Day of the Djinn Warriors by P. B. Kerr Read Free Book Online

mounted policeman in the first place. Because he loved horses. And not just horses. He loved all animals. Just thinking about how much love he had for animals brought a tear to his piggy eyes.
    “You know something, little girl?” he said, and uttered a loud sigh. “I hate the way people mistreat living creatures.” He nodded at the menu in the window of the restaurant where they were still standing. “I mean, just look at the stuff people eat in this city. Some of it is just so cruel to animals.” As he spoke, tears started to roll down his fat face. “You want to know my third wish? I wish no one in New York could eat pâté de foie gras. That’s what I wish. That no one could eat pâté de foie gras.”
    Philippa glanced at the menu, saw pâté de foie gras listed among the hors d’oeuvres — which is French for starter courses — and considered for a moment how she might make the cop’s unselfish, animal-loving wish come true. She had no idea how many people in Manhattan liked eating pâté de foie gras. What was more, even feeling as powerful as she did now, she hadn’t a clue as to how she might affect the tastes of hundreds, possibly thousands of New Yorkers. But a wish granted was a wish granted. And she decided to grant the policeman’s third and last wish in the easiest, most straightforward way possible: by causing the city’s entire supply of pâté de foie gras simply to disappear. Within seconds of her uttering her focus word, there was not a bit of pâté de foie gras nor a mention of it to be found anywhere in New York.
    “There,” she said, tapping the menu in the window triumphantly. “Just as you asked. It’s gone. No one in New York can eat pâté de foie gras. Satisfied?”
    The cop nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks a lot, little girl.”
    “No, thank you,” she said, “for saving my life.”
    “You take care, now.” And then, with a big smile on his face, the cop mounted his horse and rode away in the direction of the park.
    Philippa felt as if she had done a good deed. But instead of congratulating herself for helping to make someone a better person, she might have done better to have remembered that all use of djinn power in the mundane world has a random and unpredictable effect, even when that power has been used for something as apparently benign as saving the enlarged livers of a few French geese — for that is what pâté de foie gras is made of. And if djinn are sometimes reluctant to give ordinary people three wishes it’s not because they’re mean and stingy, it’s because they have learned to appreciate that granting wishes to human beings has unseen, unpredictable consequences. Even a wish that’s made with a kind intent. It’s the one aspect to being a djinn that young djinn take the longest time to learn. Sometimes it’s a hard lesson, too. As Mr. Rakshasas was fond of saying, “Having a wish is like lighting a fire. It’s reasonable to assume that the smoke might make someone cough.”
    There’s an old nursery rhyme that explains how small things can have large consequences. It goes:
    For want of a nail, the shoe was lost
.
    For want of a shoe, the horse was lost
.
    For want of a horse, the rider was lost
.
    For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
    For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
    And all for the want of a nail
.
    Now, because of this wish Philippa had granted the police officer, a chain of events was set off, and one thing led to another; it’s probably just as well that Philippa never ever connected the dreadful thing with the third wish she gave that New York policeman.
    The djinn have a word for this kind of misfortune:
Kismet
, from the Persian
qismat
. According to the
Shorter Baghdad Rules
, it means “that which is destined.”
    Safely back home again, Philippa switched on the TV and tried to relax. But she couldn’t help noticing that a lot of her favorite TV shows had been taken off the air. According to the TV news, this was