Small Magic
A Faere Trade Novella
Louis Williams stared at the lamp in his hands, the tarnished copper heavy and almost iridescent against his darker, sepele-shaded skin. It really was a beautiful piece, catching his eye amid the mounds of memories left in his Aunt Dottie’s old attic, now that she’d moved to her new assisted living apartment.
But nothing compared to the man now standing with his arms crossed over his broad chest.
No. Not a man.
“Genie?” Louis eyed him up and down, his skin as brilliant and multi-hued as his lamp — flashing copper, gold, bronze, and even burnished green in the low light. “Do you mean a djinn?”
The genie rolled his shoulders and looked at Louis, his eyes dark as night. “Nah, my magic’s not that old. Not of that time or place. ” He shrugged casually, his shoulder-length black hair falling into his eyes. “Magic is always born out of belief. Mine’s only a few decades old. Born right here in the states, because of some 1960’s sitcom,” he said, nodding at the old, rotary dial television sitting dust-covered and broken in the corner, “but made strong from a 1990’s cartoon.
Louis arched an eyebrow. “A sitcom gave birth to you?”
The genie huffed. “Do I look sixty to you?”
Louis blinked, unsure of what to say. How was he supposed to know what a sixty-year-old genie looked like?
“Strictly speaking, I’m ageless; I was born this way and will die this way. But I’ve been around for about forty years. At least according to the date you told me.” He waved that off dismissively. “My magic — or species, if that’s easier to understand — is around sixty years old.”
“Birthed by belief?” Louis tried not to smirk.
The genie shot Louis a smug, superior look. “Everything, not just magic, exists because someone believed it should, willed it to be so. My kind is just young enough to remember it.”
“People were willed into existence?” Louis shook his head. “By whom?”
The genie shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you; I wasn’t there. But creation is always an act of magic, wouldn’t you say?”
Louis didn’t know what to say to that, so he just pressed his lips together and thought about it.
The genie studied Louis and frowned. “Usually, my magic only works on children; adults tend to have a hard time believing.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how many perfect stray puppies, kittens, and ponies I’ve magicked up in my time.” He raised a curious, arched eyebrow. “How is it that my magic works on you?”
Louis gave a musing grin. “I’ve seen some weird things in my life. Rags to riches stories. Men on the moon. Devices that can both fit in your pocket and connect people halfway across the globe.” He held up his hands, mystified. “None of it makes sense to me; who am I to judge what’s possible or not?”
The genie narrowed his dark eyes. “So you believe anything’s possible?”
Louis just chuckled. “Well, you’re here, so it would seem so.” He tilted his head and jutted his chin at him. “So what do I call you?”
He bowed his head. “We don’t really get names. What would be the point? It’s not exactly a long-term relationship. You get three wishes, then it’s back to the lamp for me.”
“Well, until then, I’ve got to call you something.” And he couldn’t call him Genie, not without thinking of Robin Williams. “I know you said you weren’t one, but what about Genn.”
“Jen?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Like Jennifer?”
Louis flushed. “No, like Genn, as in short for genie.”
“I don’t think that’s how abbreviations work,” the man said with a confused look. “Aren’t you changing the letter’s sound?”
Louis shrugged. “English is weird and malleable. Think of it like gif.” Louis frowned. Did that even mean anything to a man — a genie — like him? He shook his head. “If you prefer something else…”
“Whatever you want.” He stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles. “Speaking of which, it’s wish time. What do you wish, Master?”
Louis frowned. “Yeah,” he said with a grimace, “not that.” He knew there were people out there who did — and, hey, Louis always figured you do you — but it was hard to be a black man in this country and play those kinds of Master/slave power games. “Let’s stick with Louis and Genn.”
He bowed his head. “Very well, Louis.” He waved his hand dramatically. “What is your wish?”
“Oh no.” Louis shook his head and turned to pace the attic. “I’ve read this story before. Genies are tricksters by nature. Quintessential be careful what you wish for creatures.”
Genn lifted a noncommittal shoulder and gave a small, but intriguing smile. “Don’t believe everything you read.”
Louis snorted. “Like I said, I’m a believer.”
Genn rolled his eyes and flopped down on the antique fainting couch, a cloud of dust kicking up under his weight. “Well, you’re the Mast—” He caught himself on a cough. “You’re in charge. I’ll just enjoy stretching my legs until you decide.”
Louis shot him a skeptical look. “You’re really going to follow me around until I make a wish?”
Genn kicked his feet up on the cushions and put his arms behind his head, the corded muscles stretching and flexing, causing the light to play across the man’s burnished skin. “That is the deal.”
“You must have something better to do.”
“Really don’t.”
Louis paused. His gaze narrowed and his nose wrinkled. “That’s sad.”
Genn blinked before staring off at the plank wood ceiling, the cocky light in his dark eyes dimming a bit. “Kinda is.”
Sounded pretty lonely too. “What if I wish you free?” Wasn’t that what the heroes did in those stories?
He shrugged. “Genies and our lamps are intertwined; our stories — the magic and belief that keeps us alive — rely on them. Like turtles and their shells, we can’t really survive without them. Wish me free and there’ll be a lot of flash and sparkle from all the noble, warm fuzzies you’ll have, all so I can wait for the next person to rub-a-dub-dub and start the whole story over again.”
Louis sighed and sat down on the wood floor. “So we’re stuck together until I make a wish?”
Genn held up his fingers and waved them. “Three, to be exact.”
“So, if it’s not to be free,” Louis asked, “what would you wish for, if you were me?”
“Telling feels like cheating.”
“Think of it more as a consult.” After all, who would be better to ask? The genie had to be an expert by now, after decades of seeing what made a good wish and what didn’t. “Or I could just ask for some stray pets and be done with it.”
“Anything but that.” Genn chuckled before thinking about it. “Don’t ask for things. We aren’t conjurers by nature.” He gave a sly smile. “Tricksters. Thieves. Liars. Our power is great, but it’s far easier to steal than to create.”
“No things.” Gottcha. “What else?”
He tilted his head one way and then the other, his loose, black locks swaying around his face. “Nothing big. Nothing world-changing. Or even life-changing; things can get complicated and run astray. The bigger the ask — the more I have to tinker with or alter the wider world — the more likely it is for things to veer off path and go places neither of us intended. Wishes are changes; and change is always hard and not always good.”
Louis bit his lip and nodded. Wise words. “Okay, then what should I ask for?”
“An experience.” Genn looked off into the sunlit afternoon through the tiny attic window. “That’s what I’d ask for. Some fleeting moment that can’t last, but that you can keep forever.” He turned to face Louis. “I’ll let you in on an insider secret.” He smiled mischievously. “The shortest-lived magic is always the hardest to screw up.”
An experience. “What kind?”
Genn shrugged. “Whatever. Ever want to skydive over the Gold Coast? Or trek through the Amazon? Or be in the middle of an orgy of Hollywood starlets? Whatever your little heart desires.”
Louis shook his head. “I hate heights. And leaving home. And starlets...” He gave a small laugh, feeling his face flush. “Not, uh, really my thing.”
Genn raised an eyebrow and held out his hands in the universal sign of indifferent neutrality. “Whatever your heart desires.”
Louis hung his head and gave a tense chuckle. “I wouldn’t even know what to do in the Amazon or the Gold Coast.” Or at an orgy. Knowing what to do with only one other partner never came terribly naturally to him, much less multiple ones. Hell, he’d only ever had the one.
It wasn’t always easy being the only openly gay person in a small town. It’d been, by far, harder when he’d been younger. When neither he nor anyone around him had really had the words to talk about it. But Louis knew, because of those more brave and prominent than he was and the shift in culture they’d moved like a mountain or a miracle, that he’d been lucky. His aunt may not have always understood him, but she’d always loved him enough to try. To find the words and ways to let him know that he mattered more to her than beliefs that helped no one and hurt people like him. And the same was true of most of the people in town. His friends. His neighbors.
It hadn’t always been easy and might never be perfect, but this was and would always be his home. It was where he belonged.
But it could be lonely too sometimes. To watch his friends date and marry and have kids. To know that wasn’t and might never be possible for him here.
His aunt had told him, when she’d decided to move into the assisted living home, that he should leave. Live. Go to some metropolitan hub and find a life — and a love — that, no matter how amazingly accepting this town was, he could never find in such a remote place.
But he was, by nature, a homebody; how did someone like that leave his hometown? And did he even really want to?
Louis scrunched his nose in thought. What did he really, really want? Sighing, he looked about the room. Well, if he was honest with himself. “What I really want is help cleaning up this place.”
Genn smiled and leapt to his feet. “Is that your wish?”
“Sure.” Louis shrugged. “I guess.”
Genn’s dark eyes sparkled impishly. “Then say it...”
Louis tilted his head one way and then the other thoughtfully. It was just a little housecleaning. What could go wrong? “I wish for your help to clean up my aunt’s house.”
Genn clapped his hands excitedly before giving a little whoop. He crossed his arms over his chest dramatically and bowed his head. “Your wish,” he said with a gleeful nod, “my command...”
To read the rest, check out my genie romance novella “Small Magic.”
Be careful what you wish.
When Louis Williams finds an old genie lamp in his aunt’s old stuff, he knows better than to mess with magic. But that won’t stop this handsome trickster from messing back!
Genn’s been stuck in that stuffy lamp for so long, all he wants is to do a little magic and have a little fun. But what’s a genie to do with a Master that literally wants nothing from him? And why does that make him even more determined to grant his every happiness, sure that in doing so maybe—just maybe—Genn can find his own.
Spice level: slow-burn to a kiss at the end
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