Lily

The Aronson girl went missing on Sunday afternoon. It was the perfect autumn day: the air was crispy, the trees dressed up in many colours to die, and the carnival was in town.

Townsfolk blamed it on the carnival, naturally, even before the sheriff did. God-fearing, hard-working honest people, they were, maybe simple but not stupid. They knew that they can’t trust those travelling weirdos. With all the magic the carnival brought, all the enchanted mirrors, the Ferris wheel that let you see any cities you want in the world from the top, the werewolf and the fortune teller who was always right, and the apples covered in caramel that let you relive your most treasured memory, with all that, they remained the very thing people could never trust or like: strangers. Someone different. So when the sheriff visited the carnival, first thing after a hysterical phone call from Mrs Aronson, the townsfolk knew it for a fact that the carnies did away with the little girl. None of them was surprised or shocked: such was life around there. Kids sometimes disappeared or had an accident. Most made no sense and had no reason, but this time they had someone to blame, at least.

They weren’t wrong, in a way. Sometimes things are what they look like.

Lily Aronson wandered off. She went with her older brother and his friends. They didn’t want a girl with them but Lily’s mother told her son that he can only go if Lily goes, too.

But she wandered off and went to where nobody was supposed to go: she took a peak behind the scenes. Kids are like that, curious little creatures. She saw many miracles that were too valuable, too dangerous, or too hideous to show people (without them paying extra for it, that is): old spell books that were whispering in long-forgotten languages, jewels with souls trapped in them, a coat that ate its wearer alive, the eye of a cyclops, crystal orbs filled with fog and secrets, unicorn horns, pixies in a cage and so much more… Lily believed them all, of course, as every child believed in magic. An adult might have looked for strings and explained how the unicorn horns were actually that of a narwhal’s, but a child just saw the magic and believed it. Most of the time, the adult would have been right. Most of the time. Lily stumbled upon a ring in a box, and for she was indeed a curious little creature, she put it on. The djinn of the ring (what, did you think all of them are imprisoned in lamps?) granted Lily a wish. Any wish. Not three, like in the tales, but a single one. It was a young djinn, barely a millennium old and wanted to try something new.

Had she been older, Lily wouldn’t have believed in djinns and certainly would have known better than to make a wish. If there was one thing everybody knew about djinns, it was that they weren’t to be trusted.

Lily wished to see her granny again. And so she did. The djinn wasn’t even being mean, it’s just, he couldn’t bring someone back to life. So he did what he could.

Some, or maybe a long time later Lily died in her sleep, dreaming about the old lady, granny’s lifelong friend, the one who laughed easily. the one who told the best stories. The silly old lady who believed in magic, never made a birthday wish and wore the ugly old ring she rubbed all the time as if she was waiting for something to happen. In her dream the old lady was her. In her dream, it wasn’t a dream at all.

The air was crispy on the day she died, the trees dressed up in many colours, and the carnival, as it happens, was in town. A perfect autumn day.