He could identify with her loneliness, but he found her naiveté vaguely annoying. He’d had to work hard and grow up fast-or at least, try his best to grow up fast. Sometimes he felt like he’d done a poor job of it. “They were right, you know. I am dangerous. I don’t want to be, but that doesn’t change things. I don’t want to scare you, but… perhaps Celestina and your father had a point in keeping you isolated. The second King Luka found out about you, look what happened. And it could have easily been that Belin brought him a mean and nasty jinn, and that mean and nasty jinn would have a hold of you right now.”
“But I wouldn’t have given that jinn my hair ribbon.”
He sighed.
Not long after that, they reached the farmhouse he’d been aiming for. He knocked on the door, Violet huddled beside him. A dog started barking, then two dogs. In another moment, the door was open and the dogs were barking and jumping on Ifra and Violet while a man with a bushy mustache held up a lantern. “Hello! It’s much too cold to be outside! What are you two thinking? Come inside!” He had a merry, rolling accent.
Ifra hustled Violet in. Calm yourselves! he thought fiercely at the dogs. Thank goodness, they were eager to please and sat right down.
The man blinked at them. “Mercy. What happened to you boys?” The dogs looked up at him almost apologetically. “I’ve never seen them behave like that before.”
There was no time for introductions before an awful lot of children-six, at quick count-a wife, and a white-haired woman came down the stairs, and they were all very loud, with a lot of religious exclamations. “Saints alive, what’s all this?” “Heavens!” “God have mercy, who’d be out in this cold at this hour?” The younger half of the children just seemed to be screaming for the fun of it. The dogs started going again, running around the family, a wagging tail almost taking out the smallest boy.
“My name is Ifra, and this is Violet, and we’re-”
“Of course, of course! We’ll have none of that! Do you need something to eat? Of course you do! Ma, is the fire still going? Well, we should heat some tea!” The women and the oldest daughter, who might have been sixteen or seventeen, were fretting over Violet at the same time. “You must be half-frozen, child!” “Let me get your wraps!” “Come here, we’ll get you warmed up!”
Ifra had used a little magic to dampen their alarm and confusion at the sight of two mysterious strangers appearing at the door in the middle of the night, but this seemed excessive.
The family mostly asked and answered their own questions. “Where’d you come from?” the father asked.
“They must have come from town, Pa! I bet they got lost!” the eldest son answered.
“Happens sometimes, when the snow covers up the landmarks,” the old woman said. “Poor dears. Are you new in town?”
“They must be, I’ve never seen them before. Where are you from originally?”
“They’re obviously Roscardian. Are you brother and sister?”
“Sure, look at the family resemblance, Pa. It’s in the ears. People look at eyes and noses, but you can always tell by the ears, really. Look at us, we’ve all got the same ears.”
Ifra let them go on thinking whatever they wanted. The truth was quite a bit more complicated. His hands were shaking a little, as if his body knew it finally had a chance to rest.
A cup of tea was put before him, and then a slice of toast. And though he didn’t need the food, it tasted as good as any beef dumpling he could imagine.
Violet, usually so chatty herself, looked overwhelmed, and slightly irritated, by the noisy family. Her eyes went wide with horror when the sisters of the family said she could sleep with them.
“You don’t have a bedroom for guests?” she said.
“Mercy! You must be the banker’s daughter or something. Anyway, it’d be awfully cold,” the mother said.
Violet started coughing, looking quite cross. Two of the sisters hugged her, one on each side. “Don’t worry!” “It’ll be such fun!” “We have an extra nightgown Lissy’s grown out of!” Ifra knew he shouldn’t smile, but Violet had precisely the expression of a cat being dressed in doll clothes.
They hustled her upstairs.
“And you can sleep with the boys,” the father said.
“The boys” grinned at him. Ifra started to say surely he was too old-but no. Of course he wasn’t. This man still saw him as a boy.
“I prefer to be alone,” Ifra said. “I’ll sleep downstairs. If you have a blanket to spare…”
“It’s too drafty in the parlor! You’ll freeze. And we wouldn’t dream of asking a guest to sleep in the kitchen!” the mother said.
“I will not freeze,” Ifra said softly, meeting their eyes in turn, and a flicker of fear passed through them, as if they had finally noticed that he looked nothing like the people of Cernan.
The mother stood. “I’m sure we have a spare blanket somewhere.” The boys dispersed, rough-housing their way up the stairs. The old woman gathered the dishes. It got very quiet.
Ifra waited for them all to leave. He took off his coat and shoes and lay down on the rug before the unlit fireplace. The room was cluttered and a little shabby. It seemed like a wonderful place.
One of the dogs came from the kitchen to stand in the doorway-he heard its nails clicking on the wooden floor. It looked a little shy. He waved it over and the gray beast settled down beside him with a sigh. Ifra wondered if maybe he was the kind of person who preferred animals to people. Maybe he would ask Luka for ownership of his horse, and a few good dogs and cats, instead of a wife. Maybe some chickens as well.
Somewhere in the middle of his dream list of animals, he fell asleep.
He woke to a whisper in his ear. “Ifra?”
“Hmm?”
Violet was sitting behind him. “I thought those stupid girls would never go to sleep. They snore too, at least one of them does. Were you sleeping? I thought you didn’t need sleep.”
“I want sleep.” He turned over to look at her. Her hair was down, and all rippled from being in braids. She had a nightgown on that should have buttoned to the neck, but the buttons looked like they’d mostly been torn off by the previous owner, perhaps in some sibling scuffle, baring her neck and the sharp edge of a collarbone.
The longer he looked at her, the less peevish she looked, and the more anxious… and lovely.
“I’m cold,” she whispered.
He rearranged the blanket so he could throw a corner around her shoulder, and she settled down with him, her small body rigid.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“It’s so ordinary here. I mean… these people are nice. Maybe a little too nice. And then when everyone went to bed and I had time to think…” She took a deep breath. “I can’t believe… Uncle Erris might be dead. And I’m going to the fairy kingdom, and… it doesn’t seem quite real. I’m not prepared for it to be real.” She turned to him, stricken. “I don’t want to be a queen! I want to go home.”
“I’m scared, too, but-”
“I never knew jinn could be scared. You must have granted zillions of wishes already.”
“Twelve,” he said. “I guess Luka’s wish for me to serve him was the thirteenth.”
“Three wishes times four? You’ve only granted wishes to four people?”
“Well, I’m only seventeen. I haven’t been doing this for long.”
“What were the wishes?” she asked.
“I’m starting to forget. When I have a new master, I forget the last ones, mostly.”
“How do you become a jinn who grants wishes? It obviously wasn’t something you wanted.”
“It happens to all of us. On our seventeenth birthday. I wasn’t sure what day I was born, exactly, so it was a surprise, but maybe it’s best that way. One day I guess I just blacked out, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up to this person holding a golden oil lamp. My first master was young, I remember that. A boy. Wait-a thief. He’d lost a thumb as punishment for pickpocketing, and he asked for it back.” Ifra smiled a little. “That wasn’t such a bad wish.”