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Authors: Megan Whalen Turner

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BOOK: Instead of Three Wishes
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By using the school's front entrance, Kevin had avoided the high-school boys who usually relieved him of his lunch money. Having enough money for a regular lunch should have been a bright spot in his day. Unfortunately, he met one of the older boys as he was leaving the lunchroom. The older boy looked down at Kevin's substantial lunch and shook his head back and forth. Kevin scuttled away,
realizing that he should have settled for an ice-cream bar; the hamburger stuck in his throat.

That night, when the snakes held up their mirrors, Kevin saw himself slinking down a school hallway, using his notebook as a shield. He was concentrating so hard on anonymity that it was only a particularly conscientious teacher who would have noticed him. Kevin felt the teacher's ripple of curiosity and distaste for the cringing figure. Then the dream moved on.

In the morning, Kevin thought there had been something familiar about that scurrying person in the dream. Of course it had to be familiar; he was watching himself. But there was something beyond that. When he got to school, he slipped around the building, looking for other open entrances. He had cheated the older boys of his lunch money the day before. They would be looking for him that morning. He sat on the steps on the far side of the gymnasium and thought about his problems until the bell rang.

For the next week, Kevin entered the school by various doors. He went through the music room door. He waited once for the late bell to ring and snuck into the building through the auto shop. The older boys glared at him in the lunchroom, but Kevin was safe while in the building, and the junior high let out half an hour earlier than the high school. One of the gym doors didn't close properly, so Kevin slipped in that way twice. After school, he
headed straight home without stopping to hassle any of the smaller kids. Seeing himself through those kids' eyes every night had taken the fun out of the bullying. Kevin's goal was to get through the day with no one noticing him at all.

While sitting alone in his room for hours, Kevin thought about his nightmares. The crouching mousy figure in his dreams rang a distant bell. Kevin racked his brains trying to understand. Finally, the next day, as he waited on the gymnasium steps, the bell rang right inside his head. The sloping walk that he saw in the dreams was the same as the walk of the Jell-O lady, the one he and his friends had been hassling just before school started. The rest of the day passed in a blur. Kevin didn't care what his dreams would be like that night. For the first time he thought he knew where they came from, and he hoped to get rid of them.

After school, he went straight to the bus stop at Fifty-fifth and Hyde Park Boulevard. He checked the passengers getting off every bus. He spent all day Saturday at the bus stop as well. He sat on the bench until the manager at Orly's chased him away. After that, he walked up and down the street, hurrying back to the bench whenever a bus arrived. She wasn't there. By Sunday, he was beginning to despair. What if that had been the only day she had ridden the bus? What if she had bought a car? What if, after ruining his life forever, she'd decided to
move to Ohio or someplace like that? He walked up Blackstone Avenue trying to find her apartment building, but couldn't pick it out. Maybe he would never find her and he'd be stuck forever slinking down hallways like some sort of deformed rabbit.

He was late for dinner and should have started home, but he kept telling himself he would wait for just one more bus. Finally, he thought he saw her. Maybe. But she was wearing different clothes, a red coat and an orange dress, and she walked differently, swinging her arms and bobbing her chin, humming to herself as she walked. Kevin had seen her the day before but had not recognized her. He still wasn't sure if this was the woman he wanted or not. He followed her down the street. She turned at a familiar corner and headed for a familiar building.

“Wait,” Kevin shouted as she put her key in the door.

She turned and recognized Kevin immediately. She laughed in his face.

“No backsies,” she said. The door closed and locked behind her.

“Wait, wait!” Kevin threw himself against the door and rattled the lock. Through the dirty glass in the door he saw the woman disappear up the steps inside without looking back. After a moment, he sat down on the steps and hugged his knees. Eventually, he had to go home for dinner, but the next morning, when the woman came out to go to work, he was waiting on the step.

“What, are you still here?” she asked.

“What did you mean, ‘no backsies'?” he asked.

“Just what I said. You can't give it back to me. You have to give it to someone else who asks for it.”

“But what is it?”

“What do you think? It's a nightmare.” She walked down the street.

 

Kevin met her when she got off the bus that afternoon.

“Why did you give it to me?” he asked.

“Because you asked for it. Hassling an old woman and telling her you want whatever she's got. People who ask for it get what's coming to them.”

“Then where did you get it?”

She stopped at the corner. She looked down at him and nodded her head as she admitted, “I asked for it.”

“How long?”

“How long did I have it? Six years,” she said softly.

Kevin rocked back in horror.

“And you never do get all the way rid of it. Spend time with that nightmare, and you can always see yourself in other people's eyes. Even now, people look at me and think I shouldn't wear a red coat and an orange dress, and I say to myself, ‘Hey, I don't care what they think as long as they don't think it in my dreams.'”

“But it's only ever bad things. Why not any good things?” Kevin pleaded.

The woman shrugged. “That's why it's a nightmare.”

She looked at Kevin sadly. “Better you than me,” she said. Then she walked away, and this time Kevin didn't follow.

His thoughts ran through his head in circles. Six years. I'll be old. Six years, and she only got rid of it because she ran into an idiot like me. How many people that stupid can there be in the world? What if I never get rid of it? What if all the people in the world who are stupid enough to ask have already had it once and I was the very last dummy? Kevin had heard that there's a sucker born every minute. Maybe the next sucker was just being born, and Kevin would have to wait until he or she grew up enough to say, “Hey, gimme that nightmare. It's just what I always wanted.”

Kevin went home. He ate his supper without a word and headed to his room to do his homework. His mother looked with concern at the dark circles under his eyes, but Kevin was too steeped in misery to care. That night he turned a resigned face to the dream mirrors. The woman in the red coat didn't appear, but the disgust of the manager at Orly's oozed over Kevin and stuck like tar.

 

The next day was Monday. Kevin had run out of open doors at school, so he was forced to begin the cycle again with the main entrance and hope the high-school boys had forgotten him. As he rounded
that corner from sunlight to shade, he was momentarily blinded. Shadow figures knocked his books out of his hands and pushed him against the wall.

“Hey, Kev,” said a voice out of the dark, “you haven't been in the yard lately. We missed you.”

Hunching his shoulders, Kevin could only think of how this scene would reappear in miserable dreams. He didn't really pay attention to what the older boy was saying.

“We were beginning to think you didn't like us, Kev. You do still like us, don't you?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure.”

“Doesn't sound real sincere. Tell you what, why don't you give us a token of your esteem?”

“What?”

The older boy held out his hand. “Hand it over Kevin. Empty those pockets. Whatever you got, I want.”

“You want…?” He stopped in confusion and then was tongue-tied with rage. That was his chance. Maybe the only chance he'd ever have and he'd blown it. Now the boy leaned closer. He was going to ask again, but this time he would be specific. He wanted Kevin's lunch money, and Kevin was going to have the nightmare for the rest of his life. Kevin wanted to bang his own head against the wall he was so frustrated, but then, to Kevin's relief, the older boy repeated himself.

“Whatever you got, Kevin, I want. Do you understand?” He clenched his hand into a fist, then
opened it again, palm up.

“Yeah,” said Kevin, “yeah, sure.” He cupped his hand around invisible Jell-O and tossed it into the older boy's waiting hand. “It's all yours,” he said, and ran for the school doors as the bell rang.

O
nce upon a time, there was a very small kingdom that consisted of a single island just off the coast of the mainland. The island and kingdom both were called Monemvassia.
Monem
meant “one” and vassia meant “way,” and truly there was only one way to reach the Monemvassians. All visitors had to come in at the harbor gate. Only at the harbor was there a break in the cliffs that rose straight out of the sea to form the island. One could get to the island by boat, or one could walk across a bank of sand during low tide, but the harbor gate was the only door to town.

Once you passed through the harbor gate, there were stairs to climb that led up the sides of the island to the very top, where there were various flat spots planted with olive and eucalyptus trees and grapevines and small stone houses. The residents of Monemvassia fished, and they cultivated olives and wine, and many of them spent their days carving wooden spindles out of the local eucalyptus trees. The wooden spools they sent off to the mainland to
trade for things that didn't grow on the island. Most people in the kingdom were happy. Some people attributed this to the fact that Monemvassia was the only known kingdom that had no king.

The old king had sent his only child off to school to be educated in kingly ways and then had unfortunately caught a chill while out fishing. Before the king's councillors had a chance to ask, “By the way, to which institution of kingly learning was the crown prince sent?” the old king had died, and the councillors were stuck. There were some angry words exchanged about the foolishness of letting the king choose a school for his son and send him off without informing the council, but the prime minister explained that the old king had thought that the crown prince deserved a little privacy before he became king and gave it all up for the public life.

“Well, he's certainly got his privacy now,” said one minister. “He's so private we don't know where he is.”

Someone suggested advertising in the international newspapers, but the rest of the council thought that was undignified. Finally they decided to do nothing. Just wait. Surely the prince would send a letter home to say whether he liked school, and when he did that, the council could check the return address. Then they would send someone to fetch home the new king of Monemvassia. It was an exceptional plan, approved by the entire council. They informed the public that while the king was
away at school, they would act as regents. There were important decisions to be made and very few restrictions on the council's power. They couldn't increase the taxes, and they couldn't call out the army, but they could collect taxes that were already levied, and they were authorized to disburse money from the royal treasury. They made up a budget for the upcoming year. They organized the annual summer spool festival, and they waited.

 

Nine years passed, and they were still waiting. The prince hadn't written home. The councillors kept thinking that they would hold off just a few more months before making any decisions that they might regret. Meanwhile, the citizens of Monemvassia were the happiest of any country in the area. In the intervening nine years, there had been revolutions in other countries and several wars. Monemvassia was surrounded by democracies, and dictatorships, and one communist state. But Monemvassia itself was peaceful and prosperous. Unable to call up the army, the council had been circumspect in its foreign policy, and of course, taxes hadn't been raised since the old king died. The wooden spool trade was booming. The council felt secure and decided to wait another year before addressing the problem of the missing prince. Surely by then he would have finished his education and be on his way home to take the throne.

When a letter arrived addressed to the king's
council, the ministers were overjoyed, thinking that at last the prince had sent word. Unfortunately the letter was not from the prince. It was from a man named Spiro Popodoupaoulas.

In the letter, he explained that it had come to his attention that the king of Monemvassia had been missing for nine years. Having only just realized that the kingdom was without any sort of sovereign guidance, a most deplorable and in this case remediable state, he was offering himself as a replacement for their delinquent monarch. He and his associates would arrive on the tenth of the following month to assume all rights and responsibilities of government. He wished to have the coronation ceremony the day he arrived, and there should be plenty of malmsey on hand to serve guests. The council should have ready suitable residences for himself and his many, many associates. He would send more details with future messengers. He signed his letter “Most Sincerely, Spiro Popodoupaoulas the First.”

“Spiro Popodoupaoulas,” said one minister. “Is that the bandit Spiro the Unpopular who has been holding up trade in the inland mountains?”

“The same,” said another minister.

“I don't understand what he wants.”

“He wants to be king,” the minister of finance explained.

“But we have a king.” The minister of the royal wardrobe was over ninety, and sometimes things
had to be explained to him very carefully.

“What's this about associates?” asked the minister of the armed forces, who hadn't had a lot to do in the last decade and spent most of his time fishing.

“I think that means army,” said the minister of finance, with whom the minister of the armed forces usually fished.

“This is very bad.” It was going to interrupt the fishing.

“What are we going to do?”

“Call up the army?” the minister of finance suggested.

“Can't do it without a royal decree,” said the minister of the armed forces. “Wouldn't do much good if we did. They haven't trained in ten years.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Does anyone have any suggestions?” asked the prime minister.

 

The sun was shining, and the air was brisk. Orvis, who was the king's minister of cultural events (that meant he organized Monemvassia's annual festival to celebrate spool making), walked down the hill from the palace with the cloth of his ministerial robes going
fphliit, fphliit, fphliit
against his legs. He watched his feet stamp in the cobblestones and rehearsed in his head the cutting speech he should have addressed to the council. It had taken him hours of careful work to convince them of the threat of this Spiro Popodoupaoulas and his private army.
More careful work had convinced the council that only a new king, one that could call up an army, would do in this crisis, and if the true king arrived later, the substitute could always abdicate. That was a concession to the conservatives. Of course, the new king should have an impeccable character and a great deal of experience. He should be selected from the council, for example. He should be a minister who was used to responsibility.

After hours of meandering debate, Orvis had gently, gently suggested a nomination of two candidates for kingship to be voted on the following Friday. His suggestion was taken, but neither of the candidates, neither of them, was Orvis!

Fphliit, fphliit
went the council robes, and
smack smack
his feet jarred on the cobblestones until he ran
bang
into someone hard. There was a tricky moment when a collection of white objects flew through the air, before the world settled down and the white things turned out to be cake boxes. Orvis sat up from where he had fallen and looked at the heavyset master baker who had been his partner in the collision.

“You should have watched where you're going,” snapped Orvis.

“One of us should have been watching,” said the baker. “Good thing those cake boxes are empty.”

“A very good thing,” said Orvis stiffly. “We might have had quite a mess.” He was thinking of his council robe. It was dark purple, and he was
particular about its neatness.

“We're in luck, I guess,” said the baker, and Orvis agreed, each thinking it was the other who had been lucky.

Some of the flour on the baker's apron had brushed off on the purple ministerial robe, and Orvis asked the man if he had a handkerchief to get it off. The baker handed Orvis a handkerchief even more covered with flour than he was himself. Orvis handed it back and stepped into the bakery to find something more suitable.

The bakery was a large room with a counter near the door to separate the bakers from the customers. Behind the counter were the huge ovens and the racks for the fresh breads and pastries. Beyond them were doors leading to the cold storage rooms cut into the solid rock that was under the bakery and all the buildings in Monemvassia. While Orvis was swatting at his robe with a clean handkerchief, a young man stepped out of one of these doors carrying a limp snake. The bakers left a wide path between the young man and the door. The only person who didn't move out of the way was Orvis, who was busy.

“Excuse me, sir.”

“Yes?” Orvis looked up. He froze when he saw the snake, but Orvis didn't jump back in fright the way someone less attached to his dignity might have done.

“Young man, that is a poisonous snake you have in your hand.”

“Yes, sir, it's asleep.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir,” the journeyman baker explained. “They crawl into the cold storage pantries sometimes and fall asleep there. I like to pick them up and carry them away before they wake up enough to eat anything.”

“Why not kill them?” It seemed like a more obvious solution to Orvis.

“Well, they eat the seagull eggs, sir, and that keeps the seagull population down.”

Orvis had to agree that anything that got rid of seagulls couldn't be all bad. Seagulls were a terrible pest in Monemvassia. They came in with the fishing ships and roosted all over the island, leaving dirty streaks on the laundry hung up to dry and on the one statue in the kingdom, the first king of Monemvassia, holding a eucalyptus spool in one hand.

“So go ahead and get rid of it then,” said Orvis, and the young man disappeared through the bakery door.

Orvis returned the handkerchief to its owner and was about to leave when one of the master bakers coughed politely.

“Excuse me, Minister, but I wonder if you could tell us any news. There have been rumors about a bandit, Spiro the Unpopular.”

“Oh?” said Orvis at his most haughty.

“Well, yes,” said the baker. “And you being a
minister and no doubt a very important man, I was sure that if there were anything to be concerned about, you would surely know.” This just shows that the master baker was a smart man. It was no wonder his bakery was the largest on the island.

“My good man,” said Orvis, “let me lay your fears to rest.” And he proceeded to tell the baker all the reasons why he had nothing to worry about, which only made the old baker more nervous than ever. Orvis was still going on when the journeyman baker returned from having disposed of the cliff snake.

“Any news from the king?” he asked.

Orvis went back to being silent and haughty. “No,” he said, and turned to go.

“Wonder if anyone will recognize him when he shows up,” said the journeyman. “You'd think anyone at all could arrive and say that he was the king.”

Orvis paused in the doorway.

“I could be king myself,” said the young man, and he puffed out his chest and struck a royal pose that was spoiled by the smile on his face. The rest of the bakery laughed.

“All hail King Nele,” called out someone in the back.

Orvis looked at the young baker thoughtfully. Most Monemvassians had broad shoulders and short legs. Their hair tended to be thick and dark and curly. But the old king and his son had had high foreheads and straightish fair hair. In the
king's case, the hair had wisped away, leaving his pink skin to show through. The young baker, with his sandy-colored hair and his fair skin, could in fact pass for the missing king.

Someone bumped into Orvis, who was still blocking the bakery door. Distracted by his thoughts, the minister of cultural events was more polite than usual. He excused himself and hurried away. By the time he got home, he was quite pleased with the plan he had in mind—so pleased that when his daughter asked if he would take her to the puppet show the following month at the summer spool festival, he actually agreed, to his daughter's surprise. She had expected the same answer he gave every year, which was absolutely not—he spent too much time organizing the event to waste money attending it himself. (The ministry of cultural events did not pay well. No position on the council did.)

 

That evening, Nele and the other employees filed out of the bakery at closing time. All of them carried the leftover bread that they would have for dinner. As Nele walked down the street toward his home, someone fell into step beside him. He assumed it was his friend Bet, but when he looked, he saw it was Orvis, minister of cultural events. Orvis asked if Nele had just a few minutes to talk.

Orvis wanted to know if Nele had any family. Nele said he had none. What had Nele's father done
before he died? Nele explained that he had been apprenticed before he had any clear idea of how his father occupied his time. Orvis smiled. And did Nele remember where he had lived before he had been apprenticed? Nele did not. It was a big house with a wonderful garden, but more he couldn't say. Orvis rubbed his hands in delight and explained that he had considered what Nele had said in jest earlier that day, and perhaps it was true. Perhaps Nele was the missing king and didn't know it.

Nele looked at him in blank consternation. His eyes were round, and Orvis began to think maybe the boy was not very bright. That suited Orvis.

Someone standing beside them gave a low whistle. It was Bet. “King Nele,” said Bet. “What a laugh.”

Orvis jumped. He hadn't realized that he and Nele were not alone. “I remind you, young man, that the missing king's given name was Maninele.”

“So?” said Bet.

BOOK: Instead of Three Wishes
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