I hear Gunza laughing, and I turn to see him floating in midair on a scarlet magic carpet. As he claps, Magda slumps beside him, utterly joyless.
Like I said, she becomes an accomplice. She literally has no choice.
At least she takes no pleasure in it. That’s what makes her worth saving.
She has yet to hand over her soul.
“Bravo!” says Gunza. “Bravissimo! You should’ve seen the look on your face, Oleo!”
I keep my eyes fixed on him, partly so I won’t have to look at my partner’s body parts oozing blood at my feet.
Gunza elbows Magda hard in the side. “You’re getting all this on tape or a crystal ball or whatever, right? So I can watch it again and again?”
Magda nods. “Yes, Master.”
I hate seeing her like that. A woman with so much power, a woman who literally could do anything, reduced to groveling and harming the very people who could set her free.
Unless I can get through to her. “I can help you, Magda.”
Her eyes flick toward me.
“Tell me what you want,” I say. “Ask me for it.”
I hold her gaze for a moment before she looks away. She’s still not ready.
That’s the root of the problem here. A genie, acting always to serve others, knows nothing of selfishness… but she must ask for something for herself to become free.
The key stands in front of her, but it’s useless if she won’t pick it up and turn it in the lock.
I wait for Gunza to become bored with my screams, but it takes a very long time.
He hovers above on his magic carpet as the echoes of Magda’s demented masters torture me. They do it right there in the gymnasium, on a weight bench, using trays of knives and needles and power tools wished up by Gunza.
As the ghouls work me over, I wonder if they are improvising or if every terrible step is drawn from Magda’s memory. The pain is indescribable, unbearable, catastrophic. Each application of blade or pliers or drill bit plunges me into uncharted depths of agony.
Did they do the same to her? Did they twist and pull and crush and cut, sometimes all at once? Did they laugh as they tuned her screams by grinding harder, digging deeper, winding tighter?
Did they cut off bits of her? Did they taunt her as they excavated organs? Did they push her to the brink of death again and again… holding her alive with wishes as they ruined her in every possible way?
And then, did they wish her back to wholeness, repairing every damage… only to start all over again?
The way they do with me?
If so, my sympathy for her increases a trillionfold. More even than that.
Because this is hell. Sheer hell, as the devil himself might design it.
And I wonder, between strokes of the knife and blows of the hammer, how it is that Magda has not gone irretrievably mad.
Finally, after what seems to me like a dozen years, Gunza does grow bored. Tired is more like it. His eyes start drifting shut, and instead of wishing himself wide awake, he floats off to bed.
Lying on his belly on the magic carpet, he winks and waggles his fingers at me. “Back soon, dear.” His braided red mustache jumps as he chuckles. “Don’t miss me too much.”
At this point, I’m in excruciating agony on the bench. This is the sixth time I’ve been horrifically mutilated and left at the brink of death.
My limbs have all been disconnected and reattached in the wrong places. The ghouls wear my organs on leather thongs around their necks. Only wishes are keeping me alive.
Gunza gives Magda a shove off the carpet, and she thuds to the floor. “I wish you would put Oliver back together, good as new, and get him rested up for our next session.” After he says it, he rolls over on his back, crosses his hands behind his head, and floats out the door, yawning and snickering.
When he’s gone, Magda struggles to her feet. She weaves mystic sigils overhead, and the torture squad of monstrous masters past disappears in a shower of golden glitter.
Standing over me, she gazes down at the damage, then looks away. Turning her back, she weaves more patterns in the air with her agile, flickering fingers.
I feel a familiar tingling. Gold dust twinkles around me, and I hear a fluttering trill like the song of a tiny tropical bird.
Reality stops and shifts like a jump-cut in a movie. There is an instant of nonexistence, disconnection from senses and self-awareness… and then I am whole once more.
My body is intact. My wounds are closed, my organs and limbs back in the right places. For the seventh time today, she has put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Except for the memories, it is as if none of it ever happened. This is how it must be for her, every time Gunza tears her apart and wishes her restored once more.
I wonder how many times a day she must do it. How many times she has done it since he took control of her.
How many times since her birth or creation.
She turns to face me again, fingers still weaving. The weight bench becomes a bed, the gymnasium a bedroom draped in white satin, aglow in moonlight.
Small figures materialize around me-winged children, robed in white. Some are toddlers, some older, some younger. Some are infants.
They push pillows behind my head and tuck blankets around me. They dab my forehead with a cool compress and wrap warm towels around my arms.
They raise a glass of water to my lips, and I drink. They feed me bread and hot broth from a silver tray. They sing softly as they work-dozens of them, all watching me solemnly, eyes glowing like little silver moons in their dark and pale faces.
“Who are they?” As I ask the question, an infant hands me a little cake.
Magda watches from the foot of the bed. “My angels,” she says. “My babies.”
Gazing around me in wonder, I begin to understand. “Your children? All of them?”
Magda nods. “They are my only comforts in this world.”
I accept another spoonful of soup from a dark-haired little boy. “You made them.”
“With my masters, as any woman would.” Magda bows her head. “And unmade them, as my masters wished.”
“My God.” I shiver as I feel their moonlight eyes upon me-the eyes of dozens of dead children, recreated from the dust of graves and residue of tears.
Every last one of them, dead. Murdered by magic at whatever age they most displeased their mother’s masters. Their fathers.
Gone now, as if they had never been. As if they had never been forced into or out of existence. Living on only in her memory.
Resurrected only to comfort her in moments of greatest pain and despair.
Tears roll down her face, and she wipes them away. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Sorry for everything.”
If only I could break her free from this unending cycle of woe. If only I could cut the magic ties that bind her to her heartless monster of a master.
If only there was some way to move her to ask for what she needs. What I can provide.
Maybe there is.
I glimpse it for a split second. A look of sharper sorrow on her face. A sudden sinking. Fear and panic and rage and longing all at once, like fruit on a tree.
She touches her belly, and I know. She pulls her hand away instantly, but it’s too late.
I finally know.
I know how to save her.
“Very good!” Gunza claps from his royal box in the crowded stands of the coliseum. “Not perfect, but that comes with practice! You’ve just committed your first murder, Oleo!”
The bloody knife slips from my fingers and lands in the sand at my feet. My arms are soaked in blood up to the elbows. My white t-shirt and pants have gone crimson from sleeve to cuff.
I know what I’ve just done. I know that I had no control over it, that I was at the mercy of a compelling wish.
But it doesn’t really matter. I still remember every detail. I remember killing the innocent woman wished up from somewhere in the world outside… killing her as the crowd around me cheered and stomped and showered me with roses.