Not a Mere Man
Layal El-Ayoubi - 2023
Those who don’t know any better might think that my home is that of an infidel. The gods set their feet upon the clouds and glare down at my family. There is no valid explanation other than this: They must know of my father Odysseus who went to war at Troy and never returned. Whether he is dead or alive is unknown to me, and for all I truly know about him, I might mistake him for the lame blind man who wanders the streets.
He has been absent for the entirety of my youth. Absent while my mother has cried tears of longing to his name. Absent to fend off the filthy froths of men that traipse in the halls of my home trying to win the affections of my mother. These vulgar men who treat themselves to lavish food, drink, and entertainment. Odysseus, the courageous soldier and unrelenting force who once sat atop the throne of Ithaca, now has a son whose riches have been expended, whose home has collapsed in shame, and whose reputation has been extinguished.
As I sit amongst the horde of unwelcome men who absent-mindedly muse at the song of the entertainer Phemuis, a broad-shouldered man with strides akin to cement approaches the front gate. Rushing to invite him in, I leap from my seat and soon learn that this stern soul is known as Mentes. When he mentions that he had once been a friend to my father, I become skeptical of his intentions and curious of his knowledge. Many a traveler had come before him claiming to have known the great Odysseus or to have knowledge of what has become of him. After dining together, Mentes remains stagnant, his hands firm with intent. His fatherly expression then meets my eyes as he inquires, “Who are these banqueters? And what is the occasion?..They look so arrogant and self-indulgent, making themselves at home. A wise observer would surely disapprove of how they act” (112). I hear the implications laced in his tactically worded comment.
“Mentes’s intentions seem righteous,” I think to myself.
I want to investigate further, but soon I find my focus drifting. I can’t help but wallow in the misfortune that has been brought upon us by my supposed father.
Since his departure when I was a baby, our house has been cast into an earthquake
fabricated by the Lord Poseidon himself. All clouds, all around, we are fated for a life of torment. If only he had died an honorable man at war, we could have had a proper burial with a procession through the streets of Ithaca and a feast to celebrate his life. My mother would have remarried to one of her many suitors. I would have started upon my own adventures in building a family. I could have said farewell to a father I never knew. The gods would have no reason to cast our family into the jaws of misery, and, for once, I would have a reputation to put to my name. But truly, life can never be that simple or easy for me. This man must have dishonored my family. He must have died a cowardly death or fled the battlefield as only a man so hated by the gods could bring such misfortune upon us.
Mentes interrupts my thoughts to speak more leathery words of wisdom: “You need Odysseus to come back home and lay his hands on all those shameless suitors...A bitter courtship and a short life for them! But whether he comes to take revenge or not, is with the gods. You must consider how best to drive these suitors from your house. Come, listen carefully to what I say” (113). As he continues, his words are a captive spark illuminating a growing fire under my tongue. Mentes speaks of what a valiant leader and right-hearted man Odysseus was. I look at his well-worn expression of outrage and am shocked to see truth in his eyes. Mentes insists that the task is mine to banish the suitors from my household and then to go out in search of my father. I am to gather my wits to expel these wretched men from my halls for should he return, my father would restore our household and dry my mother’s tears. These men are older and wiser. These men are more cunning and malicious. Their tricks might grease the footholds of my climb to find my father.
I speculate that Mentes is not like other men. He seeks to rearrange the mind with a feather rather than to plunge the heart with a gladius. I know that I must follow the truthful advice of wise Mentes. As he insists on departing, he flies away as an owl, and it is revealed that he is not a mere man but a god.
Perhaps the favor of the gods has swayed. Is it possible that they have decided to take pity on the ruin that is my household? And for what reason? To extend such paternal words of wisdom to the son of a dishonorable man would be unheard of. It is decided that Odysseus, my father, is a man of which I have much luck to claim as my blood. His absence has caused much hardship, but, with one slash of his staff, this god had broken the stitches of a wounded and hollow demeanor to fill it with courage, determination, and strength. Pursuing my voice for the first time and surpassing the expectations of these crooked men, I would live up to Odysseus’s name. I would restore my household to its former glory and rule over Ithaca with my father by my side or with him properly departed to Hades.
Layal El-Ayoubi - 2023
Those who don’t know any better might think that my home is that of an infidel. The gods set their feet upon the clouds and glare down at my family. There is no valid explanation other than this: They must know of my father Odysseus who went to war at Troy and never returned. Whether he is dead or alive is unknown to me, and for all I truly know about him, I might mistake him for the lame blind man who wanders the streets.
He has been absent for the entirety of my youth. Absent while my mother has cried tears of longing to his name. Absent to fend off the filthy froths of men that traipse in the halls of my home trying to win the affections of my mother. These vulgar men who treat themselves to lavish food, drink, and entertainment. Odysseus, the courageous soldier and unrelenting force who once sat atop the throne of Ithaca, now has a son whose riches have been expended, whose home has collapsed in shame, and whose reputation has been extinguished.
As I sit amongst the horde of unwelcome men who absent-mindedly muse at the song of the entertainer Phemuis, a broad-shouldered man with strides akin to cement approaches the front gate. Rushing to invite him in, I leap from my seat and soon learn that this stern soul is known as Mentes. When he mentions that he had once been a friend to my father, I become skeptical of his intentions and curious of his knowledge. Many a traveler had come before him claiming to have known the great Odysseus or to have knowledge of what has become of him. After dining together, Mentes remains stagnant, his hands firm with intent. His fatherly expression then meets my eyes as he inquires, “Who are these banqueters? And what is the occasion?..They look so arrogant and self-indulgent, making themselves at home. A wise observer would surely disapprove of how they act” (112). I hear the implications laced in his tactically worded comment.
“Mentes’s intentions seem righteous,” I think to myself.
I want to investigate further, but soon I find my focus drifting. I can’t help but wallow in the misfortune that has been brought upon us by my supposed father.
Since his departure when I was a baby, our house has been cast into an earthquake
fabricated by the Lord Poseidon himself. All clouds, all around, we are fated for a life of torment. If only he had died an honorable man at war, we could have had a proper burial with a procession through the streets of Ithaca and a feast to celebrate his life. My mother would have remarried to one of her many suitors. I would have started upon my own adventures in building a family. I could have said farewell to a father I never knew. The gods would have no reason to cast our family into the jaws of misery, and, for once, I would have a reputation to put to my name. But truly, life can never be that simple or easy for me. This man must have dishonored my family. He must have died a cowardly death or fled the battlefield as only a man so hated by the gods could bring such misfortune upon us.
Mentes interrupts my thoughts to speak more leathery words of wisdom: “You need Odysseus to come back home and lay his hands on all those shameless suitors...A bitter courtship and a short life for them! But whether he comes to take revenge or not, is with the gods. You must consider how best to drive these suitors from your house. Come, listen carefully to what I say” (113). As he continues, his words are a captive spark illuminating a growing fire under my tongue. Mentes speaks of what a valiant leader and right-hearted man Odysseus was. I look at his well-worn expression of outrage and am shocked to see truth in his eyes. Mentes insists that the task is mine to banish the suitors from my household and then to go out in search of my father. I am to gather my wits to expel these wretched men from my halls for should he return, my father would restore our household and dry my mother’s tears. These men are older and wiser. These men are more cunning and malicious. Their tricks might grease the footholds of my climb to find my father.
I speculate that Mentes is not like other men. He seeks to rearrange the mind with a feather rather than to plunge the heart with a gladius. I know that I must follow the truthful advice of wise Mentes. As he insists on departing, he flies away as an owl, and it is revealed that he is not a mere man but a god.
Perhaps the favor of the gods has swayed. Is it possible that they have decided to take pity on the ruin that is my household? And for what reason? To extend such paternal words of wisdom to the son of a dishonorable man would be unheard of. It is decided that Odysseus, my father, is a man of which I have much luck to claim as my blood. His absence has caused much hardship, but, with one slash of his staff, this god had broken the stitches of a wounded and hollow demeanor to fill it with courage, determination, and strength. Pursuing my voice for the first time and surpassing the expectations of these crooked men, I would live up to Odysseus’s name. I would restore my household to its former glory and rule over Ithaca with my father by my side or with him properly departed to Hades.
Habits
Calder Sprinkle - 2021
“Now remember, Lydia,” said Dad, just like he always did as they knocked on the door, “don’t go taking everything Grandpa says about monsters and stuff seriously, ok? We’re all just having ourselves a bit of fun.”
“Enter ye!” came the voice of Nibs, Lydia’s grandfather, from the kitchen. Mom laughed. Dad shrugged and pushed open the door.
Every month, Lydia’s family made a habit of driving out to the coast to visit her Grandpa Nibs for dinner and stories. Nibs had been a sailor in his day and his house told stories of it; a figurehead above the front door, a stuffed parrot on the mantlepiece, an astrolabes on the shelf, and so on. While Mom loved Nibs’ stories of adventure on the high seas, Dad was more of a literalist. But he was a fan of sailing and loved it when Nibs described how--
“Me and my buddies were fighting that cursed wind, trying to haul ourselves back north, zig zagin’ across the sound when a big wave came up—CRASH— swamped our boat! We was grabbin’ anything we could get our hands on: buckets, cups, paddles, bailing water out as fast as we could—"
“How big was the boat?”
“I don’t know, maybe a twenty-footer or so? I swear it hit thirty on a good day.”
“Was it an outrigger, or—“
“Son, if it was an outrigger, how’d’ya reckon we took on more sea water than an elephant in an African oasis?”
By this time, Lydia would have left the room. She like Nibs’ tales, but it got sooo boring when her dad interrupted.
“More of the story, less of the rigging,” she thought to herself, wandering off into the house.
It had become her custom to count things on these escapes from the living room; shiny things, glowing things, strange things; lately, she had been colors.
“What haven’t I done yet? I did purple last time, blue before . . .” She thought about it for a while. “What about brown?” she wondered. “Or wood colored.”
This turned out to be a mistake because by the time she’d left the kitchen, she was already up to 49 and reached 342 after she had made it all the way around the house.
“I shouted ‘I knew it! This storm is cursed!’ and I grabbed the tiller and—”
“Tiller? Not a wheel?” interrupted Dad.
Lydia did a 180 and walked right back out again. It looked like she was going to be continuing her counting upstairs.
The second story of Nibs’ house was not quite as normal as the first. Here, the old sailing gear was not contained like it was on the ground floor: it spilled out of every room, sat on every shelf, hung above every door. Pieces of broken wood, old navigation instruments, even a few barnacles hanging around on the bookcases.
The first room Lydia went into was the guest room; Grandpa hadn’t had guests since his wife passed away around seven years before, so this room had been completely taken over by memos from the past.
“373, 374, 375,” she said, counting the three cardboard boxes sitting on the bed. On the wall hung a ship’s wheel with one half that looked like it had been blackened by a blast of fire. “376,” said Lydia and headed back out.
At the end of the upstairs hallway was Grandpa’s bedroom. Lydia tried the door and found it locked. “Oh well,” she said, looking up to the top of the doorframe to see if Grandpa Nibs had nailed on a nameplate or something. On the roof above there was a square of wood that didn’t quite fit in.
“I didn’t know he had an attic,” Lydia said out loud. Then: “Oh no. If there are this many brown things down here, just imagine what’s up there!”
It was a dire straight of affairs; She could just ignore it, but Lydia had always been a stickler for playing fair. “It’s only right,” she said to herself.
On the wall was a latch. Sighing, she pulled it.
Nothing happened. She tried again. This time, there was a squeak of old hinges and a thump as the rope ladder hit the ground, falling from where the trapdoor had opened. Lydia grabbed hold of the ladder and stepped on. The ladder, however, was feeling contrary that day and immediately started swing around, and Lydia had to just hang on and wait for it to calm down. One rung at a time, she made her way up until her head bumping into the trapdoor told her that she was at the top. She reached up with one hand and pushed it fully open and climbed into the attic.
All across the floor were scattered boxes and crates; pieces of wood, rope, and old sailor’s apparel were spilling out over sides onto the floor. Off in a far corner, there was a neat stack of bins with labels like “English” and “Math and stuff I don’t particularly care about” from Nibs’ school days.
“Oh, shoot!” Lydia said, seeing a stack of wooden boards in one corner. As she begrudgingly began to count them, she muttered, “Someone’s out to get me.”
Suddenly, she had a thought. “Do I have to look in the boxes too?” Lydia groaned as she thought of how many more things there probably were. It would take a million years! “If whatever’s in front of me is locked, I won’t count anything inside boxes. If it’s open, I will,” Lydia decided.
She looked down. Directly in front of her was an old seafaring trunk with a latch that had once held a lock. But the lock was nowhere in sight.
“Ugh,” she said, leaning down. There was a strange humming noise emanating from the trunk. “That’s funny,” she said, hesitating. Knowing Grandpa Nibs, there was no telling what would be in there. She carefully lifted the latch and--
Ka-POW!!
The lid flew violently open and out shot two figures, arching through the air before crashing into the floor with dull thuds.
The first got to his feet and rubbed his head. “Who are you?”
“Uh, Lydia?”
“Well, are you or aren’t you?” said the other, leaping up.
“I guess I am . . . Who are you?”
The first one struck a pose. “I’m the Genie of the Box!”
“Co-Genie!” said the other.
“Shut up!”
“Co-Genie!” she insisted.
“I said, shut—”
“Just say Co-Genie and I will!”
“Fine!” said the first Genie, begrudgingly. “CO-Genie of the box!”
The second grinned. “There we go!”
Lydia took a step back.
“What did you expect?” asked the first Genie, staring at her. “Winnie-the-Pooh?”
“Not particularly, no,” Lydia replied. “A pile of seafaring junk, I suppose?”
“Seafaring Junk?” said the second Genie. “Are you calling ME seafaring junk??”
“Uh, no?”
The Genie stopped. “Oh. Cool.”
“She’s not normally like this,” sighed the first Genie.
Lydia hesitated. “So if y’all are Genies, does that mean I get wishes?”
“Uh . . . well—”
“—Well, duh,” interrupted the first Genie, suddenly rising up from the floor and landing on a pile of boxes. “We’re Genies, right?” he said.
“How many wishes?” Lydia asked.
“Three.”
“Three? But there are two of you! Shouldn’t I get six?”
“NO!” said the two Genies in unison.
“Why not?” Lydia complained.
“Because that’s not how it works!” said the pile of boxes; the Genie had disappeared and was now inhabiting one of them just because he could.
“Well that’s stupid.” said Lydia. “Y’all were just arguing about being ‘Co-Genies’ and I only get half the deal.”
“Too bad,” said the Genie on the ground.
“And if you really are Co-Genies—"
“Na na na na na,” said the first Genie, popping out of the box with a shower of sparks. “Y’know what? Fine. You can have six wishes.”
“WHAT?” shouted the floor Genie, and before her counterpart could respond, she had dived at him, grabbed him by the scuff of his neck and hurled him back into the box, slamming the lid and sitting resolutely on it. The box shuddered and thumped.
“I hate him!” she said. “I hate him so much. You don’t even realize.”
Lydia just stood there open-mouthed, trying to figure out exactly what she was witnessing. “So—"
“You get one wish,” said the Genie.
“ONE?”
“One.”
“Wow,” said Lydia. “You’re a stingy Genie.”
“Actually,” said the Genie, doing a hairflip, “I’m just emo.”
“What.”
“Emo. Do you want a wish or not?”
“Yeah?”
“Then wish away,” said the Genie. The trunk gave a rattle and she kicked it viciously. “I don’t want to sit here all day!”
Lydia thought fast. “I wish for infin—“
“No infinite wishes! Didn’t you learn ANYTHING from Aladdin? Haven’t you seen Alad—? Oh, never mind. Your generation is incredibly uneducated,” said the Genie of the Box.
“Ok,” said a muffled voice. “If you’re going to yell at me about it, YOU have to say you’re a Co-Genie too!”
“Well I’m not the one trapped in the stupid trunk, am I? Congratulations, you—WAAAAAAH!!!”
The lid of the trunk suddenly flew up, catapulting Ms. Emo Genie into the ceiling.
“Tada!” shouted the other. “FREEDOM FOR SCOTLAND!!!”
“CHARGE!” screamed the other Genie, falling back down directly on top of him. “I’ll teach you to—"
“Lydia?”
The two Genies froze.
“Lydia, you up here?” came Nibs’ voice, and his head appeared in the opening.
The Genies slowly looked at each other, and then at Nibs, who met their gaze with the Tiger’s Eye.
“Well, well, well,” said Nibs. The Genies gulped. “Looks like you two are in fer—"
“RUN AWAY!!!!!” the two shouted, scrambling over each other and darting back into the trunk. A hand shot up, grabbed the lid, and slammed it down with a loud crack.
“OW! That was my finger, you dimwit!”
Nebs laughed and hauled himself into the attic. “Are you alright, Lydia?”
Lydia just stared at the trunk and nodded.
“Better not t’ mess with them. Nasty little buggers.”
“You knew they were there?” asked Lydia.
Nibs smiled. “O’ course! It’s my attic, after all. I’d hardly let ‘em stay here without me knowing ‘bout it.”
“What are they?”
“They’re quite the pair is what they are. Angsty homeless ocean spirits.”
“Emo,” muttered the box.
“Homeless?”
“Yep,” said Nibs, looking around the attic. “Got kicked out of the sea fer causing too much trouble ‘round one of the Triton Temples or something.”
“What are— How long—” started Lydia. “Why are they here?”
“Well, they can’t exactly go back to the ocean unless they want to get beat up by the Tritons. If they float around in the air though, they’ll fade and vanish in a couple o’ days. This trunk here,” Nibs said, giving it a pat, “spent decades underwater in a shipwreck, so it’s infused with a sort o’ . . . power that lives at the bottom o’ the sea. They’ll be alright as long as they come back here each night.”
“Can they really give you wishes?”
“Them? Oh no, they just make trouble,” chuckled Nibs, stooping down to pick up the trunk’s lock from where it was hiding under an old flag. “When I first found out they lived in the trunk, I thought they were real Genies too. But they just ‘grant wishes’ by stealin’ things.”
“Oh!” said Lydia. “Rude!”
Her grandfather laughed, walking over to the trunk and padlocking it shut. “Quite. Now, a little bird, o’ shall I say, my stuffed parrot, told me that you were countin’ all o’ the brown things in the house.”
“How did you—"
“And there just happen to be 539 brown things in the attic,” said Nibs, winking at her and starting down the ladder. “Now, what rooms are left?”
Calder Sprinkle - 2021
“Now remember, Lydia,” said Dad, just like he always did as they knocked on the door, “don’t go taking everything Grandpa says about monsters and stuff seriously, ok? We’re all just having ourselves a bit of fun.”
“Enter ye!” came the voice of Nibs, Lydia’s grandfather, from the kitchen. Mom laughed. Dad shrugged and pushed open the door.
Every month, Lydia’s family made a habit of driving out to the coast to visit her Grandpa Nibs for dinner and stories. Nibs had been a sailor in his day and his house told stories of it; a figurehead above the front door, a stuffed parrot on the mantlepiece, an astrolabes on the shelf, and so on. While Mom loved Nibs’ stories of adventure on the high seas, Dad was more of a literalist. But he was a fan of sailing and loved it when Nibs described how--
“Me and my buddies were fighting that cursed wind, trying to haul ourselves back north, zig zagin’ across the sound when a big wave came up—CRASH— swamped our boat! We was grabbin’ anything we could get our hands on: buckets, cups, paddles, bailing water out as fast as we could—"
“How big was the boat?”
“I don’t know, maybe a twenty-footer or so? I swear it hit thirty on a good day.”
“Was it an outrigger, or—“
“Son, if it was an outrigger, how’d’ya reckon we took on more sea water than an elephant in an African oasis?”
By this time, Lydia would have left the room. She like Nibs’ tales, but it got sooo boring when her dad interrupted.
“More of the story, less of the rigging,” she thought to herself, wandering off into the house.
It had become her custom to count things on these escapes from the living room; shiny things, glowing things, strange things; lately, she had been colors.
“What haven’t I done yet? I did purple last time, blue before . . .” She thought about it for a while. “What about brown?” she wondered. “Or wood colored.”
This turned out to be a mistake because by the time she’d left the kitchen, she was already up to 49 and reached 342 after she had made it all the way around the house.
“I shouted ‘I knew it! This storm is cursed!’ and I grabbed the tiller and—”
“Tiller? Not a wheel?” interrupted Dad.
Lydia did a 180 and walked right back out again. It looked like she was going to be continuing her counting upstairs.
The second story of Nibs’ house was not quite as normal as the first. Here, the old sailing gear was not contained like it was on the ground floor: it spilled out of every room, sat on every shelf, hung above every door. Pieces of broken wood, old navigation instruments, even a few barnacles hanging around on the bookcases.
The first room Lydia went into was the guest room; Grandpa hadn’t had guests since his wife passed away around seven years before, so this room had been completely taken over by memos from the past.
“373, 374, 375,” she said, counting the three cardboard boxes sitting on the bed. On the wall hung a ship’s wheel with one half that looked like it had been blackened by a blast of fire. “376,” said Lydia and headed back out.
At the end of the upstairs hallway was Grandpa’s bedroom. Lydia tried the door and found it locked. “Oh well,” she said, looking up to the top of the doorframe to see if Grandpa Nibs had nailed on a nameplate or something. On the roof above there was a square of wood that didn’t quite fit in.
“I didn’t know he had an attic,” Lydia said out loud. Then: “Oh no. If there are this many brown things down here, just imagine what’s up there!”
It was a dire straight of affairs; She could just ignore it, but Lydia had always been a stickler for playing fair. “It’s only right,” she said to herself.
On the wall was a latch. Sighing, she pulled it.
Nothing happened. She tried again. This time, there was a squeak of old hinges and a thump as the rope ladder hit the ground, falling from where the trapdoor had opened. Lydia grabbed hold of the ladder and stepped on. The ladder, however, was feeling contrary that day and immediately started swing around, and Lydia had to just hang on and wait for it to calm down. One rung at a time, she made her way up until her head bumping into the trapdoor told her that she was at the top. She reached up with one hand and pushed it fully open and climbed into the attic.
All across the floor were scattered boxes and crates; pieces of wood, rope, and old sailor’s apparel were spilling out over sides onto the floor. Off in a far corner, there was a neat stack of bins with labels like “English” and “Math and stuff I don’t particularly care about” from Nibs’ school days.
“Oh, shoot!” Lydia said, seeing a stack of wooden boards in one corner. As she begrudgingly began to count them, she muttered, “Someone’s out to get me.”
Suddenly, she had a thought. “Do I have to look in the boxes too?” Lydia groaned as she thought of how many more things there probably were. It would take a million years! “If whatever’s in front of me is locked, I won’t count anything inside boxes. If it’s open, I will,” Lydia decided.
She looked down. Directly in front of her was an old seafaring trunk with a latch that had once held a lock. But the lock was nowhere in sight.
“Ugh,” she said, leaning down. There was a strange humming noise emanating from the trunk. “That’s funny,” she said, hesitating. Knowing Grandpa Nibs, there was no telling what would be in there. She carefully lifted the latch and--
Ka-POW!!
The lid flew violently open and out shot two figures, arching through the air before crashing into the floor with dull thuds.
The first got to his feet and rubbed his head. “Who are you?”
“Uh, Lydia?”
“Well, are you or aren’t you?” said the other, leaping up.
“I guess I am . . . Who are you?”
The first one struck a pose. “I’m the Genie of the Box!”
“Co-Genie!” said the other.
“Shut up!”
“Co-Genie!” she insisted.
“I said, shut—”
“Just say Co-Genie and I will!”
“Fine!” said the first Genie, begrudgingly. “CO-Genie of the box!”
The second grinned. “There we go!”
Lydia took a step back.
“What did you expect?” asked the first Genie, staring at her. “Winnie-the-Pooh?”
“Not particularly, no,” Lydia replied. “A pile of seafaring junk, I suppose?”
“Seafaring Junk?” said the second Genie. “Are you calling ME seafaring junk??”
“Uh, no?”
The Genie stopped. “Oh. Cool.”
“She’s not normally like this,” sighed the first Genie.
Lydia hesitated. “So if y’all are Genies, does that mean I get wishes?”
“Uh . . . well—”
“—Well, duh,” interrupted the first Genie, suddenly rising up from the floor and landing on a pile of boxes. “We’re Genies, right?” he said.
“How many wishes?” Lydia asked.
“Three.”
“Three? But there are two of you! Shouldn’t I get six?”
“NO!” said the two Genies in unison.
“Why not?” Lydia complained.
“Because that’s not how it works!” said the pile of boxes; the Genie had disappeared and was now inhabiting one of them just because he could.
“Well that’s stupid.” said Lydia. “Y’all were just arguing about being ‘Co-Genies’ and I only get half the deal.”
“Too bad,” said the Genie on the ground.
“And if you really are Co-Genies—"
“Na na na na na,” said the first Genie, popping out of the box with a shower of sparks. “Y’know what? Fine. You can have six wishes.”
“WHAT?” shouted the floor Genie, and before her counterpart could respond, she had dived at him, grabbed him by the scuff of his neck and hurled him back into the box, slamming the lid and sitting resolutely on it. The box shuddered and thumped.
“I hate him!” she said. “I hate him so much. You don’t even realize.”
Lydia just stood there open-mouthed, trying to figure out exactly what she was witnessing. “So—"
“You get one wish,” said the Genie.
“ONE?”
“One.”
“Wow,” said Lydia. “You’re a stingy Genie.”
“Actually,” said the Genie, doing a hairflip, “I’m just emo.”
“What.”
“Emo. Do you want a wish or not?”
“Yeah?”
“Then wish away,” said the Genie. The trunk gave a rattle and she kicked it viciously. “I don’t want to sit here all day!”
Lydia thought fast. “I wish for infin—“
“No infinite wishes! Didn’t you learn ANYTHING from Aladdin? Haven’t you seen Alad—? Oh, never mind. Your generation is incredibly uneducated,” said the Genie of the Box.
“Ok,” said a muffled voice. “If you’re going to yell at me about it, YOU have to say you’re a Co-Genie too!”
“Well I’m not the one trapped in the stupid trunk, am I? Congratulations, you—WAAAAAAH!!!”
The lid of the trunk suddenly flew up, catapulting Ms. Emo Genie into the ceiling.
“Tada!” shouted the other. “FREEDOM FOR SCOTLAND!!!”
“CHARGE!” screamed the other Genie, falling back down directly on top of him. “I’ll teach you to—"
“Lydia?”
The two Genies froze.
“Lydia, you up here?” came Nibs’ voice, and his head appeared in the opening.
The Genies slowly looked at each other, and then at Nibs, who met their gaze with the Tiger’s Eye.
“Well, well, well,” said Nibs. The Genies gulped. “Looks like you two are in fer—"
“RUN AWAY!!!!!” the two shouted, scrambling over each other and darting back into the trunk. A hand shot up, grabbed the lid, and slammed it down with a loud crack.
“OW! That was my finger, you dimwit!”
Nebs laughed and hauled himself into the attic. “Are you alright, Lydia?”
Lydia just stared at the trunk and nodded.
“Better not t’ mess with them. Nasty little buggers.”
“You knew they were there?” asked Lydia.
Nibs smiled. “O’ course! It’s my attic, after all. I’d hardly let ‘em stay here without me knowing ‘bout it.”
“What are they?”
“They’re quite the pair is what they are. Angsty homeless ocean spirits.”
“Emo,” muttered the box.
“Homeless?”
“Yep,” said Nibs, looking around the attic. “Got kicked out of the sea fer causing too much trouble ‘round one of the Triton Temples or something.”
“What are— How long—” started Lydia. “Why are they here?”
“Well, they can’t exactly go back to the ocean unless they want to get beat up by the Tritons. If they float around in the air though, they’ll fade and vanish in a couple o’ days. This trunk here,” Nibs said, giving it a pat, “spent decades underwater in a shipwreck, so it’s infused with a sort o’ . . . power that lives at the bottom o’ the sea. They’ll be alright as long as they come back here each night.”
“Can they really give you wishes?”
“Them? Oh no, they just make trouble,” chuckled Nibs, stooping down to pick up the trunk’s lock from where it was hiding under an old flag. “When I first found out they lived in the trunk, I thought they were real Genies too. But they just ‘grant wishes’ by stealin’ things.”
“Oh!” said Lydia. “Rude!”
Her grandfather laughed, walking over to the trunk and padlocking it shut. “Quite. Now, a little bird, o’ shall I say, my stuffed parrot, told me that you were countin’ all o’ the brown things in the house.”
“How did you—"
“And there just happen to be 539 brown things in the attic,” said Nibs, winking at her and starting down the ladder. “Now, what rooms are left?”