Vale was right. There were no beds in the forest. We had to pick our way carefully down a crevasse in the back of Mount Rushmore before making our way several miles into the dark forest of the Black Hills.
I’m guessing it was way past midnight when we finally decided to stop for sleep. It was a good idea to put some distance between us and the national monument. I didn’t know how the Universe’s shield would explain the strange magical happenings at the park, but none of us wanted to stick around and find out.
Ridge and I found a comfortable spot below a pine tree where we could lie down without too many little rocks jabbing us in the back. Tina and Vale bedded down several yards away. They were close enough that I could shout for help, but not too close in case Tina snored.
Have you ever slept outside in the forest without a tent or a blanket? I didn’t even have my backpack to use as a pillow anymore. I just couldn’t get comfortable. And after several minutes of tossing and turning, I decided that my inability to sleep was also due to something that I couldn’t get out of my mind.
“Ridge,” I whispered, reaching over and poking him in the shoulder. “You awake?”
“I am now,” he said.
“We could have died today,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” he answered. “You’re not the one who got pushed off a cliff.”
“I know. But we’re tethered together, so I would have gone over with you,” I said. “Can genies die?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, sitting up under the pine tree. “Just like you or Tina.” He scratched a hand through his curly black hair.
“And it hurts to die?” I asked.
“Maybe?” he answered. “I’ve never done it before. This is kind of morbid, Ace. Are you all right?”
“Tomorrow probably isn’t going to be any less dangerous,” I said. “And there’s something I have to know in case I don’t make it through the week.”
I sat up next to Ridge, reaching into my pocket for the only item that had ever truly been mine. It was a bit awkward to reach into a backward pocket, but in a moment I had retrieved my folded card.
“What’s that?” he asked, seeing me flick the edge of the card with my thumb—a nervous habit that had led to a worn and frayed spot.
“I don’t remember anything about my family,” I said.
“The Lindons?”
“Not my foster parents,” I said. “My real family. My memories begin three years ago, when I was nine years old. I woke up in a hospital. The doctors said I just stumbled in. Nobody knew where I came from or what happened to me. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody knew my name.”
“But . . .” Ridge stammered. “You’re Ace.”
I unfolded the small card and handed it to him. The moonlight glimmered on the glossy coating and Ridge held it close to his face for inspection.
“The ace of hearts,” I said. “From a deck of playing cards.” Ridge turned it over to look at the back, but I knew from countless hours of studying it that he wouldn’t find anything. “That was the only thing I had with me when I came into the hospital.”
“Ace,” Ridge muttered.
“So,” I began, taking a deep breath. “I guess what I want the Universe to tell me . . .” I started the sentence over, making it official. “I wish I knew my past.”
At the sound of those magical words, my hourglass watch clicked open and Ridge took a deep breath.
“I had no idea,” he said, still staring at the card I had handed him. “I’m sorry.”
“Time’s ticking,” I replied, holding up my wrist so he could see the white sand spilling. “It took me two days to build up the courage to make this wish. Just tell me the consequence.”
“You won’t like it,” Ridge said. “It seems the Universe holds that knowledge at a very high price.”
“What is it?” My hands were sweating despite the coolness of the night. My throat felt tight.
“If you want to know about your past,” said Ridge, “then every person who has ever seen you will cease to exist.”
I felt my hopes leak out like air from a punctured balloon. I thought of all the people who had seen me in the last three years since my memories began. People at school. People around town. Thousands, if not more. “What will happen to them?” I asked.
“It’ll be like they were never born,” Ridge said. “Anyone who ever laid eyes on you will simply vanish. All traces of their lives will be erased. It won’t change the past. What those people did will still have been done. But from this moment on, the world would go on without them. As though they never lived.”
Tina, Vale, and Ridge had all seen me. If I accepted the consequence, I’d suddenly find myself alone in the forest of South Dakota. But Thackary Anderthon would also cease to exist. In a way, I would have completed my quest. But it wouldn’t stop there. The Lindons and my previous foster parents would disappear. The unraveling would continue until there was no one left who knew me.
But I’d know my past. I’d know who my family was and where I came from.
I couldn’t believe I was actually considering it. If the wish were anything else, I would have turned down the consequence the moment Ridge explained it. But this was the only thing I’d ever truly wanted in life. What was I willing to pay to know my past?
“Your time’s almost up,” Ridge said softly. Obviously, he didn’t want me to take the consequence. Doing so would abruptly end his life.
My thirty seconds ran out, and I didn’t answer. The little hourglass collapsed back into a shiny disk on my wrist and I slumped to the ground.
“I don’t get it,” I muttered. “Wishing to know my past doesn’t have anything to do with stopping Thackary Anderthon. But that was the worst consequence yet!”
Ridge shrugged. “Maybe it is connected somehow. We just don’t see it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe Thackary is your brother, and that mean guy who talks like a pirate is your dad.”
I shuddered. “That’s a horrible thought.”
“But knowing it would change the way you see the quest,” answered Ridge. “If learning your past armed you with important quest-related knowledge, then it would make sense why the Universe would hold it at such a high price.”
“I guess.” It was frustrating. If a genie couldn’t even help me, then how was I supposed to learn the truth? “Wouldn’t they have recognized me?”
“Not if there was a wish in play,” Ridge said.
“Or maybe they just pretended not to know me,” I muttered. “Maybe they got rid of me and don’t want me back.” That was a depressing thought. In all the years I had imagined my family, I had never considered that they might not have wanted me.
“Hey, if those guys don’t want you to be part of their family, it’s probably because you’re too nice,” Ridge replied with a chuckle. But it didn’t make me feel better. He fell quiet, then cleared his throat. “This is my first quest,” Ridge said.
I turned my head to look at him, puzzled by this sudden admittance. “What?”
“You’re my first Wishmaker,” Ridge explained. “I’d never been out of the jar until you opened it.” He sighed, as though glad to have the truth off his shoulders. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
I grinned. “I’ve noticed.”
“I should have told you the truth before,” he muttered, “but I didn’t want you to think I was a bad genie.”
I shook my head sympathetically. “So, why did you decide to tell me now?”
Ridge shrugged. “That wish you just made? I know it was hard for you to talk about your past.” He reached out and handed me back my card. “It only seemed fair for me to tell you something that’s hard for me to talk about.”
I took the card from his hand, folding it along its familiar creases and tucking it into my backward pocket once more.
“I didn’t want you to be disappointed,” said Ridge. “I knew you were counting on me to get us through. But I don’t actually have any past experience. The only stuff I know is what the Universe told me before the jar opened.”
“But what about your name?” I asked. “I thought genies were named after the place where their jar was first discovered.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Ridge Lane. That’s the address of your foster home. I saw it on an envelope when I first appeared.”
Ridge Lane. The address didn’t sound familiar, but that was because a consequence had forced me to forget it. “I thought you were named after a mountain ridge or something. Not some boring street in the suburbs.” That seemed a little like cheating.
“Well, it could have been worse,” Ridge said. “Technically, I should have named myself Kitchen.”
We both laughed at that, and I settled my head back, looking up at the starry sky through interwoven branches. “We’re quite a pair,” I said. “A Wishmaker who doesn’t know where he came from, and a brand-new genie who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“We’re alike, me and you,” Ridge said. “Neither of us has a lot of memories to draw from. Maybe that’s why the Universe put us together.”
“Why?” I asked.
“So we could help each other forget about the past,” said Ridge. “And move on to make our own future.”
I didn’t reply, partly because I didn’t want to believe that my chance to learn about my past was over. Save the world from zombie pets, sure. That was a good thing. But the real reason I had gone with Ridge was to ask the question I had just asked. Now that I knew the consequence was too heavy to bear, I wondered what I had left.
Just a folded ace of hearts in my right pocket.