When he woke up, Tommy still felt full. The first thing that he saw was Jenny looking at him.
” I thought that you’d never wake up”, she said. “You’re lucky Mom and Dad are gone for most of the day, and that we have high fences, so that no one saw you. That horse running around loose and distracting everybody doesn’t hurt, either.”
“’Horse’?”, he asked.
“Never mind that", Jenny said, “You have to tell me what’s going on here. I need to know everything. Don’t leave out anything., no matter how small.”
Tommy was filled with a sudden powerful conviction that Jenny was right, that it was imperative that he tell her everything. The whole story of his encounter with the genie began spilling out of his head, like an unstoppable torrent of words. When he’d finished, Jenny looked pensive. She’d never believed in magic, but the fact that her brother was now some kind of monster had made her a believer.
“We need to get you back to normal ASAP”, she said. “Give me a minute to think.”
After a minute, she said, “Try this: Say ‘I’m a normal boy like I was before I changed’.”
“I’m a normal boy like I was before I changed”, said Tommy, obediently.
Jenny gaped in wonder as Tommy’s body began to shimmer, shrinking and changing, returning to normal. Even his tattered clothing repaired itself.
“Wow!”, said Tommy, looking over his body. “Thanks, Sis!”
“'Thanks’?”, said Jenny. “You should be down on your hands and knees, kissing my feet in gratitude!”
“You’re right!”, said Tommy. He dropped to his hands and knees and began kissing Jenny’s feet.
“Stop that!”, said Jenny, a little disturbed. She couldn’t imagine her brother kissing her feet like that, even as a joke. What neither of them knew was that when Tommy had said “You can talk the birds out of the trees”, the genie’s spell had done more than simply restore her voice. It had given her the power of super-persuasiveness. Any suggestion she made, any argument she put forth, any pretext she gave – would be overwhelmingly compelling, nearly impossible to disbelieve or reject. She couldn’t issue direct commands, but it would be easy for her to get people to do whatever she wanted. Neither of them knew this, but Jenny was beginning to suspect that something was up.
“We should go inside, don’t you think?”, said Jenny. Tommy complied eagerly.
Once they were in the house, she said, “I think that we should go to your room, don’t you?”
“Sure thing, Sis!”, said Tommy. Once they were in his room, Tommy sat don on his bed, and Jenny sat down on his desk chair.
“Say, Tommy”, she said, “You’d like to help me test something, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure!”, he said.
“Act like a dog, would you, please?”, asked Jenny.
“Woof! Woof!”, said Tommy, jumping off the bed, and sitting on his haunches in front of his sister. Jenny looked around and noticed an autographed baseball on Tommy’s nightstand. She rolled it gently along the floor.
“Fetch, boy, fetch!”, she said. Tommy crawled after the ball, picked it up in his teeth and brought it back and presented it to Jenny, She took the ball and patted him on the head.
“Good boy!”, she said. “Good dog!” Tommy panted and then yipped happily.
“That’s enough”, said Jenny. “You can stop being a dog, now. Why don’t you sit on the bed again, and just give me a minute to think?”
“Tommy”, she said, “Do me a favor, and say ‘Jenny knows what she wants to know’, would you, please?”
“Jenny knows what she wants to know”, said Tommy. Jenny waited, but nothing happened. Well, Tommy had said that the magic would fail occasionally. Still, she was pretty sure that she knew what was going on, and she had something that she wanted to try.
Next…
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