Master of Wishes
The snake stared up at me, mouth gaping in a wide, fangless mockery of a smile, like a dog’s smile, but beady eyed and without a hint of companionship.
“Wishes are a serious matter to me,” I told the thing. “I’ve imagined this day many times. If you are what you say you are — ”
“A talking snake, at the very least, ” interjected the creature, and in this matter I didn’t doubt my senses.
“ — yes. Well then…”
I took a deep breath.
“For my first wish,” I closed my eyes, choosing my words with care, “I wish for it to be forever true that every wish I was ever granted was granted without any consequences I did not intend.”
The snake’s jaw shut and it slithered backward, rubbing the sides of its body together into layers of coil.
“Your wish,” it rasped, “is granted. From this moment you have the assurance that every wish granted you carries no unintended consequences.”
Gleeful certainty bloomed in my chest. It had worked!
The snake continued to stare as snakes do, its body stiff below the head and wavering, as if readying to pounce. As assuredly as my first wish had been granted, there remained a dare in its unsettling attention, and its words.
“Did I wish for assurance?” I asked, guarding against wasting a wish for clarification (can questions be wishes?). “Wasn’t my wish for a truth?”
“Assurance of one’s beliefs is a form of truth,” said the snake.
“See,” I sighed, “this is the trouble with wishes.”
A wish, I had surmised long before this day, was never a favor, nor a gift. A wish was a contract; and so a wish, stated and granted, was an invitation to argument. And I was a lawyer.
“If that first wish was granted with any unintended consequences, then it cannot be forever true that all my wishes were granted without unintended consequences.” The snake tightened further into its body’s coil. “Perhaps I should make my second wish that all of your misdeeds…” (is there justice among wish-granters?) “…are noticed by your superiors?”
“Clever mortal,” it conceded. “Very well. Your wish is granted, as you intended it. No loopholes, no tricks. It will forever be true that every wish you have ever been granted indeed bore no unintended consequences.”
I doubted the snake’s pronouncement, surprised I could so easily convince a wish-granter to change the way a wish had been granted, but the absence of that prior confidence confirmed the truth of it.
“My superiors,” the snake then confided, loosening its body, “revel in the cunning trickery of our kind. I suspect in this case they would likely commend my ingenuity. So proceed with your true next wish, o wisher. It shall unfold exactly as you intend.”
“For my second wish, I wish for the ability to grant my own wishes.”
The snake‘s tongue flicked from its grin as it approached. “Desire for power cannot be ignored by your kind,” it said, winding toward my feet. “Your wish is granted. You have the ability to grant your own wishes.”
The snake reached me, rested its head against the side of my foot. “And for each wish you grant, mortal, an equal and opposite wish will be granted elsewhere in the balance of existence.”
“An unintended consequence,” I complained.
“A rule,” it replied, draping itself over my shoe. “You still have full control of your own desires, o wisher. I offer only an explanation of what your actions will invoke, that which your mind is hopeless to comprehend, what your kind can neither foresee nor control.”
“You never told me there were limits to your powers.”
The snake wound around my ankle. “Very well,” it said, “your wish is granted as you intended it. You have the power to grant your own wishes without any consequences you do not intend.”
It was, in many ways, my final moment.
The cosmos lit softly upon my shoulders. Its enormity threatened to fold my mind into a point. A self-preserving instinct within me wished for the capacity to withstand it and so it was. My former self was no more.
The snake spoke, its words’ blatant mockery now bare before me as I observed all anew.
“You have no further need of your third and final wish from me,” it said moving up my shin, my calf. “Reality will mirror exactly what you wish. But I remain bound to my pledge.” It wrapped my thigh. “I will grant your third wish. Choose wisely, o master of words and intentions. I shall adhere to your exact desires.”
Two wishes had freed me from the wish-granter’s traps. Another wish could take that power from me. I knew what I had to do, but my new perspective afforded me pause.
“I wonder,” I spoke as the snake reached for my wrist, “what would happen if all other wish-granters were eradicated.”
“An intriguing curiosity,” it answered, muscle contractions continuing its wind up my arm. “One cannot help but contemplate the chaos and void such an event would create.”
It reached my shoulder and clung to me, extending its body to place its head directly before me. “The eradication of all other wish-granting beings would render you the sole source of such power in existence.
“You would become the epicenter of desire. The lone fulcrum upon which the universe’s wishes pivot. The dreams, hopes, and whims of others would rely solely on your discretion.” The snake slithered around to the opposite shoulder. “Be mindful, dear wisher,” it whispered beside my head, “such ponderings can be dangerously close to wishes themselves for one such as you now, though the consequences, or lack thereof, rest squarely in your hands.”
The snake hung around the back of my neck. “Now, I wonder: what will your third wish be?”
“I wish it so.”
“Your wish is granted.”
The snake did not yet disappear. Such is the way with wish granting. The decree must be completed.
“All creatures capable of granting wishes, saving only you, will be eradicated from existence,” the snake declared from my shoulder. “You stand alone with the power to make dreams come true, the sole arbiter of wishes in all worlds. Every outcome will be precisely as you intend, with no unintended consequences.”
The domain of wish-granters was mine. My wishes, just as I had intended them, had blundered me into shouldering the burdens of fate. Where once there was a balance, now there was only me, my will alone, responsible for everything.
The snake’s gaping smile returned to my view once more as it wrapped around my neck in its final moment. “Enjoy the world of your own making!” it hissed in laughter, fading from being. “Farewell, o master of wishes!”
