With ironic timing, the genie flew right past Hank’s nose, leaving a trail of purple smoke. Hank blinked, shaking his stubborn head. “I didn’t see that.”
“I did,” Margaret told him.
“You, the educated, logical attorney, Miss It-Makes-Perfect-Sense, sees some crackpot in purple pants and earrings flying around us?”
She nodded.
“You know as well as I do that genies do not exist!”
“I see him. The children see him. You see him. We all see him. Therefore, he must exist.”
“This is not happening,” he repeated, then muttered, “Mirrors. Where are the mirrors?”
The genie buzzed around him like a bee, hovered over his head for a moment, then soared straight upward.
Hank scowled so hard his black eyebrows almost touched.
“It is not logical to assume that the existence of anything can be understood rationally in a world that is consistently irrational,” Margaret explained.
He stared at her as if he’d been clobbered in the head. His gaze cleared, and he seemed to think about what she had just said. He stared at the sand for a long time, then he looked back to her and waved the knife. “You actually believe this crap?”
“I have to believe it. It would be illogical not to believe what I can see.” Margaret was watching a purple genie fly. She turned back to Hank, who sat down on a nearby rock. He rested his wrists on his bent knees and stared down.
“I can see him flying, Hank.”
He slowly looked up as the genie flew over the tops of the coconut palms, then soared downward purposely close to Hank’s head. To Hank’s credit, he didn’t duck.
On the genie’s next flight past, he snatched the cap from Hank’s head.
“Give me that back! You little...” Hank shot up and tried to grab Muddy. He missed.
A few seconds later the cap came floating down next to Hank’s feet. He stared at the cap lying in the sand, then grabbed it and jammed it back on his head. “Let me see that bottle, kid.”
Theodore handed Hank the bottle. “I found it and got three whole wishes.”
Hank lifted the bottle close to his eye and examined it the way a jeweler looked at a stone. The only clue that he recognized the bottle was the slight tightening around his mouth.
“It looks exactly like the bottle you threw away,” Margaret said as casually as she could.
His eyes narrowed with the promise of retribution.
She gave him an innocent smile, then added, “Actually, you threw it away twice.”
* * *
They argued for almostan hour.Muddy sat on a nearby rock, his chin resting in one palm, while his gaze darted back and forth, like someone watching a long volley in a game of lawn tennis.
“Now, Theodore,” the woman named Margaret said, “don’t worry. Hank doesn’t mean to yell at you.”
“Like hell!”
“Please stop bullying him. He’s only a little boy. I’m certain he doesn’t understand how important this is.” Margaret turned back to Theodore and squatted down so she was eye level with him. “You understand that you are the only one who has the power to get us off this island.”
“I understand,” he said sullenly.
“One wish and we can all go home.”
He stared at his bare toes. “I don’t have a home.”
