The cave had an unnatural glow. It was as if the walls and ceiling had been rubbed with broken glow sticks, making the whole area shine in an eerie multicolored light.
It was a vast cavern that seemed both ancient and new. Ancient, because I know it takes millions of years to form a cave. But new, because we were the first human beings to set foot in this place in thousands of years.
Tina, Jathon, and I didn’t need to spread out, searching for the undiscovered jar among the luminescent cave formations. Our eyes were instantly drawn to a feature right in the center of the cavern.
There was an island. Now, this wasn’t the pleasant kind of island surrounded by an ocean where you might want to vacation. This was an island of stone, surrounded by a deep chasm on all sides, like a pillar that was cut off halfway to the ceiling of the cave.
I couldn’t tell how deep the abyss was, but a single rope bridge spanned the distance. In the center of that stone platform was a dais, with at least half a dozen stairs leading up on all sides to a slender pedestal. And there it was, displayed upon a black stand. It looked to be made of hardened clay, and it glowed with a deep crimson aura.
The Undiscovered Genie jar.
The three of us sprinted for the rope bridge. Jathon was in the lead, but that was only because he was playing dirty. He knocked into Tina and stuck out his foot to trip me as we ran. I hit the ground hard, sliding across the smooth stone as Jathon stepped onto the narrow bridge. Scrambling, I came up just behind him, with Tina hard on my heels.
I wasn’t sure who’d designed the bridge. I guessed it was the Universe, since it seemed totally unsafe and definitely not made for kids. The bridge was constructed of wooden boards, strung together with a coarse rope. It sagged just slightly, spanning about twenty feet across a bottomless abyss. The bridge’s planks were only about three feet wide, and to make matters worse, there was absolutely no railing on the sides.
Have you ever crossed a rope bridge before? How about a rope bridge without a railing? How about a railingless rope bridge that drops off into nothingness on both sides?
“What’s happening?” Ridge shouted as the three of us Wishmakers moved slowly across the terrifying bridge. The boards swayed dangerously underfoot. Jathon’s weight ahead of me and Tina’s weight behind me made for a very precarious experience, which soon had me crawling on my hands and knees.
“You want to know?” I answered my jarred genie with a question before going on. “We’re on a bridge! I’m stuck behind Jathon.”
“Slide past him,” Ridge said.
“It’s not that kind of bridge,” I answered.
Ahead of me, Jathon stopped, but he hadn’t quite reached the other side yet. He seemed rooted in place, knees bent so the motion of the bridge didn’t buck him off to his doom.
I didn’t understand why he had frozen. From his vantage point, there would be no contest in reaching the Undiscovered Genie jar first. He slowly turned back to me, his bearded youthful face determined.
“It isn’t for me,” he said, his voice echoing in the huge cavern. I didn’t know what he meant, and my confusion must have shown, so he continued. “I have to help my dad achieve his greatest desire.”
“It’s too late,” I said. “Your crazy dad isn’t here. And you can’t get the jar to him before your time runs out.” I shook my head. “The quest’s over, Jathon. You’ll never make it.”
He reached into the pocket of his horrible leather jacket and withdrew a pencil. It looked perfectly ordinary. Jathon twirled it between his fingers once, like he was debating whether or not to do something. Then he grabbed the pencil in both hands and snapped it in half.
As it turned out, the pencil was a trinket. Jathon discarded the broken halves, and they tumbled into the black chasm. But my attention didn’t linger on the spent trinket.
Jathon was paying a consequence. The Universe seemed to pick him up and slam him against the ground. Except, at this moment, the ground happened to be the rope bridge.
Jathon slammed into the planks, half a dozen times, like he was trying to body-slam the wooden boards. The repetitive action caused the rope bridge to undulate like a wave.
Luckily, I already had a death grip on the boards, but behind me, I heard Tina scream. Whirling around, I saw the girl barely hanging on to the coarse rope, her legs dangling over the edge of the bridge.
I performed a quick backward crawl, reaching her in a second. As Jathon’s beating came to an end, the bridge calmed and I hoisted Tina onto the safety of the planks.
Jathon was lying facedown on the boards, just feet from the end of the bridge. He had paid the consequence for the pencil trinket, and now I saw the wish that went along with it.
Thackary Anderthon had appeared. He was standing on the stone platform just behind his fallen son, face twisted in a snarl. “Ha-ha!” His laugh seemed slightly frenzied at finding himself in the place he had been seeking. “The trinket has brought us togetherrrr, son!” he cried. “And I told you the consequence wouldn’t kill you!” He nudged his son with his foot.
Jathon slowly raised his head. His nose was bleeding and there was a cut across his forehead from the pounding he had accepted.
“It will all be worth it, boy!” cried Thackary. “Once I have what I want, I can be the father you’ve always wanted me to be.” He turned away from his injured son, laying eyes for the first time on the jar of the Undiscovered Genie.
It fell silent in the cavern. Only Jathon’s ragged breathing split the quiet as Thackary Anderthon stepped across the raised stone platform and climbed the steps, reverently approaching the crimson jar.
“Ace?” Ridge’s voice rang out from my museum bag. “Ace, what’s going on?”
“You want to know how bad it is?” I whispered. “Thackary’s here. He’s almost to the jar.”
“Do you have it ready?” he whispered back.
I chose not to reply to his question, grinning instead, as Tina gave me a questioning glance. “We thought of a little something in case this happened,” I explained to her.
On the stone platform, Thackary Anderthon reached out and lifted the genie jar from its pedestal. For a brief second, he cradled it close, showing more care than I’m sure he ever showed to Jathon. Then he burst out in maniacal laughter and lifted the jar above his head.
I’m sure his next move would have been to pop off the lid and take control of the Undiscovered Genie, but I had a trinket I was dying to use.
I knelt high, pulled a fridge magnet out of my pocket, and hurled it at Thackary. The consequence of using my pay-as-you-play trinket displayed itself immediately. I reached behind myself, grabbed the elastic of my underwear, and gave myself the biggest wedgie you could possibly imagine.
Hey, I didn’t want to. The Universe forced my hand. But it was a price I was willing to pay. And as quickly as I paid the wedgie consequence, the magnet hit Thackary Anderthon and worked its magic.
Remember when Ridge and I had stepped into the museum gift shop to pick out a souvenir? I thought it would be a good idea to wish for a trinket for a situation just like this. The magnet forced the person it touched to drop whatever they were holding. In this case, that was Thackary Anderthon. And the item he was holding was the clay jar.
My trinket was simple but effective. And it caused Thackary to scream in surprise as the crimson jar toppled from his grasp, bounced down the steps, and rolled across the stone platform. It hit the little ledge where the bridge was anchored into the stone, and popped up, rolling just a few more inches until it came to rest between the first two planks of the rope bridge.
The jar was two feet from Jathon. Had he not been so stunned, he might have taken it. Instead, I risked rising to my feet, sprinting the final distance, and leaping over Jathon’s injured form.
I halted at the edge of the stone platform, stooping quickly to snatch up the clay jar. I wasn’t sure exactly what my intentions were, I just knew I needed to keep the jar away from Thackary Anderthon for a few more minutes. I could have run around the cavern, stalling for time. I could have tossed it back and forth with Tina, like a game of keep-away that could save the world. I could have hurled it into the abyss at my feet so no one would ever find it again.
But the moment I had the jar in my hand, all those ideas were replaced by a single all-powerful thought.
Open it.
I could finally find out where I came from, who my family was. No heavy burden to bear. No unpleasant consequence. I could ask, and the genie would grant it.
Did it matter that Roosevelt’s head, the cotton candy vendor, and the fisherwoman had warned against opening the jar? Did it matter that the curator had explained that nothing good would come from this cave? I had the answer to my biggest question. It was right in my hand.
Come on. You would have wanted to open it, too.
Slowly, my hand moved to the ceramic lid of the jar. My fingers tightened, and all it would have taken was the slightest tug. But before I could finish the action, a certain trinket fridge magnet struck the back of my head.
Two things happened at once. The hand that had been about to pry off the lid instead reached back to further the wedgie I had given myself. And my other hand, which seemed to have a solid grip, suddenly lost control of the jar.
It tumbled forward. And from my position at the edge of the bridge, there was only one place for it to fall.
Into the chasm.
I cried out, releasing my wedgie and reaching desperately for the jar I had so carelessly dropped. I was furious at myself. Vale had warned me about the risks of a trinket, and my own trick came back to bite me!
I thought for sure the Undiscovered Genie jar was a goner, tumbling over the edge, when Jathon’s hand suddenly shot out and grasped it mid-fall. He had been lying so still at my feet, so beaten and defeated, that I wasn’t even sure he was still conscious. But his reflexes didn’t seem slowed by his injured state.
“That’s me boy!” Thackary shouted from behind me on the stairs. I whirled around to face him. His hand was still poised from throwing my fridge magnet. Thackary stretched out his other hand, beckoning hungrily for the jar his son had just rescued.
But I wasn’t going to let that slimeball touch it. I glanced down at the watch face on top of my hourglass. I had only like fifteen minutes left until my quest expired. And I didn’t intend to let the world get ruined now!
“Tina!” I shouted. Her single clap echoed through the cave, so I knew she could hear me. I’m sure my shoelace came untied, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. “Get the jar from Jathon!”
I sprinted directly at Thackary, taking him by surprise as I turned my back on Jathon and the jar. When I hit the bottom stair, one of my recent consequences kicked in and I suddenly found the need to take two steps per stair.
The wiry man fumbled for something in his pocket. I assumed it was his coin trinket, the one that would encase him in a force field. Whatever he was reaching for, I was going to make sure there wasn’t time to use it.
I didn’t let my double-stair-stepping curse slow me down. Leaping from the second stair, I plowed into Thackary and sent us both to the ground in an impressive tackle.
“Are we fighting now?” Ridge shouted from inside his jar in the museum bag. He was probably piecing things together from the sounds of our scuffle. “Are we winning?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I answered with my obligatory question. “I’ve got him pinned!” I quickly maneuvered myself into a position where I was kneeling on Thackary’s chest. I had one of his arms clasped tightly in both of my hands, but the other one was wriggling free from where it was trapped against the stair.
“We don’t have much time left!” Ridge called.
I blame Thackary’s bad cologne for this next part. My nose twitched. I drew in a sharp breath.
I sneezed.
A green grape, much larger than my nostril, came shooting out of my nose. It pelted off Thackary’s forehead, leaving a somewhat slimy smear above his eyes.
Sneezing out a grape was certainly not a pleasant experience. But if it had to happen, I was glad it occurred when it did. The distraction of the disgusting grape caused Thackary to falter, and I managed to wrangle his other hand down against the stairs.
The fact that I had successfully pinned him was a miracle. But I seriously doubted that I’d be able to sneeze enough grapes to keep him like this for the next fourteen minutes. I needed help.
Glancing down the steps, I saw Jathon on his feet at the edge of the rope bridge. To my surprise, the crimson jar was still in his hands. I wondered what Tina had been doing while I was tackling the mean dad, and then I saw. She had stepped up beside Jathon, her hand on his shoulder for support.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Take it and go!” But Tina seemed to have no intention of following my advice. She looked at me, her gaze piercing the distance across the stone platform.
From beneath me, Thackary angled his head to see the two kids on the bridge. “Bring me the jar, boy! Bring it to yer old man! This is the moment we be fighting for!”
Jathon stepped toward his dad, but Tina held him fast. “You can’t do this, Jathon,” she said. “You know you can’t. We talked about this.”
“What are you saying?” I muttered. “When did you talk about this?”
Tina looked at me. “The night in the train,” she said. “Jathon and I made an agreement before I let him go.”
“What kind of agreement?” I asked, my insides turning to mush.
“There was only one way this could end,” Tina said. “But I knew you wouldn’t like it, Ace. I knew you’d try to stop me, so I couldn’t tell you.”
I felt my grip on Thackary relax as my muscles wanted to give out. Instead, I channeled my anger to hold him tighter.
“Don’t be a fool, Jathon!” Thackary screamed. “Think about what that jar could do fer me! I promise I’ll be the father you’ve always wanted!” Then his teeth clenched in a rage. “Bring it here!”
Tina released her grip on Jathon’s shoulder and held out her hand instead. “It’s the only way, Jathon.”
“What are you talking about?” I shrieked. “What’s the only way?” I wanted nothing more than to sprint over to the bridge and shake some sense into Tina. But I wasn’t sure what would happen if I released my grip on Thackary. I was trapped, and my only option was to shout my logic.
Jathon closed his eyes, one already swollen shut from his pounding on the bridge. He drew in a deep breath, as if hoping that the air could make the choice for him. Then his eyes opened. He looked across the stone platform and muttered two words.
“Sorry, Dad.”
Then Jathon handed the jar to Tina.