Lyric the Djinn

Lyric’s world exploded in colors and sounds and sensations. She quickly formed a body around her essence. Tan skin, deep auburn hair, and chocolate brown eyes. Chocolate. Chocolate sounded amazing. Maybe she could get this master to give her chocolate before they started spouting off wishes. They obviously didn’t have a clue what she was, no preconceived notions about genies forming her appearance straight out of the bottle.

Clothes before chocolate. She wrapped a loose shirt and pair of trousers around her body. It was men’s clothing from her own time. She smirked as a pair of boots covered her feet and she touched down on the ground. Once upon a time her father would have hit her for wearing it. But he was long since gone, and it was something familiar and comforting to wear something from her own time. The last time she’d gotten out of her bottle, she was told she looked like Robin Hood’s merry lady. She still wasn’t sure what it meant.

She had no idea how long she had been confined to the dark, lifeless dimension “inside” her bottle. And now it all came rushing back. The smell of smoke, tobacco smoke specifically, filled her nose. A dim room, lit only by a few lights on the walls. Dark wood walls and wood floors, tables scattered around and a long bar with stools. Music, unlike any she’d heard before played from a small metal box on the bar. She approached it slowly, eyeing it curiously. A man’s voice crooned over the sound of unfamiliar instruments.

She reached forward to examine it, take it apart and find the tiny little man that must be inside when a bottle crashed behind her. She spun around to see him standing there. She knew him instantly, just as she did all her masters. Giaccomo Rossi. Jack. First generation American. His parents came over from Italy and he was born here just after. America. The New World. She’d always wanted to come here. Maybe he’d let her see the outside world. She idly stared into his green eyes and traced his family history back. Often she could find a common line between them, but she’d only found herself in Italy once or twice.

Jack had dropped a bottle of liquor, staring at her now in shock. She had appeared out of nowhere, of course he’d be shocked. It made sense.

“Hello, master. May I call you Giaccomo? Much nicer than Jack. Do you have chocolate? It has been so long since I’ve had chocolate!”

She laughed brightly and opened up her senses. She could smell the liquor he’d spilt, not a far cry from the ale they used to drink in the seaside towns. She opened her arms wide, spinning as she took in the smells and sounds of this new world. Djinn senses were so much stronger than a humans. Mortals live on this world, while djinn are a part of it.

“Who are you?” He asked nervously. “How did you get in here?”

“What year is it?” She asked moving back to the singing man in the box. “The last time I was let out it was… 1922? I believe…”

“It’s 1968… What do you mean let out?” He frowned deeper. “Who are you?”

“Forty-six years. Nearly a lifetime.” She sighed.

“Who are you?”

She tensed. That was three times. Djinn worked under rules of three. Three wishes. Three repetitions for the binding spell. And three questions. Ask a direct question three times and a djinn must answer, whether you are their master or not.

She clenched her jaw. It started like pins and needles through her blood. But it grew quickly. She knew she had to answer, but she hated being forced like this. That was the curse of the djinn. She wondered what free will truly felt like. The pain increased and she knew soon she’d barely be able to gasp in a breath to answer.

“I am your djinn, master.”

“My gin? Like, gin and tonic? That don’t make no sense, lady.”

“Djinn. Commonly known as a genie.”

“A genie? Like… lamps and three wishes?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “You get three wishes. But it is a bottle, not a lamp.”

She scanned the bottles of liquor he kept behind the bar, finding hers nestled amongst the others, looking distinctly out of place. Small, cloudy glass. Uneven shape, hand blown. All bottles djinn were tied to were enchanted to make people want to pick them up. Want to open them.

She pointed at her bottle. “That one. That’s mine.”

James glanced at it, then back at her. “You’re crazy. How did you get in here?”

Two times for that question.

She sighed. “Three wishes. You may wish for anything with a few exceptions. I cannot kill mortals, I cannot raise the dead, I cannot make anyone fall in love with another person – or animal, do not try that – I cannot grant you more wishes, nor can I grant you eternal life. Though I do not know why anyone would ask or such a thing. If they truly understood what it meant they would not.”

“Why did you have to come into my bar, crazy lady? We’re not even open, the door is locked, how did you get in here?”

Three times. She didn’t wait even for the pins and needles this time. There was no point in finding it. “In my bottle. Someone brought it in here. And you opened it and here I am. Three wishes you get. But… first… Please may I have some chocolate, master?” She asked again.

“Fine. Here. My mama baked me cookies.” He set a plate of baked goods on the bar and backed away from her toward  the front entrance. While she plucked a cookie off the top, he checked the lock on the door. Still locked, of course it was.

She took a bite and the doughy morsel exploded in her mouth. Sweet and fine, dark chocolate chips that melted in her mouth. She could trace the cacao beans back to their origin, if she wished. But no, she would rather enjoy the taste in the present. She closed her eyes on the second bite, moaning indecently. So good.

“Why are you doing this?”

“A better question, my friend, is why are you not taking advantage of it?” She asked. “I have offered you three wishes, nearly limitless in possibilities. And you worry more about the state of your locks?”

“Fine, prove your story to me.” He said, folding his arms.

“You wish for a display of magic. Simple.” She waltzed around the room, deciding she liked this new music. She found what she was looking for, a picture of a woman in what she hoped was today’s fashion. She liked it. A boxy little sleeveless dress in bright blue, boots to her knees in white leather and little white gloves up to her wrists. While her clothes morphed, she changed her hair. Finding a short little cut on a picture of someone named Mia Farrow, her hair shortened quickly, cropped close to her scalp and a lighter colour now.

She smiled back over at her master. He was across the room, staring wide eyed at her. Her smile widened into a grin and she popped the body out of existence, reforming it behind him.

“Do you approve, master?”

He stared at her a while longer. “Three wishes?”

“Yes, master. Three wishes.”

His wishes were simple and he barely paused to think about them. Wealth, and a handsome face. She considered teaching him about the consequences of selfishness and vanity. She knew other djinn who killed off  beloved relatives and left their masters untold sums of wealth. She even knew of a djinn who when his master wished for him to “change his face” with no specifics, set his face on fire, leaving it scarred for life. She didn’t think she could be that cruel, she didn’t have it in her. Never had.

She didn’t teach him the consequences. She created a locked box that would never be empty, always full of the currency of the time and land he was in. And gently molded his features, turning his rather aquiline into something smaller and much straight, made his lips fuller, the kind even she would like to kiss, and gave him dark wavy locks that any woman would want to run their fingers through.

He set at a table to contemplate his third wish. “What happens to you? When you grant my third wish?”

She glanced at him, frowning lightly. “It matters not. Please hurry, master.”

“It does matter. What happens?”

Twice. “Why does it matter?”

“Because you’re a living, breathing person.”

“Yes. And I have been for seven hundred years. I move from master to master, wherever my bottle takes me. It should be of no consequence to you.”

“But what happens?!” Three times. “What happens in between masters?”

She clenched her jaw, needles filling her veins. She didn’t want to answer. She did not want to guilt him into anything. Many of her kind were bitter tricksters by her age. But she couldn’t do it. Mortals didn’t know any better, it wasn’t their fault.

“I go back into the bottle.” She gasped when the pain became too much. Then she stared into him and the words poured out of her mouth. “A dark, lifeless prison. Alone with the passing of time and only my own thoughts and dreams. No sound, no light, no sensation. Nothing. I do not exist within the bottle.”

“Oh.” He said simply, seeming truly upset about it. “What is your name?” He asked after a long silence.

“Whatever my master wishes it to be.” She responded honestly.

“But what do you call yourself.”

She stared at him another moment. “Lyric.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Why does that amuse you?”

“It’s just… a word, not a name.”

“It is a name I chose for myself when I was changed. I had aspirations as a… troubadour, I suppose in that time.”

“Changed?”

“Djinn are not born, master. We are changed.”

“From what?”

“Mortals. Humans. One of you.”

“So is it like… When you die or something you can be a genie instead of an angel?”

“No. Becoming a djinn is usually a curse, or a misguided blessing. It deals heavily in difficult magic. A witch may curse a person into a life of servitude. Others think they are blessing the other with eternal life and youth, incomprehensible power… But they do not think about the way our free will is taken away and bound to that of whoever holds our bottle.” She sighed, staring out the window at an unfamiliar world and wishing she could return to hers. “And sometimes it is a desperate act by another djinn, to save a dying human.”

“Oh.” He repeated, just as sadly as before.

“Do you have your last wish, master?”

“I wish…”

He looked at her, something strange in his eyes and she swelled with hope. Perhaps this improbable candidate would wish her free. Or even break her bottle and free her entirely… Was it possible?

“I wish … that this place, my bar… I wish everyone in the city wanted to come here.”

She stared at him a long moment, almost incredulously. Then closed her eyes, sending out a pulse of thought throughout the limits of the city. The thought was simple go to Jack’s Place. Then she sent out another pulse. This one telling them they wanted to come here to drink and have fun, and not care what happened to the bar in the meantime. No one would understand why they suddenly had no care for his property, but she hoped it would be up in flames by the end of the night.

She’d never done anything like that before. Never used her powers against the mortals. In all her hundreds of years… Gods, it felt satisfying.

“Goodbye Giaccomo. You will need luck. Perhaps you should have wished for that instead.” She said before blinking out of his plane of existence and back into darkness. Who knew how long it would be this time? She settled into the darkness.

At least she’d gotten chocolate.

---

Lyric didn’t know how long it had been when the world opened again, this time truly exploding. She felt the link between her bottle and her essence shatter and she stood in the ruins of Jack’s Place, staring down at the shards of her bottle at Giaccomo’s feet, his face full of fury. A long jagged cut ran down his face marring the work she’d done reshaping it.

“You bitch! You destroyed it! They stole the box! It’s your fault!” He shouted at her.

She couldn’t help it, in the face of his rage, she laughed brightly, letting in the essence of the world around her. “Oh, Giaccomo! You did it after all! You freed me!” She cawed.

He snarled and lunged at her, she made herself intangible and he went right through her. “What do you mean?”

“You broke the bottle. That frees me from this life!” She twirled around, her arms open wide. “Oh, this is wonderful.”

“You’re free? What do you mean?” Twice. “You’re my genie!”

“Was. Was your djinn. Now I have no master. No bottle. Nothing!”

“I don’t understand.” She realized then that he was drunk and probably truly didn’t understand what she was talking about. Still he asked a third time. “What do you mean?”

She thought without a master the pain wouldn’t come. That she was free from the rules. But when the needles starting rafting through her veins again she knew that she would never be completely rid of them.

“When you break a djinn’s bottle, it frees them. Unless some witch binds us to a new bottle.” She waved a hand dismissively. “But they’d have to find me to do that.”

She lifted herself off the ground, using the energies around her to keep her afloat as she grinned down at him. “Goodbye, Giaccomo. And for freeing me… Even if you hoped to kill me…”

She waved a hand and the money box she’d created for him appeared in his hands. She felt the drain on her powers now. With a master that would be a parlor trick. She’d have to learn her new limits. She would have so many new things to learn. Wonderful. So wonderful!