up in my room talking to Stacy on my cell and lamenting about Zach’s inability to see me with those gorgeous blue eyes of his, Stacy dared me to do something about it.
“Something outrageous,” she said.
Outrageous. Me?
“Mom won’t even let me color my hair,” I said.
Not that I haven’t thought about doing it anyway, but Mom’s got a real vindictive streak. She might decide to make cream of mushroom soup every night for a month. I can’t stand the smell of mushrooms, much less the taste (even though my little brother Sammy loves the things, go figure).
Or she might volunteer me to babysit the Butler kids down the block. I did that once when Mrs. Butler’s usual sitter bailed. Never again, not if I can help it. I had to cut gum out of my hair thanks to the oldest Butler boy, and my favorite tee turned into my can’t-wear-it-outside-the-house tee thanks to their two-year-old and a permanent marker.
Mrs. Butler didn’t even give me a tip.
“So think up something else,” Stacy said. “Something your mom would approve of.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I joined the Young Entrepreneurs Club at school.
Now, if you knew me, you’d understand how truly outrageous that was. I’ve never thought of myself as the entrepreneurial type, but Zach’s the club president. I’d heard he personally greeted all new members when they came to their first meeting. He’d have to notice me then, right?
Wrong.
I went to my first meeting with my legs shaking so badly I thought I might trip over my own feet. Still, I smiled my best smile at Zach when he greeted me right inside the door of the classroom, and I shook his outstretched hand and hoped that mine wasn’t too sweaty. He smelled wonderful, and did I mention he’s got the world’s most amazing blue eyes?
Well, those eyes gazed down at me with almost no interest, like he thought he might have seen me before but couldn’t place me, not that it mattered. To him. He was polite enough and all, said something about how he hoped I would enjoy the group, but then he went right over to a group of guys at the back of the classroom.
That was it.
So much for being outrageous.
I would have quit right then, but the fact that I was voluntarily participating in an after-school activity that got me out of my room made Mom ridiculously happy, which I figured would mean ix-nay on the mushroom soup for a while. And Dad? You’d have thought I’d invented the next generation cell phone or something.
So I hung in there. The club let me spend an hour after school once a week in the same room with Zach, although to be honest, his star was starting to wane a little. And besides, the club turned out to be kind of fun. Our project for the semester was for each of us to come up with our own fake business, complete with business plan, business cards, and business logo.
Zach, naturally, opened his own savings and loan. He’s really into the whole business thing. He even dresses for club meetings like a banker. White shirt, power tie, navy blazer. I think he’s got his sights set on Harvard.
What did I come up with for my business?
Perri’s Petsitters to the Stars.
Don’t laugh. Our advisor told us our business names had to be catchy. “Something to get people in the door,” she told us. “That’s half the battle.”
Getting Zach to notice me was the real battle, not that anyone but Stacy knew that. But good old, blue-eyed Zach never said anything about my fake business, which I was actually kind of proud of.
At least Grady liked my business cards. He should have. He helped design them.
I knew Grady from my English Lit class. He’s about as socially inept as I am, but he’s like an idiot savant with computers. He taught me how to use the program that created our business cards. He even added a little design magic, as he put it, to my logo, which was a really cool graphic of a star shooting across the night sky.
“You really have experience babysitting pets?” he asked.
Real world experience or aptitude was a component of the project, but since when did Zach have any experience with a savings and loan? His dad worked in some law firm downtown. I had no idea what his mother did, but I kinda doubted she owned a bank. Grady’s parents owned a restaurant, which had spawned his project—a food truck called Grady’s Grits.
We didn’t have any pets—I’d always wanted a cat, but my brother Sammy’s allergic—but I did have experience babysitting the Butler kids.
“Yes,” I said.
“But not for real stars, right?”
Hardly. Brentwood’s about as far from Hollywood as you can get.
“Go big or go home, right?” I said.
He smiled at me. Grady actually had a pretty good smile. “Right.”
The project ended with each of us presenting our businesses to the rest of the group. White knuckles, sweaty palms, and everything, I managed to stumble my way through a five-minute PowerPoint about Perri’s Petsitters to the Stars. I got polite applause from everyone—except Zach. He sat in his desk at the back of the room with his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking for all the world like a banker declining my little business’s application for a loan.
The jerk. Talk about a star that crashed and burned.
Stacy had waited for me after school so that we could have a congratulatory Starbucks on the walk home. One look at my face, and she could tell that even a mocha frappuccino wouldn’t cheer me up.
“Show me,” she said, holding her hand out.
I gave her one of my business cards, complete with my shooting star logo.
“It’s a cute idea.” She pocketed the card and threw her arm around my shoulders. “You did good, Perri Perri.”
“If you say so.”
But I didn’t believe it.
I also didn’t want to think about it anymore. I threw the whole project—business cards, business plan, and all—into the trash bin outside of Starbucks.
“I really wish it had worked,” I said.
And that should have been that.
The first ghost showed up one night a week later clutching one of my business cards in her semi-transparent little hand.
I’d been lounging on my bed, watching the latest episode of my favorite anime on the Roku my parents gave me for my birthday. Lots of blood and animated guts and shouting in Japanese. I’d been so intent on reading the English subtitles that it took me a minute to realize I was no longer alone in my room.
I didn’t scream, I’ll give myself that. I think I did let out a startled little yell, but it got lost in all the shouts coming from my television.
The ghost, who looked all of ten years old, held out my business card. “You are Perri Winterhaven, proprietor of Perri’s Petsitters, are you not?”
What? “Um...”
Eloquent I’m not, even in the best of circumstances.
“What are your rates?” the ghost asked.
“Um...”
“I’d like to hire you to watch my rabbit,” she said. “If your rates are reasonable.”
That’s when I noticed the cage at her feet. Inside the semi-transparent bars of the cage was a semi-transparent white rabbit.
One thing about watching a lot of anime—you get a lot of stories with ghosts. And characters who are used to dealing with ghosts. Also characters with severed limbs and lost eyeballs or wh
o fight gigantic titans out to eat them, but let’s not go there.
I never expected to see a ghost in real life, but the fact that one had showed up in my room didn’t totally freak me out.
What freaked me out was that she had one of my business cards.
That I had thrown away.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, pointing at the card.
“My manager gave it to me,” she said, like it was the most matter-of-fact thing in the world.
A little girl ghost who had a manager. “Who are you...or were you, anyway?”
She lifted her chin, causing ghostly curls that might have been blonde to cascade across her shoulders and down the back of what looked like a school uniform. “Leta James,” she said. “I was—”
And it clicked. “You were on that show my mom used to watch when she was a kid. About the bachelor magician who adopts a cute little orphan to be his assistant but she worms her way into his heart.”
The ghost smiled. “I got to keep the stunt rabbit. He was my friend on set. Can you babysit him for me? I need to spend a few days as my older self before I can be young again, and the rabbit—his name was Bobby—never knew me when I was old.”
I blinked. That was a lot of information to take in all at once.
Which was probably why I said, “Sure.”
“That’s wonderful!” Leta said. “You won’t need to feed him, of course. I just don’t want to leave him by himself.”
I half expected screams from my mom when Leta left my room by walking through my bedroom door. My bedroom’s across the hall from my parents’, but either Leta totally dematerialized once she left my room or I was the only one in my family who could see ghosts.
I called Stacy immediately, of course. I’m not sure she believed me, but at least she listened. I also tried to take a picture of Bobby, the ghostly stunt rabbit, to send her, but he didn’t show up in any of the pictures I took with my phone.
It turned out Bobby was pretty easy to take care of. He didn’t eat and he didn’t poop, but he did like to sit on my lap. I could pet him, sort of, as long as I kept my touch light so my hand didn’t go through him. He stayed in his cage in my room while I was at school, and kept me company at night while I did my homework.
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