Of course, I’d never known Gram to lie . . .
And we were a fourth-generation Sass family, after all. The town was full of folks who had family shines. Everyone knew Mina Cunningham was a pain lifter and the Fullers could soothe bad dreams. But granting wishes? That was hanging the basket mighty high.
Just then, a mouse so familiar I’d named it Scooter skittered across the floor. Our house had more cracks than it did walls. It wasn’t bad enough we were hungry. Winter was coming, and without money to pay the electric, we’d soon be cold. Dangerous cold. I was scared.
But wishes—that would remedy everything. Not just now, but forever.
All right, then. I’d play the huckleberry. But what should I wish for? At first, I wasn’t sure. Maybe for my pa to wake up and get sober and fix things before they broke any worse. Not real likely. There was a better chance of my dead ma showing up at the door with angel’s wings and a basket of money.
Hmm.
Food. House repairs. Electricity through the winter. All the things we needed. It pretty much came down to cash.
Simple enough, I figured.
Now. How would a body go about fetching a wish? In the end, I couldn’t think of any other way but to say it out loud.
I took a deep breath. In the moment before I spoke, my belly lurched. First, because my wish might actually come true. Second, because I knew it probably would not.
I wish, I wish—oh, please—I wish . . .
“I wish-fetch myself one thousand dollars!” I spoke into the night.
I know what you’re thinking. Why only a thousand? But I reckoned if I really was a wish fetcher, I could always wish up some more. Better to start small.
The amount ended up not mattering a whit. I could have wished for a million. The outcome would have been the same.
Nothing happened.
But remember, now, I was desperate. There was no way I was going to give up after the first try.
No, what I needed was a little schooling.
I got up out of my bed—which was the living room sofa—and went into Gram’s room—which used to be my old room.
“You sleeping, Gram?” I whispered.
Gram’s dentures clacked. “Who’sit! Who’sit!”
“Shht. Gram. It’s just me.” I sparked a match and lit the candle beside her bed. “I need to ask you something.”
“You scared the golly out of me!” Her face looked a little green in the candlelight.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”
“Well, what is it?” Gram sat up in the grumpiest manner she could muster.
“Do you think . . .” I looked at the flickering of the little candle flame.
“Yeah?”
My stomach rumbled. I stuck my fist in my gut to shush it. “Did you mean what you said, after my birthday, about all that wish-granting stuff?”
Gram blinked. “I did. I do.”
I nodded, chewing on that. “Do you think you might teach me to grant wishes?”
She smiled just a little. “I think I could.”
“And then I could wish us a better life? With money and food and all?”
“Ah,” she sighed. “I see.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“A wish fetcher can’t grant their own wishes, Gen,” she replied.
I pondered that for a while.
“Well, you can do it, too, right? What if you grant me and I’ll grant you and we can both of us grant Pa? He could use a double dose of wish, surely.”
She shook her head. “Can’t.”
I flared my nostrils. There’s few things that bother me as much as a person who gives up easily. “Gram, you are hungry, ain’t you?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“You wanna be hungry any longer than you absolutely have to be?” I asked.
Just then, her belly made a sound like an angry cat.
“No,” Gram admitted.
“Then shouldn’t we at least try?”
She thought this over.
“Lemme tell you a true story.” She wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.
“A mess of years ago,” she said, “there was a man, a wish fetcher who lived in the city of Fenn. It was a big city, one of the grandest in all the South, mostly because of this man, who spent his days granting the good-hearted wishes of the people.” She pointed a finger at me. “Good-hearted wishes. Let that be the only kind you ever fetch, you mark me?”
I nodded.
“So, here’s this man,” Gram went on, “granting wishes. And one day he wakes up and realizes everyone in Fenn is getting everything they want—except him! He’d fetched wishes for loving wives and housefuls of kids, good jobs and good health, and what did he ever get from it? He lived comfortably enough, sure, but he had no wife, no kids, no job but granting wishes, and, sure as sunshine, he came down with a bad cold every August, no matter what.”
“See! That’s just what I mean!” I interrupted. “Why couldn’t he grant his own wishes? Nothing bad, just good things.”
Gram held up a finger. “But he did. He broke the wish fetcher’s first rule and wished himself a wife and two apple-cheeked young’uns. And they were happy, and he went on granting wishes for other people, too. But then his tub sprang a leak, and it was all too easy to fetch a wish to fix it. And when his oldest daughter started to turn fat, it was easier to grant her beauty than it was to teach her to eat right. Wishes and wishes, faster and faster they came, until his whole life was built on wishes, and he wasn’t fetching any for anyone else.”
“But I wouldn’t—” I blurted.