Thinking about that made me grumpy for a bit.

 
The book started out with a caveat: “Nothing in this book is definitive because Genie Magic by its nature is fluid and ever-changing. Nevertheless, this is a compilation of everything that is known to be true in the field along with some educated speculation.”

Ah? Right! Even magical spirits used disclaimers written in legalese, apparently.

Then there were some guiding principles:

1) Genie Magic is not free. Something must be given up for every magic effect. If not now then someday, if not here then somewhere, if not the caster then someone else.

2) Genie Magic is finite. Every magical effect must be bounded in time, space, number, and/or other measurable dimensions. No wish can affect every and all of some unbounded group for eternity.

3) Genie Magic is a mystery. There are those who know magic exists and those who do not. It is against the rules of the Djinn to increase the number of people initiated into mystery unnecessarily.

4) Genie Magic has limits. You can’t wish someone dead or back to life, and you can’t take away their free will. You can’t alter the past either if doing so would break any of the other rules. There is a limit to how much wealth can be conjured.

That last sounded interesting and important and had a footnote that explained that the current limit at the time of going to press was not more than 1000 dinars a week. A footnote on the footnote revealed that a dinar was a small gold coin worth approximately $30 US. Yikes!? That was a heckuva lot of money in 1974.

Thirty thousand dollars a week? That was like $1.5 million a year. Okay, not a J. Paul Getty level of income, but… Holy Cow!

I was reading over Travis’s shoulder now, and I reached around him to point out the footnote. “See that?” I asked.

“Mm, hmm,” Travis grunted like it wasn’t important.

“We’re rich,” I explained. “You can wish us rich.” It made me want to bubble.

“I’m rich,” he countered. “If I make the wishes.” He pointed to another paragraph.

At first, I didn’t see what he meant. It looked like a bunch of irrelevant detail.

There were some definitions, like, who knew there were different tribes of genies? And different classes. Aboriginal genies, subdued genies, exiled genies, refused genies, retired genies….

I was a recruited genie of the Jinn tribe and technically a jirini rather than a jinni since I was endowed with a female essence. Thinking about that made me grumpy for a bit.

But the next paragraph…

“A genie may not own anything, even her clothes and her body belong to her master. Her one possession is the inside of her vessel, the space she inhabits when her master does not allow her presence in his world.”

I stopped reading because I couldn’t see through the tears. I remembered the cold, dark space inside the lamp. That was all that I owned now? “Tra-a-avis,” I sobbed.

I’m not sure how it happened, but I ended up in his lap, all curled up in a ball with him awkwardly patting me and saying, “Jonny, Jonny, it’s okay, it’s okay. Maybe the book has a way to get you out of being a genie. Huh? Would that make you feel better?”

“Huh?” I said intelligently. “M-m-maybe?” At that moment, I had just realized where I was and that Travis was patting me on the shoulder. I wanted to snuggle in and… and… I didn’t want to think about just what I wanted to do.

Already I felt a bit better, but the emotional whipsaw was beginning to feel like a carnival ride from hell. Was this happening because I was a genie or because I was a girl?

“Is there an index in this thing?” Travis asked. Meaning the book, not my shoulder.

“I dunno,” I whimpered. He had stopped petting me and was paging through the book.

It did have an index. Who knew? “Freeing a Genie, page 179, okay,” he said. Flip, flip, flip.

I squirmed a bit there on his lap, and put my arms around his neck, looking up into his eyes. But he was looking at the book, not me. My lower lip pooched out all by itself.

“Here we are,” he said. He paused to read, and I licked my lips, wondering why I was doing that.

“Travis,” I began, but he read part of the page he found out loud.

“A genie may be freed from her servitude only after she has fulfilled all of her master’s wishes unto his complete satisfaction and has served him a minimum of seventy years.”

“Seventy years!” I yelped, having forgotten whatever it was I had intended to say.

“A freed genie must journey to the City of Brass and appeal to the Great Djinn to be accepted as a citizen of the city and live out her days there, or she may accept the assignation of a new master and return to the realms of men,” he continued reading.

“That’s not fair!” I wailed.

Travis put the damned book down and wrapped his arms around me. “It’s okay, Jonny,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

I cried myself out in a few minutes and felt better but didn’t try to stand up, just enjoying being held. No one had held me like that since I had been a little boy and it was nice. But I made the mistake of snuggling into the hug and Travis pushed me off his lap onto my feet. There went my lower lip again.

“We, uh, we had better cool that,” he said. Maybe I pouted at him, I certainly felt like doing so. He added, “For now, at least.”

We read some more in the book, but really, it was only sort of helpful and kind of depressing in parts. It amazed me. Travis wanted to read the whole thing, but I was bored.

I sat on the floor while Travis read, just watching him. My feelings were confused. Travis was still my friend, but he was also now my master. I belonged to him, and I didn’t really want it any other way. And he was male, and I was female, and that was confusing, too.

I shook my head, trying to clear some cobwebs out of my thinking, wondering if there were some room I could blink imaginary webs to like I had the real ones in the room.

Travis suddenly spoke. “We need to own this house. There might be other stuff here we don’t want anyone to know about. Can I just wish that it were mine?”

I nodded. “You could, and the paperwork would all be okay, but the people who own it now would still think that they owned it. I can’t change other people’s memories, ‘cause those are protected by their free will.” Wow. I hadn’t known that. Was it in the book?

But Travis had another question. “Hmm. We could buy it then?”

“I guess so.” I glanced around. “How much would they want for it?”

“I dunno. It’s a big house in a nice neighborhood, but it’s old and needs work, no one has lived here for years. And I don’t know how much it might be worth.”

“I can conjure up the money,” I offered. “A thousand gold coins!”

“Not just yet,” Travis cautioned. “We’re only kids, even though I’m eighteen. We might have to explain where we got the money. And we couldn’t legally own that much gold. I don’t think.”

I thought about it a moment. “It doesn’t have to be in gold. I think I could conjure up currency, too.”

Travis looked at me curiously. “It wouldn’t be counterfeit?”

“Uh, no. Real bills, though you might want to include that in the wish, just to be sure the spirits don’t cut any corners.”

“That bothers me. If they’re real bills, then they have real serial numbers and must have already belonged to someone.” The book had explained that invisible, intangible spirits actually did genie magic. Silent, tasteless and odorless, too, I suppose. Not that that mattered.

Travis made a questioning noise. I blinked, unable to think of something to say.

“Jonny,” he said, “tell me where wished-for money is going to come from.”

“Oh!” I grinned. “From lost bills and money that has been destroyed,” I said, happy to know there was a solution.

“Okay,” said Travis, nodding. “That sounds kosher. I’d hate to think we were stealing stuff when we wish for it.” He looked at the book, lying on the table where he had left it. “But that book? Did it belong to someone?”

“Uh? The paper did, I guess, but the book and the information in it were created by the wish you made.” The flavorless spirits, really.

“Created,” said Travis. “But magic isn’t free so if the wish created knowledge does that mean that someone somewhere had to get stupider?”

“Probably me,” I said. I don’t know why I giggled.