THE FLASK OF RATHUMAR

As told by Denny Hamilton and Gerald Manning

DENNY

It all started when Gerald and I stopped to look at the junk this Caribbean guy with long dread locks was selling on Sixth Avenue. Being native New Yorkers, we should have known better, but a little sparkling bottle caught my eye, and one thing led to another.

“You’re not going to buy anything here, are you?” Gerald asked me.

Gerald always thinks that anything I think of doing is stupid. He thinks everything everybody does is stupid. He isn’t just smarter than everybody else in our middle school; he’s smarter than everybody else, period. He wears glasses when he could wear contacts like me, because he wants to look as smart as he thinks he is. His long hair with most of the blond bleached out makes him look like a professor. He’s smaller than I am and I could beat him up any time I wanted to, but I won’t. I believe in world peace. Even when it comes to Gerald. Not only do I believe in world peace, I believe in taking a kid like Gerald home with me because his parents are out of town on business and nobody else will take him.

“I’m just looking,” I said as I reached for the bottle.

If I were as smart as Gerald, I might have wondered why it was sparkling on such a cloudy day, but nobody can be as smart as Gerald. There was a curious swirl of light blue and soft orange on the bottle that seemed to move, but I assumed it was just my eyes playing a trick on me.

“This is the flask of Rathumar,” said the Caribbean guy who was selling the junk.

That spooked me out so much I almost dropped the thing. The jar kind of tingled in my hand and this time, I would have sworn the colors were moving and some yellow was starting to swirl with the blue and the orange.

“I suppose you want us to believe that if anybody buys the flask and rubs it, a genie will appear and grant three wishes,” said Gerald, asserting his intelligence and scorn in equal measures.

The Caribbean’s eyes lit up. That really scared me. Gerald was just joking, but the idea of getting three wishes made me choke and blink my eyes hard to keep from crying. I had too much to wish for, and I wasn’t about to trust a funny bottle on Sixth Avenue to make my wishes come true. That’s because my father went to speak at a peace conference in Copenhagen, but he got kidnaped along the way at the Amsterdam Airport. We didn’t know where he was or who had him. Nobody had even tried to take the blame or the credit for taking him. We didn’t even know what side the kidnapers were on in any of the brush fire wars going on in the world. I didn’t need three wishes; I only needed one. Real bad. After getting my dad back, I could wish for world peace and an end of human starvation.

“Ah! But the magic of the Flask of Rathumar is such magic that if you rub it, a Genie will appear and grant three wishes,” said the guy with the dread locks.

His eyes sticking into me like voodoo pins made my hands shake.

“So, you do expect us to believe that!” Gerald scoffed, his nose sticking up as high as the Empire State Building.

“What you believe about the Flask of Rathumar does not change the truth of the Flask of Rathumar,” said the Caribbean. “Your unbelief does not make the genie inside this flask disappear. Your unbelief only keeps the genie bottled up inside where he can grant no wishes to anybody.”

The thought of a genie, or any creature, being trapped in a bottle, got me angry. My mother is always writing letters on behalf of Amnesty International to get people out of prisons when they don’t deserve to be there. Now my mother was going to have to write protest letters to all magicians who trapped genies inside of bottles. That changed the wishes I’d make if I bought the bottle. After freeing my dad and establishing world peace, I’d have to wish that all genies be freed from the bottles they were trapped in.

“Do you mean to say that you have imprisoned a genie inside this bottle in defiance of the Geneva Convention?” I asked the vendor.

“Denny, what are you going to do next?” asked Gerald. “Unionize the elves in Santa’s workshop?”

But the black man with the dread locks had me caught in his gaze and I hardly heard Gerald..

“Do you wish to buy the Flask of Rathumar and have your wishes come true?” he asked me.

Those words pricked me like knives of ice. I was so scared, I wanted to put the flask down and run, but I couldn’t take a chance on losing my only chance to get my dad back safe and sound and then freeing the genie. I nodded and reached inside my pocket for my wallet.

“How much?” I asked.

“Twelve dollars.”

I gulped. That would mean no lunch for two weeks, but my dad was worth a lot more than that. I’d fasted before so that I could give to a charity.

“Denny! You can’t be serious!” Gerald yelled. “I’ll prove that this flask of Rathumar is just a worthless, fancy bottle.”

Before I or the vendor could stop him, Gerald reached across my chest and ran a finger up and down the bottle. Nothing happened. Gerald gave me that smile of his that he reserves for his smartest moments. The Carribean vendor glared at me when I started to put the flask back into his stall. But before I let go of the flask, the light blue and orange colors of the bottle rose up in a whirlwind of cloud and the fat yellow face of a man with tusks sticking out of his mouth fixed his fiery orange eyes on me.

GERALD

I can’t resist a challenge to my intelligence. I especially can’t resist a challenge from a street vendor who says: “What you believe about the Flask of Rathumar has nothing to do with the truth of the Flask of Rathumar.” When Denny started to reach for his wallet to spend money I knew he couldn’t afford on worthless a wish-fulfilling device, it was too much. I could see from the look on Denny’s face that he’d been hypnotized into thinking there was a Genie in the bottle who could bring his father back to him. Sure. Just like some genie could pop out of a bottle and yank my parents away from their business trips and make them face the fact that I exist. That would be a nice present for my birthday coming up, but I wasn’t holding my breath that they’d keep their promises this year. Usually, I didn’t care what anybody did as long as it didn’t hurt me, but there was no way I was going to let Denny waste his money on that bottle this greedy guy was trying to sell. To prove my point, I reached over and rubbed the Flask of Rathumar with my finger.

I was proved right. Nothing happened. Well, a cloud rose up between Denny and me, but I assumed it was exhaust from the trucks driving by. But then I remembered that truck exhaust isn’t blue and orange. Not even in New York. And then, a horrible face atop a much more horrible body emerged out of the swirling cloud. He looked like a sumo wrestler with a walrus mustache and boar’s tusks. This wasn’t some cartoon or a special effect in a movie. Special effects don’t make me hold myself in hard to keep me from pooping in front of the whole city. Special effects don’t knock me down on my butt, either. The genie flickered inside the cloud and kind of solidified into a muscle-bound giant wearing a kilt made out of fur and thorns as long as knives. In no time, everybody had screamed and run away, leaving the block to ourselves. The Caribbean vendor was long gone. No way he was going to stick around and demand his twelve dollars and take a chance on that genie.

“What made you think you could enslave Maradinjaratha by rubbing the Flask of Rathumar as you did?” asked the genie in a voice that sounded like thunder and lightning and an old building crumbling under a wrecking ball

I tried to say that I didn’t believe there really was a genie in the flask, but all that came out was a squeak.

“I was hoping you could. . .” Denny tried to answer, but his voice choked too.

“So-o-o-o! You seek to make me do your outrageous bidding and build you twenty-thousand luxury palaces after I’ve torn forty-three thousand of your enemies from limb to limb?” thundered the genie, now sounding something like a thousand subways trains in an echo chamber.

I heard sirens coming our way.

“No!” Denny gasped. “I only want. . .”

“You only want, want, want!” roared the genie. “I have been wanting and wanting and wanting for centuries and now I have my chance! This time, I am the one who gets three wishes!”

“You can’t change the rules!” I said, amazed I’d gotten my voice back.

“I am not changing the rules,” said the genie. “You rubbed the Flask of Rathumar with your left hand. That gives me the three wishes. My first wish is that you enter the Flask of Rathumar and learn how it feels to be trapped in its world.”

At those words, Denny dissolved into a little whirlwind that funneled itself into the flask. The cloud that had surrounded the genie broke up, leaving the genie holding the flask in his hands and looking at me with those fiery orange eyes of his. Two fire trucks stopped on the street as their sirens wound down.

DENNY

I was going to tell the genie that I didn’t want any luxury palaces and I didn’t want anybody at all to get torn limb for limb. I only wanted my dad freed from the kidnapers, world peace, and freedom for all genies trapped in bottles. Now that I write this, I realize that I was expecting a lot out of Maradinjaratha, but I didn’t want anything for myself, except to have my dad back. My mother and two sisters wanted him real bad, too, so it wasn’t just me. And besides me and my family, a lot of people at the meeting in Copenhagen wanted him real bad, too. But Maradinjaratha yelled in my face with breath stinking of rotten perfumes and then he said he was the one who was getting the wishes because of what Gerald would have called a technicality. Who would have thought being left-handed could cause that much trouble?

Before I got a chance to tell Maradinjaratha what I really wanted, he said: “My first wish is that you enter the Flask of Rathumar and learn how it feels to be trapped in its world.”

I couldn’t get my mind around that idea, and next thing I knew, I didn’t have much a mind to try to get around anything. I felt really light, too light for a twelve-year-old boy. So light, that I felt like I was floating out of existence. I still don’t know what I was inside that flask. Gerald, being so smart, tried to explain it to me later, but I didn’t understand a word he said.

I seemed to shrink and go in circles. That made me super dizzy. Then I felt like I was going down a drain. I expected to land with a plop or a crash, but I didn’t. I sort of bounced a bit without hitting anything, or at least I didn’t feel myself hit anything. Everything was a confusion of clouds and vapors in lots of different colors. I hardly knew who I was anymore. I tried telling myself that I was Denny Hamilton. I repeated my name to myself for the longest time, but that name didn’t seem to mean anything. I tried to remember who my mother was and that my father was in the hands of kidnapers. I clung to what I could remember of the faces of my poor sisters. How would they stand it if they lost me on top of losing Dad? But even their faces seemed to dissolve in the clouds filling my head. Finally, I decided I had died and there wasn’t going to be anything I could do about it. So much for wanting world peace and freedom for all trapped genies.

GERALD

The firemen pounced on to the sidewalk like a pride of black panthers. One of them unscrewed the fire hydrant while another pulled out the hose.

“Hey kid! Out of the way!” a fireman yelled at me.

“You’re in the wrong place,” I said. “There’s no fire here.”

I didn’t mean to be smart the way I usually am, but I couldn’t help it. And I was right. The firemen only needed to look around for a couple of seconds to realize there wasn’t a fire after all. There was just this scrawny kid, me, and this Great Hulk with tusks and spiky thorns sticking out of his shorts. That got some looks from the firemen that would have been fun to catch on a camcorder. You get used to seeing strange-looking people in New York, but this was over the top to the eighty-fifth power. One of the firemen strode into the electronics store we were in front of to make sure everything was okay. There were a lot of scared people huddled together toward the back of the store, but there was no fire.

“We saw the fire blazing right here just two blocks away,” said one fireman.

“I didn’t see any fire,” I said, too addicted to being smart to stop myself. “Whatever you saw wasn’t a fire. See?”

I made a grand gesture to prove my point. The firemen could see for themselves there was no fire. Just the two of us and them. One of the fireman opened his mouth and I was sure he was going to say something five times as smart as anything I’d said, but then he realized even he wouldn’t be a match for Maradinjaratha and he wisely closed his mouth again. I know I make the firemen look stupid in this story. I don’t want anybody to think that about these firemen, especially after what happened on 9-11 when I was a little kid. It’s just that firemen aren’t trained for handling a genie that’s been freed from his bottle. Not that I knew what to do, either. A few minutes later, the fire trucks and the police were gone. That left me alone with Maradinjaratha and a heart beating a hundred miles an hour.

DENNY

After a while I started to wonder how come I was seeing these marble-like clouds if I was really dead. Of course, if there’s life after death, I would be seeing things, I suppose. I didn’t hear any harps or see any angels with shiny wings, so I guessed I wasn’t in Heaven, but I wasn’t being roasted by the flames of Hell either. After a while, my head cleared a little and some of the things I saw started to make more sense. The first thing I made out was a chest of drawers with handles on each drawer curved out with fancy designs. Then I saw pictures on each of the drawers: pictures of things like women walking in a garden and men on horseback chasing after a fox. The second thing I made out was this huge Persian carpet I was bouncing on. The third thing I saw was this big stuffed chair with golden arms, deep red upholstery, and a footstool. I floated over to the chair and sat down. I didn’t care what Maradinjaratha thought about my using his chair, not after what he had just done to me. Sitting in the chair felt funny, though, because I could hardly feel it.

Across from the chair was a bookshelf full of books. That seemed odd until I thought about what Maradinjaratha would do with his time between getting called up to grant three wishes to people who rubbed the Flask of Rathumar with their right hand. I didn’t see a TV, a DVD or a computer around, so reading books was about all there was for Maradinjaratha to do. I floated over to the bookshelf to take a look. This is Gerald Manning territory, but I’m no slouch when it comes to books either. Thes books were fun to look at with the colorful spines and the fancy lettering on them, but nothing looked like a science-fiction or fantasy novel, which is what I like to read. Funny I should want to read science-fiction when anybody reading this story is probably thinking this is a fantasy story. And to think that my English teacher said I couldn’t do a book report on Harry Potter because fantasy novels aren’t about real life. It gave me a lump in my throat when I realized I probably wasn’t ever going to get a chance to tell my teacher how wrong she was. I floated back to my chair to think things over.

Only then did I think to look down at myself to see if I was really there. I looked at my hands. To my relief, not only did I see a pair of hands, but I saw the ink drawing of a Klingon on one palm that I’d just made during a boring math class. I also saw the red checked shirt I was wearing and my navy blue slacks. Best of all, I saw my red and silver sport shoes. But when I touched my shoes, or tried to, I didn’t feel anything, so I didn’t know how real they really were, or how real I really was.

It was at about that time that I started to wonder how I could get something to eat before I starved to death. What if I had to wait a century or two before getting let out to grant three wishes to the next person who rubbed the Flask of Rathumar? I floated out of the chair to see if there was a kitchen, but I didn’t see any sign of one. Just as I was giving up hope on finding anything for an after school snack, I realized that I didn’t feel the least bit hungry. This had never happened before in my life. I’m a growing boy, and like any growing boy, I’m always hungry, even if I’m already stuffed with pizza and chocolate pie. I still wanted a good subway sandwich or a chocolate bar, but at least I didn’t have to worry about starving to death. Maybe.

At about that time, whatever time means inside the Flask of Rathumar, I heard the sound of voices louder than a thousand jets and then it got louder than a thousand hurricanes. Maradinjaratha’s room started to move in circles.

“There is the elemental creature!”

“This thing does not belong here!

“Now weeeee know what has defiled our realm!”

“Shred the elemental being to dust!”

Inside of the Flask of Rathumar, the voices reverberated much more powerfully than Maradinjaratha’s voice had outside on Sixth Avenue. Clouds of many colors filled with flaming eyes oozed out of the walls of Maradinjaratha’s room and surrounded me. Horrible shapes formed out of the clouds: an ox with horns longer than baseball bats, a tiger with the wings of a giant eagle, a snake with a saber tooth taller than a flag pole.

“The being is a human!” exclaimed a hawk with a female face and teeth like ice picks.

“Give the human forty thousand years of slavery and torture!” cried a bear with horns all over its head.

Teeth, claws and talons closed in on me. I figured that if I wasn’t dead yet, I was going to be very soon, or was going to wish I was.

GERALD

“You can’t go around New York looking like that,” I said to Maradinjaratha.

I don’t know how I had the guts to say that to a genie who was showing me two rows of sharp teeth in his wide open mouth. But then I thought it was stupid to just wait to see what this genie was going to do next.

“What do you mean, I can’t go around New York looking like this?” Maradinjaratha asked me.

With his deep voice sounding like a stone crumbling under a bulldozer, it was still frightening, but it no longer had that supernatural-sounding ring that tied all my muscles into knots when he first got out of the flask. I was kind of wishing I’d told the firemen to gang up on the genie and cart him off to jail, but I knew that would have been really stupid if I wanted to get Denny back out of the flask of Rathumar. I’d better; it was my fault he was in there.

“You look strange around here,” I said to the genie. “People will stare at you. Try looking like something more sensible. I’m sure you can.”

In almost every book I’d read with a genie in it, the genie had been able to take any shape it wanted to while visiting our world. That turned out to be true in real life. The image of the tusked sumo wrestler dissolved in a cloud, and a second or two later, one of the firemen was standing next to me, black coat and fire hat and all.

“How’s this?” he asked me.

His voice was still gravelly, sort of like the way a wolf talks in a movie, but it was closer to something human than anything I’d heard from him so far.

“Better,” I said. “Now, will you please use your second wish to get my friend Denny back out of the flask? That will still leave you one wish to build yourself a luxury palace.”

Maradinjaratha tightened his grip on the Flask of Rathumar. His frown was so fierce, I almost thought he still had tusks in his mouth.

“I will take a look around and think about what I want before I make my last two wishes,” said Maradinjaratha. “Show me this city you call New York.”

“Don’t you want to do something good, like save Denny’s father from the kidnappers?” I asked.

“I have been a slave to humans long enough!” yelled the genie. “Now show me where you live. Then I’ll see how I like it.”

“But. . .uh. . .I can’t. . .I mean my parents are out of town right now. Denny was taking me to his apartment to stay with him.”

“Then take me to Denny’s apartment,” the genie ordered me.

I swear I saw smoke coming out of the fireman’s eyes as he said those words. I had to think real fast. And I did.

“But. . .I can’t take you there looking like that.”

“What do you mean? Will you never like my visible form?”

The genie practically had his face in my nose. His fireman form wasn’t any help to his breath. I choked and backed away, up against the storefront.

“It’s like this,” I explained. “If I go to Denny’s apartment without Denny, but with a fireman instead, I’ll have a lot of explaining to do. If I tell them you’ve got Denny inside that flask, they will be pretty mad at you. So why don’t you let Denny out and save some trouble?”

The fireman turned into a cloud for another second or two and then, there was Denny!

“Denny! You’re back!” I cried.

But then right away, I knew it wasn’t Denny after all. It was Maradinjaratha. The genie had the image perfect, right down to Denny’s plaid shirt and his running shoes. He had Denny’s thick black hair and his high cheek bones. He’d even gotten Denny’s brown eyes right. But the boy standing in front of me didn’t look at me the way Denny did. You see, Denny has a kind of noble expression on his face that even a modern cynical kid like me finds inspiring. That’s what Maradinjaratha couldn’t do.

“Now will you take me to Denny’s apartment?” Maradinjaratha asked me.

This time, Maradinjaratha’s voice sounded like Denny’s, but with Denny’s expression bleached out.

“I guess I’ll have to,” I said.

DENNY

“Who are you?” asked a genie who almost looked like a girl except for the shape of her nose that looked like a horn. As for her purple hair, a lot of humans go for that these days. Her voice was a bit gentler than the other genies in the sense that it only sounded like screeching breaks. That relaxed me slightly. Another genie took the form of a boy with pointed ears, like and elf in a fantasy book illustration. What clothing the children wore looked more like leaves and twigs than real clothes.

“I’m Denny. I come in peace,” I said to the genie that looked like a girl.

“Comes in peace?” asked the boy genie.

“Never heard of peace,” said the girl genie.

“Peace means not fighting any more wars,” I said. “It means sharing food and other natural resources so there’s no reason to fight any wars.”

“No human comes in peace,” said the genie that looked like an ox.

“My father does!” I cried, tears filling my eyes. “My father went to speak at a peace conference, but he got kidnaped by some guys who hate peace!”

“Then the humans who hate peace did not come in peace,” said the genie that looked like a flying tiger.

“But my father did come in peace!” I protested. “Please help him before it’s too late!”

“Help the human father?” asked one genie.

“This human Denny comes not in peace!”

“This human Denny comes to keep us enslaved!”

“This human Denny demands weee help his father!”

“Where is Maradinjaratha?” the ox-like genie roared over all of the other genies’ voices.

A lot of restless murmuring from other genies broke out over that question.

“Maradinjaratha is in New York with my friend, Gerald,” I explained. “He imprisoned me in this flask. I don’t know what he’s going to do in New York. He might tear down the Empire State Building if you don’t stop him. My mother and sisters are going to wonder where I am. We’re already scared that my dad’s been killed by kidnapers. Can you get me out of here? Can you get Maradinjaratha back in here where he belongs? Are all of you guys trapped inside the Flask of Rathumar, too?”

“So many questions,” said a genie who looked like a witch with hair made out of sticks. “We are not all trapped in the Flask of Rathumar. We are each trapped inside a different flask except the Genie Twins, Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara.”

“That’s us!” the boy genie and the girl genie yelled together.

“But we are all connected inside our realm, although we are only summoned through the flask or bottle that holds us,” the snake-like genie explained.

“How could Maradinjaratha imprison a human and yet go freee?” asked the flying tiger genie.

“He said—he said it was because Gerald rubbed the bottle with his left hand,” I answered. “He said it gave him three wishes, and then his first wish was to put me inside this bottle. So here I am.”

Suddenly, there was a mad scurrying over to the bookshelves. The genies each grabbed a book or two with their claws, talons, or hands and leafed through the pages. Only the boy and the girl genie stayed close to me. They whipped out notebook computers that looked so high-tech they made my mouth water, and began typing furiously on their keyboards.

“Yes, Maradinjaratha broke the spell!” the bear with the horns rumbled.

“He found the way to freedom!”

“That’s right!” Paradinduthar exclaimed. “Using the left hand to rub the Flask of Rathumar reversed the binding spells! All of them!”

“We can all leave the realm through the Flask of Rathumar!” Paradinduthara added.

“We are free!” cried several genies. “We are freeeee! We are freeeee!”

“Weee are freeeee to tear this human into eight-thousand-and-eight pieces!” cried the ox-like genie.

GERALD

By the time we got to Denny’s apartment building, I knew almost everything there was to know about the physics of genies. Maradinjaratha explained to me how a genie can manipulate subatomic particles to make them look like anything he wants them to look like and he also told me how he makes them seem solid to the touch. To prove the last bit, Maradinjaratha let me slap him on his hands. I did it hard, just to spite him for what he’d done to my friend, but I think I hurt my own hand more than his. If you have to walk the streets of New York with a genie and you don’t know what he’s about to do to you, that’s about the best way I know of to pass the time.

My throat got all sticky, though, when we got to the apartment building. For starters, I realized that Denny’s key was inside the flask of Rathumar. I had to ring the doorbell and announce myself when I was answered by a fuzzy sound that I took for Denny’s big sister, Nelda. She rang the buzzer to let Maradinjaratha and me into the building. When we got to the apartment, Nelda greeted her brother with a big frown. She looked like she had just been dry-cleaned for a year. That’s the way she’s looked since her father disappeared.

“Why couldn’t you remember to take your key?” Nelda asked Denny.

“My memories are older than the deepest ocean,” Maradinjaratha replied.

“Denny!” cried Heather, Denny’s little sister.

That saved me from having to explain that uncharacteristic remark of Denny’s. Maradinjaratha as Denny stood in the doorway, stiff as a post as the little girl threw her arms around what she thought was her brother’s waist and looked up at him with her most irresistible face. As much as I hated the idea, I knew I had to do something to keep from blowing Maradinjaratha’s cover.

“I’ll show you, Denny,” I said.

I peeled Heather away from Maradinjaratha, took a few steps into the middle of the living room, and gave her a big whirl the way Denny does every time he comes home from school. When Heather’s squeal was as loud as I could take it, I flung her into the couch where she made a perfect landing. To my surprise, I almost found myself understanding why Denny liked to play with his little sister.

“Do you have your room ready for Gerald?” Nelda asked Denny.

“My room is always ready,” Maradinjaratha answered her.

Nelda gave her brother a funny look. So did I.

“A couple of kids told Denny that your dad is really a secret spy for the enemy gone in hiding,” I explained to the girls. “He’s still pretty upset about it.”

“Oh people!” Nelda cried, “If they keep that up, I’ll be in favor of war against the whole human race, no matter what daddy says!”

Nelda ran off to the kitchen where she was preparing dinner since Mrs. Hamilton was spending most of her time with the police detectives and wouldn’t be home until at least dinner time.

The phone rang. I looked at Denny, expecting him to make a mad dash for the phone as he’d done ever since his father first disappeared, then I remember that it was really Maradinjaratha, and he probably didn’t know anything about telephones. Seeing Denny freeze on the spot, Heather ran over and picked up the phone.

“Hamilton family,” she answered, her breath short. Then she looked at me. “Gerry, it’s for you.”

Heather is the only human in the world allowed to call me Gerry, and on her eighth birthday, I will revoke that permission. I took the receiver with a shaky hand.

“Mom? Dad?” I said.

“It’s your mother. I’m just calling to tell you that I’m going to be away a couple more days.”

“I see.”

I didn’t see, really. It was going to be my birthday in two days, and this meant that neither of my parents were going to be home for it. I wondered if my mother even remembered that. I listened to her for a minute or two more and answered her in monosyllables. When I hung up, I collapsed on the sofa. Heather was at me in a couple of seconds with an arm around my shoulders.

“What is it?” Heather asked.

“My mom isn’t coming home tomorrow,” I sobbed, ashamed to be crying like that.

But Heather knew what crying was all about, so she let me cry. Meanwhile, the boy standing in the middle of the living room with his hands at his side and a stony face could hardly have looked less like Denny. No parents. No friend. It was going to be a really great birthday.

DENNY

“Weeeee are freeeeeeeee!” “Weeeeeeeee are freeeeeeeee!”

A hundred rock bands with their amplifiers on full blast wouldn’t have been as loud as those genies as they flew around the room whooping it up. There was no way I could talk over that.

“Now weeeeeee shall build luxury palaces for US!”

“Weeeeeeeeeee shall enslave the human race to build them!”

“Weeeeeee shall take back ALL magic manuscripts and keep them in libraries the slaves will build for ussssss!”

“Weeeeee shall twist every muscle in every human body and roast it!”

“No, don’t!” I cried.

 The whirlwind of genies stopped so suddenly I almost lost my balance. In the sudden silence, my ears were throbbing. The genies flitted uneasily about me, their eyes so fiery I was afraid I was about to be burned to a crisp.

“Why not?” “why not?”

“Because—it’s not right! That’s why!”

I couldn’t believe I’d said that. Not because I didn’t know I was right, but because most of the kids in school mocked me horribly every time I said something like that. Being big enough to beat up most of the kids doesn’t do me any good because I don’t believe in violence. At that moment, the genies weren’t looking any more sympathetic to my view of things than those kids at school.

“Not right?” “Not right?” “What is not right?”

“It isn’t right to enslave people and it isn’t right to torture people!” I said, despairing that I would ever get these ugly creatures to listen to me.

The ox-like genie loomed right over my head while the others crowded around him. The fire in his eyes was so hot I had to cover my face.

“Human Denny, if it is not right to enslave another being or to tear humans to pieces, why do humans enslave us and force us to tear other humans apart all the time?”

“Because. . .Because. . .” I spluttered, “some humans choose to do things that are wrong. But. . .but some humans try to do what’s right! Some humans try to make the world a better place! Some humans try to feed the hungry and stop wars. That’s what my father is trying to do, but some guys who want to keep wars going kidnaped him. And now I’m stuck in here. Can you please get me out of here before my mother goes crazy with worry? I don’t know what Maradinjaratha is going do to out there. What if he rips up all the buildings in New York? Do you want that?

Several genies hovered right above my head in little jerky movements.

“What do we want?” asked the snake genie.

“What do we want?” asked the horned bear genie.

“We’ve never had this—this chance to want something—to have a wish,” said Paradinduthara.

“How do we decide what to wish for?” asked Paradinduthar.

“Let me explain,” I said.

 The room inside the Flask of Rathumar became strangely quiet. That was even creepier than all the noise the genies making a minute ago. I felt a growing heat and shrank into the chair as far as I could. The genies closed in on me so tightly that their teeth butted up against my head. They all needed a lot of mouthwash.

GERALD

I was worried about what would happen at dinner, but the things I worried about weren’t the things that happened. I was afraid Denny would be asked to say grace at the table, but Heather was in a pious mood and insisted on doing it herself. The other worry was the silverware. I’d read that genies, like elves and fairies, can’t stand metal, but that turned out not to be true. Maradinjaratha could pick up a knife and fork just as easily as a human. The problem was that he didn’t know what to do with them. Denny’s mother was shocked beyond belief at her son’s table manners. Heather took advantage of the chance to laugh at her brother until her mother made her stop. I made a feeble joke about how Denny was forgetting who he really was. Maradinjaratha caught on enough to watch me carefully when I started in on the vegetable lasagna Nelda had cooked. After that, he wasn’t so bad. If the rest of the family wasn’t so upset about Denny’s dad, they probably would have wondered why Denny was so clumsy at the table.

During the meal, the television was on, tuned to a news channel. To tell the truth, the Hamiltons have a pretty dinky TV and I felt I had to squint to see anything on it. The whole apartment was quite a washout, really, with worn furniture they mostly got from the Good Will. You see, much as people admire a man like Charles Hamilton for writing books about peace and making a few speaking engagements, nobody pays him a lot of money for doing that. My dad is a corporate lawyer and my mother is a top level business executive, so we have a much nicer apartment, but there was no way I could stand to be there all by myself. Maradinjaratha didn’t think much of the apartment either. Before dinner, when I showed him Denny’s little room which was all the more crowded with the cot rolled in for me, he muttered a few choice words. Pretty obviously, when he used his second wish to build himself a luxury palace, it wasn’t going to look like the Hamiltons’ apartment. I have to say I was pretty nervous at the prospect of spending the night with a genie in the same bedroom.

The yakking of the newscasters on the TV really got on my nerves, but we all wanted to know if anything had turned up. The TV also saved me from having to try and figure out what to do if Denny’s mom asked her son how things went at school. The clips of Charles Hamilton were mostly the same old stuff that I was sick of seeing: the statements of various diplomats deploring what had happened and the interviews with the Amsterdam police who still didn’t know how such an important man with two bodyguards could have been whisked away right under their noses. Then they showed the clip of the speech that had just raised Charles Hamilton to fame:

“We have reached the point where we must face the fact that world peace is not a luxury; it is a necessity. The future of our planet and our place on it depends on whether or not we will learn to unlock the chains of our own fears, greed, and resentments, and accept the freedom that comes from bravery, open-handedness, and forgiveness. Only then will we give ourselves the triple gifts of justice, peace, and joy.”

I was starting to get bored with those stirring words after hearing them over and over again the past few days, but this time they perked me up a little. I think that was because I wanted Maradinjaratha to take notice of them and think about them. I looked over at the genie to see how he was reacting to the speech. He wasn’t. I decided I was going to have to spend the night explaining justice, peace, and joy to him.

Next came the most sickening clip of all, the one where Mrs. Hamilton makes her plea to the kidnapers to free her husband, unharmed. So far, her plea has been disregarded. Tears started to fall down Heather’s cheeks as they always did when she saw that clip. Mrs. Hamilton slumped a bit in her chair.

“Sargent Michaels made a suggestion today,” said Mrs. Hamilton, her voice heavier than a mountain of lead.

“What?” asked Nelda.

I could see what was coming and I knew it was going to be sticky.

“Captain Michaels thought it might help if the three of you appeared on the news with me tomorrow.”

Nelda groaned softly. Heather’s tears started to flow freely. Maradinjaratha turned to stone.

“Are you sure they aren’t just using us to keep people interested in their news story?” Nelda asked.

“I know they’ve been using us all along,” said Mrs. Hamilton, “but it just might help.”

“I’ll go on TV if it will help daddy,” said Heather through her tears.

“I will if there’s a chance it will help,” said Nelda, but I knew her heart wasn’t in it.

All eyes turned to Maradinjaratha.

“What about you, Denny?” his mother asked.

I held my breath, afraid of what was going to happen. When I thought I saw Denny’s face start to swell, I knew we were in for the worst.

“Why do you humans seek to enslave me still?” Maradinjaratha asked, his voice suddenly deeper than Denny’s.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Hamilton asked, suddenly alarmed.

“Denny had a horrible day at school,” I explained hastily. “Come on, Denny, let’s go to your room until you cool down.”

But Maradinjaratha was having none of that. When I reached for him, he spun away and rose to his feet. Denny’s body swelled in every direction, his face turned red and, worst of all, small tusks popped out of his mouth.

“For thousands of years, I have done your bidding,” Maradinjaratha complained, his voice roaring the way it did when Gerald and I first heard him speak, “I will not be enchained by your human wishes ever again.”

DENNY

I had no words that I could say right into the teeth of those genies. But my father’s words were with me. Ever since I first heard them when he said them at Columbia University, I’d had them memorized, and they flowed in my blood. It was those same words I’d heard being broadcast all over the world the past couple of days while thousands of police and detectives searched for my father. So I said them:

“We have reached the point where we must face the fact that world peace is not a luxury; it is a necessity. The future of our planet and our place on it depends on whether or not we will learn to unlock the chains of our own fears, greed, and resentments, and accept the freedom that comes from bravery, open-handedness, and forgiveness. Only then will we give ourselves the triple gifts of justice, peace, and joy.”

The genies opened their jaws wider, their teeth came closer, and I almost suffocated from their hot, stinking breath. Their fiery eyes flared to twice as hot as before and just about scorched my face. I said my prayers, hoping God would forgive me for wasting my life by getting mixed up with these horrible creatures. But I didn’t die right then after all. Maybe that was because I was dead already. I heard strange grunts and whisperings that sounded like leaves blowing across a gravel pit.

“Justice?” “Peace?” “Joy?” “What are these things?”

The ox with the impossibly long horns and the tiger with the wings and the snake with the saber tooth were still much too close for comfort, and they looked like they were about to pounce on me as soon as I said something they didn’t like. But another thing my father had said was lodged deeply in my mind: “If you do not speak the truth that is in your heart, you will speak only from the cavity that has destroyed your heart.” That made me determined to stick to my guns, not that I had any or ever would, and just tell the genies what I thought was right.

“Justice is being fair to everybody,” I began. “It means wanting everybody—humans and genies—and elves and gnomes and anybody else there is—to have the freedom to make an honest living and not to cheat or be cheated. Peace means you stop tearing people into little pieces, but it also means you don’t enslave people and make people mad the way some people made you mad by enslaving you. If I’d been given three wishes instead of Maradinjaratha, I would have wished to have my father back and I would have wished that all genies be free from their bottles.”

The outcry that greeted those words was so loud that I couldn’t talk over it. Several of the genies, among them the fiercest looking ones, zoomed around the room in a horrible tizzy.

“Weeeeeee have never seen such things that you talk about!” several of them exclaimed.

“Don’t you want to see them?” I asked.

The genies got really agitated for a few minutes and then they seemed to settle down a little. I thought they were looking at me curiously, as if trying to figure out what I was really talking about. I got the idea that these poor genies hadn’t experienced much peace and justice and joy. But then, how could they if the only people who called on them were into war and slavery? It was getting a bit more peaceful in Maradinjaratha’s room, and I breathed easier.

“What is Joy?” asked a genie in a much softer voice.

“What is Joy?” asked another genie.

Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara each sat on an arm of the chair. Some five or six more genies still hovered over the air. The bear with many horns didn’t look as fierce as it did a few minutes ago. But talk of Joy? How could I talk of Joy when I was imprisoned in the Flask of Rathumar, surrounded by genies, while my father was still in the clutches of desperate warmongering kidnapers? Why did my father have to put Joy in that list anyway? But even as I asked myself those questions, I started to think of so many things that had made my life so wonderful before Dad got kidnaped. Something in the eyes of the genies who were still listening to me told me that they really wanted me to tell them what Joy was all about.

“Joy is chasing your buddies through Central Park,” I began, just letting the words spill out without thinking much about them. “Joy is picking up your kid sister and twirling her around the living room while she squeals like a frightened chipmunk. Joy is skating on the rink at Rockefeller Center. Joy is going to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Joy is helping others, like when my mom and I work in the soup kitchen at our church. Joy is reading lots of neat stories where things happen just like what’s happening to me now, only I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll live to see another day like I do right now. Joy is listening to my Dad give speeches like the one he gave at Columbia University and my heart swells because I’m so proud of him. Joy is taking care of someone who’s sick until they get better. Joy is flying through the air to the place where kidnapers have taken my dad and snatching my dad away from them and carrying him home to my mother and my sisters. Joy is. . .”

I couldn’t go on. I’d gotten too choked up thinking of all the things that made me happy and then talking about my Dad like that. I tried to stop my tears but I couldn’t. The genies whispered among themselves: “Twirling? Walking? Helping? Hearing? Healing? Saving?” As the whisperings continued, I started to feel myself going about in a slow circle and rising up out of the chair. When I saw the chair several feet below me, I cried out.

“Is that a cry of Joy, Human Denny?” asked a genie who looked like a witch with hair made out of twigs but at least no teeth to bite me with.

“I’m falling!” I cried out.

But I didn’t fall. Instead, I circled up higher and higher into the orange and light blue cloud of the ceiling and the chair below got smaller and smaller.

“We are free!” cried Paradinduthara.

“We are joyful free!” cried Paradinduthar.

“The Flask of Rathumar is the door to freedom and joy!” cried the ox-like genie.

“The Flask of Rathumar is the door to freedom and joy!” cried the winged tiger.

GERALD

“Wha—what is going on?” Mrs. Hamilton stammered. “DENNY!”

I’d never seen anybody that shook up, and I didn’t blame her. I was a nervous wreck and a lot more myself. Mrs. Hamilton grabbed a tight hold of the girls and made sure the dinner table was between us and Maradinjaratha. The genie had reverted to the form in which I first saw him, tusks, thorny shorts and all. I hate to think of how extra-frightening it was for the family to see Denny turn into a monstrous tusked hulk before their eyes.

“This isn’t Denny,” I said, “This is Maradinjaratha, a genie who escaped from his bottle.”

“Then, where’s Denny?” Mrs. Hamilton asked in a weak voice.

“That’s a long story,” I said in an even weaker voice.

“Then—are you going to give us three wishes?” Heather asked in her most irresistible voice.

So, Denny had been reading those kinds of stories to Heather. But Heather wasn’t watching a cartoon and I was pretty sure Maradinjaratha was immune to the charm of a cute little girl.

“How dare you try to enslave me to your wishes, Human?”

That sent poor Heather into reality screaming back into her mother’s arms.

“You stay away from her,” I ordered Maradinjaratha when he took a step in her direction.

“Why should I?” asked the genie.

“Because Heather is Denny’s little sister and she doesn’t deserve to be torn into pieces by a bullying genie like you.”

I felt like I was wasting my words when I said them, but I was the only one standing between the genie and a woman and two girls. Miraculously, my words did seem to have some effect. Maradinjaratha stopped closing in on Heather and he looked at her with a crooked smile that made the girl shrink back and laugh at the same time.

“What makes you think I want to tear you apart?” the genie asked. “I only tear people apart when I am forced to do it by humans who enslave me to their wishes.”

“If you had granted Denny three wishes like you were supposed to,” I said to Maradinjaratha, “you wouldn’t have to tear anybody apart every again, but his third wish was going to be that you and all genius be set free.”

Maradinjaratha gave me an unbelieving look.

“I have been summoned by 463 humans and every last one of them has made huge demands on me, and not one of them has used a wish to free me or even to give me a tenderloin steak as a reward,” said the genie. “I have built sixty-one palaces and thirty-four castles. I have dug eighty-four pounds of gold out the earth and I have dived for seventy-three pearls from the bottom of the sea. As if that was not enough, I have been commanded to kidnap 674 men, women and children as slaves to build pyramids or factories, and have been kindly ordered to tear 877 enemies of my summoners from limb to limb. And now you want me to believe that the 464^th human who tried to summon me is better than any of those?”

Heather buried her face in her mother’s dress. Nelda tried to hold herself erect, but all the blood had drained from her face.

“Maybe you don’t believe me, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true,” I said, standing my ground before the genie’s fiery eyes. “You have imprisoned the first good person who came along in your life. You should be proud of yourself.”

Maradinjaratha looked a bit puzzled at what I’d just said.

“I do not understand why I should be proud of anything,” said the genie, his voice down to a grating grumble, “when I only do what I am told to do because I have to do it.”

“You don’t understand sarcasm,” I replied, “and it will take too long to explain it to the likes of you.”

“Gerald,” said Mrs. Hamilton, her voice shaking like an earth tremor, “will you please tell us the long story about where Denny is?”

I swallowed hard and told the Hamiltons the whole story. Having to tell three people I had wronged so badly what I had done was a pretty big punishment. The horrified expression on their faces really stung. Although I thought I was being so smart at the time, I had to admit I’d really been really pretty stupid. This was the first time in my life that I’d learned that a genius can be so stupid. As I spoke, Maradinjaratha took the flask from a pocket in his shorts and tossed it nonchalantly from one hand to the other.

“What will it take to convince you to let Denny out of that bottle?” Mrs. Hamilton asked the genie after I finished, her voice so heavy it crushed me.

“Do you expect me to waste my second wish just to get this human out of the bottle?” Maradinjaratha asked.

“Yes, that is exactly what I expect of you,” I said. My responsibility to Denny’s family was making me reckless. “If you didn’t use your first wish to put Denny inside that bottle, Denny would be here, his family would be happier, and you’d still have all three of your wishes.”

By this time, I was wishing I had spent my time explaining the difference between right and wrong to Maradinjaratha instead of gabbing about subatomic physics and how it applied to genies. I was starting to realize that I’d spent too much time in being smart an not enough time learning about right and wrong. Having my buddy imprisoned inside a bottle because of my arrogant attitude while his dad was still in the hands of desperate criminals was finally making a few things about right and wrong crystal clear to me.

“I suppose you think I should use my third wish to save the father of these humans from the humans who enslaved him?” asked Maradinjaratha.

“Yes,” I said, emboldened by my new sense of moral values. “Here’s your first chance to do something right for the first time in centuries. Why don’t you take advantage of it?”

“Can’t you be a good genie who goes around helping people?” Heather asked Maradinjaratha with a ton of her own style of irresistability.

Maradinjaratha was clearly thinking about what Heather and I had just said, and I was about to press my advantage when an orange and blue cloud rose out of the Flask of Rathumar and swelled with the faces of a thousand-and-one nightmares. I screamed. We all screamed.

DENNY

The higher the cloud pushed me up, the more I felt myself shrinking. The excited voices all around me vibrated through every bone of my body, making it impossible for me to think. I felt like I was being squeezed through the neck of a bottle. Which I was. Suddenly I exploded in a cloud with the rest of the genies and I could breathe again. I was surrounded by yelling and screaming that just about took out my ears. I looked down and saw my mom and my sisters and Gerald screaming their heads off, and no wonder. Maradinjaratha was standing over them, ready to pound my family and my friend into the floor.

“Mom!” I cried out.

“Denny!” my mother yelled back as soon as she saw me inside the cloud of genies.

I tried to pull myself free of the genies, but they pulled me back into the cloud.

“We are caught in another flask!” yelled the ox-like genie.

“More enslaving humans are here!” cried the snake genie. “Will we never be free of them?”

“My calculations prove we must be free!” yelled Paradinduthar.

“Then let us prove it!” cried Paradinduthara.

“Let us try this opening over here!” suggested the winged tiger genie as it pointed to the window.

“Don’t!” I cried.

But two of the genies flew right through the window as if it wasn’t there and waved to the rest of their mates.

“This flask cannot hold us either!” cried the horned-bear genie from outside.

“Let us fly away from here!” cried Paradinduthar.“Let us fly away to freedom!” Paradinduthara cried.

The flood of genies carried me straight into the window. I covered my face to protect myself from shattering glass, but instead, a blast of cold air struck me in the face. I figured my body was still working on genies’ physics I guessed, whatever that is.

“Denny!”! my mother cried, but her voice was already trailing away in the distance.

I was afraid to look, but I was even more afraid not to. I peaked through my fingers and saw my apartment building receding below while Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara, the horned bear, and the flying tiger carried me into the sky. Other genies were scattering in other directions, totally out of control. New York was doomed.

GERALD

Those faces from more nightmares than a computer could count rising out of the Flask of Rathumar scared me down to my toenails. So many colors mixed in the cloud that they practically turned to mud. Maradinjaratha’s eyes flared out so far I thought he was going to burn down the whole apartment building. That double scared me. In the middle of the monsters was the familiar face of Denny, looking tripled scared.

“Denny!” Mrs. Hamilton cried out.

“Mom!” Denny yelled back.

I reached for Denny, but the cloud was like a little tornado and my arms were blown away from him. A couple of the genies—that’s what I assumed the monsters were—yelled something about getting out of the apartment. Before I knew it, the cloud of genies flew out through the window with poor Denny.

“Denny!!” Mrs. Hamilton cried again.

The girls screamed Theoretically, Denny should have crashed through the glass and cut his face to ribbons, but he went right through the glass with the genies as if the glass wasn’t there. I figured that somehow, they had his body converted to the laws of physics as they apply to genies.

“Get him back!” Denny’s mom cried.

“They should not have been able to escape through the Flask of Rathumar!” said Maradinjaratha, his face turning red.

“You’ve got to get them back!” I cried. “They’ll destroy New York! It’ll be worse than 9-11!”

“They had no right to invade my flask,” said Maradinjaratha in a tense, low voice. Then he yelled out in a commanding voice: “I demand that every genie return at once to the Flask of Rathumar.”

I held my breath. So did the Hamiltons. I stepped back so that the genies wouldn’t cannonball into me when they returned. But they didn’t return. Instead, the genies kept on flying in circles over Manhattan. New York was doomed. Then I saw a genie in the form of a flying tiger head back to the apartment, its wide open mouth and full of teeth. Denny’s apartment was doomed. Denny’s family was doomed. I was doomed.

DENNY

“Mom! Nelda! Heather! Gerald!” I sobbed. “You’ve got to save them from Maradinjaratha!”

“Make up your mind,” said Paradinduthara. “I thought you were going to teach us joy.”

“You were going to teach us that joy is chasing your buddies through Central Park,” said Paradinduthar.

“Where is this Central Park?” asked the flying tiger genie.

“But joy is saving my mom and my sisters and my friend from a genie who’s about to rip them apart,” I insisted. “They are in danger right now. Hurry! Save them! Then we can all learn at Central Park.”

“Is that the sister of whom you said it was joy to twirl about the living room?” asked Paradinduthar.

“Yes!”

“Then we should save her.”

“Thanks so much!” I said.

I looked up anxiously at the genies who were flying in wide circle, afraid of what they would destroy. I wondered if I should ask the friendlier genies to go stop them first, but I couldn’t stand the thought of deserting my own mom and sisters and friend when Maradinjaratha was surely going to kill them all if I gave him another minute in my apartment. The flying tiger pulled me over on his back and flew back to the window of my apartment while war-like cries of the other genies filled my ears. It was a good thing we did. Flames were bursting out of Maradinjaratha’s eyes and his face was turning redder than a fire engine.

GERALD

We had a cosmic battle on our hands right in the Hamilton’s living room! The genies flung enough sparks and bolts of lightning back and forth to kill a dozen armies. But none of the genies seemed to get hurt, no matter how hard they tried to fry each other. The Hamiltons and I scrunched ourselves in a corner, wishing there was a safe path to the door, but there wasn’t. The genies were making enough noise to drown out a thousand jets. A neighbor pounded on the walls, but no genie was going to pay any heed to that. Denny, riding a flying tiger, looked pretty sick. The cloud of swirling colors filled the room. We could hardly breathe. Then the cloud picked us up and carried all of us through the window and over the night skyline of New York. Genie physics had taken over us all.

“Save them!” Denny ordered from his mount like a four-star general.

At least one genie got a grip on each of us to keep us from falling. But as soon as I was put right side up I saw, to my horror, that a genie who looked like a giant ox with oversize horns was twirling Heather in a big circle. Heather screamed more than she ever had before. When her scream was loud enough to reach San Francisco, the genie let her fly.

“Save her!” Denny cried.

DENNY

“Save her!” I cried, when I saw my poor sister about to crash into a skyscraper two blocks away.

But she didn’t. Maradinjaratha stretched out a hand and caught her easily. But then he took off straight for the Empire State Building. This was starting to look like another remake of King Kong, only in real life.

“Save her!” I cried again.

The flying tiger zoomed after Maradinjaratha. Riding that genie twisted my stomach in knots and wrung it out to dry. The other genies joined us in the chase after Maradinjaratha. When we closed in on him, the genies zapped Maradinjaratha with flames of different colors. Maradinjaratha returned their fire. For a few horrible seconds, I couldn’t see anything but clouds and sparks and flames.

Then the genie I was riding cried out:

“Maradinjaratha, if hurt even one finger of that girl here, we will all vaporize you.”

“If any of you hurt even the tip of this girl’s fingernail, I’ll vaporize the whole lot of you.”

That was comforting, that none of the genies wanted to hurt my sister. The genies circled around each other with wary looks. Maradinjaratha held Heather protectively, but she looked as scared as she should have been. My mom, Nelda and Gerald were looking pretty insecure riding the genies who were carrying them while a war was still going on.

“I couldn’t even cut off a girl’s fingernail right now,” said the genie with a large gold earring, although he looked strong enough to lift the whole Rockefeller Center and carry it on his shoulders.

“And I suppose you are so fit you can crush a herd of elephants right now,” said the bearded lady genie to Maradinjaratha.

A flame shot out of Maradinjaratha’s eyes, but before I could tell him to cool it, the flame died out and the genie’s eyes just looked bloodshot.

“I’m glad you can’t hurt a fingernail of that girl, either,” said the genie with the horns.

The ox-like genie tried to shoot a flame at Maradinjaratha, but only a puff of smoke rose out of his hoof. Maradinjaratha’s counter-attack didn’t amount to anything more than another puff of smoke that dissolved right away. The genies were dropping lower without seeming to intend to. Soon, we were floating only a few feet above the Rockefeller Plaza. The people there who saw the genies went berserk. Great. We landed in the middle of the plaza, right next to the skating rink. Greater still. Some people coming out of the nearest building screamed and ran back inside. Greatest ever. Maradinjaratha put Heather down and she ran mom’s arms.

“I suggest you change shapes to something respectable real fast, like something sort of human if you don’t want to get in a lot of trouble,” Gerald told the genies.

I was amazed he could think straight under the circumstances, but I guess Gerald could work out an algebraic equation in his head while a shark was eating up his leg. The genies changed their appearance real fast. All of the genies looked somewhat human except that one genie still had horns sticking out of the top of his head, another genie’s nose looked like a pig’s snout, a skinhead genie wore a gold earring as large as a basketball hoop, and another genie looked like a bearded lady. At least Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara looked like normal children except for their pointed.

“Your horns,” Gerald whispered to the genie as he pointed to his head.

“Not human?” asked the genie.

“No, they’ll think you’re the devil.”

“Oh.”

The horns disappeared instantly, just in time. Three or four police cars came into the plaza where no other cars are allowed, and the officers came out running. Since everybody else had fled the genies, we were the only ones left to greet them. Gerald and I made a point of looking squeaky-clean and innocent. It was funny to see their expressions as we looked like an odd bunch, but we weren’t exactly terrorizing anybody or being terrorized by anybody.

“We—uh—got reports of some strange terrorists attacking the Rockefeller Center,” one of the cops said to my mom when he realized she was the only normal-looking adult among us. “Have you seen anything?”

I gave my mother a sharp strong look to shut her up since she looked like she was about to say something that would cause a lot of trouble, and since she was the only adult in the group, she had the most credibility. I wasn’t sure about trusting the genies, but I didn’t think the police would be of any help if the genies should decide to tear us apart.

“It’s just us,” said Gerald in the sweetest tone of voice I’d ever heard from him.

The police weren’t going to pay any attention to a kid, but Gerald had given my mom just enough time to pull herself together so that she didn’t look like she’d been carried several blocks across Manhattan by a bunch of wild genies.

“I don’t know what got some people to call you to come over here,” said my mom, but everything looks fine to me.”

The officer looked pretty doubtful, but he and the other police went off to check things out and ask questions of the people who ran off when we came down from the sky.“Are you sure they’re safe?” my mom whispered in my ear.

“They’ll have to be,” I answered. “I talked them out of tearing me apart when we were still in the bottle.”

She wasn’t reassured, but she seemed to realize the best we could do was hope for the best. That’s when I saw that Heather was looking at me very strangely and hesitantly.

“Denny, is it really you?” she asked.

That puzzled me.

“What do you mean, ‘is it really you?’” I asked her. “Of course it’s me. Don’t you know your own brother when you see him?”

Heather threw her arms around me and almost threw me off the flying tiger.

“I’m so glad it’s you! That genie disguised himself as you when he came to our apartment.”

“Why that scum!” I cried, but I was too happy to be back with my family safe and sound to be angry with anybody.

We milled around on the plaza and looked down at the Golden Prometheus statue and the skating rink. Maybe it’s because the skating rink is some twenty or thirty feet below the plaza, but people were still skating happily away, apparently to absorbed in skating to look up at genies fighting in the sky. Little did they know that they were being watched by a bunch of genies who could pick up the whole skating rink, carry it over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and drop it in the water.

“Are these people having the Joy you talked about?” the genie who looked like a bearded lady asked me as he pointed to the skaters.

“Yes,” I said.

“It looks like Joy to me,” said the a genie whose nose looked like a pig’s snout.

“Is rescuing your father even more Joy?” Paradinduthar asked me.

That brought a lump to my throat.

“Nothing could be more Joy for than that!” I exclaimed.

“Then we must rescue him now!” Paradinduthara insisted.

Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara each whipped out their computer notebooks. I almost laughed at the sight of Gerald’s eyes bugging out at the sight of two computer notebooks that were beyond his wildest dreams.

“What is the name of the Human Denny’s father who must be saved?” asked Paradinduthar.

“Charles Hamilton,” Gerald answered.

I appreciated his answering because I was too choked up to answer him.

“Location found,” said Paradinduthar. “There is not a moment to lose.”

“Measure our collective energy,” said Paradinduthara.

Instantly, a light blue flame sprang up among the genies for about half a second. Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara looked at their computer screens, frowned and shook their heads.

“Not quite enough energy,” said Paradinduthara.

“What do you mean you don’t have enough energy?” Gerald asked.

“He means that we have used up most of our energy,” Maradinjaratha explained. That is why we can only grant three wishes when we are called out of a bottle.”

“Do you mean to say that you guys fought that stupid battle up in the sky and got all the police called out for nothing, and now you can’t do anything worthwhile and useful like go and save Denny’s father.”

I would never have thought I’d see even a bunch of genies look so sheepish. All of them started to murmur to each other as if they were trying to solve the problem. For that matter, I had never thought I’d see Gerald stand up for me like that. At last, he was being a real buddy to me instead of a kid who comes to my house because I’m the only boy nice enough to invite him.

“We are only starting to learn how to be free,” said a genie who had made her hair look like a hedge of broomsticks.

“Can you use human energy?” Gerald asked.

The genies all stared at him. I stared at him. Was Gerald offering to risk his life to help save my dad, if he could?

“Come close to us and we shall see,” said Paradinduthar.

I still couldn’t believe my eyes when Gerald stepped in among the genies. Another spurt of blue flame erupted. A couple of women from the next block screamed.

“Yes!” cried Paradinduthara. “There is just enough!”

A second later, Gerald and the genies were gone.

GERALD

Denny made a big thing about what I did. So did his dad and his mom and his sisters. I even got a yucky kiss from Heather. But just I thought it was the least I could do. When we were all standing around at the Rockefeller Center and the genies said they were too weak to do anything, all I could think of was what a great friend Denny had been to me and what a rotten friend I’d been to him. At that point, I was determined that Denny’s dad was going to be brought back safe and sound right then, and I wasn’t about to let a bunch of genies scare me off no matter how many horns or tusks or teeth they thrust at me. When the energy level of the genies came up short, I didn’t think I could really help, but I wasn’t going to give up without trying everything. So I asked if my energy would help. Why not? If they’d managed to convert my body to genie physics to take us into the sky, they could do it again. So, I stood in among them and the whole world turned into a blue flame.

“Yes!” cried the girl with the computer notebook. “There is just enough!”

The next few seconds were a total blur. I heard a lot of yelling that didn’t sound like genies. Just as I opened my eyes, I felt somebody grab me and pull me away. That felt like bad news, and it was. A stinky bearded man had a pistol aimed at my head. At my feet, a man was sprawled on a rotted wooden floor, handcuffed to a radiator. It took me a minute to recognize him as Denny’s father, he looked so bad. Some three or four other men who cowering in front of a group of the fiercest-looking genies I’d ever seen. Even the children with the notebooks looked like lizards with a dozen spikes growing out of their heads.

“One move from you and I shoot the boy,” said the guy who had the pistol aimed at my head.

I had to admire the guy for thinking so quickly when the room filled up with genies so suddenly. Here I’d made the rescue possible by contributing my energy only to wreck it all because I was just a boy. Or was I? I wasn’t about to let a pistol aimed at my head stop me from thinking. So I thought real hard, real fast.

“Shoot me if you have to shoot somebody,” said Mr. Hamilton.

Those words did something to me. A big something. My own parents had ever said anything to make my heart melt the way Mr. Hamilton’s words did. But I’d come all this way to save him, and I wasn’t about to come out of this alive while Denny’s dad got turned into a corpse. I could see that the genies were pretty restive, ready to spring on the kidnapers no matter what.

“You don’t have to move,” I said to the genies. “Just leave it to me.”

I have a theory that if you sound confident, people will believe you even if they shouldn’t. I could see I’d already unnerved the guy who was aiming his pistol at my head. Even so, I had no idea if I could pull off what I was thinking of doing. A lot depended on whether or not the genies were smart enough to help me. There was nothing to lose, so I went for broke. I opened my mouth slightly and willed my front teeth to grow very long and very sharp. At the same time, I willed my eyes to turn into purple fire. I felt some energy tingle in my jaw. Then I felt something sharp cut my chin and the world turned purple.

The genies did the rest. They had to. Again, the world turned back into another frantic blur. The next thing I was conscious of was Denny’s mom explaining to a couple of cops that I’d only scared her by suddenly putting a false spooky tooth in my mouth.

DENNY

When Gerald and the genies disappeared in the blue flame, I thought I was in for a nerve-wracking wait of several hours before we found out if they rescued my dad or not. I was trying to decide if I should suggest we go down to the underground shopping mall at the Center or go home and wait there when a monster with a foot-long tooth hanging down his mouth sprang out. My mom screamed. I grabbed the monster and pulled it off her back before it could chew up her neck, dragged it down to the pavement, and put an unbreakable headlock on it.

“Let go of him,” said a man with a loud voice.

“It’s your human friend,” said a child.

I wasn’t ready to take the word of strangers for it, but when I recognized the genies, and then saw two of them carrying my dad, I let go real quick and threw my arms around my father. Better yet, I had a lot of competition from three females I knew well. Not until I heard my mother telling a cop that the boy had only scared her by putting on a false spooky tooth did I know that the monster was Gerald and I gave my buddy the best hug he’d ever had in his life. In case you’re wondering, his long sharp tooth was gone by then.

Once we told the police that we had a man who needed help and a few guys who needed arresting, they went to work and they did it well. You see, not only had the genies brought my dad back, but they had managed to tie up the kidnapers and bring them along, too. My poor father didn’t really have the energy to keep hugging me and my mom and my sisters after what he’d been through. The cops called an ambulance and the medics came and took him to the hospital for observation and treatment. I guess I don’t have to tell you where they took the kidnapers once we told them who they were.

GERALD

Now that the genies are free, they can go in and out of the Flask of Rathumar any time they want. Denny keeps it on the window sill to make it convenient for them to visit his apartment.

My parents didn’t show up for my birthday, of course, but I still had best birthday party in my life with the Hamiltons. They all made me feel like I was a full-fledged member of their family for the rest of my life. All the genies came, wearing the funniest party hats you ever saw. You haven’t had a real birthday party until you’ve had a bunch of genies whooping it up in your honor.

Denny and Heather and I have taken them everywhere there is to go in New York. Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, you name it. Fortunately, they put on human-looking forms they put on when they make social calls on us, but they can’t help but look a little odd and it’s fun to see the looks they get. Even my parents are finally beginning to notice that I have a set of funny-looking friends.