Before the creases on my mother’s brow flatten out, I say, “What about Henry?”
Her olive skin doesn’t turn pink, despite how tickled she looks. “Huh, I didn’t realize you two were a thing. Sure, I mean, the balloon and all on your birthday was a clue, but I thought the crush was a bit more him on you.”
My skin, on the other hand, must match the color of the tomatoes left on my plate. “What? Crush? I don’t have a crush. Neither does he. We’re just … just friends. He’s nice, and I think it’d be nice to do something nice for him.”
Nice, very, very nice.
“Whatever you say.” My mother smiles. “Still, I’m not sure that’s the best idea. Considering the history you two share, I think you might be too … invested. Predisposed to grant the wish you want to grant, which may or may not be what he wants. Restraint can be difficult when it’s someone you like—”
“I don’t like him.”
“Or hate, I was going to say. Remember how you felt with Mrs. Pucher?”
I do. The tsunami of emotions surging through me while granting Mrs. Pucher’s wish didn’t just disappear when I was done. A sense of melancholy hung with me all day.
My mother scoops up her last spoonful of cardamom-scented rice. “Now think about how long the human’s residual anima may stay with you if it’s someone you have a connection with. The circulus holds great power over us.”
Reciting the circulus incantation is what allows us to grant a human’s purest wish. It links our spirits, a magical mumbo jumbo I always scoffed at. I still want to, but I can’t. Not anymore. The circulus incantation is what made me feel Mrs. Pucher’s pain. It gave her soul a temporary home in mine. This is how I was able to delve into her inner psyche, into her unconscious “anima,” and understand her needs, her wants, her desires. In that moment, we were one.
I imagine feeling that with Henry. Henry, who has Jenny’s eyes. Suddenly the idea of granting Henry a wish seems like a very bad one indeed.
“It really is … intimate, isn’t it?” I say.
My mother lays her fork and knife across her plate. “It lessens over time.” She relaxes back into her chair. “The stronger you become, the more control you have over the depth of the connection. Still, the process takes a lot out of us.”
And takes a lot of energy, so much so that if we ever invoked the circulus for a candidate not assigned to us, the Afrit would be able to recognize such a spike in magic instantly.
“And their anima,” I say, the word still feeling foreign to me, “their souls, do they really stay with us?”
“A piece.”
“But I don’t feel any different.” Except being more than a little weirded out.
“You may not. Not yet, but it builds. Eventually it weighs us down. Not that there isn’t as much lightness as there is darkness. But they’re always there, the effects of linking with a human’s soul.” My mother runs a finger along the rim of her wineglass. “And then, one day, you’ll recite the circulus incantation and find you can’t link anymore. You can’t enter the human’s psyche. Your wish-granting days are over.”
The Afrit retire some Jinn before their circulus powers are bled dry, but my mother, predictably, was one of the ones kept in rotation until she was the equivalent of the Sahara. She granted her last wish when I was five. Sometimes I wonder if the hairline creases around her eyes don’t just come from me.
Her eyes glisten. “Maybe you can’t yet accept it, but making someone’s wish come true is special. It’s what we are meant to do. It completes us as much as them. You see that now, at least a little?”
I shift in my seat. Did helping Mrs. Pucher make me feel good? Of course. How could it not? Did it complete me? Fill all the Swiss cheese holes the Afrit have punched in my life? Of course not. How could it?
My mother sighs as she wraps her hand around the gold bangle that replaced her silver one when she retired. Though she lost her ability to grant wishes, she gained the powers of healing (which is why I never suffered so much as a nose bleed) and tracking (why I never got far when I packed my pillowcase, hobo style, and bolted).
She slowly gets up from the table. “It’s nice that you’d think of Henry, but trust me, you don’t want to make this more complicated.” As she clears our plates, she adds, “Unless you want to be stuck trailing some human for the rest of your life. Remember Farrah? She was tied to that old man for a week.”
We both laugh. We can’t help it. But it must have been awful for Farrah. Scary too.
Without the circulus link, we can’t grant a human’s wish, but with the circulus link, we can’t not grant a human’s wish. Once we recite the incantation, we are magically commanded to grant whatever wish the human makes first. There are no do-overs, for them or for us. We have twenty-four hours to show signs of beginning the wish-granting process, after which the circulus curse kicks in.
Like it did with Farrah. It was her second official candidate. He wished for a “room,” but the old man’s lack of teeth made her think he wanted a “womb.” Her mind-reading skills weren’t, and still aren’t, great so she relied on what she heard with her ears, neglecting to fully enter his psyche. The grace period came and went, and a baffled Farrah became tied to the old man. Magic physically compelled her body to shadow him. She couldn’t be more than a hundred and fifty feet away from him until she completed his wish.
The lore of a genie being tied to a master likely has its roots in the circulus curse. A thousand years ago, a smitten female Jinn probably refused to grant some hot dude’s wish and was forever compelled to remain by his side. Insta-myth.