Taking one final deep breath of free air, she turned toward the council and held out her wrists. “I am ready.”
Cyrus, the kindest of the three, stood. His snow-white robe and beard against his dark skin made him seem more like a wizard than a genie. She felt a little like laughing at her absurd thought.
But she kept her amusement in check because she knew her parents would fear she’d gone over the deep end if she didn’t. Clearly she was still in shock.
To go from eating breakfast and thinking about which classes she’d be taking in college next semester to the next second being told for the next fifty years her life would be one of bondage and servitude, a lesser person might have already snapped by now.
“I am sorry, child. But you were born of a great line, and though your father was cast out for his misdeeds, it does not exempt the child from her responsibilities to her people. We all carry the heavy burden of who we are.” He flipped his wrists, revealing his own set of golden cuffs.
For a second Nixie wondered how the three could still be genies and yet no longer required to serve masters. Or were they? What kind of magic would she be able to perform with these new powers? Would she be limited only to the whims of her masters, or would she have magic of her own?
There was so much of this world she did not know.
With a final smile, Cyrus gestured for her to walk to the center of the room.
“Come child and be baptized by the Mother of our Creation.”
Nixie stared hypnotized at the glowing circle of brilliant bluish-white light. Many years ago her father had told her the story of how a true-blooded genie was born. Genies, he’d said, were born of a bright pulse of nascent light called a quasar. They were conceived within the birth of a star, that was where the power lay and that was where they wanted her to step into now.
“I love you guys,” she whispered without turning back, because she knew if she did she’d fling herself into her father’s arms and cry like a baby, beg him to save her from this fate.
Steeling her nerves, she thought not of her parents, or her boyfriend, or even the life she’d be leaving behind, but of her one day a year and all the things she’d do with it.
Nixie stepped into the circle and was bathed in the light of rebirth.
*
4 months later
“Come here, slave,” her sneering master said with a lecherous grin tipping the corner of his oily, lamb-smeared lips. Patting the edge of his plush daybed draped with the snowy white and black-speckled pelts of snow cats, he waited expectantly.
Nixie jerked as the fiery sensation of electrical impulses flooded her system. The longer she kept her feet rooted to the ground, the more pain she felt. Sweat dotted her forehead as the blood in her veins began to bubble and froth; her body would not die, but the agony that consumed her sometimes made her wish she were merely mortal again.
“Come. Here.” Josiah’s molten silver eyes gleamed with a predatory and fierce light.
The second command caused the pressure in the air to thicken, making her lungs gasp for want of oxygen. Nixie clutched her chest, wheezing as first one foot then the other stepped forward, her traitorous body unable to withstand the weight of denying him his mastery over her.
Reclining back, Josiah plucked a grape from the golden fruit bowl sitting beside his bed and chewed thoughtfully. “I’m very displeased with you, genie.”
Nixie took a deep breath, counting to three in her head before she felt able to talk to him without scorn dripping from her words. “How so, Master?” She clenched her teeth on the title.
She’d tried once, several days ago, not to say it to him, but the second she failed to do so she’d doubled over, gripped by lancing, searing pain in her midsection that hadn’t abated until she’d muttered the moniker.
The number one rule of being a genie was that you did not belong to yourself.
Bowing her head, though not out of difference, but rather from the humiliation of the injustice, she clenched her fingers. Scoring her palms bloody from her nails driving through them.
A fur trader would never amount to any true wealth in Kingdom. Unlike on Earth, where intuitiveness and a go get ‘em attitude could take you far, Kingdom was almost entirely built on a caste system. Meaning if you were born into a family of metal smiths, you would die a metal smith. You would not move on into fame, unless of course you married in, or stole as your trade.