A Story of Ash and Smoke

Content Warning: minor references to violence, abuse, and mental health

           A thousand years. A thousand masters. The genie had experienced much over his long, immortal life. He had seen kingdoms rise and fall, and he was perhaps responsible for a few of each. The rarest experience, he found, was a person who saw value in him. Beyond, of course, what he could give to them.

The genie’s container, a fancily decorated golden bottle, had found itself in an antique shop gathering dust. It had been roughly a century since it was last used. How he ended up in the antique shop was anyone’s guess. The container seemed to have a mind of its own when deciding where to go after a wielder was done with it. Yet another will he was subjected to.

Great.

Inside the bottle, the genie was cramped. Yeah, he was smoke, sure, but he was solid smoke, and he really wanted a chance to stretch. He heard the jingle of the bell on the door and greetings being exchanged between the old man running the store and some younger voice. He ignored the sounds of shopping throughout the store until he heard someone’s voice just above the bottle.

“Oh, cool!” the voice said. “Where’s this from?”

“My son found that a few years ago. I never asked where he got it from,” the old man replied.

“Is it Arabic?”

There was silence. Or maybe the shop owner responded non-verbally. The genie felt the bolt shift, perhaps being lifted.

“How much is it?”

“What’s the tag say?”

It was tilted around for a moment. Had he not been weightless magic smoke, he might have fallen through the opening.

“I don’t see a tag,” the young voice finally answered.

“Tell ya what. It’s old, and it’s yours for twenty-five.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. No point in it gathering dust around here.”

Great, pawned off to some kid.

After the purchase was complete and the young shopper bid farewell to the store owner, the genie assumed he had been taken for a ride. The travel was rather smooth, likely in one of those modern inventions known as cars. The genie was treated to musical performances by his container’s owner, sung alongside some music player. It brought back memories of an old master he once knew–a minstrel who desired nothing more than for his music to be heard and appreciated. At least, that’s how he presented himself. Of course, as soon as he had come upon the encrusted bottle, he had many other requests that just had to be answered to. First, he desired for his music to enrapture all people who heard it into a dancing frenzy. Entire towns had become hot with a dancing fever, sometimes even leading to injury. He didn’t seem to mind the consequences of his desire. And before long, he had already figured out his second wish. He desired for his music to bring him great wealth. All who heard him strum and sing were compelled to give him their precious belongings. Of course, he eventually became unsatisfied with the isolation caused by his acoustic plague and wished for a companion that would love him unconditionally. The genie had rules against compelling attachments between two persons where there was none.

“But not compelling emotions or thoughts?” the minstrel said.

“That greatly depends on what exactly is being asked,” the genie replied.

The minstrel thought for a moment. A moment turned into a day, and that day became a week. A month had passed as he played his music and tried his hand at using it to woo passing maidens, but they only loved his music and would dance uncontrolled to its tune. One day, it struck him, the solution to his problem.

“I wish, oh genie, that my presence produces the same desire for itself as my music for a woman of my choice.”

That turned something in the vapor of the genie, but he could only think to grant the wish or convince his master of something else. He tried for ten minutes to change his master’s mind, but the old minstrel was settled. His wish was granted, and he picked a young woman from a noble family to be his bride. And for him she fell, and hard the fall was. She would not leave his side, much to the dismay of her parents. To convince them of the marriage, the minstrel played his music and sang his songs. Unfortunately for the victim of his hypnotism, her desire for his presence did not prevent her desire to dance endlessly for his music.

The man was distraught, and the genie was repulsed by what his power had caused. Fortunately, the spell that bound him to service only required he grant three requests, and his contract for them was ended if he no longer desired to serve them after that threshold was crossed. Before the minstrel could curse the genie’s unknown name, the immortal’s vaporous essence receded into the bottle and was untold miles from his former master.

Since then, the genie didn’t like music so much. As his memories of that old minstrel faded into the haze of his mind, he felt the vehicle jerk to a stop. The bottle was carried through a creaky door and sat down as its owner fumbled with what sounded like a faulty lock on the door.

“Okay,” the young voice said. “Let’s see where I’m putting you.” They moved around for a short amount of time, possibly denoting a small living space. “I wonder if Kim would be happy with this in the living room.” The bottle tilted from side to side. “Not if it’s this dusty,” they said, followed by a chuckle and snort.

The genie felt the sensation of fingers brushing along the sapphires embedded in the bottle’s sides and the smooth metal being caressed. Oils from the wielder were sapped away, sinking into the engravings on the surface. The oils multiplied in volume and pooled until it filled the bottom of the bottle, just enough to force the genie out in a spiral of crackling energy and blue sparks of energy. Like fire in a lamp, he erupted forth, his smoky form taking shape into that of swollen cobalt muscles. He felt gaseous sinew stich over equally weightless bone, and his jaw and head erupted with brilliant blue flames. He stretched his new joints and roared out with the fury of millennia of untapped power and potential.

“I have awakened, master!” he bellowed. “I am the spirit of this vessel, now bound to you in a contract etched in metal to serve your three greatest desires!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” the tiny mortal before them said. “Hold on, hold up, hol-” They dropped the bottle and paced for a few seconds before sitting on a shabby couch that looked like leather, but somehow not looking like tanned skin.

“What is your desire, master?”

“Huh?” they asked, eyes wide with confusion and horror. “Sorry, am I high?”

“I do not understand the question,” the genie responded. “You seem confused.”

“Very.”

“Allow me to explain. I’m what you would likely call a genie. I am an elemental spirit of fire bound by powerful magics to this vessel, and it is my duty to serve your three greatest desires.”

The puzzled look hadn’t yet left their face.

“There are rules, however. I can grant many wishes, some even impossible by your standards, but there are limits to what can be done with a wish. For what things exist, I cannot simply create for you. I must retrieve them from a real place. For what is abstract, I cannot grant to you. I cannot make you the best at a given task or the wealthiest of your neighbors. For what concerns another person, I cannot forge into a relationship. I cannot make an enemy your ally and I cannot make someone your lover, not in truth. For what has perished in this world, I cannot make to live again. For what things don’t exist or are impossible, I cannot bypass causality. No matter how arbitrary, something must cause another thing.”

“Why-”

“It is the nature of enchantments. Magic must be bound to-”

“No, why is this happening?”

The genie paused his speech and looked around the room. The room was small and cluttered with boxes and plants. There were no religious symbols or magic wards, no house brownies or the shape of ghosts lingering in the walls. Everything was mundane. Even in the most ordinary village or town, even a century ago, there was magic and there were spirits that lingered about. It dawned on him that, perhaps, this place was not as accustomed to the presence of something so magical.

He receded into a small cloud that hovered above his bottle, light embers rising from the top like a small ponytail. “I understand this may all be shocking to you.”

“Oh, no. This is pretty standard for me.”

“Oh? Then-” the genie stopped himself, sensing sarcasm in his master. “Ah.”

“Okay, so you’re not a demon here to take my soul,” the master began.

“No, and I’m not beholden to demons as my masters.”

“I won’t ask.” The master clapped their hands together and breathed deeply then let out a sigh. “So, you’re a genie and you’re here to grant me wishes because I rubbed the lamp or bottle or whatever this is, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Why me?”

“You’ve initiated the contract. It is not you specifically that is special.”

The master scratched the back of their head which, like either side, was shaved low. “Okay, so next question. Who made the contract? Like, three wishes sound cool, but I don’t like jumping into contracts I can’t read.”

“Do you wish to see the contract, its construction, or its creator?”

“I’m not wishing anything. I’m just asking questions.”

“Do you wish for me to answer them?”

“Can you just answer them like a normal person?”

The genie was shocked into silence. At first, he desired to trick the master into wishing for innocuous things. But this was a conversation, something that was rare for his masters to hold with him. “The contract was written by the one who would become my first master. I was bound to this vessel and compelled to grant the desires for those who fulfilled the contract’s requirements.”

“Compelled? Like, it wasn’t your choice?”

“Of course not. I was in violation of a pact and was bound as punishment.”

“So, slavery? What was even your crime?”

“I committed no crimes. I was summoned by a magician of great power. I was in violation of a sacred pact that forbid my kind from entering your world and was abandoned by my brethren. As punishment, I was left to be bound to this vessel and serve the will of my captor.”

“That doesn’t sound fair.” The master leaned back on the couch and dusted flakes of the fake leather from their arms.

“You seem to be accepting a lot of this at face value.”

“Well, you came out of a bottle in a storm cloud. I can’t really judge your story as believable or not at this point. More importantly, why do you serve people weaker than you? Can’t you free yourself or ignore them?”

“I cannot do either. I am bound to grant wishes and the only protest possible is to convince my masters of rephrasing their desire. I cannot, however, simply deny them.”

“Is this in the rules? Are there no exceptions?”

The genie formed into the shape of a normal sized blue man with a flaming beard and ponytail. He hovered above his bottle and crossed his arms and said, “Not explicitly. I am compelled to do so by magics beyond my understanding.”

“That sounds like anxiety, to me.”

“I don’t become anxious.”

“Well,” the master leaned forward. And rested their elbows on their knees to support their head. “I think it’s a bit strange that you don’t just say ‘no’ to serving people. Are you afraid that there is some kind of hidden clause to punish you?”

“You’re asking many questions that seem to take us further from your wishes being granted.”

“Ah,” the master clapped. “So, you at least get annoyed. I don’t want to make you do something you don’t feel comfortable doing.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

The genie sat with that for a moment. He had heard many justifications for wishes from rich and poor, weak and powerful alike. But this person defied many conventions at once. The genie had thought of numerous wishes they would be justified in asking to have granted.

“What do you want?” the master asked.

“Nothing, you are my master. I do not require anything from you.”

“No. What do you want?” The master pointed at the genie.

The genie felt a skip in his ghostly chest. What do I want? What kind of question is that?

“I cannot be freed,” the genie began. “I feel unable to break the bindings on myself. But I don’t want to grant wishes, at least not those I object to.”

“Okay, let’s start there. I wish you could deny wishes you objected to.”

The genie sat there, and energy swirled in the cloud of his body. The fire on his head erupted into a pillar that scorched nothing, but a third of the oil in the bottle had been depleted. “It is done.”

“I wish my apartment complex exploded with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs!” The master made a grand gesture with their arms expanding out from their chest.

“Absolutely not!” The genie felt a jab in his chest as if his cloud of a heart were about to sink from him like a stone, but he did not feel compelled to grant the wish.”

The master let out a huge sigh, “Oh, thank goodness!”

“Why would you wish for that?” the genie asked, exasperated.

“I needed to make sure it worked! But now that we know it does, do you want me to set you free?”

The genie brushed down the flame–now excited–on his head. “I cannot risk that. The pact and the binding are beyond me. I cannot be sure what would happen if I were released, and your world is woefully unprepared for retribution if either are too grossly violated. I must remain in this vessel, at the very least.”

“Okay, well,” the master tapped their leg rhythmically. “Ah, got it! I wish you could decide where your bottle goes, and I wish you could change masters as you pleased.”

“Are you sure about both these wishes?”

“Yeah. You should at least be able to stand up for yourself and go where you please. Hopefully, one day, you’ll get the freedom you deserve.”

The genie surged with energy and his flaming ponytail erupted twice in succession. “I am grateful for this. And as thanks…” The genie surged again, and the couch became refurbished, something the master had never seen before.

“Oh, wow!” the master jumped up. “Kim is definitely gonna love this!”

“I guess that is the end of our contract. But this is the first time I won’t simply vanish with my vessel to some other location.” The genie scratched the back of his head as his gaze diverted to the side. “I suppose this means I may need to stick around for a while until I learn where to go. Perhaps I can serve your friend Kim.”

The master chuckled. “Kim is my girlfriend.”

“The times really have changed.” The genie smiled.

“Say, what is your name, anyway? I’ve been wanting to call you ‘genie’, but that doesn’t seem right.”

“My name cannot be pronounced in your tongue, but it means ‘smoke’.”

“That’s cool. I was getting a little uncomfortable with my own name and have been considering Ash, myself.” The master–Ash–laughed seemingly to their self. “Ash and Smoke. That could be a comic or something.”

“There’s a lot you have to teach me about this world.” The genie chuckled and retreated into his bottle which floated onto the glass coffee table in the middle of the room.

“I wish you wouldn’t sit there all dusty. Kim is gonna freak.”

The genie’s head reared from the bottle with a mischievous smile across his face. “Wish denied.”