“NEVER TURN A client away,” Mr. Almasi had said to Charlotte on her first day at work. His hand swallowed Charlotte’s when he shook it. Charlotte had searched for an accounting job for almost a year—she was determined to move out of the youth shelter and into her own place—so she would have heeded his advice even if his goliath size hadn’t frightened her.
The entrance to the Al-Hambra Accounting Firm sank into the middle of a back-alley in an Edmonton industrial area whose tenants had long since moved on. Dust clouds nearby took the shape of trucks, horses, and legless pedestrians. The Firm felt out of place, a leaning townhouse in the middle of a swath of abandoned concrete, a building someone had dropped on their way somewhere else.
Every time Charlotte walked to work from the bus stop, she experienced a disquieting loneliness blended with the sense of many eyes watching her. The loneliness was familiar. The sense of being noticed was not. Every morning Charlotte shrugged off the feeling with a shiver, cleaned her dusty glasses, descended the steps below street level, and entered the crooked door to the office.
Both Mr. Almasi and the dark oak-panelling of the office smelled of old library books. The space was sizeable and the arms on the desk chairs sat just a bit too far apart, the wooden legs just a bit too tall. Although they fit with Mr. Almasi, they didn’t fit with much of anything else, and gave the whole room a sense of being off-kilter every time Charlotte walked in.
It was a job though, and Charlotte intended to keep it no matter what. Alicia and the other girls at the youth shelter were happy for her, but Charlotte found herself turning down their offers to socialize. If she wanted to move on, she’d need to distance herself from them anyway. So she lost herself in her work, content in the task of putting everything in its proper place, accounting for every penny of a client’s portfolio. For eight hours a day, five days a week, the world made sense to her. Then she’d head back to the shelter, enduring the nights by counting the days until she had enough money to move out on her own—just one more month.
When Mr. Almasi left for vacation Charlotte was ready to prove herself. After working hard all morning she sent Alicia an e-mail turning down an invitation to go to a free concert that night and eyed the clock, debating whether to take her lunch.
The door creaked open, and she turned.
A blue figure floated through.
His body tapered to a glowing ember inches above the ground and his skin was cut from star fire, white wisps drifting across, bobbing in the same way his entire form did. His cheeks were purple, and his eyes glowed brilliant pearls. He had no hair, and if he had ears, they were swathed in flame. The oak-panelling and door smouldered where he had brushed by them, and Charlotte tasted ash. Shadows raced to escape his luminescence, but could find nowhere to hide.
“Whatever this is,” she muttered to herself, wringing her hands, “must be a clerical error, a joke—a mistake. No reason to be alarmed, Charlotte. Nope, because it can’t possibly be here for me.”
Mr. Almasi’s hearty voice echoed in her mind: “Never turn a client away.”
“Can’t do that, can I?” She searched for more pens to put away on the desk, paper clips out of order, and eventually just rubbed her palms on the surface frantically. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the blue figure drawing closer, reeking of burnt espresso.
“He’s got the wrong place,” she mumbled. “This’ll be over in a heartbeat.”
“Do you ever talk to someone besides yourself?” the creature said, his voice a crackling wood stove.
Charlotte cleared her throat and straightened. She took one look at the intense fire floating in front of her, then looked abruptly down again. “Do you have an appointment?” She scooted to the notebook and glanced at the entries.
“What?”
“I don’t see anything here,” Charlotte said, flipping back and forth through the entries. “Did you set something up privately with Mr. Almasi? He does that sometimes.”
“I never require an appointment, and especially not for Almasi.” He folded massive arms across his chest. His cheeks burned a deeper purple. Had his burning cores for eyes narrowed?
“Unfortunately Mr. Almasi is on vacation,” Charlotte said. Any time now this will be someone else’s problem, something for someone more important. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her fingertips tingled with heat. She knew what Mr. Almasi would want her to say, though, and remembered how badly she needed to keep this job and get out of the shelter. “Maybe I can help you in his place?”
The creature waved an arm. A tower of papers materialized and slammed onto the desk on top of the appointment notebook. Charlotte jerked back, whispers of wind from the papers still on her hands.
“You think you can manage this? Do you have any notion of the responsibilities, the weary trials of tallying all that I bring into this world? That”—the creature pointed to the stack—“is but from one year. You mortals desire more wishes, but cannot comprehend the paperwork—the import taxes—that burden me for every infernal thing you wish into the world.”
Oh my God. He’s a djinni.
She swallowed and adjusted her glasses. Breathe. Import taxes. Breathe. “We have experience with those types of claims,” she said, grateful she could grasp this point of familiarity. “We can help you with that right away, even without an appointment. Mister . . . ?”
“Maimun. Maimun will suffice, child.”
Even with the giant paper barrier blocking some of the djinni’s intensity, sweat trickled down Charlotte’s neck. “My name’s Charlotte. I’m not a child.” She wasn’t sure whether it was the heat, the taste of ash, or the stifling smoke that made her speak the words. She clasped her hands together, feeling even smaller in Mr. Almasi’s office chair.
“Charlotte,” Maimun said, letting the word hang.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, keeping her mouth moving as much as she could. “As I said, I can help you out with your import taxes right away.”
“I should hope so,” Maimun said. “Almasi made a vow for prompt service.”
“I wish Mr. Almasi would come back and take care of this mess,” she muttered.
“What did you say?” Maimun said, tilting his head and leaning in.
“Uh—around here our service is the best,” Charlotte said.
She ushered the djinni into a side room, her head feeling lighter with each step she took. With the djinni behind her and out of sight she could almost forget he’d come, until her back tingled and singed from his star fire. She shot glances back to make sure he hadn’t set the building ablaze. A black trail snaked across the ceiling behind him along with the scent of campfire, but it hadn’t ignited yet.
Deep breaths did nothing to calm her as she took a seat behind a large mahogany table and smoothed out the folds of her dress. Each inhale ushered in a wave of acrid smoke from the djinni, who floated closer to the ground and made the fumes worse. Wherever he went, it seemed he burned but somehow also quenched the fire.
“Let’s take a look at your records, then, Maimun,” Charlotte said, her hands shaking as she reached for the papers. The smouldering eyes behind the massive stack were finally starting to seem real. She trembled at the sudden shift in the universe, wondering whether she would be a sacrificial lamb for the djinni’s greatness. She had never been part of anyone or anything’s plan, ever since her mother had given her to child services and disappeared. If she had a father, he didn’t want her in his plan, either.
“I am surprised Almasi hired someone so weak,” Maimun said, folding his arms again. As they tucked into his armpits, sparks burst from the seams.
Charlotte’s hand clutching the first file stopped mid-air. “I’m not weak,” she said, holding his fiery gaze for the first time. She may never have been included in anyone’s plans, but that didn’t imply weakness.
Maimun snorted, and his body surged a brighter blue.
She read through the first file, lifting the pages to block Maimun from her sight. “Early in the year you granted wishes to Mr. And Mrs. Vandermere. The first was for $9,999—”
“That’s the most I can give,” Maimun said. “You humans always wish for inordinate sums of money, and are so surprised when there are limits. I thought your society understood inflation.”
“The second was for a lifetime supply of macarons.”
“Most of them spoiled after the first month.”
“The third was for every modern tool on the planet.”
“They filled his garage and he couldn’t do any work after that.”
“So they weren’t very happy,” Charlotte said, scanning the declared amounts of imported goods.
“That’s irrelevant to your job,” Maimun snapped.
“How do you pay taxes, anyway?” Charlotte asked. “Can’t you just magic the money into being?”
Maimun shook his head. “I cannot abuse it this way. I pay with money I’ve saved and earned along the way, as you or anyone else would.”
“People pay you?”
Maimun straightened. “They tip.”
Charlotte continued reading, scanning the first few files to get a sense of how long the job would take. Part of her enjoyed making Maimun wait, while another part recognized this approach imprudent to her survival.
The stack of files seemed to thicken with each page she scanned, each file detailed and long.
“Maimun, this is going to take . . . some time,” she said. “If you like I can call you when it’s ready.”
Maimun spread his arms and raised himself, making every surface of the room smoke. “I am not yours to summon,” he boomed.
Charlotte choked and coughed on the smoke. “Fine.”
She read through the files while Maimun floated and stared. She wondered if she would die from smoke inhalation before she finished the work. Maimun differed so greatly from the images of servitude she had read in fairy tales that she wondered whether he would even let her live.
In the files she learned about a wide assortment of wishes he’d granted in the past year. A little girl had wished for a cat, a pony, and a field to play in. The last of these had resulted in the displacement of a soccer pitch and rearrangement of the local streets that ended in a number of traffic incidents. Someone else had wished for several wives, another for several husbands. Both resulted in large dowries being paid to the bewildered families or former spouses in order to account for their sudden disappearance. The dollar figure couldn’t possibly account for the damage done, but it was marked on a receipt nonetheless.
Other wishes involved more abstract concepts, like happiness, satisfaction, and self-confidence. Those resulted in vouchers for therapists, social clubs, walks in nature, and a variety of other solutions specific to the person’s individual needs. It was strange to see a $9,999 price tag on a receipt for “Contentment”.
Charlotte would have wished out of the shelter if she’d been given the chance, but she suspected Maimun was about as likely to grant her a wish as he was to go swimming. His eyes upon her were unrelenting, and she felt him study her every movement as she worked through the files.
A pegasus, a pegasus that could fly, then a pegasus that could fly that still looked normal. Wishes that showed revisions, continued iterations revealing short-sightedness after the first words spoken. The ability to breathe underwater, breathe underwater and still breathe on land, breathe underwater and still breathe on land and not look like a frog. In many ways it resembled the evolution of a contractual arrangement, where the terms grew more specific but certainty was never granted.
Charlotte was tallying the animal costs of a backyard zoo and the associated rezoning permits when she felt Maimun’s heat more intensely on her face. She struggled to keep a professional demeanour under his scalding FBI-lamp. His smoke had taken on a burnt weed smell.
“Charlotte,” he said.
She wanted to lose herself in the files and the numbers, find a way to straighten all these loose ends out. Account for everything. “Yes?”
“You are different from other humans,” he said. “Have you no desires? Nothing that burns inside, seeking, wanting more? I sense no fire in you.”
Charlotte wiped her brow. Fire was the last thing she wanted right now. She felt like she’d spent the last three hours in a boiler-room. But Maimun remained where he floated, his eyes both staring and not staring at her.
“It’s never mattered,” she said at last.
“So you’re wasting my time. Someone who cares so little is unlikely to do a thorough job on my taxes.”
Charlotte stood and pushed back her chair, fists curled at her sides. “I care about my job. I care about the things over which I have control.” Her head throbbed from the sweltering heat, and she sensed her internal fuse burning. “Have you never wanted free of your wish-granting duties? Have you no ambition, djinni?”
“You will call me Maimun.” He extended his arms and leaned in until small pyres lit at the edges of the table.
Charlotte had endured far too much to be bullied by a creature she was trying to help. “Maybe I will do as you do, and define you only by what I see in front of me, which is a being of utter servitude. Djinni.”
The table ignited, and Charlotte fell back against the wall. She kept her gaze fixed on Maimun. The papers had vanished, and the table now burned an orange fire with blue tips. The scent of burnt plastic filled the air. At any moment, the whole building would light up.
“Do I look like a being of utter servitude?” Maimun thundered.
“Maybe,” Charlotte said, struggling for breath, “you should show more compassion to those helping you. Be more understanding, given your experience.” The words poured out of her with little thought to self-preservation.
Maimun placed his fists on the table and vaporized holes in it. Charlotte’s thighs burned and the tips of her shoes melted around her feet.
“I could destroy you,” he said.
“And you would have nobody to help you.” Charlotte tried to fall back on her sense of unimportance, but the thought of burning alive made her insides knot. She prayed it didn’t show.
Maimun glared at her. Between them, the desk crumbled and fell apart into a pile of glowing embers.
“You have no strong desires,” he said, showing no reaction from having demolished the table. “But you have strength.”
Maimun backed off and with a wave of his hand the smoke vanished, though the faint tendrils from the floor beneath him remained. The change felt like a cool breeze. Another wave of his hand and a desk appeared atop the ashes with the pile of papers. Along the edge next to the computer monitor stood a family of troll dolls, each with its neon hair pulled straight up into a point. Sticky notes pasted to the monitor reminded of a woman named Margaret’s birthday next week.
“Whose desk is this?”
“Does it matter?”
The trolls gazed vacantly into the distance. “Do you like these things?”
Maimun lifted his chest. “They’re more accurate than most of your folklore.”
“Oh—okay.” Charlotte wiped her forehead and brushed sweaty hands on her dress. She scooted closer to the stranger’s desk. “I will need more time to get through this, and having you loom over me isn’t helping.”
“Your care is selective,” Maimun said, floating back and forth with his massive arms clasped behind his back. “You guard it so closely I cannot see deeper. Most curious.”
If you think I’m going to share it with you, Charlotte thought, you’ve got another think coming. “I care about doing a good job. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’ve never met a human quite like you,” Maimun said.
Charlotte frowned. Of all the people who could grant her attention, a pompous, selfish djinni was not on her list. And despite his attention, he didn’t seem to be hearing anything she said. “What do you want from me?”
Maimun stopped his float-pacing. “You think it strange I see you as special. Few—or none—have recognized this within you?”
As he spoke the words, water in a well in Charlotte rose until her breath drew short. Of course she wasn’t special—her own mother had vanished when she was seven, leaving her to bounce from one foster-parent to another. She was a secondary character in everyone’s eyes, an afterthought. She’d been left in grocery stores, forgotten outside of schools, and locked out of houses on countless occasions. Child services barely paid her enough attention to give her file even the lowest priority. She’d eventually run away in search of her mother whom no one acknowledged had ever existed. After years of travelling as a vagrant, stealing library books and scraps of food, Charlotte had ended up in a youth shelter which paid her a sliver of enough attention to let her finish her certification as an accountant.
This job was her key to getting out of the shelter, if she could keep it.
Her lips trembled. Her body remembered the cold nights that penetrated deeper than the weather.
“You’re right,” she whispered. “Few people notice I exist.”
Maimun held her gaze, and she couldn’t look away. His fire snaked its way into her, warmth that burned in contrast to the coldness she felt inside. His eyes widened and she felt parts of her inner being brought into the light, exposed.
“Ever since your mother disappeared,” he said.
Every strand keeping Charlotte’s body together tightened, pulling through her legs, her shoulders, and up to the base of her skull. She shoved away from the desk, away from the exposing light of Maimun’s gaze, back into her comforting dark.
“Is this fascinating you?” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest. “Am I a good case study? Enough to entertain you?”
Maimun backed away, causing shadows to creep out from the desk paraphernalia. The flames at the edges of his body flickered with green tips as the temperature dropped. The smoke from the floor smelled like burnt hair. “That was not my intention.”
“No, but you have about as much empathy as a stray cat. You’re treating me like a specimen. Do you want to be studied like that?”
“Some in your world have tried,” Maimun said. “Few see me as anything but a vessel to their own selfish desires.”
“How is it,” Charlotte said, picking up a file from the stack, “that you’re able to see desires so well, but so many of these wishes don’t fulfil any of their desires?”
“I have learned that if I give people what they need before they ask for it, the results are disastrous.” Maimun’s light dimmed imperceptibly, his eyes slanting down at the edges. “I long for people to find that within themselves.”
“Is that what you were trying to do with me?” Charlotte said. “Well, I’ll tell you now, I’ve searched long and hard for my mother. She’s gone. If she exists, she’s changed her name, and made everyone forget about her. So don’t think you can help me find what you think I need. I’ve already tried for myself.”
“I could grant you a wish,” Maimun said, his voice low. “As payment for your services. It doesn’t have to be related to your mother.” He bowed his head. “I apologize for pushing you in that direction.”
“Why do you feel the need to push me in any direction?” Charlotte asked, ignoring the teasing prospect of a wish. Not from him. “I thought djinnis were supposed to serve the wishes of their masters, not shove their own agenda down people’s throats.”
“I told you before,” Maimun said, biting each word, “I am not a servant.”
“Isn’t that part of the rules? Aren’t you bound by a lamp?”
“I follow my own rules,” Maimun said. “The lamp was a historical fixation of your people that became a convenient conduit to call my attention, and bring me from the realm woven into and around every space of your world. Almasi helped set up the rules, and encouraged the legend to spread.”
A chill crept up Charlotte’s spine. How old is Mr. Almasi?
Maimun no longer looked at her. He had turned to the side, and seemed as though he could see through the wall to some world beyond Charlotte’s perception. Then he stiffened, and seemed to notice Charlotte again. “We are wasting time,” he said. “I will honour your request for peace and solitude, and return in two days.”
Before Charlotte could say anything, the office door flew open and Maimun glided out like a wisp of incense, star fire singeing the air behind him.
CHARLOTTE WORKED LATE that evening, determined to demonstrate how serious she’d been when she talked about her work. Delving into the file with all its intricacies provided ample distraction and pause from the painful memories the djinni had awakened. It also prevented her from thinking too hard about who or what Mr. Almasi was, and what she might have gotten herself into.
First she scoured Mr. Almasi’s files to see if previous claims had been made under Maimun’s name. If Mr. Almasi kept any history of Maimun’s previous interactions, she discovered, he had hidden them very well. After that, she camped out in the office library, looking up historical cases and examples of anything close to what the djinni imported.
She focused on the dollar signs beside the desires of every one of Maimun’s clients. $1000 for the perfect birthday party, $2500 for that first vehicle restored to its former glory. $8000 for a friendship rekindled. Not all the things Maimun imported into this world were material, but the material effects were surprisingly quite measurable.
Charlotte worked into the small hours of the morning.
TWO DAYS LATER, Charlotte should’ve felt proud after her breakthroughs, but she felt like the djinni’s pile of documents had landed on and compressed her head into the desk while she slept. When consistent banging echoed through the office and circled inside her skull, she groaned and took a few weary steps into the hall. The light through the windows carried a bluish tinge.
“Morning hothead,” she croaked. Maimun floated in the doorway, stirred-up clouds of dust obscuring the neighbouring buildings. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought they were in the desert.
“Is this the time of day when you try to be funny?” Maimun asked.
Charlotte rubbed her eyes, and beckoned him in. “This is the time of day when I try to be anything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just come in and turn down your brightness.”
When she’d managed to coax Maimun and stumble her way into the office, Charlotte took a deep breath and let her mind sink back into the world of taxes and legalities. Maimun floated in a seated posture, eye to eye with her.
“This stack,” she said, laying her palm on a pile of files as high as her computer monitor, “involves wishes such as weightless furniture, one hundred-league boots and apartment extensions. These were all destroyed shortly after the clients wished them into being—”
“They were all terribly impractical. I tried to warn them.”
“You imported them, but they were destroyed,” she continued. “So you don’t have to pay any tax on these.
“Now this one—” she moved her hand to an even taller stack, “—involves goods that are considered charities, and actually qualify you for some deductions. Lifetime supply for the food bank, guaranteed election results that gave huge funds to political parties, that sort of thing.
“Now, we have this stack. I’m fairly proud of this one. All of these items are listed on a free trade agreement of some kind within various international agreements that exist between the United Nations. The principle of non-discrimination in all these agreements requires no most-favoured-nation treatment, meaning a country cannot discriminate between its trading partners. As a being partially existing in another realm interwoven in all the nations of the world, you can argue that you are a global citizen, and as such cannot be discriminated against. You are a part of all the member states involved in the free trade agreements, meaning you should pay no tax on all the items in this pile.
“There are a few that don’t fall into any of the above categories. A thousand lifetimes of love is one of them, the happy feelings from when someone spends summers with their grandparents, the joy at seeing one’s child for the first time—these ones fall into here. I mean, some of the tangible related items I could get exempted, but some of the abstractions were just too difficult to justify.
“In total, instead of upwards of five hundred thousand, you’ll need to pay two-thousand, five hundred and seventeen dollars and fifty-eight cents.” Charlotte sat back in her chair to catch her breath, and crossed one leg over the other.
The sound of crackling fire filled the space as Maimun leaned forward, glowing eyes wide, hands moving and making the papers float apart to see Charlotte’s work for himself. The sight made Charlotte wonder if the gravity in the room were letting go, since all the papers gradually drifted into the air under Maimun’s survey.
“Most impressive,” he said at last. “It seems I won’t be constrained to three wishes any longer. I’m sorry I underestimated you.”
Charlotte’s chest lifted. Although she hadn’t expected Maimun’s words to matter, the validation after how hard she’d worked still encouraged her.
“I must repay you for your efforts,” Maimun said, letting the papers settle back into their original piles.
“Our standard fee is—”
“No,” he said, “I will pay you in something much more valuable.”
“That won’t be necessary, I’m sure Mr. Almasi will—”
“I insist, Charlotte.”
Charlotte thought back to his earlier offer of a wish. She’d seen some of the harsh realities of the wishes, but a part of her still wondered how she might make use of such a possibility, get something that wouldn’t hurt anyone else. However, Mr. Almasi might be furious at her for not taking the regular payment—unless he had taken similar payments in the past.
“What did you have in mind?” she whispered.
Maimun lowered himself until he floated once again eye to eye with her. “I can show you your mother,” he said.
Charlotte gasped. The heat no longer seemed to have a way out of her. “What?”
“Your mother,” Maimun said gently. “I can show her to you, then grant you a wish.”
“What, like she’s a specimen or something?”
“No. I can open a window.”
Charlotte’s chest constricted. She took short breaths. “If you show her to me, will I know where she is?” she asked warily.
“I will answer as many questions as you desire after you see her.”
She put a hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow down. “Okay.”
Maimun waved his massive arm and one of Charlotte’s monitors brightened into the view of a hilltop cottage with long grass swaying in the breeze. A woman in a blue country dress with a grey-haired bun walked up a dirt path carrying a wicker basket full of laundry. Her face was wrinkled with crows’ feet and lines of happiness. She paused near the top of the path, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath before entering the cottage.
Mom, Charlotte thought. She dared not move for fear of breaking the moment.
Inside the cottage, a man in a wheelchair rolled dough on a counter, flour spattering his clothes. He dusted himself off as she entered, then he and Charlotte’s mother embraced.
“Where is she?” Charlotte asked.
“Rural British Columbia, Canada. East of Kelowna, in the Okanagan.”
Charlotte watched as her mother and the man in the wheelchair held hands, and he showed her his latest batch of freshly-baked buns. They exchanged a few words, kissed again, and he patted her bottom, leaving a flour handprint. She swatted him, tried to dust it off, then walked with her basket of laundry into another room, shaking her head but keeping a smile on her face.
“Who is he?” Charlotte asked.
“Daniel Fitzpatrick.” Maimun’s throat crackled with words on the edge of utterance, then he added, “He was suicidal when I met him.”
Charlotte turned her head slowly as she took in the words. “You knew him?”
“I found it in my old files when I sought an appropriate reward for you. I’d forgotten, Charlotte. I granted his wish. I’m sorry.”
Charlotte’s head felt light, the smoky air wanting to make her vomit. “W—What? Are you saying my mother disappeared . . . because of you?”
Maimun’s form shrank, his fire flickering green as he dimmed. The smell of burnt hair returned. He nodded.
“You bastard!” she shouted. She picked up a purple-haired troll and hurled it at him. It vaporized. “You took her away from me!”
“I am truly sorry, Charlotte.”
“After what I just did for you?! You manipulative, evil, g—get out! Get out now!”
“Charlotte, I—”
“This was your idea of a reward? Showing me how much of a shitbag you are? Thanks, Maimun. It’s good to know the concept isn’t confined to humans alone.”
Maimun spread his arms. The room filled with even more acrid smoke. “Let me tell you his wish. Then I will leave.”
“What, did he wish for a fine piece of ass? Someone to dote on him, look after him?” She wanted to throw the monitor at him, but grabbed one of the textbooks on the desk instead.
“He wished to meet someone who would love him as he is, and whom he could likewise love in return.”
Charlotte’s arm fell to her side, the book thumping against her thigh. She said nothing for a few moments. “Okay,” she whispered. “And that love couldn’t include me?”
“After your mother and father split up, she guarded against love. She would never have opened herself up to Daniel. Even if in time she had let her guard down, the damage ran too deep. It would have ruined her relationship with him.” Maimun hung his head. “I did not understand the full effect of what I was doing. I thought the capacity for love was finite, and couldn’t be healed in time. So I made her forget about your father, and you as well.”
Tears blurred Charlotte’s vision, and she sank along the wall to the floor, clutching her knees. Everything hurt.
“Charlotte,” Maimun said, coming forward.
Charlotte sobbed. “Go away.”
“Do you not see?” he said. “She never stopped loving you. She didn’t abandon you. That was my fault, Charlotte. The self-doubt you’ve carried all these years . . . is based on a false notion.”
“You took her away.” Charlotte choked out the words.
“I can make things right,” Maimun said. “You just have to wish it, and I will make it so.”
Charlotte lifted her face, a mask of salty tears. It would be so easy. Just wish Daniel away, her mother back, and everything could be normal again.
But between her and the djinni sat the giant stacks of wishes, the catalogues of collateral damage induced by even the simplest of wishes. The paperwork barely scratched the surface of the ripple effects every wish had on the wider world.
“Is she happy?” Charlotte asked, staring through blurred vision at the monitor.
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll leave her that way,” Charlotte said, shaking her head as a sudden weariness fell over her. “Maimun, you’ve done enough. Go. Please.”
Maimun’s cheeks lost their purple colour, and his glowing eyes closed, which almost looked like they vanished. “As you wish, Charlotte.”
The room cooled and she knew he was gone.
FOR THE NEXT few days, Charlotte went to work early and stayed late, diving as deeply as possible into the accounting details. She felt raw and weak, as though at any moment she might lose hold of the fragile balance she had left. Her mind continually drifted back to thoughts of her mother living out a peaceful life in the Okanagan.
She’s happy, Charlotte told herself. That’s something, at least.
Something was churning in her mind, processing, and she felt like a child again, unable to investigate or understand what was happening to her. The sadness and weakness she felt after that first day had transformed into something else, but what exactly, she wasn’t sure.
Charlotte began cold-calling clients in search of work, something she had dreaded before, but now found herself enjoying a small amount. One day as she hung up the phone after a surprisingly pleasant conversation, Mr. Almasi waited for her across the desk.
For the first time, she noticed the faint scarring on his arms, remnants of tattoos snaking up and around, buried beneath layer upon layer of tanned skin. His square jaw was speckled with hints of the curly hair covering his head, coloured a dark brown that shimmered grey and black in the light. A chain necklace hung below his collared shirt, hiding the outline of a circular medallion.
“Who was that, Charlotte? An old friend?” he said.
“No,” Charlotte replied, glancing between him and the phone. “That’s the first time I’ve spoken to her.”
“You’ve finished all the outstanding work?”
Charlotte nodded. “On your desk.”
“Wow. Terrific. I should go on vacation more often.” He beamed, his grin stretching almost as wide as her computer monitor.
A week ago she would have remained thankful for her job and kept her head down to avoid arousing ire, but things had changed.
“Mr. Almasi, how old are you?” Her insides felt jostled, the sensations no longer familiar and comfortable. She wasn’t sure whether to be excited or frightened.
“How old do I look?” he asked, leaning on one hip.
“Middle-aged,” she said, “but after what Maimun told me, it seems you’re at least a few centuries.”
There it was, in the open. She prayed she wouldn’t lose her job for it, or worse.
He looked her up and down, his expression studious. “Maimun came by, did he? The office is still standing so . . . it went well, I suppose?”
“As well as I could do. He seemed . . . impressed with how I handled his file.” She’d wanted to say happy, but the word died on her tongue.
“Great job,” he said, staring hard into her eyes.
There was a time when Charlotte may have been frightened by such a giant of a man looming over her, but she surprised herself again by holding his gaze.
“To answer your question,” he said, “I’ve been around for some time, yes.”
“Did you bring Maimun into our world?”
“Yes.”
“How did you convince him to come here?”
“Convince him? He came to me, and I helped him fill his need.” Mr. Almasi stepped back and laughed, his chortling filling the space. He levelled his gaze at her, and the questioning look had vanished. “Anyway, I’m glad you handled him so well. I knew you were the right person for the job.”
Charlotte sat straighter, still unable to discern what she felt as Mr. Almasi moved down the hall and away from her in a few strides.
THAT AFTERNOON, SHE asked Mr. Almasi how to contact Maimun. He pulled out an unmarred copper lamp from a locked filing cabinet, and told her to polish it.
Alone in the waiting room she rubbed its cool surface. Maimun arrived thirty seconds later.
“I . . . didn’t feel good about how we parted,” she said, coming around the desk to stand in front of him. His heat and smoke made her breath catch, but she felt it important to bridge the gap.
Maimun nodded. “Nor did I.”
She took a deep breath. “I know you did the best you could, and I realize it’s unfair of me to blame you.” She’d ran through the words a few times in the bathroom, but saying them now wrenched at a knot inside her. It untwisted with each word she spoke, and she was terrified she would disappear with it. “You—you were doing what you had to, in the best way you could.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s strange, what you said about Mom never stopping loving me . . . I’m still processing it, but I feel . . . better, I think.”
Maimun didn’t move, but his flame brightened until there wasn’t a crack of shadow in the oak panels. A purple halo grew beyond his body, and the smoke took on the deep and creamy aroma of sandalwood.
Charlotte was still intact, even though the knot had gone. “Your instincts are better than I give you credit for.”
Maimun bowed his head, then shook it. “You were right about the collateral damage. And you are the first person who’s turned down an offer for wishes, and who would deserve one most.”
Charlotte frowned. The eternal temptation to ruin lives for the sake of her own. “I haven’t changed my mind about that.”
“I don’t want you to,” Maimun said, spreading his arms. “But you’ve made me change. I haven’t the courage yet to tell Almasi, for he brought me into this world based on my need.
“Throughout my life, I had no sense of usefulness. No matter what job I tried, I wasn’t good enough. The only skill I seemed to have was knowing what others wanted, but mundane jobs couldn’t fill the need burning in me. I wanted to bring people what their innermost selves wanted, but they rarely asked for that. So I began granting wishes to strike at the heart of desire. At first I’d fulfil what wishes I could through material means alone. As my magic awakened from this newfound sense of purpose, I began to do all that you’ve seen in order to fulfil wishes. I paid a small price for the wishes, one that I didn’t notice at the time—giving up my own desires. It was a job, a way to feel useful, a task of meaning that surpassed anything I’d known before, regardless of the unsuccessful results in the aftermath.
“I wasn’t obliged to continue this lifestyle, but I did, especially after Almasi brought me here and created the expectation of my duties and a framework of rules, that this was what I did, this was the purpose of my existence. The more I did it, the less I wanted to do anything else. How could anyone see that I had other value?”
“You don’t need others to tell you your value,” Charlotte said, her voice just above a whisper.
Maimun nodded. “The words come easily, but true understanding does not. You’ve helped me learn, Charlotte. Shown me. My inner fire is enough. I don’t need to give wishes anymore.” He paused. “And I will never do to anyone else what I did to you.”
Charlotte’s voice caught in her throat. “W—what will you do now?”
“It’s been so long since I’ve wanted anything,” Maimun said. “But I think I will start by visiting an old friend—a troll.”
Charlotte wanted to say something as Maimun bowed and headed for the door, but she could do nothing but stare as his fire concentrated into a white flame in his torso, and he passed into the dusty air and out of sight.
ON HER LUNCH break, Charlotte phoned Alicia and took her up on an offer to go to a poetry slam. Alicia sounded wary at first, then surprised. Mirrored in Alicia’s voice Charlotte sensed the warmth they both felt in talking to each other again.
When Charlotte returned to work, Mr. Almasi walked through the hall, glanced back at her, then stopped and turned.
“Maimun must have rubbed off on you,” he said. “You’re glowing.”
Charlotte smiled.