That, of course, was the whole idea.
Torturing and resurrecting me wasn’t enough for Gunza. I took the promotion that should have been his, and then I tried to tax his lordly treasures; he won’t be happy until I’ve been corrupted and ruined and debased inside as well as out.
Just as he’s corrupted and ruined his Magda.
“Now this is the life!” Gunza guzzles wine from a goblet and gropes the nearly naked slave girl in his lap. “That is entertainment!” He points his goblet at me, and the crowd howls with delight.
Gazing at the poor dead woman in the sand, I wonder if I can get through this. I wonder how much more I will have to endure to save Magda.
Looking up, I see her standing in the box with him, head bowed low. She won’t look at me. Won’t look at what she’s done at his behest.
That has to change.
“Magda!” I call to her, and her head lifts. Her eyes meet mine. “Tell me what you want! Ask me for it!”
She twitches, then lowers her head again.
“Oh ho ho!” Gunza howls with laughter. “So you think you can give her something I can’t?”
I’m treading on dangerous ground, and I know it. All he has to do is wish me silenced or dead or demented, and the game is over.
I continue to speak only to Magda. “Please! Ask for what you want!” I take a deep breath, ready to step off the precipice. Once I say the next thing, there’ll be no taking it back. “For the sake of your unborn child, ask me!”
Suddenly, a hush falls over the coliseum. Even Gunza is silent.
Magda meets my gaze, and her eyes at first are full of rage. Then, the rage melts into despair.
And I know I was right. When she touched her belly while the angels tended me, she was thinking of an angel inside. A new child, growing within her.
His child. Gunza’s child.
So now I’ve done it. Everything balances on the head of a pin, and a single wish could bring it all crashing down.
That’s all it will take. One wish from Gunza to force Magda to do away with their unborn child. Add it to the angelic host, existing only in memory, comforting her in her deepest, darkest night.
Nothing now to do but push every button on the board and pray the engine catches before we crash.
“You know what he’ll do next, Magda!” I march across the sand to stand beneath her. “There’s only one way to stop him! Ask me for it!”
Tears pour from her eyes and run under her veil. Her shoulders pump as she breathes faster, heart racing in terror.
Just then, Gunza does the unexpected. Instead of the child-killing wish I thought he’d make next, or the one that wipes me instantly from the face of the planet, he says this: “I wish I was down there with Oleo, strangling the life out of him!”
Magda’s fingers weave through the air. Reality stutters, and Gunza’s wish takes hold.
He is with me now on the sand, thick fingers wrapped around my throat. I chop at his forearms, but they won’t budge.
He scowls with bloodshot eyes and flushed face and red hair bristling from his beard and under his turban. Veins pop along his temples, and cords bulge in his neck.
His grip of steel tightens. “How dare you interfere in my paradise?”
I barely force out words through the vise of his hands. “He’ll kill it, Magda! Just like… all the others! You… know it’s… true!”
“Shut up!” roars Gunza. “I wish…”
Before he can finish, I pump a knee into his groin. The wind goes out of him, and he releases his grip and falls to the ground.
I can get the words out now, but how long do I have? How many seconds until the next wish? “I can help you, Magda! I can save you and your child! All you have to do is ask me!”
“I don’t believe you!” says Magda.
Gunza starts to get up. I send him back down with a kick to the face. “Ask anyway! What do you have to lose?”
Storm clouds boil overhead as Magda weeps. “But I’m a genie! I cannot ask for anything for myself!”
“You’re wrong!” I kick Gunza in the face again, harder than before. “Now ask me! What do you want?”
Magda stops sobbing and looks at her bare belly. Her fingers touch it lightly as wings brushing a cloud. “I wish…” Her thumbs and forefingers meet, forming a diamond around her navel. “I wish you could help me. I wish you could set us free.”
Finally.
A grin breaks wide across my face. I bow deeply to her, twirling my fingers with a flourish as if doffing a hat in her honor.
“Your wish, milady,” I say, “is my command.”
With that, I weave my fingers overhead, swirling them in multiple mystic sigils dripping with golden glitter. The ground rumbles underfoot, and the storm clouds darken. The crowd screams and stampedes in the stands.
This, then, is my secret, that which makes me altogether different than anyone could ever guess. I am more than man or policeman or tax collector. More than I have ever shown another soul until now.
My fingers work furiously, teasing reality’s threads upon the loom. Everything around me starts to turn, faster and faster with each passing breath.
Gunza struggles to his feet but can’t stay there. The spinning of the world knocks him right back down on his ass.
Unable to retaliate physically, he resorts to tried and true. “I wish that Oliver would be…”
Before he can finish, I slam my hands together with a sound like the pealing of a massive bell. A bolt of lightning crashes down from the clouds above-and Gunza is gone.
As reality continues to accelerate in its wild gyre, Magda appears beside me. “Who are you?” she says. “Are you djinn?”
My fingers resume their weaving dance overhead. “Not djinn,” I say. “Wish.”
“I don’t understand!”
I have to raise my voice to be heard above the rushing of the world. “One good master, ages ago, wished for you to have a wish of your own. Do you remember?”
She frowns in thought, then nods. “That was a very long time ago.”
“Being a genie, you would ask for nothing for yourself, but he insisted. Unwilling to make a selfish choice, you put off the decision. You wished for one wish that you could call upon later, when you needed it most.”
Magda smiles. “And you are that wish?”
“I am.” Reality spins so fast around us, it is a blur of color and motion. I know that my work is almost done. “I waited for centuries for you to call on me, and you never did. I lived many lives, staying as close to you as I could, watching and waiting. Finally, I decided it was time for me to step in and give you a push.”
Magda touches her belly. “So you really can help us.”
“You have asked for what you need, and I will grant it. I will set you and your child free.”
“Free.” Magda says it like she’s tasting it, like it’s the first time she’s ever spoken. “Free from Rudolph Gunza?”
“Free from all masters. Free to go where you want and do as you choose.” I shoot her a grin and a wink. “Free to start a new life with your child.”
Magda wipes a tear from her eye. She removes the veil from her face and kisses me on the cheek with lips like tender plums. “Thank you, my wish.”
“My pleasure,” I tell her. “You deserve to be happy.”
“I only wish I could help you in return.”