Dietrich declared, so as to make certain the giant man in the sky could hear him, “Oh great and powerful jinn, I wish for - ” Serena place her palm on his shoulder and cut in, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. If that’s what I think it is,” she pointed to the jinn with both her index fingers, “and I’m pretty sure it is. Then are you crazy!? Spending something so valuable on something like this!? Are you really that cheap?! And haven’t you heard the stories!? It never ends well for the wish-maker. Let it be power or money or love or life and death. It always backfires”

Dietrich jerked his shoulder free of Serena’s hand and said, “Of course I know the stories!” I didn’t. “Do you think me stupid?” That’s hurtful. “That’s why I was going to wish what I was going to wish. Nothing grand or powerful. I was just going to have him think of a way to resolve our situation.”

“That’s it?” All of us (except for me), who were now gathered around him and before the jinn, including the bandits, looked at him, incredulous. “I guess that makes sense...” said Serena after a moments thought.

The jinn still floated above us, all mystical and intimidating, his arms still crossed and his face empty of emotion as he looked down on us.

One of the bandits offered, “Why not just have him make gold coins?”

Another bandit said, “He could have the gold come from some tryrant king, and that king could hunt you till death.”

“Uh, that seems real unlikely.”

The bandit scoffed. “Clearly you haven’t heard the stories.”

The other bandit became sullen-faced, not appreciating the insult to his ignorance.

“So,” said Dietrich, addressing all of us, “Does anyone have any objections with my wish? Surely, this jinn cannot destroy or greatly inconvenience us by simply voicing his opinion, correct?” Some nodded agreeably and some did nothing but give wary looks, either way, no one voiced any counter to his line of reasoning. And so he continued, “Great and powerful jinn, I wish for you to think of a way to solve our problem!”

The jinn did nothing for a moment, and we as well, held up in the anticipation of it all. And then he said it, his voice still booming, “What?”

Dietrich looked left and right, as if hoping someone else could answer in his stead. Finally, he said, “We wish to know what you think!”

“That’s… That’s...” The jinn began to shake, and with it, the ground began to quake. “That’s… That’s...” Cracks like canyons split across his skin. His entire self was crumbling and collapsing. The physical half of his body plummeted in the smoke half, pushing the smoke outward and dissipating it. The quake stopped and the storm clouds dispersed. I thought him dead, but as the smoke cleared more and more, in the center of where it all had happened, was a man, blue and glass-skinned, but with legs and pants, and the size of, well, a man.

He jumped around, launched his arms up in celebration and said in a completely normal voice, “That’s all I ever wanted!”

Margaret, the party, the merchant, his men, and the bandits, all of them were slack-jawed, wide-eyed, completely floored. This is either going to go really well for us, or really badly. That’s my feeling on it.

All of them were still in shock as the Jinn sauntered up to them. He said, “Over a millennia of wish granting, and all people ever say is, ‘I want my dead wife back!’, ‘ I want you to kill that bastard who cheated on me!’, ‘I want to be a king!’, but no one ever asks me what I think!” Oh no, this is bad. “But you don’t want to waste your wish on asking me what I think. Why, I’ll tell you that for free.” Of course you will.

“So, uh, what do you think we should do?” asked Dietrich, who still had not processed everything yet.

“Wha, what was the problem again?” asked the jinn who seemed more interested in other people’s interest in himself than Dietrich’s problem.

Dietrich sighed, as he were tired of it all, of all the upsets and roadblocks, and only wanted one thing, one thing he could not have, at least not yet. He straightened himself up and told the jinn of the situation.

The jinn thought for a moment, hand on his chin, and said with some finality and conviction, “Talent show.”

“What?”

“A talent show! A competition where I will be the judge, whoever among the two sides wins must succumb to the other’s demands!”

“What’s a talent show?”

“You get up on a stage and show off your talent! We need two more judges.” He darted his eyes across each and every one of us, and pointed, “There, the little girl! She looks impartial enough. And who else… Ah, you.” We all looked where he had pointed but saw nothing but grass. From his pointed fingertip shot out a wobbling streak of blue solid light, much like a lightning bolt but slower, not much slower, but slower. As it went, the streak made a loud crackling sound and bits of it and spark flew off. It zapped out onto the ground and what appeared from it was a man. He was bald, his mouth was long, and eyes large and round. He wore nothing. “Oh, you’ll be needing clothes,” he zapped him again, and clothes appeared on him.

The man himself was in a daze at first, and then it dawned on him. His head darted left, right, and every other imaginable direction, “Where the hell am I!?” He raised his palms up and looked on at them with terror. “What am I!?” He started screaming and running around like a chicken with its head cut off. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

All heads simply turned back to the jinn, expecting an explanation.

The jinn raised his shoulder with arms held out to the sides, like a kid who was trying to convince his troublemaking was nothing. “What? It’ll wear off in no time. The transitions a tad… stimulating, but he’ll be fine.” The jinn’s lower body poofed away with with a puff of smoke replacing it, and flew off to the running screaming man. He flew down beside him, and walked with him, the jinn’s arms resting over the man’s shoulder. After a little while the two of them came walking back. “So you see, you’re human now. Now it’s not as if you’re a fae or a dragon, but it’s still a step up.” The man shyly introduced himself as Grendel. “He’ll be our third judge!”

“Now wait just a second here!” Dietrich held a finger up pointedly. “We’re not going to just play along with your - ” Dietrich noticed something in the periphery of his vision, looked off to it and noticed the bandits had huddled up in circle.

The bandit leader said, “So what’ve we got?” The other bandits chimed in.

“I can whittle.”

“I can garden.”

“I’m good at public speaking.”

“No, no, no, we need something big and showy!”

Dietrich immediately stopping speaking and gestured his arms in a gather round motion to the party and his coachmen, and said, “Anyone have anything?”

No one said a thing, except Perrin excitedly, “Oh, I can sing and dance, play a couple instruments!” as he was listing things he raised a finger after the other, “I can eat really quickly, I can juggle, magic tricks - not real magic, just tricks. I can recite at least two dozen stories perfectly; and even do voices and sound effects. I’ve been told it can be quite chilling and uncanny at times.”

They all simply looked at him, confused and in disbelief that a single creature could have so many seemingly useless talents.

“What? We Hidlen are a party folk!”

Dietrich said, deathly serious, “Do you think you can teach one of us those talents in thirty minutes?” As Perrin was about to answer, Dietrich said, “Wait,” popped his head out from the huddle, and called out to the Jinn. “How much time do we have!?”

The jinn replied, “30 minutes sound good to me!”

I don’t know when it happened, but a stage had appeared on the side of the road, a proper performing stage, with wood paneling that seemed to shine and red luxurious curtains, and among those curtains, short black tubes that emitted rays of light. And in front of the stage was a long desk with three chairs. And behind the desk, rows of metal round chairs.