If Wishes Were Horses 6

Today’s word count:      1673                                                 Total word count:  10, 893

Eventually I realised that I needed much more information than I currently had. This creature I faced was not the kind of threat life usually threw at me. I had to find out more. I wasn’t sure where I was going to start looking for details about supernatural beings and wish granting, but I thought maybe old folk tales might be one place where memories of such creatures might survive. I have a very old book of tales from my childhood but I’m not sure how traditional any of them are and I suspected that the stories in it might have been made up by a modern author. Hardly a source of useful information on how to deal with my curse, whatever it turned out to be. I decided a trip to the library would yield the best results. I still haven’t graduated to looking up everything online like the rest of the world does now. Somehow I don’t trust the information fed to me on a computer screen. I like the reassuring feel of an old book in my hands. If someone has committed information to print, somehow I am more convinced that it contains facts. I’m probably wrong, but that’s just how I am.

I left my car at home, figuring that if anyone from work saw it they’d know for definite that I was bunking off. I couldn’t afford to be easily spotted. If I was seen in town I could always say that I’d gone to find some medication for how I was feeling. I practised my excuses: “I caught the bus because I didn’t feel safe to drive. I really do feel very rough.” Did I need to cough after that to make a point? Maybe not. It’s a migraine I’m recovering from, not the flu. So I set off on public transport, which isn’t my favourite way of getting around. I kept hoping that it wouldn’t be too traumatic and trying desperately not to lose my temper with any of the other passengers in case my inner thoughts were heard and translated into some horrid end for an innocent bystander. Keeping my brain calm wasn’t easy, and my mind started to wander off onto all the potential fates my fellow travellers might suffer if I couldn’t control my own mind.  I caught myself picturing a dreadful collision between the coach and a lorry, driven coincidentally by someone who’d cut me up on the motorway at some time in the past. Then I started to panic in case the pictures in my head were vivid enough for old NotMyFault to interpret as a wish.  “Please, please don’t let that happen,” I thought, but I must have said it out loud because a woman across the way turned and smiled at me.

“It is a bit of a bumpy ride, but I don’t think we’re in any real danger,” she said, trying to pacify me.

I just started to think “Mind your own business you….” when I caught myself and stopped the thought in its tracks. “No losing your temper, Angela, smile back nicely and be friends.” Which I did, with a great deal of effort.  I turned to face her directly and thanked her, politely, with the best smile my fright would allow, but inside I still worried that I might have more deaths on my conscience and my heart thumped almost loud enough to hear for the rest of the journey. 

As a way to make my thoughts behave I began to consider what I would need to research when I arrived.  I had my notebook with me so I could begin with the points I’d identified earlier, and write down anything new that might be useful.  Doodad seemed to have me pinned down from all directions in this deal. The whole calamity was extremely unfair, but associating with the underworld was always that way, wasn’t it? Deals with the devil and all that. He’d told me he wasn’t called Beelzebub, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t some other demon. Did I know any demon names? That would be worth researching when I got to the library, though I hadn’t the first idea what section would cover it. I could ask the librarian. Or should I? I didn’t want to draw attention to myself too much by asking ridiculous questions. I could almost imagine seeing the library staff whispering to each other behind their hands but looking pointedly in my direction with worried expressions on their faces in case I was some kind of lunatic. Would they think I was dangerous and likely to attack if they didn’t find exactly what I needed? Life certainly wasn’t getting any easier. It would help if Gizmo had told me a few of the rules. He claimed he had told me a lot, if I had paid attention, but I don’t think I took much heed of his actual words. I was still reeling from the whole concept that he was magical to take proper notice of details while he talked to me.

Once I got to the library I wasn’t sure where to start. It was a magnificent building, dating from some time in the Victorian era, at a guess, and the shelves were high and made of rich, dark wood, polished over the years by thousands of hands. The atmosphere suggested this was just the place to find out more about my questions, but the endless rows of spines gave few clues about the direction in which I’d find my answers. I considered looking in the children’s section to see if I could find any books of fairy tales, but you have to be careful these days as an unaccompanied adult doing anything around young people. It doesn’t matter how innocent your intentions are, there will always be someone around who will be quick to shout ‘up to no good’ and you can find yourself in court with a ruined reputation before you can protest. That’s not to say that there aren’t some proper weirdos out there and kids should be looked after, but it’s not easy if your legitimate business coincides with the presence of kids. I gave the children’s literature a wide berth and headed for non-fiction instead. I wandered round a bit aimlessly at first, but eventually wound up in the paranormal section and selected a few likely-looking titles.

A surprising number of authors have tackled the subject. Being granted wishes is not the blessing that everyone, including myself before it actually happened, believes it will be. It turns out there are far more stories of how wishes went wrong than when they were granted properly. Apparently sprites and piskies all around the world have a habit of tricking the unwary. I found lots of instances where careless folk were granted three wishes – not three a day, just three – and they wasted them on stupid things. There were even a few where the grantee took so long to think about their wish that they made an unplanned one by mistake and got something they didn’t intend. There’s a French tale, for example, where a woodcutter wishes for a black pudding, because he’s hungry. For not very obvious reasons his wife ends up with the pudding stuck to the end of her nose and they have to use wish three to remove it. Variants of that story crop up all over Europe. This is a long way from Aladdin! There are plenty of stories and one thing they seem to have in common is that the sprites and goblins who offer the wishes do not intend anyone to benefit by them. Tales in which people made sensible choices and lived happily ever after are very few and far between. In fact the ones who come out best are those who decide, after careful thought, that their lives aren’t so bad after all and they don’t want the wishes, thank you very much.

Meanwhile I was making no progress on my own situation. I had spent an entertaining afternoon learning about all manner of poor people who were offered a way out of their poverty. They were often poor people in the stories, woodcutters, cobblers, farmers and other sons and daughters of toil, which made the lack of success even more cruel, somehow. Some of the stories were amusing, but most left unfortunate and desperate peasants in exactly the same state as they began, although maybe a little wiser. This did not bode well for me.  I needed a plan, but it was hard to draw up safety measures if I didn’t know exactly what I was defending myself against.

There was the ‘up to three’ wishes thing to consider, of course. I thought back through the stories I had read to see if they would give me any hints, but I had found no examples of any number other than three, and I hadn’t found any tales at all where the number varied according to the granter’s whim. Why not exactly three, I wondered. In most tales, like the French woodcutter, the last wish had to be used to undo the harm the first two had caused. If I wasn’t sure I would get the last two I would have to be extra careful not to cause havoc with the first. I was no nearer finding a solution.  I carried on reading, looking up as many tales as I could find from all over the world, but they seemed to be variations on a theme, and none of them matched my story. Doohickey really had the advantage in this, but there had to be a way around it. There had to be some means of stopping him. At this stage I didn’t even consider being able to control him well enough to get my wishes. It would always be too dangerous to risk asking him for anything. I just wanted out of the whole arrangement, and my life back to normal. I really wished for that!