Crime Spells

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 i

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 ca

“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.