Dreams and Shadows - By C. Robert Cargill Page 0,9
head. “I am the one who is sorry. I am Yashar. What is your wish?”
Colby had no idea what to make of the strange man, but found him intriguing. At first he thought he might be some sort of pirate, but now that he’d said the word wish he was beginning to reevaluate him. “My mommy says I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” he said. “She says that bad men like little boys with red hair and blue eyes, but I told her that my hair wasn’t very red and she said it didn’t matter how red it was, just that it was red. Is that true?”
“There are men that like many things. I am not one of them.”
“You don’t like small redheaded boys?”
The man bellowed a laugh, honestly amused. “No, I am not a man.”
“Well, you’re still a stranger and I can’t talk to you.”
“But I told you my name. I am Yashar.”
Colby crossed his arms. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Well, how do I become anything but a stranger if you won’t talk to me?” asked Yashar.
“I guess Mommy or Daddy would have to introduce us.”
“What if I told you I wasn’t a man, but a djinn?”
“Like the card game?” asked Colby.
Yashar leaned in close, as if to whisper a carefully guarded secret. “No, like a genie.” He smiled big and broad with all the reassuring boldness he could muster.
Colby eyed him skeptically, folding his arms. “If you’re a genie, where’s your lamp?”
Yashar cocked an eyebrow at Colby, displeased but not altogether surprised. He dropped every last bit of pretense. “Look, kid, if I had a nickel for every time I was asked that—”
“You’d be rich,” Colby said, interrupting. “My daddy says that. Well, if you’re really a genie, prove it. Don’t I get three wishes?”
Yashar turned his head, playing coy for the moment. “Not exactly.”
“I knew you weren’t really a genie.”
“You watch too much television,” said Yashar. “That three wishes and lamp garbage, well, it doesn’t work that way. It never worked that way.”
“Well, how does it work then?” asked Colby with wide, inquisitive eyes.
“Oh, I see: one minute I’m a stranger and you can’t talk to me, but when you find out that you might get something out of it you’re all ears. I don’t know if you’re the right child after all.” Yashar turned as if he was about to walk away. One, two, thr—
“Right child for what?” asked Colby.
“For remembering me.”
“I’ll remember you! Promise!”
Yashar nodded. “Well, we’ll need a little test. Meet me back here at the same time tomorrow. If you remember, you just might be the right child.”
Colby lifted the plastic face on his watch, checking the time. It read 3:45. “What’ll I get?”
“Whatever you want, my boy,” Yashar said with a laugh. “Whatever you want.” He spun around, his robes a kaleidoscopic torrent becoming a colorful smear, before vanishing altogether, his sash fluttering alone on the wind, finally folding into nothing. Where he’d been, he was no longer, and left no trace behind to prove otherwise. But his voice whispered into Colby’s left ear, gently carried by a breeze over his shoulder. “Tell no one. Not a soul.”
Colby stared, dumbstruck, at the empty spot where Yashar once stood. He couldn’t believe it, he could have anything he wanted. Anything at all. Yashar had said so. This was all so exciting. He turned, forgetting about everything else, and sprinted back home. He ducked, dove and wove about trees, thinking about all the treasures he might ask for. Would he get only one wish? Is that what he meant? Or could he have anything and everything? Oh, he hoped he meant anything. Anything at all. Anything and everything. There was just so much to ask for.
Arriving at the ROAD CLOSED sign, Colby stopped dead in his tracks. The man’s car was still in the driveway. Colby’s watch read 3:47. Crap. He wished that the man would hurry up, finish helping Mommy with her headache and leave so he could go home. But he wouldn’t get his wish until tomorrow, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized that this would be a rather silly and wasted wish. He would wait, no matter how long an eternity that hour and thirteen minutes might be.
He would wait, because when Mommy said five o’clock, she meant it.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TEN THOUSAND BOTTLES OF THE FISHMONGER’S DAUGHTER
Translated from fragments unearthed midway through the twentieth century, “The Ten Thousand Bottles of the Fishmonger’s Daughter” appears to have, at