The soldier was cheerful, too. He sat leaning against the stone wall with Whippersnapper asleep in his hat beside him and gazed out at the sunset. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You get a wish from your misty blue friend tomorrow, don’t you? You know the most practical wish you could make? You should wish for that magic carpet back. Then we could really get on.”
“It would be just as easy to wish ourselves straight to Kingsbury, intelligent infantryman,” Abdullah pointed out—a little sullenly, if the truth be told.
“Ah, yes, but I’ve got that genie’s measure now, and I know he’d mess that wish up if he possibly could,” the soldier said. “My point is, you know how to work that carpet, and you could get us there with much less trouble and a wish in hand for emergencies.”
This was sound sense. Nevertheless, Abdullah only grunted. This was because the way the soldier put his advice had made Abdullah suddenly see things a whole new way. Of course, the soldier had got the genie’s measure. The soldier was like that. He was an expert in getting other people to do what he wanted. The only creature that could make the soldier do something he did not want was Midnight, and Midnight did things she did not want only when Whippersnapper wanted something. That put the kitten right at the top of the pecking order. A kitten! thought Abdullah. And since the soldier had the genie’s measure, and the genie was very definitely on top of Abdullah, that put Abdullah right down at the bottom. No wonder he had been feeling so put-upon! It did not make him feel any better to realize that things had been exactly the same way with his father’s first wife’s relations.
So Abdullah only grunted, which in Zanzib would have counted as shocking rudeness, but the soldier was quite unaware of it. He pointed cheerfully at the sky. “Lovely sunset again. Look, there’s another castle.”
The soldier was right. There was a glory of yellow lakes in the sky, and islands and promontories, and one long indigo headland of cloud with a frowning square cloud like a fortress on it. “It is not the same as the other castle,” Abdullah said. He felt it was time he asserted himself.
“Of course not. You never get the same cloud twice,” said the soldier.
Abdullah contrived to be the first one awake the next morning. Dawn was still flaring across the sky when he sprang up, seized the genie bottle, and took it some distance away from the ruins where their camp was. “Genie,” he said. “Appear.”
A flutter of steam appeared at the mouth of the bottle, grudging and ghostly. “What’s this?” it said. “Where’s all the talk about jewels and flowers and so forth?”
“You told me you did not like it. I have discontinued it,” said Abdullah. “I have now become a realist. The wish I want to make is in accordance with my new outlook.”
“Ah,” said the wisp of genie. “You’re going to ask for the magic carpet back.”
“Not at all,” said Abdullah. This so surprised the genie that he rose right out of the bottle and regarded Abdullah with wide eyes, which in the dawnlight looked solid and shiny and almost like human eyes. “I shall explain,” said Abdullah. “Thus. Fate is clearly determined to delay my search for Flower-in-the-Night. This is in spite of the fact that Fate has also decreed that I shall marry her. Any attempt I make to go against Fate causes you to make sure that my wish does no good to anyone and usually also ensures that I get pursued by persons on camels or horses. Or else the soldier causes me to waste a wish. Since I am tired both of your malice and of the soldier’s so continually getting his own way, I have decided to challenge Fate instead. I intend to waste every wish deliberately from now on. Fate will then be forced to take a hand, or else the prophecy concerning Flower-in-the-Night will never be fulfilled.”
“You’re being childish,” said the genie. “Or heroic. Or possibly mad.”
“No—realistic,” said Abdullah. “Furthermore, I shall challenge you by wasting the wishes in a way that might do good somewhere to someone.”
The genie looked decidedly sarcastic at this. “And what is your wish today? Homes for orphans? Sight for the blind? Or do you simply want all the money in the world taken away from the rich and given to the poor?”
“I was thinking,” said Abdullah, “that I might wish that those two bandits whom you transformed into toads should be restored to their own shape.”
A look of malicious glee spread over the genie’s face. “You might do worse. I could grant you that one with pleasure.”
“What is the drawback to that wish?” asked Abdullah.
“Oh, not much,” said the genie. “Simply that the Sultan’s soldiers are camped in that oasis at the moment. The Sultan is convinced that you are still somewhere in the desert. His men are quartering the entire region for you, but I’m sure they will spare a moment for two bandits, if only to show the Sultan how zealous they are.”
Abdullah considered this. “And who else is in the desert who might be in danger from the Sultan’s search?”
The genie looked sideways at him. “You are anxious to waste a wish, aren’t you? Nobody much there except a few carpet weavers and a prophet or so—and Jamal and his dog, of course.”
“Ah,” said Abdullah. “Then I waste this wish on Jamal and his dog. I wish that Jamal and his dog both be instantly transported to a life of ease and prosperity as—let me see—yes, as palace cook and guard dog in the nearest royal palace apart from Zanzib.”
“You make it very difficult,” the genie said pathetically, “for that wish to go wrong.”
“Such was my aim,” said Abdullah. “If I could discover how to make none of your wishes go wrong, it would be a great relief.”
“There is one wish you could make to do that,” said the genie.
He sounded rather wistful, from which Abdullah realized what he meant. The genie wanted to be free of the enchantment that bound him to the bottle. It would be easy enough to waste a wish that way, Abdullah reflected, but only if he could count on the genie’s being grateful enough to help him find Flower-in-the-Night afterward. With this genie, that was most unlikely. And if he freed the genie, then he would have to give up challenging Fate. “I shall think about that wish for later,” he said. “My wish today is for Jamal and his dog. Are they now safe?”
“Yes,” the genie said sulkily. From the look on his smoky face as it vanished inside the bottle, Abdullah had an uneasy feeling that he had somehow contrived to make this wish go wrong, too, but of course, there was no way to tell.
Abdullah turned around to find the soldier watching him. He had no idea how much the soldier had overheard, but he got ready for an argument.
But all the soldier said was “Don’t quite follow your logic in all that,” before suggesting that they walk on until they found a farm where they could buy breakfast.
Abdullah shouldered Midnight again, and they trudged off. All that day they wandered deep lanes again. Though there was no sign of any constables, they did not seem to be getting any nearer to Kingsbury. In fact, when the soldier inquired from a man digging a ditch how far it was to Kingsbury, he was told it was four days’ walk.
Fate! thought Abdullah.
The next morning he went around to the other side of the haystack where they had slept and wished that the two toads in the oasis should now become men.
The genie was very annoyed. “You heard me say that the first person who opened my bottle would become a toad! Do you want me to undo my good work?”
“Yes,” said Abdullah.
“Regardless of the fact that the Sultan’s men are still there and will certainly hang them?” asked the genie.
“I think,” said Abdullah, remembering his experiences as a toad, “that they would rather be men even so.”
“Oh, very well then!” the genie said angrily. “You realize my revenge is in ruins, don’t you? But what do you care? I’m just a daily wish in a bottle to you!”