Page 11 of Wishing Upon a Monster
“Min Skat,I would like to tell you a story. Would you be willing to listen?”
She hesitated a moment.
“Could we sit on the porch? It’s a nice night. I would like for us to get to know each other a little better.”
I did not suppress the pleased grin that stole across my face at her willingness to continue our time together. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”
She took my hand and led me through her home as if I would get lost in the small building, taking me outside onto her porch. She gestured for me to sit across from her. I had noted the chairs with curved runners like sleighs when we first entered the house. I couldn’t imagine they were for traversing the snow, especially with how temperate the climate was.
Sitting gingerly, I wrapped my hands around the armrests for stabilization, noting that I rocked back and then forward once settled. Aurora began to purposefully wobble. So that was the purpose of the runners. It reminded me of a cradle.
In the darkness, I was formed, and even now, at my age, I found it comforting. It could be the same for humans, Isuppose, remembering a time when they were cradled and rocked in safety.
Aurora smiled, watching me find my rhythm with the chair. She reached over to flip a switch on the wall that made blades rotate above our heads. A comfortable breeze kissed my skin while I rocked. I looked out into the space in front of her house, watching the little bugs light up as they flew, organizing my thoughts before I began.
“I used to live by a human village, during a time when the Earth and I were both young. My people, who humans call the Brøndmand, need to trade wishes. It’s something we are compelled to do, especially when we are young. It is a cosmic charge by our gods, the” I pronounced their names in a series of sounds, high-pitches and low howls, ending on a hum.
Aurora winced, sitting up taller as if to say, ‘this is not strange, I am unaffected,’ when I know very well that I sounded like the nightmarish horror I have been accused of being in the past.
“Their names are untranslatable in flesh; what I have just said is the barest approximation. They decided our purpose, gave us the need to grant wishes to beings, so that we might obtain the experience, the good karma––to borrow the term––to rest in the latter stage of our eternity.
“I wandered this plane, the worlds, some you may know, as I heard the humans of your ancestry speak their names. I’ve seen celestial bodies, dimensions where beings cannot lie, those where angels fell, and those where magic could not exist because belief had killed the very thought of it. Your Earth was so diverse and yet so simple; the creatures were diverting. The things humans wished for were as many as the grains of sand in your deserts.
“As I learned the ways of humanity, it wasn’t hard to discover what they held dear. Gold was the preferred currency,and I adopted that as mine. It is forbidden to give a wish without a price. There must be a loss commensurate with the gain. It is one of the very foundations of the universe. The loss must equal the weight of the wish, and there are limitations.”
“You can’t bring someone back from the dead, you can’t make someone love you, and you cannot kill anyone,” She murmured, leaning back further in her chair.
Pleasantly shocked at her knowledge, I smiled. “There is a distinction,min skat,the wisher cannot wish for me to kill someone, but I assure you, if necessary, I can end the life of anyone who would threaten your wellbeing.”
She shivered, perhaps a bit unnerved at my declaration. The urge to pull her from her chair and onto my lap as I did earlier in the day intensified. But the Cuélebre had warned thatmin skatwould not welcome my need to be close to her so early in our mating. I had overstepped with my demonstration of my claim at the gathering with her team. It was necessary, I felt at the time, but I would do better to observe her ‘cues.’
A rush of warmth, surely this was endearment, flooded my system. “Min lille skat,I would never do anything against your wishes. I am aware of your prowess, and you may always have the option to kill them first, but like at my well, if you are unable, I will step in. I only wish to protect you when you cannot protect yourself.”
She nodded, tension relaxing from her shoulders, “Are the other two limitations correct?”
“Mmmm,” I paused and thought, striving for accuracy, “if they have ceased to be because their time has run out on this plane, I cannot bring a being back to life. Their energy has a choice, and their wishes would supersede those of the wisher. Higher planes are harder to access and manipulate.
“For the last––there is nothing in the cosmos that can force a being to love another. That is the one absolute truth of thethree. I can make someone lust after another, to the point of obsession, but I cannot make them love someone else. Free will is a very universal trait throughout all the worlds.”
Aurora mulled over what I said. I could feel relief, but it was as if I was listening to her through a wall. Her thoughts were dampened by her shielding, and once again, I felt pride in her accomplishment.
“I would never,” I guessed as I watched her think, “force you to love me,min skat. Even if I had the ability. I am not that kind of male. When you love me, it will be because your soul cannot bear to be apart from mine, not because I have gone against the will of the cosmos.”
She made a noise in her throat, a pretty blush rising to her cheeks, “So you traveled the world and ended up in a small village?”
“Yes, I discovered a place where the rain was bitter and icy, where the humans yearned for larger wishes. In my youth, I foolishly thought that the more complex the wish, the more worthy it was to grant. This proved not to always be the case. I settled in Danmork, by the village of Haithabu. There were a few box wells throughout the town that I could travel through to other wells where I would grant wishes, but I used one near the outskirts of the village as a direct pathway to my home.
“There was a young man, a youth really, named Trygve, who liked to come to my well and sing. He was teased because he wanted to be a spillemænd, but he was terrible. Every town had its own musicians, and Trygve had aspirations to travel and sing. He was the son of shepherds and had acquired, through trade, a drum.”
I laughed, thinking of my old friend. “He couldn’t keep time. He couldn’t play the simplest of rhythms. If he tried to sing and play, it was dismal. I would sit and listen to his attempts until finally, oneday, I had enough.”
“Please tell me you didn’t take the poor boy’s drum,” she asked.
“No, I did something I hadn’t done since my youth. Usually, my kind are wished for in quiet places, a coin tossed in a well, an offering left at a designated spot agreed upon by the elders. I hadn’t ever granted wishes in a place I used as a home base. Now I know the reason why—that asks for frequent interruptions and a loss of personal peace. But then, I was young and foolish myself.
“After he stopped screaming and realized I wasn’t going to eat him,” I smiled at Aurora with all of my teeth, garnering a chuckle for my antics before I continued, “I explained I was going to help him find his rhythm. I wasn’t granting a wish, because he did not ask for my help, but he accepted it once I showed him what I could do.”
I stroked the air in front of me like it was a cat, forming a drum from my shadows. I played a short rhythmic combination with my hands against the faux shadow skin. The sound of my music scared the local animals into silence, and the lighted bugs scattered.
