I Wish I May I Wish I Might

She sat on a driftwood throne near the great gray rocks by the sea, watching the angry
foaming waves hurl themselves again and again upon the cold and empty whiteness of the
beach. She listened to the discordant cry of the endlessly circling gulls overhead and to the
blaring lament of the chill October wind. She drew meaningless patterns in the silvery sand
before her with the toe of one rope sandal and then erased them carefully with the sole and
began anew.

She was a pale, blond young girl of fourteen, her long wavy hair, her eyes the color of
faded cornflower. She dresses in light corduroy trousers and a gray cloth jacket, and her thin
white feet inside the sandals were bare. Her name was Agatha.

She looked up at the leaden sky, shading her eyes against its filtered glare. Her fingers
were blue-numb from the cold. She turned her head slowly, bringing within her vision the eroded
face of a cliff, with its clumps of tule grass-like patches of beard rubble, rising from the beach
behind him. She released a long, sighing breath and turned her head yet again to look out at the
combers breaking and retreating.

She stood and began to walk along the beach, her hands buried deep in the pockets on
her cloth jacket. The wind swirled loose sand against her body, and there was the icy wetness
of the salt spray on her skin.

She rounded a gradual curve in the beach. Ahead of her, she could see the sun-
bleached, bark-bare upper portion of a large timber half-buried in the sand, some twenty yards
from the edge of the water. Something green and shiny, something which had gone unnoticed
as she passed earlier, lay in the wet sand near it.

A bottle.

She recognized it as such immediately. It was resting on its side with the neck partially
buried in the sand, recently carried in, it seemed, on the tide. It was an oddly shaped, the glass
an opaque green color—the color of the sea—very smooth, without markings or labelings of any
kind. It appeared to be quite old and extremely fragile.

Agatha knelt beside it and lifted it in her hands, and brushed the clinging particles of
sand from its slender neck. Scarlet sealing wax had applied to the cork guarding the mouth. The
oil bore an indecipherable emblem, an ancient seal. Her thin fingers dexterously chipped away
most of the creation, exposing the dun-colored cork beneath. She managed to loosen the bung
— and the bottle began to vibrate almost imperceptibly. There was a sudden loud popping like a
magnum of sabrage and later an intense blinding flash of crimson phosphorescence.

Agatha cried out, toppling backward on the sand, the bottle erupting from her hands.
She blinked rapidly, and there came from very close to her high, loud peals of resounding laugh
that blend with the wind and the surf to fill the cold autumn air with rolling echoes of sound. But
she could see nothing. The bottle lay on the sand a few feet away, and there was the timber and
the beach and the sea; but there was nothing else, no one to be seen.

And yet, the hollow, reverberating laugh continued.

Agatha scrambled to her feet, looking frantically about her. Fright kindled inside her. She
wanted to run; she tensed his body to run—

All at once, the laughter ceased.

A keening voice assailed her ears, a voice out of nowhere, like the laughing, a voice
without gender, without inflection, a neuter sound, “I wish I may, I wish I might."."What?" Agatha
said, her eyes wide, vainly searching. “Where are you?”, “I am here,” the voice said. “I am here
on the wind.” “Where? I can’t see you.”

“None can see me. I am the king of djinns, the ruler of genies, the all-powerful—unjustly
doomed to eternity in yon flagon by the mortal sorcerer Amroj.” Laughter. “A thousand years
alone have I spent, a millennium on the cold and dark empty floor of the ocean. Alone and
imprisoned. But now I am free; you set me free. I knew you would do this, for I know all things.
You shall get a reward. Three wishes shall I grant you, according to custom, according to
tradition. I wish I may, I wish I might. Those are the words, the gateways to your fondest
dreams. Speak them anywhere, anytime, and I shall hear and obey. I shall make each of your
wishes come true.

Agatha moistened his lips.“Any three wishes?”

“Any three,” the voice answered. “No stipulations, no limitations. I am the king of djinns,
the ruler of genies, and the all-powerful. I wish I may; I wish I might. You know the words, do
you not?”

“Yes! Yes, I know them.” The laughter. “Amroj, foul sorcerer, foul mortal, I am avenged!

And suddenly, there was a vacuum of sound, a roaring of silence, the pressure of which
hurt Agatha's ears and made her cry out in pain. But then the moment passed, and there was
nothing but the sounds of the tide and the wind and the scavenger birds winging low, low over
the sea.

She gained her feet and stood very still for perhaps a minute. Then she began to run.
She ran with windspeed, away from the timber half-buried in the sand, away from the smooth,
empty green bottle; her sandaled feet seemed to fly above the sand, leaving only the barest of
imprints there.

She fled along the beach until, in the distance, set back from the ocean on a short bluff,
she could see a small white house with yellow warmth shining through its front window. She left
the sand there, running across the ground now more solid, running toward the white house on
the bluff.

A wooden stairway appeared on the rock, winding skyward. As she neared it, a man
came rushing down the stairs. He ran toward her and threw his arms around her, and hugged
him close to her breast. “Oh, Agatha, where have you been! I’ve been frantic with worry!”, “At
the beach,” she answered, drinking great mouthfuls of the cold salt air into her aching lungs. “By
the big rocks.” “You know you’re not supposed to go there,” the man said, hugging her. “Agatha,
you know that. Look at the way you dressed. Oh, you must not ever, ever do this again. Promise
you will not ever do it again.” “I found a bottle by the big timber,” Agatha said. “There was a
genie inside. I can't see him, but he laughed and laughed, and then he gave me three wishes.
He said that all I have to do is wish, and he will make my wish come true. Then he laughed
some more and said some things I didn’t understand, and then he was gone, and my ears hurt.”
“Oh, what a story! Agatha, where did you get such a story?” “I have three wishes,” she said. “I
can wish for anything, and it will come true. The genie said so.” “Agatha, Agatha, Agatha!” “I am
going to wish for a trillion ice cream cones, and I am going to wish for the ocean to be as warm
as my bathwater, so I can go wading whenever I want. I am going to wish for all the little boys
and girls in the world to be just like me so I’ll never-ever be whenever everybody to play with.”
Gently, protectively, the father took the hand of his retard daughter. “Come along now, dear.
Come along.” “I wish I may, I wish I might', Agatha said.