13.
 Arthur shook his head. Oddly, he didn’t feel afraid. He had that same groggy feeling he got when awakening in the middle of the night to stagger down a dim corridor for a glass of water, then returning to sleep in his bed without ever having fully awakened.
“I come with the clock,” Cuphandle said. “I am the djinni of the clock.”
“The what?”
“Genie, you know, like found in a bottle? It’s an English word, from the Arabic djinni, from the ancient Roman genius, whose plural in Latin was genii.”
Arthur was surprised. “You mean, like the genie Aladdin found in the sand in a bottle?”
Cuphandled nodded. “Yes, near the sea. The sea of time, I might add.”
“You don’t say.”
Cuphandle looked down over crossed, muscular arms. “When you bought the clock, you got a piece of me too.”
Arthur stood with his mouth hanging open, and could only manage to say “What?”
“You probably thought djinn only live in jars, stuck there until someone lets them out. Djinn is plural in Arabic, for two or more djinni-guys. Actually, virtually every place and thing has its djinni. It’s just that some djinn are smarter than others, and I’m one of the smartest.”
Arthur put his hands on his hips. “This is all so utterly ridiculous, Mr. Cuphandle. Have you been drinking?”
Cuphandle raised his hands in a ‘search me’ gesture. “Not a drop, Mr. Latchloose.” Now it was Cuphandle’s turn to put his hands on his hips. “See here, Latchloose, you’ve got limited time and you don’t want to waste any of it, so start believing in me and let’s not waste a lot of time arguing about your doubts.”
Arthur kept his hands on his hips, and the two glared at each other thus. Arthur said: “I want you to either haul this thing to my home, or get someone up here who will do it for me, and stop talking drivel.”
“Very well,” said Cuphandle. Wrapping his enormous arms around the clock, he lifted it easily as if it were a light thing filled with air. He carried it out the door in a few easy steps.
“Easy! Careful!” Arthur cried out, hopping after him, down the corridor, to the stairs.
“Not to worry. Oh, do close the door and turn off the lights behind us, would you? Let’s not waste energy.”
Grumbling, Arthur did as he was told. By the time he pulled the outside door shut with a loud click, and joined Cuphandle by the truck, Cuphandle already had the clock wrapped in quilts, safely covered with a heavy black tarp, and strapped down with thick blue and white nylon cords.
“Where to, boss?” asked Cuphandle.
Arthur told him his address—reluctantly—adding, “You don’t plan to stay there with the clock, I hope.”
As they sat in the warm cab again, and Cuphandle drove bouncing over the speed bumps, Cuphandle said: “Not to worry; I have her strapped in and wrapped as delicately as eggs. In regard to my domicile, I do indeed stay with the clock—“
“Oh no!” Arthur protested loudly and angrily.
“—At least for the first twelve hours,” Cuphandle finished his sentence. “You see, unlike those djinn in bottles, we clock types only award you one wish, and you have to make it, and we must fulfill it, in exactly twelve hours from the time you signed the purchase from the previous owner. He didn’t explain all this to you, did he?”
Arthur shook his head. “I don’t recall off-hand from whom I bought it, come to think.” He raised his palms to his temples, and violently shook his head, but no memory came. The immediate past was partially a muddled blank.
“No matter,” Cuphandle said. He tapped the large round clock face in his truck’s dashboard. “In fact, your first hour is almost up, so you only have eleven hours left. What is it that you desire most in life?”
Arthur laughed. “Assuming I believe all this poppycock?”
“What have you got to lose?”
“That’s true,” Arthur said. “Okay, suppose I play along with your silly game. What is it I want most of all? Do I have to be careful what I say? Like if I wish I had another million bucks, will you drop a zillion pounds of reindeer on my head?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” said Cuphandle. “That’s for those dorky lamp djinni that one occasionally finds washed up on a beach. They play nasty little games like that. I’m a professional, and take pride in delivering quality service with that fawning, customer-is-always right smile, and of course your happiness with the outcome is the key.” He added rather darkly: “Even if I want to strangle you at times. And you do seem like a prime strangling magnet.”
Arthur thought a bit. “You know, if I had at least two wishes, maybe the first one would be that you tell me nothing but the truth.”
Cuphandle shrugged. “True, but a lamp djinni would figure out some way to play with the words and lie to you. You’ll just have to trust my honesty. Truthfulness is built into the clock and all that it touches. Time is truth, and time does not lie. I urge you, however, to consider your choice very carefully, because you truly will be stuck with it forever.”
“Oh come on. This is just a game, right?”
Cuphandle grew a bit huffy. “Listen, you old fool who believes in nothing, and cares only about himself. Don’t anger me or I’ll change you into a dog and leave you at someone’s doorstep. Then your only wish would be to change back into your miserable self.”
“That would defeat your customer service philosophy,” Arthur said with malevolent sarcasm.
“True. Okay, let’s try this. See that tree over there?” Cuphandle pulled over on the narrow two-lane road, and pointed to a snow-covered tree. “I want you to point at that tree and say Poof, got that?”
“You must think I am as nuts as you are,” Arthur said. He kept his hands firmly, palms-down, on the seat on either side of him.
“Let me show you,” Cuphandle said. He pointed at the tree and said “Poof.” Instantly, all the snow disappeared from the tree’s barren, black, icy branches, and it stood fully resplendant with a full crown of midsummer leaves bursting from every branch, stem, and twig.”
Arthur stared in disbelief. “Holy Mackerel. I must be dreaming.”
Cuphandle seemed unperturbed, as if he did this sort of thing routinely. “Now you point at it and say !fooP. Got that?”
“!FooP?” Arthur asked numbly, looking at Cuphandle.
“It’s the opposite of Poof!” Cuphandle explained, as if Arthur were dim. “You must look at the tree and point when you say it,” Cuphandle said patiently as if teaching a slow child. “And put a little body English into it, like you mean it. That was so lame just now.”
Arthur felt a bit silly, but he looked at the tree, pointed his finger at it, and said softly, “!fooP.” Instantly, the tree became once again utterly barren, dormant, and covered with snow and ice. “I’ll be darned. So you are a supernatural being?”
“No, not at all,” Cuphandle said. “I am a perfectly rational construct of the late alchemical age, about the time when Newton was co-inventing calculus on the one hand in the rational modern world, and on the other hand was making a living by casting horoscopes for a bunch of superstitious fools who, like in all ages, were the people in charge.”
“Sort of a foot in each world,” Arthur mused. “And two lame ones, at that.”
“Well put.” Cuphandle pointed to the dash clock. “You only have eleven hours left, so we’d better get zipping and zooming, or you’ll miss out on your wish.”
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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