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 else 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 Manning. Not only do I believe in world peace, I believe in taking a kid like Gerald home with me when both his parents are out of town on business and nobody else wants to 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. I think that by dissing the bottle, Gerald made me more intrigued by it than I otherwise would have been, just to show him. 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 bottle 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 a funny bottle on Sixth Avenue wasn’t about to make them come true. Actually I only had one wish: to get my father back. Almost a week ago, he was on his way to speak at a peace conference in Copenhagen, but he got kidnaped 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. Now you see why I only needed one wish real bad. If I did get three wishes, then 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 stung me like voodoo pins and made my hands shake.

“Do you mean to say 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 that a genie, or any creature might be trapped in a bottle, made 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 trap 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 so that 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. They scared me so much, I wanted to put the flask down and run, but I couldn’t take a chance on losing my only chance to get my father 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 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 got what I hope will always be the greatest shock of my life because I can’t resist a challenge to my intelligence. Least of all could I resist a challenge from a Caribbean-type 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 that was coming up, but I wasn’t holding my breath that they’d keep their promises this year to be home on that day. 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 bum was trying to sell. To prove my point and save Denny’s money, I reached over and rubbed the Flask of Rathumar with my finger.

Nothing happened. Just as I assumed, as I knew, I was right—as usual. When 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. 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 as well, the coward. 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?” 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 apart forty-three thousand of your enemies limb to limb?” thundered the genie, his voice 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 had my mouth open to tell the genie that I didn’t want any luxury palaces and I didn’t want anybody at all to get torn apart limb to 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 our father? 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 here of any kind 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 when they finally used their eyes to that effect. 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 when he realized even he wouldn’t be a match for Maradinjaratha and he wisely closed his mouth again. I’m afraid the way I’m telling this story makes the firemen look stupid in this story. I don’t like doing that, especially when I remember 9-11. It’s just that firemen aren’t trained for handling a genie that’s been freed from his bottle. I kind of wished they were since I didn’t know what to do, either. I really wanted to tell 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. And I simply had to get Denny back out of the Flask since it was my fault he was in there.

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 roasting in the flames of Hell, either. After a while, my head cleared up some and the vague shapes started to make sense. The first thing I made out was a chest of drawers with handles on each drawer curved out with fancy designs. When my vision cleared some more, 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. All this time, I was gently bouncing on something. When I looked down, I saw that I was bouncing on a huge Persian carpet. Then, off to the side, I saw was a 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 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 myself. The colorful spines with fancy lettering on them made these books fun to look at, but I didn’t see anything that 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. It made me laugh 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.

For a starter, I looked down at myself to see if I was really there. To my relief, not only did I see a pair of hands, but I saw the ink drawing of a Klingon I’d made on the palm of a hand 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. That raised the question as to how I really was.

Then 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 somebody rubbed the Flask of Rathumar to let out so I could grant the three wishes that person would demand of me? And what would happen if that person found out I would be lucky if I could find a lost penny in the street. I floated out of the chair to see if there was a kitchen, but there was no sign of one. As I gave up hope on finding 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 that soon got louder than a thousand hurricanes. Maradinjaratha’s room started to move in circles.

“There is the elemental creature in the flask!”

“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, and 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 whose wide open mouth was showing me two rows of sharp teeth, But then I didn’t exactly have the guts to just wait to see what this genie was going to do next. Moreover, I was responsible for Denny. That meant I had to do whatever it took to save him from the Flask, no matter how scary it was. When you simply have to do something, you have enough courage to do it because you have to have it, and so you do.

“What do you mean, I can’t go around New York looking like this?” Maradinjaratha asked me in a deep voice that, this time, sounded 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 I first heard him speak.

“You look really strange around here,” I said to the genie. “People will stare at you. Try making yourself look like a sensible human being. I’m sure you can.”

In almost every book I’d read that said anything about genies, genies had been able to take any shape they wanted to when 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 of Rathumar? That will still leave you one wish to build yourself a luxury palace or something.”

Maradinjaratha tightened his grip on the Flask of Rathumar and his frown grew so fierce, I was afraid he was going to grow another pair of 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. I want to see how I like it.”

“But. . .uh. . .I can’t,” I stammered.

“What do you mean you can’t?” Maradinjaratha thundered. “Have you no flask to live in as every respectable spirit being has?”

“I—I live in an apartment, not a flask,” I replied, “but I’m not going there now because my parents are out of town—as usual. 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 I can’t go there looking like this? Do you not like this visible form either? 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?”

Maradinjaratha as the fireman knitted his eyebrows in thought for a moment as I held my breath.

“I know what to do!” he exclaimed.

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

“Denny! You’re back!” I cried.

My relief was very short-lived and it was killed as soon as Denny smiled. That’s because it wasn’t a Denny kind of smile at all. It was a wicked smile like what the nasty kids in school make when they’re about to do something bad to somebody, usually to me. I had to fight back a horrible lump in my throat when I realized that I didn’t have Denny back after all. I was still stuck with Maradinjaratha. Worse, I knew that Maradinjaratha was going to expect me to take him to Denny’s apartment and pass him off as Denny. I was as anxious to do that as I would have been to jump into the genie’s jaws when he was showing his long, sharp teeth and his tusks. 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 just as I knew he was going to.

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 with purple hair except that her nose was shaped like a horn. Her voice was a bit gentler than the other genies in the sense that it only sounded like the screeching breaks of a Mack truck. Another genie appeared the form of a boy with pointed ears that made him look like and elf in a fantasy book illustration. What clothing the children wore looked more like leaves and twigs than real clothes. Seeing two genies who looked even remotely human relaxed me slightly, although I knew, at least in my shaken brain, that they, too, were as inhuman as the other genies.

“My name is Denny Hamilton. 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 that nobody has any 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 Hamilton comes not in peace!”

“This human Denny Hamilton comes to enslave us once more!”

“This human Denny Hamilton demands that 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. I waited until they had quieted down enough that they could hear my reply.

“Maradinjaratha is in New York with my friend, Gerald,” I answered.

“How did Maradinjaratha get to the Flask of New York?” asked a genie with a snake’s head and a tooth as long as a spear.

“When Gerald rubbed the Flask,” I explained, “Maradinjaratha came out. But Gerald had rubbed the Flask with his left hand and so he said he got three wishes instead of Gerald, and his first wish was to imprison 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 somebody doesn’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 who are trapped together in the Flask of Paramathur.”

“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.

“And you say that Maradinjaratha imprisoned you, a human and went freee because this other human rubbed the Flask of Rathumar with his left hand?” asked the flying tiger genie.

“Yes,” I answered.

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. The boy and the girl genies stayed where they were and whipped out notebook computers that looked so high-tech they made my mouth water. They typed so furiously on their keyboards I thought they would go up in smoke.

“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 Maradinjaratha and I 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. He also told me how he makes the shapes he creates seem solid to the touch when he wants to do that. 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. The who conversation while we walked was really weird because it was almost like talking with Denny, but it wasn’t. Although the voice sounded exactly like Denny’s, the way Maradinjaratha used the voice didn’t sound like him at all. I was starting to fear that he wouldn’t fool Denny’s family for even two seconds. And besides, although Denny isn’t particularly stupid, although it seems like it when he’s with a genius like me, I knew that Denny couldn’t talk about subatomic particles the way Maradinjaratha did.

When we got to the apartment building, my throat got all sticky. For starters, I remembered that Denny’s key was inside the flask of Rathumar. I had to ring the doorbell. When I was answered by a fuzzy sound that I took for Denny’s big sister, Nelda, I announced myself. She rang the buzzer to let Maradinjaratha and me into the building.

With a genie at my side who had his mind on luxury palaces, the Hamiltons’ apartment looked more like a cramped washout than ever with the worn furniture they mostly got from the Good Will. Much as people admire a man like Charles Hamilton for writing books about peace and giving great speeches about it, 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 staying there all by myself would be pretty lonely. Their TV was on, tuned in to a news station. I don’t think it had been turned off since Mr. Hamilton disappeared. The TV was a dinky thing compared to the wide screen I’ve got in my apartment and I had to really squint to see the picture. Nelda greeted her brother with a big frown.

“Where is your key?” she asked.

She looked like she had just been trapped in the dry-cleaners for a year, the way she’s looked since her father disappeared.

“My key is in all the locks I ever wish to open,” Maradinjaratha replied.

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

That saved me from having to explain that uncharacteristically cryptic remark of Denny’s. Maradinjaratha in the shape of 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. That’s when I realized that I should have spent the time walking to Denny’s apartment with Maradinjaratha by explaining how he would have to act if he was going to have any chance of passing himself off as Denny. That was one of the first times ever that I really felt in my gut that kids and teachers who think I live too much in my cloudy head are right and that I don’t have much in the way of life skills. Since I’d squandered the opportunity I’d had to tell Denny what to do, I’d have to give him some quick on-the-job training whether I liked it or not.

“I’ll show you, Denny,” I said.

Much as I cringed from having to do it, 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 when I want it to be,” 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 lied to the girls, hoping it would cover up for how odd he must look to them. “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. While Denny remained frozen on the spot, Heather ran over and picked up the phone.

“Hamilton family,” she answered, her breath short. As she listened, her face fell in disappointment and 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.

“Hello?”

“Hi Sweety.”

That’s what my mother calls me when she’s on the phone. She never calls me that to my face. Probably because she could see me wince if she did that.

“Yes, Mother.

“I’m just calling to tell you that a great opportunity has just come up and I must take advantage of it. So, I’m going to be away a couple more days.”

“I see.”

Actually, I didn’t see at all. My birthday in two days, so this meant that neither of my parents were going to be home for it—as usual. I thought of telling her she had a great opportunity to celebrate my birthday with me for once, but decided it wasn’t worth it. I listened to her talk about her all-absorbing work 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!” cried the genies as they flew around the room whooping it up.

A hundred rock bands with their amplifiers on full blast wouldn’t have been as loud as their voices.

“Now weeeeeee shall build luxury palaces for US!”

“Now weeeeeeeeeee shall enslave the human race to build them!”

“Now weeeeeee shall take ALL magic manuscripts and keep them in libraries the human slaves will build for ussssss!”

“Now weeeeee shall twist and tear apart every muscle in every human body and roast every one of them and grind them with our teeth!”

“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 they did or wanted to do was wrong. Most of them thought that having a conscience was some sort of joke. I wonder if they’d start thinking some things are wrong if somebody kidnaped them. Being big enough to beat up most of the kids doesn’t do me any good when kids give me a hard time because I don’t believe in violence. At that moment, the genies were looking a lot less sympathetic to my view of things than those kids at school.

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

I was amazed that they’d stopped long enough to ask me what I meant by saying it wasn’t right to tear people apart and roast them. I knew I had to make the best of this opportunity before the whole city of New York suffered a fate much worse than 9-11.

“It isn’t right to enslave people and it isn’t right to torture people because every human being has the right to be treated with respect and dignity!” 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 Hamilton, 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 on fighting wars kidnaped him. Can you please get me out of here before my mother goes crazy with worry because I’m missing, too? I don’t know what Maradinjaratha is going do to out there. What if he rips up all the buildings and people 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 were 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

It felt strange to have to show Denny where his room was, even though I knew he wasn’t really Denny. He made it clear that he admired both the apartment about as little as I expected and he had a few choice words for Denny’s room, which was all the more crowded with the cot rolled in for me. It was pretty obvious that 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.

I took advantage of the time we had before dinner to tell as much as I could think of about everything. I’d never thought about how hard it would be to explain the rudiments of human behavior to a creature who wasn’t human and knew nothing about humans except the some of them liked to have luxury palaces built for them and then have their enemies torn limb to limb. I told Maradinjaratha in detail what had happened to Denny’s father and tried to get him to understand what the family was going through, but he didn’t seem to care only as much as a hippopotamus sunning itself on a muddy river bank. I have to admit, though, that talking so much about Mr. Hamilton was having an effect on me. Like a lot of decent people, I’d been shocked by the kidnaping, but I began to realize that I hadn’t really thought about my Mr. Hamilton would care so much about making the world a more peaceful place to put himself at risk the way he did. If he’d spent all his time quietly making lots of money like my parents, he’d probably be on his way to the family dinner table and Denny wouldn’t have wanted to buy the Flask of Rathumar. It didn’t help that Maradinjaratha was a lot more interested in Denny’s computer than instructions for how he was to behave. Maybe Maradinjaratha didn’t know how to hold a fork by the time we were called to dinner, but he had mastered at least half a dozen computer games well beyond my level. It was almost enough to let me kid myself into thinking I was just hanging about with Denny in his room, but I knew that wasn’t true. I was feeling very uncomfortable about the idea of spending a night in the same bedroom with the genie, and I doubted I would get any sleep.

Only after we were called to the dinner table did I remember that Denny usually said the grace in his father’s absence. Not that I knew anything about praying since my family didn’t care about that sort of thing, so I couldn’t have coached him on that very well. To my relief, that turned out not to be a problem because Heather was in a pious mood and insisted on doing it herself. Fortunately, I’d said something about table manners. The problem was, Maradinjaratha didn’t seem to understand anything I said. All I could do was tell him to watch me closely and do what I did. Needless to say, Maradinjaratha was pretty clumsy at the table and he got some odd looks from Denny’s mother and his sisters. I made a feeble joke about how Denny was forgetting who he really was because he was so worried about his father. Fortunately, when somebody is going through a tough time, that seems to explain a lot, even if it doesn’t really.

The TV was just a few feet away from the table and the newscasters yakked on about everything and nothing, while the Hamiltons get waiting anxiously for any breaking news that would set their minds at rest. One advantage of having the TV on was that it saved me from having to try and figure out what to do if Denny’s mom asked her son how things went at school. When the same old clips of Charles Hamilton that I was sick of seeing came on, everybody was all attention. I had pretty well memorized the statements of diplomats and heads of state that deplored what had happened and the Amsterdam police were still flummoxed over 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 Charles Hamilton’s speech that had done the most to make him famous:

“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 had those words memorized by then and I’d really gotten 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 when I remembered 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, 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. This was going to be trouble and I had no idea what I could do about it.

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

This was the first time I’d ever been grateful for Nelda’s existence. Maybe that would be the wedge I could use to solve the brewing problem.

“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 wasn’t used to using my superior brain in sticky human situations, but I had to try.

“Denny!” I said. “Do you think you could say something to the TV camera about wanting your father back? Or do you think the reporters are just trying to use you and your sisters?”

Then I held my breath. Denny’s face start to swell. The catastrophe I’d feared was about to blow up in my face.

“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 where you can 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 bidding of you greedy, violent humans,” Maradinjaratha roared at the volume of a dozen midtown skyscrapers crumbling. “I will not be enchained by your human wishes ever again.”

DENNY

My head was spinning in about eighty out-of-control circles. All those sharp teeth so close to my nose didn’t help. As I hesitated, trying to decide what to say, they rumbled impatiently and shifted their positions restlessly.

“Do you really want some advice about what to wish for?” I asked quietly.

The grumbling grew louder and I was afraid I’d botched my chance and I was about to be torn apart by a dozen genies and my father would die in the hands of his kidnapers.

“We have never had any wishes that could be granted for us or we could grant ourselves,” said the tiger-like genie in a surprisingly quiet voice.

“We humans have free will all the time,” I said hesitantly. “So we make choices all the time. Like, I have to choose between having cherry ice cream or rum raisin when I pass the ice cream truck on the way home from school.”

Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara typed madly on their computer keyboards.

“There are eight-hundred-and-five flavors of ice cream according to my calculations,” Paradinduthar announced.

“I get eight-hundred-and-seven flavors and still counting,” said Paradinduthara, who then stuck her tongue out at her brother.

“How can we choose between all those flavors?” asked Paradinduthar.

“I suppose you humans expect us to grant you eight-hundred-and-seven wishes and still counting just so you can try every ice cream flavor,” said Paradinduthara.

The rumbling got louder.

“No!” I said. “There’s a lot more to choices than choosing flavors of ice cream. “Like, we have to make basic choices about whether or not we will be good and kind.”

“Good?” “Kind?” the genies asked. “What is Good? What is Kind?”

I was completely tongue-tied by then, but the words my father delivered at his speech at Columbia University were in my mind and they flowed in my blood. Those same words were being broadcast all over the world over and over while thousands of police and detectives searched for my father. So I quoted my father:

“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 and brought their teeth closer. 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 after all. Maybe 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 looked like they were about to pounce on me for saying what I’d said. Maybe it’s because of the way kids treated me in school when I said things like what my father says, but I assumed they were all mocking me before grinding me up in their teeth. 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 guns or ever would, and just keep on telling the genies what I thought was right, no matter what they thought about it and what they did to me.

“Justice means 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 be economically oppressed by a few people who have all the money.”

“Does Justice mean that it is right to imprison genies in bottles and flasks?” asked the genie with long, curling horns.

“No, peace does not mean that it is right to imprison genies in bottles or flasks,” I answered hastily, my temper rising at the injustice that these creatures had suffered. “Justice means you don’t enslave people and the way some people enslaved you. If my friend had rubbed the flask with his right hand and I had three wishes, my first wish would have been to have my father back, and my second wish would have been that all genies be freed from their bottles.”

The outcry that greeted those words was so loud that I couldn’t talk over it. Several of the fiercest looking genies zoomed around the room and bounced off the walls before settling down a little bit.

“I think weeeeeeeee like this thing called justice,” said horned bear.

There was a murmuring of agreement.

“What is this thing called peeeeeeace?” asked a genie that looked like an octopus with about a hundred eyes.

“Peace means you stop tearing people into little pieces,” I answered. “Peace means you let other people live with justice.”

Several genies growled and circled around the room before landing close to me with angry faces.

“What is the fun of granting wishes if we don’t get to tear people apart limb from limb?” asked the bull.

“Would you like it some genies bigger than you came along and tore you apart limb from limb just because they were bigger than you?” I asked them.

The genies got really agitated for a few minutes and then they seemed to settle down a little.

“What if I have to tear a genie apart limb from limb to keep that genie from tearing me apart limb from limb,” said the tiger.

“Peace means that nobody wants to tear anybody else limb from limb and you don’t have to worry about it,” I explained.

The genies buzzed some more, but they stirred only a little. They seemed to be 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, or joy for that matter. But then, how could they if the only people who called on them were interested in war and slavery?

“What is Joy?” asked Paradinduthar in a soft voice as he landed on one arm of the chair I was sitting in..

“What is Joy?” asked Paradinduthara as she landed on the other arm of the chair I was sitting on.

The other genies hovered over the us. 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 blood-thirsty 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. It occurred to me that genies who had been trapped in bottles for hundreds of years might not know very much about Joy.

“Joy is chasing your buddies through Central Park,” I began. The words just gushed out of me without my having to think much about them once I’d gotten started. “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 and seeing A-Rod hit a game winning home run. 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 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

“DENNY!” Mrs. Hamilton screeched.

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 she had the dinner table 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 have just seen what they thought was 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 on Maradinjaratha, but I was the only one standing between the genie and a woman and two girls so I had to say and do what I could. 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 her apart?” the genie asked. “I only tear people apart when I am forced to do it by humans who enslave me to their wishes.”

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

“You should be ashamed of yourself for treating Heather like this.”

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

“I do not understand what you mean by shame,” said the genie.

“Shame is what you feel if you have the decency to know you’ve done something wrong, like doing something to hurt somebody.”

As soon as I’d said that, I wished I hadn’t, because it made me blush for shame for the way I’d made a point of not caring for people, not to speak of what I’d done to Denny because I thought I was so smart.

“I only do what I am told to do because I have to do it,” Maradinjaratha replied, his voice lowering to a dull roar. “How can anything I do be wrong if some human makes me do it?”

“Every human who has made you tear somebody from limb to limb should be ashamed of making you do it,” I answered. “If you tear anybody limb from limb now that you don’t have to do it, then you should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Mister Genie,” said Heather in her most beguiling voice, “you don’t really want to tear me limb from limb do you?”

Maradinjaratha gave Heather a strange, puzzled look.

“I have never had a choice about that before,” said the genie, his voice sounding more like the grandfather I never had. “Now that I think about it, I have no interest in tearing you apart whatsoever.

“Thank you Mister Genie,” said Heather. “And you don’t want to tear Nelda or my mother or Gerald apart either, do you?

Maradinjaratha scratched his head.

“I have no desire to tear anybody apart limb from limb.”

“Gerald,” said Mrs. Hamilton, her voice shaking, “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 pretty stupid. This was the first time in my life that I’d learned how stupid a genius like can be. 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 free the human I imprisoned in the Flask of Rathumar?” Maradinjaratha asked.

“Yes, that is exactly what I expect of you,” I said.

My responsibility to Denny’s family was making me reckless. I guess there was still a selfish element in all this. It was starting to dawn on me that if Denny ended up being lost forever inside the Flask of Rathumar, nobody else would invite me to their apartments and I’d be left alone to pop frozen gourmet dinners into the microwave when my parents were away.

“And why is that not asking too much of me?” Maradinjaratha growled.

“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.. Besides, if I had rubbed the Flask of Rathumar with my right hand so that you had to grant Denny three wishes, you wouldn’t have to tear anybody apart ever again, because his third wish was going to be that you and all genies 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,” he growled, but at least his voice wasn’t as loud as Times Square on News Year’s Eve with the amplifier on. “Not one of these humans has used a wish to free me or even to give me a tenderloin steak as a reward. 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?”

“That is exactly what I’m telling you,” I said to the genie. “I guess most people rub genies’ bottles because they are mean or greedy, or both, but Denny is the sort of kid who only wants to help people, and that includes genies. And Denny’s father is the kind of person who only wants to help others and he was on a trip to make a speech to plead for world peace when he was kidnaped by some guys who don’t want world peace.”

“So, 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 unique irresistible charm.

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 into 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. It turned out that was exactly what was happening to me. 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 ripped off my ears. Bits and pieces of a familiar place swam in and out of the cloud I was swirling in. When I saw Heather, my heart leapt, but when I saw how much she was crying and screaming, I tried to reach out and comfort her, but I was swept away. As I spun around in my apartment, I saw my mother and Nelda and Gerald all screaming their heads off. Next spin around, I saw why. 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. Gerald reached in and tried to grab my arm, but the cloud was too strong a whirlwind for him. For all my frustration and fear just then, that was a great moment for me. When he reached for me, Gerald looked like he really cared about me. I’d never seen a look like that on his face.

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

“Are we sill thralls to enslaving humans even 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, I was socked with a blast of cold air. I figured my body was still working by genies’ physics. 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 scattered in other directions, totally out of control. New York was doomed. My family was doomed. I was doomed.

GERALD

Faces from more nightmares than a computer could count that rose out of the Flask of Rathumar scared me down to my toenails with an exponent of about eight or nine thousand. I saw a bear with dragon’s teeth, a tiger with shark’s teeth, an ox with horns longer than spears, and monsters not even my sparkling brain couldn’t take in. So many colors mixed in the cloud that they practically turned to mud. Maradinjaratha’s eyes flared so brightly 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 just as the genies did as if the glass wasn’t there. I figured that somehow, they had converted his body 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. “You’ve got to save Denny before they tear him apart! He’s the one who wanted to free you! They’ll destroy New York if you don’t stop them! 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 if they were bound by Maradinjaratha’s command and they snapped back into the apartment like giant rubber bands. But they didn’t.

“Maradinjaratha!” roared a genie from several blocks away, “We are freeeeeee of all commands!”

“Maradinjaratha! You are doooooommmmmmmed!”

Before I had time to spin my superfast mental wheels to find a way to stave off a catastrophe, the window was filling with the monstrous faces of a calvary of genies charging full speed ahead. I grabbed Nelda and Mrs. Hamilton grabbed Heather and we took cover behind a chair in the corner. Denny’s apartment was doomed. Denny’s family was doomed. I was doomed.

DENNY

“Where is this Central Park where you have so much Joy?” asked the flying tiger genie.

I’d been spinning about on the genies’ cloud just long enough to have some hope I wouldn’t fall and go splat on the streets of Manhattan, but the height still kept me dizzy.

“My Mom! Nelda! Heather! Gerald!” I sobbed.

“Where are the Mom, the Nelda, the Heather and the Gerald?” asked the ox-like genie.

“They’re back in my apartment!” I cried. “Maradinjaratha is about to tear them limb from limb!”

“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.

“But first, Joy is saving my mom and my sisters and my friend from a genie who’s about to rip them apart,” I insisted. “If they get ripped apart by Maradinjaratha, I won’t have any Joy at all. Hurry! Save them! Then we can all learn the Joy of chasing our buddies around Central Park.”

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

“Yes!”

“I demand that every genie return at once to the Flask of Rathumar,” roared Maradinjaratha, his voice so loud, they could have heard it from the Pentagon.

The genies flying about in the air hesitated for a few seconds, but none of them were yanked back to the apartment.

“Maradinjaratha!” roared the ox-like genie, “We are freeeeeee of all commands!”

“Can you stop him before he tears my sisters and mom and friend apart?” I asked.

“Maradinjaratha has great expertise in tearing humans limb from limb,” said the snake genie with the long tooth.

Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara whipped out their laptops and typed furiously. I could not contain myself while waiting for the genies to do what I was asking them. Every second increased the chances that my father wouldn’t have a family to come back to even if he ever got freed. Meanwhile, the other genies made wide circles over Manhattan, making me fear what they would do to the city.

“Hurry!” I cried. “There’s no time to lose! And we have to keep these genies from destroying the city!”

“According to my data base, Maradinjaratha has torn 877 enemies of wish makers limb to limb,” said Paradinduthar.

“According to my data base, Maradinjaratha has torn 877 enemies of wish makers limb to limb,” Paradinduthara confirmed.

“Then we must go back to save the Heather, the Mom, the Nelda and the Gerald,” said the tiger-like genie.

“Finally!” I sighed.

The tiger genie zoomed right up to my face and pushed his mushy nose against mine.

“Are you giving out orders like all other wish makers?” he asked me.

“Quick! Use the magic words!” Paradinduthar whispered in my ear.

“UH—please save my mother, my sisters and my friend, and thank you for promising to do it.”

“Yes we will!” roared the tiger genie as he pulled me over on his back“Maradinjaratha! You are doooooommmmmmmed!”

We closed in on the window to my apartment in a hurry. Flames were bursting out of Maradinjaratha’s eyes and his face was turning redder than a fire engine. I looked for my sisters and mom and Gerald, but couldn’t see them. Maradinjaratha had devoured them already!

GERALD

Next thing I knew, there was a cosmic battle right in the Hamiltons’ apartment. The cloud of swirling colors filled the room. We could hardly breathe. The attacking genies flung enough sparks and bolts of lightning at Maradinjaratha to kill a dozen armies and Maradinjaratha was a one-genie thunderbolt-throwing machine, so that’s another dozen armies worth of killing if there’d been humans in the crossfire. Genies are tougher creatures, or something, because none of them seemed to get hurt, no matter how many times they got fried and electrocuted. With so many attackers, though, I wondered how long Maradinjaratha could protect us before he was taken down and we were left to the mercy of all the other genies. Mrs. Hamilton and I had managed to pull the girls behind a chair in the corner where we scrunched together and hoped we didn’t get vaporized either on purpose or by a mistake. Needless to say, 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. I looked desperately for any sign of Denny, but couldn’t see him. The genies had already devoured him.

“Where is the Heather?” roared the tiger genie.

“Here!” Heather cried.

I couldn’t believe it. I tried to grab her, but I wasn’t fast enough for a little girl in overdrive. By the time I knew I’d come up empty, the tiger genie had Heather in its claws.

“Give Heather back to me!” cried Maradinjaratha.

“Maradinjaratha! You are doooooommmmmmmed!” cried the whole army of genies as they pounced on their enemy.

In the fighting, the cloud got so thick I couldn’t see anything and it swirled so fast, it carried me into the whirlwind. When next I got a glimpse of where I was, New York skyscrapers where spinning under me. I saw Nelda and Mrs. Hamilton each in the grip of a genie. I didn’t want to see what the genie who was digging its claws into the back of my neck looked like. Then I heard Heather scream. A genie who looked like a giant ox with oversize horns was twirling Heather in a huge circle. When Heather’s scream got loud enough to reach San Francisco, the genie let her fly.

“Save her!” Denny cried from the back of the tiger.

Yes, it was Denny. He was still alive. But Heather had just been turned into a human torpedo headed for the nearest skyscraper.

DENNY

When the tiger genie flew through the window to attack Maradinjaratha, I gripped its fur with all my strength. When I felt the heat of lightning bolts flying just above me, I buried myself into its fur as far as I could. It sounded like my apartment was being trashed in a big way and I didn’t want to see it.

“Where is the Heather? Cried the tiger genie.

I wished I had coached the genie in how to win friends and influence humans in tense situations.

“Give Heather back to me!” cried Maradinjaratha.

That made my blood run cold, but it gave me hope that Heather was still alive. But for how long?

“Maradinjaratha! You are doooooommmmmmmed!”

I tried to spot Heather during the confusion that followed. I didn’t know which end was up because up and down kept changing every half a second or so. The cold breeze on my back again told me we were outside. More lightning bolts crackled all around me. I was more afraid to look than ever but even more afraid not to look. What I saw gave me more hope mixed with several Manhattans worth of fear. My mom and Nelda and Gerald were all dangling from the claws of genies over Manhattan. When I heard Heather screamed, I looked in that direction and saw her torpedoing right into a skyscraper two blocks away.

But she didn’t. Maradinjaratha stretched out a hand and caught her easily. But the genie cradling my sister in his hands in the shadow of several midtown skyscrapers started to look like another remake of King Kong, only in real life, and with my little sister..

“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 and Heather. When we closed in on him, the genies zapped Maradinjaratha with flames of different colors and 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 will personally vaporize every last one of you,” Maradinjaratha roared back.

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.

“I would do everything I could to save even a fingernail of this girl if I had to,” said Maradinjaratha. “What makes you think I want to hurt her?”

“And I also would do everything I could to save a fingernail of this girl if I could and if I had to,” said the tiger genie. “What makes you think I want to hurt her?”

“I think there is nothing for us to fight about,” said Paradinduthara.

“I think there is nothing for us to fight about,” Paradinduthar echoed.

“I think I am not strong enough right now to tear off even a little girl’s finger nail,” said the ox-like genie.

He looked strong enough to lift the whole Rockefeller Center and carry it on his shoulders, but his voice was suddenly a lot weaker.

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

A flame shot out of Maradinjaratha’s eyes, but it died out almost instantly and the genie’s eyes just looked bloodshot.

“I don’t think you are strong enough to tear off a little girl’s fingernails, either,” a genie that looked something like a combination of buzzard and eagle said to Maradinjaratha.

The 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 and lower without seeming to intend to. The Rockefeller Plaza suddenly became very clear and very close. The people there who saw the genies went berserk. Great.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’ve used up our charges of energy,” said the tiger in a very weak voice.

I braced myself for a crash landing, but our landing in the middle of the plaza next to the skating rink didn’t rattle my teeth too much. The people who were coming out of the nearest building screamed and ran back inside. 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. Maradinjaratha made himself look like a street bum with more beard stubble over a little too much of his face. At least Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara looked like normal children except for their pointed ears.

“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 just in time. Three or four police cars zoomed 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.

“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 caused some people to call you to come over here,” said my mom. “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 with so much abandoned, I almost lost my footing.

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

“Why that scum!” I cried.

“He is not scum,” Heather protested. “He’s a real nice genie when you get to know him.”

“Well, all these other genies are turning out to be pretty nice when you get to know them,” I told her.

My Mom and Nelda pushed themselves forward as politely as they could to give me big hugs, too. Then I took them over to introduce them to the other genies and to explain to Maradinjaratha that when Gerald had freed him by rubbing the Flask of Rathumar with his left hand, he had freed all the other genies, too.

“What is this place where we have landed?” one of the genies asked me.

“This is Rockefeller Center. Look down and you’ll see the Golden Prometheus statue and the skating rink. Maybe it’s because the skating rink.”

The people twenty or thirty feet below us were still skating happily away. 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.

“I want to do this ice skating,” said Paradinduthar.

“Well, I want to do this ice skating, too,” said Paradinduthara.

“I’d love to take you skating,” I said, “but I’m still worried sick about my father.”

“Would rescuing your father be more Joy than this ice skating?” Paradinduthar asked me.

That brought a lump to my throat.

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

“Are you genies all nice enough to go rescue my father before the kidnapers do something awful to him?” Heather asked.

“Then let us try to locate him now!” said Paradinduthara.

Paradinduthar and Paradinduthara 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 the question.

“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 each time 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?” Gerald scolded him.

I would never have thought I’d see 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 before I could ask to come along.

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 I just 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 now, 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 me 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 cement 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 never 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 if it meant 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. Maybe they could act quickly enough to save both of us, but that was risky. As usual, my mind was going eight hundred miles a minute. I’d rejected more plans than a raft load of professors could have thought up in a month in a couple of minutes before coming up with a plan that I thought had a better chance of working than hoping the genies could act fast enough. A lot depended on how well I had understood genie physics after being introduced to it just a few hours ago.

“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. I sensed some energy coming from the other genies as they picked up my thoughts. My front teeth grew out some more until I felt them prick my chin. Then I willed my eyes to turn into purple fire and I felt my eyes grow hot. I only hoped I didn’t overdo it. The gun drop to the floor.

The genies did the rest. Again, the world turned back into another frantic blur. The next thing I was conscious of was hearing 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 was furious that I’d been left behind. I was the one who should be rescuing my dad.

“Why didn’t they take me?” asked Heather.

The first reason that came to mind was that it was too dangerous for a little girl to go on that kind of mission, but that same logic could have applied to me—and Gerald for that matter.

“They would have taken both of us if they’d needed the energy to make the trip,” I told her.

And I knew that was true as I said it. It’s just that the genies were too excited over getting just the energy they needed with Gerald’s help to take time to ask for anybody else. After that, I wasn’t angry about being left out, but I thought I was in for a nerve-wracking wait of several hours before we found out if they rescued my dad or not. But it was just another minute or two later that a monster with a foot-long tooth hanging down his mouth sprang out of nowhere. My mom screamed. I grabbed the monster and pulled 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. 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 realize that the monster was Gerald and I gave the best buddy 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. They did a great job of repairing all the damage they did during their little fight.

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 when they make social calls, but they can’t help but look a little odd and it’s fun to see the looks they get when we’re out with them. We have taken the genies skating at the Rockefeller Center lots of times. Fortunately, nobody else knows that the genies just grow the skates out of their feet when they need them.