Loretta woke from a nightmare, shivering and gasping for air. But it was warm and bright, and her eyes were adjusted still to darkness. She snapped them shut, and put her hands over her face when that was not enough.

Somewhere in the pit of her stomach she could still feel the lurching sensation that had woken her, a deep uneasy pain like a corkscrew was being turned through her belly button and extracting her along with it. She pressed her stomach with one hand, while still shielding her eyes with the other and lay where she was, quite incapacitated, for a time.

Eventually the light didn’t seem so bright, and the pain in her stomach receded as the corkscrew was twisted back into place.

A shadow passed between her and the light. Disturbed, she opened her eyes and looked up. The silhouette of someone standing in the shadow of the sun was all she could see, and “Oooh,” was all she could say, the brightness still stinging her.

“You are alive then.” A voice said. It didn’t have the same ominous resonance, or the mimicking nature it had before, but it was definitely the same voice that belonged to the figure of smoke from the dark room she had been in only a few minutes prior.

With the pain inside her completely gone now, she rolled over and sat up. She had been lying on sand, her clothes and her curls were full of it. After she shook it out of her hair and groaned again, she opened her eyes, shielding them from the direct sunlight this time.

“Am I, alive?” she said, hovering over the word ‘alive’. She wasn’t sure whether she was asking herself, or the shadow above her.

“Should I pinch you?”

“No!” she frowned at the shadow. There was a long, awkward silence before she spoke again, “Where am I then?” she asked.

“About five miles outside of Rama,”

“R-rama?” she stumbled over the rolling of the ‘R’.

“Yes. Rama, the nearest town.”

“Oh,” Loretta blinked a few times as her pupils made their final adjustments to the light. “And where is Raaaama?”

“Rrrrrrama,” he corrected again.

“Where is it?” she asked, again.

“I don’t understand the question. It’s five miles from where we are right now.”

“Well, is it in Africa? Egypt? The freakin’ Sahara? Where?” Her thinly veiled composure failed her, because it was obvious she was no longer in London, or even England.

He, the creature, began to laugh. His laugh was just as terrifying as his voice had been in the darkness of the storage room moments ago, and it shook her, but she waited patiently for his response.

“Human, surely you know you are inside the lamp? Where else would I be? Can you not see the colour of the sky which forms the boundaries of our world?” He held his arms wide and lifted his head upward.

Loretta also looked up, away from the sun. “Oh,” she said.

He laughed more.

“Oh,” she repeated, and fainted.

*

When she stirred again, the sun was still high in the sky, blaring down on her, but the light was dappled, and she was lying in the shade of a gnarled acacia tree. The creature, whom she did not yet feel comfortable referring to as a ‘genie’ was sitting, knees up, on a rock a few feet away from her. He didn’t look very supernatural. Here in the bright light of day he was neither made of smoke nor ephemeral. He was normal sized with a regular physical body. Tempted as she was to go over and poke him to check he was real, she decided it was probably not a good idea.

She didn’t move either, not yet comfortable to let him know she was awake.

He was a genie.

He was glaring out into the desert, his frown brilliantly contorting his defined eyebrows and the muscles beneath them. His skin was a warm tan brown, but everything else about him seemed cold; she had the full view of his profile, angular nose, pointed chin, harsh cheek bones, a forehead that seemed too long, and a shaven scalp save for the long black ponytail drawn from his hair line back half way to the nape of his neck, and hanging down past his shoulders. He was half-naked and clearly comfortable with it, his once white linen trousers were smeared with stains of sweat and mud and the marks of general wear. There were several holes in them big enough for Loretta to poke a finger through. His feet were bare.

His back and shoulders were covered in tattoos, the thin spiralling lines of words in an alphabet she could not read and a language she did not understand. All in all, she couldn’t have imagined a genie to look more genie-ish. The only thing she wouldn’t have imagined was the anger and hatred that emanated from him, visible in his frown and the way he arched his back and hunched his shoulders.

Rather quickly, Loretta decided it was time to get up. She stood and took a step forward almost before the genie was aware of it.

He stood and turned to her.

“Oooh,” she said, as her legs gave way beneath her. She crashed into the sand knees first.

He half reached forward to catch her before deciding better of it. As she collapsed, he squatted back down on the rock, facing her this time.

“Do you say anything other than ‘Oooh’?” he asked. “You were quite mouthy the last time we met.”

“I don’t feel so well,” she said, shutting her eyes tight, pushing her hands against her knees and stretching her shoulders, trying to squeeze the nausea out of her body.

“Clearly.”

When she opened her eyes and looked up into his, she had to blink twice to focus them. It was the first time they had made eye contact, and the genie didn’t appreciate it much. He snarled and looked away.

His eyes were pink. Loretta was taken back by their colour; she had never seen anything like it.

“Do you do anything other than frown and growl?” she retorted. She often allowed her mouth to open before giving her brain time to consider what was being said. This was one of those moments.

The genie said nothing.

“Where am I, again?” she asked, looking up at the pale gold sky, burnished and shining like a brass candlestick, or a lamp.

“About four and a half miles outside of Rama.”

“Rama, which is ‘inside the lamp’?” she clarified. There was no blue in the sky, none at all. In contrast to the golden sky, the desert sand was creamy white and sparkling in the daylight.

This was another question the genie chose not to answer.

“Why did you carry me half a mile to be under this tree if you dislike me so much?” she asked, after another long silence.

“Because I couldn’t leave you there.”

It was Loretta’s turn to frown. “Well clearly you would’ve if you could’ve.” She put her hands on her hips for a moment to illustrate her frustration before she attempted to stand again. This time she was successful.

She looked at the land around her, turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees and taking in rolling dune after dune of sparkling white sand. Four and a half miles was too long a distance to see a town from, apparently. The only things obstructing the nothingness were the acacia tree, the rock, the genie, and Loretta.

Loretta placed her hands back on her hips and let out a slow breath through her pursed lips. “Well. That is something else.” She made the announcement entirely to herself, which was just as well, because the genie remained silent. She turned and walked over to him, cautiously. “My name is Loretta,” she lamely offered him her hand, not expecting him to shake it and instantly feeling old fashioned and stupid for the gesture.

The genie looked disdainfully from her hand back to her face. “I don’t care.” He replied.

“Well I do. I mean, I care to know yours,” she said, pulling her hand back.

“You think you are smart, don’t you?”

Realising that she need no longer be surprised by his rudeness, she shrugged instead of answering.

“Well you are not. You will regret this bitterly before it ends.”

“You’re telling me!” she let out one hard laugh, unable to contain it.

“I cannot tell what foul thing you did to get here, nor do I want to know–” he began.

“I didn’t do anything!” she replied quickly, her voice more of a whinge than she would have liked, but she was fast reaching the end of her composure again, “I was curious all right? I mean, what the hell happened in that room? What the hell are you? You, you don’t exist! Not in my world!” she waggled her finger in his face.

“While you however unfortunately, seem to persist in existing in mine,” he replied calmly.

“Uurgh!” she couldn’t help herself but to release a growl of frustration.

“You really aren’t smart, are you?” he replied.

“Look, whatever, just let me out of here.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” she asked, without hiding her anger.

He pursed his lips now also. “Can’t,” he said finally.

“Not so clever now either, are we?” she replied through gritted teeth.

He shrugged.

Loretta bit her lip and waited a few moments to calm down. She walked around him and claimed her own space to sit on the rock. “I don’t know whether to laugh at the insanity of this, or cry,” she admitted slowly, as the nausea closed in on her again. She put her head down on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs.

After a long time of silence she looked up. The genie was gone, and the feelings of terror and relief which replaced him were not comforting. Also, the corkscrew in her naval had returned.

She pressed both hands to her stomach this time, as she stood up and looked all around her. Some way off she spotted the genie, standing on the crest of a dune. Begrudgingly, she followed after him. What other choice did she have?

She followed him for what seemed like hours, although not much time could have passed because it was still the height of day when she hauled herself to the peak of yet another dune and found a walled city on the near horizon. She glanced up at the sun and down at the city again, it had to be less than a mile away now. Time seemed to move slower here, wherever here was. Inside the lamp.

She was panting and resting her hands on her knees when she looked down and caught sight of the genie just below her at the base of the dune. Slipping and sliding, she tumbled down the dune toward him as quick as she could.

“Do you have any water?” she asked, still out of breath and feeling very hot and very bothered.

He put his open palms out to show he was carrying nothing.

“Can’t you like, make it appear or something?” she asked, begged.

He laughed at her and continued walking.

“Don’t you need water too?” she yelled after him.

“Why do you think I’m going there?” he asked, pointing toward the city.

She pressed her hands to her hot red cheeks for a moment, before jogging after him. By the time he stopped moving, and she caught up with him again, he was splashing his face with water that he had drawn from the well outside the city gates. She collapsed against the wall, exhausted.

“Please,” she said, holding her hand out for the bucket.

He handed it to her, his meanness gone for a brief second as she thrust her face into the water that was left in the bucket and sucked it up like from a straw. Quickly she started choking and dropped the bucket.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” the genie admitted, merely watching as Loretta heaved and coughed and spluttered. “I don’t know if they will be able to tell you are human. I can’t tell.”

“Who’s they?” Loretta asked between gasped for air.

He looked up at the walls of the city, strangely quiet in the height of the day. “The Jinni.”

“Who’s the Gin-eye?” Loretta asked when she had found her breath. She didn’t bother getting upset that he hadn’t tried to help her.

“I am Jinni,” he replied.

“And do you have a name?” she asked.

“A name is power,” he said.

“You know my name,” she replied indignantly.

He smirked, “Human names are weak. I have already forgotten it.”

“Whatever.” She smirked back at him, mocking.

He sat down, leaned against the wall of the well and closed his eyes.

Loretta let out a small snort. She pulled the rubber band out of her hair and shook it loose. It was heavy with sweat and sand and hung damp down over her shoulders. She had long ago taken her hoodie off, leaving it somewhere in the sand near where she woke.

The genie opened his eyes and watched her as she rolled up the sleeves of her Iron Maiden hand-me-down t-shirt. “What are you wearing? You look ridiculous,” he told her, though his eyes were already closed when Loretta turned back to glare at him.

“Not nearly ridiculous as you,” she told him, as she turned and stomped away toward the city gates.

By the time he opened his eyes again she was lifting her hand to knock on the giant wooden gates. He was up in a flash and caught her fist before it came down. “Not a good idea,” he warned her.

Loretta pulled back sharply from the shock she received when his hand caught hers. She opened her mouth to squeal in surprise but realised that he must not have felt it. “Look,” she said, rubbing her hand, “if you don’t have any better ideas on how I can get home from wherever this place is, then I have a right to go and look for someone who does,”

“No.”

Loretta pushed him away from her, ignoring the sharp tingle in her fingers as she did so, “No? No? Really? You won’t tell me your name, you’ve hardly spoken to me though I’ve been trapped here for – well, you’ve made me follow you for hours on end through the desert! Am I your slave that I am to do what you ask?”

“No, of course not.” He pulled away from her, seeming physically repulsed by her words. “My name is Akil,” he said.

Loretta guessed that was the closest she was going to get to an apology. “Well Akil, what are we going to do now? I need to get back to London, I’m already way past my curfew, and you need to get shot of me for your own well-being as you made clear,”

“You swear you don’t know how you got here?” Akil asked again.

“I swear it.” Loretta promised, “I swear I did not try to follow you purposefully into the lamp.” She crossed her heart solemnly.

“Are you mocking me?”

“No. Well a little. I just don’t know how you think I knew how to follow you when I didn’t even believe you were real. Do you think I see mythical creatures and monsters every other day? No, Akil. London is not like that,”

“Well–”

“And much less so would I choose to follow said ‘mythical creature’ into a lamp.”

“I have heard–”

“A Lamp,” she repeated for emphasis.

The genie sighed.

From inside the walled city, a trumpet call rose, projecting its long, strangled cry over the rooftops. Akil pulled back from the gates and thrust Loretta behind him. There was grinding and creaking as the gates were forced open from the inside. More sounds followed, shattering the stillness of the desert – the screech and bay of animals, the clanking of chains, chatter of a thousand voices and the distant thrum of music. The walls of the city buffered the sound so well that Loretta’s senses were momentarily overwhelmed. The gates slammed back against the hewn sandstone walls and Loretta and Akil were sheltered in the shadow of their massive girth as the city released itself upon the desert.

Women swathed in scarves and balancing pots on their heads or shoulders were the first to appear, surrounding the well in their droves. Behind them came children, running and tumbling and carrying their own pots or leading clutches of sheep and goats with leads around their necks. The city guards came as far as the gates and took their stations, their helmets and shirts of chain mail sparkling in the light, and their swords snugly sheathed at their waists. A caravan of carts, pulled by oxen and mules came now, and Loretta noticed the roads beaten into the sand for the first time, running away to the left and right of the gates, away toward mountains that seemed to appear now like magic from the miasma of the desert, a ridge of hazy peaks to border both extremes of the horizon. There were camels and horses in the droves which left the city too, the horses champing and rearing to go pulled ahead easily, their riders driving them to be off. The camels meanwhile, fell into step with the caravan of carts, some supporting huge and elaborate litters, draped with curtains that were tightly closed, some laden with luggage. After the women and children, girls of all ages came and filled the wash beside the well with water to empty their piles of dirty linen into. No one took notice of Akil or Loretta who hid in his shadow. One girl walking by was dragging a trail of dirty linen sheets behind her, almost dropping them from her bundle. Akil moved so fast she did not even notice when he relieved her of one.

“Here,” he chucked it at Loretta, “cover yourself up would you?”

“What?!” Loretta’s voice rose in offence.

“Just, try to blend in,” he shook both hands at her in desperation to explain.

Loretta grunted with displeasure, and draped the dirty sheet over her shoulders.

“Do you mind if I–”

“Actually yes I would,” Loretta pulled away from him before he could help her dress properly, or touch her again. She twisted the sheet awkwardly over her hair and around her face and then pulled it close to her body.

“I guess that will do,” Akil said, placing his hands on his hips and stepping back to observe her.

“Just get me out of here,” Loretta hissed at him.

He turned and marched past the guards into the city, they paid no attention to him or Loretta as they slipped into the crowded streets.

The bustling roads of the city were even hotter than the desert had been, and stuffy with the bodies of both man and beast pressing to get by and go about their day. Loretta was hungry and sweaty, and feeling more dirty than she cared to think about by the time they reached the markets in the centre of Rama.

Akil stopped suddenly beside an alley way with a sign above it in a language Loretta could not read. He turned to her, “If you go too far from me you will get sick, and eventually you will not be able to go on. Can I trust that you will stay here and wait while I make some arrangements?” he said to her.

“Clearly you don’t need to trust me, I have no choice,” Loretta replied, crossing her arms.

He turned and strode away. Loretta watched him go with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn’t like him much, and she trusted him even less, but she had no choice than to rely on him, and Loretta had never relied on anyone in her life.

It was only a few minutes after Akil left that Loretta decided to venture out, regardless of what the genie had said. Rather timidly, she wandered back into the thick of the market stalls, right past the rows of pastries and breads that were making her stomach rumble, even the elaborate stacks of exotic fruits and vegetables were calling her. Loretta had stolen things before, plenty of times, but there was something in the raw fear she felt at the unknown of Rama and her sudden entrapment within the lamp that kept her from taking anything. She was in a world full of magical creatures – genies. Though as she observed the dirty, hot and bustling society about her, she struggled to place them. Were they all genies? Every man, woman and child here? Did they all have magical powers? None of it added up with her memories of A Thousand And One Nights that her father used to read to her when she was little. They seemed normal to her, the children were just as dirty and grubby as she was, and the people working just as hard for a living as any regular human would.

But she was still inside a lamp. When she looked up at the sky, it was still golden and burnished without a cloud in sight. She shivered, mostly with loneliness, and clutched her arms about her as she wandered further. After a while she began to feel the corkscrew sensation of pain behind her bellybutton, and the queasy unease creeping up her throat that she had felt in the desert. She knew then that it was the feeling of her wandering too far from the genie, but she decided to keep going, motivated by the comfort of the city so busy and alive around her.

“Shoes? You want shoes?” A man asked her.

She shook her head, afraid if she spoke that she would be picked out as a someone who didn’t belong. The man viewed her up and down, and looked at her dirty trainers that were almost unrecognisable as trainers from all the dirt and dust smeared on them.

“I have cheap shoes,” he suggested.

Loretta shook her head, and walked away. By the time she had slunk to the far end of the alley the uneasiness in her stomach had actually disappeared, so she kept going. In fact she felt she was gaining more strength the further she went. She held her head a little higher, her confidence growing. There was fruit piled high on a cart in front of her, apples, pears, mangos and cactus fruit, and she just knew if she could make her way into the crowd that gathered around, she would be able to fill her watering mouth and empty stomach. Everyone was haggling over different quantities to fill their baskets, their fingers pointing and demanding as the trader struggled to keep up with them. Loretta slipped into the foray with a quick burst of confidence and stretched her hand out for a bright green pear in easy reach.

Swiftly, a hand caught her by the wrist and hauled her aside. Her heart bounced against her ribcage in fear and her arm recoiled at the grasp but she could not get free. By force she was pulled out of the crowd and away from the cart. It only took her a moment to realise who had her from the electrical shocks against her skin.

“Let me go!” she wrestled with Akil.

“You can wait.” He hissed at her in an undertone as he dragged her back into the shadows of a covered alley. He let her go, and she fell back against the wall with the momentum of her struggling.

In anger she put out both palms to shove him back, but he caught her and held her hands up and away from him.

“The punishment for stealing would be to cut off your hand just above the wrist,” he tapped his thumb against her pulse, “right there.”

“Let me go!” she cried at him again as she fought, so angry she could feel tears gathering.

“Do you understand what I am telling you?” he asked. He allowed her to pull free, and watched silently as she stormed further down the alley, putting distance between them.

“Asshole!” she muttered as she went, rubbing her wrists.

He jogged to catch up with her. “You cannot walk away from me. Do you not realise I followed you as soon as you pulled away? Of course I can feel it, the sickness, the pain. Just like you.”

“I don’t care,” she muttered, not looking at him because of the tears running down her dirty cheeks.

He stepped in front of her, and easily blocked her when she tried to duck around him. If he noticed her tears, he did not say anything. Instead he shoved a small sack into her hands, inside there was bread and cheese, and two apples that were only slightly bruised.

“I was hungry,” Loretta said in a quieter voice, still refusing to make eye contact with him. She looked instead at the ground as she tore off a chunk of the bread with her teeth. Her anger was quelled for the moment as she leaned back against the clay wall and chewed. She passed the sack back to Akil, but he shook his head.

“It was for you.” he said.

She did not say thank you. It just didn’t seem right. When she finished eating, she wiped the back of her hand across her face and half-glanced at him. She opened her mouth to speak as she looked away, but he cut her off.

“As I see it, I have two options,” he told her. “I could kill you and hide all evidence of your unfortunate existence here, or I could take you to the Djin king, washing my hands of you completely, explaining that you are a conniving little thief who tricked her way into the lamp and are therefore none of my concern.”

Loretta snorted in disgust at him. “What’s the Gin king?” she chose to ignore his candid suggestion to disposing of her.

Akil snorted back at her, possibly in disgust that she did not know, “He is the ruler of the Lamp, the king of all the Jinni,”

“Is he trapped in the lamp also?”

Akil just looked at her.

“Well he’s not much more of a king than you are then, is he?” she suggested, disdainfully looking him up and down, still half dressed as he was.

He ignored her look, and continued, “Taking you the Djin king does however risk danger to myself,”

“So you would prefer to kill me?” she suggested.

“Prefer? Of course. However it is forbidden to kill a human,”

“How lucky for me,” she replied sarcastically, folding her arms now, “and unfortunate for you.”

“Then again, it is also forbidden for Jinni to communicate with humans, and I certainly didn’t think it was possible for one to enter the lamp, and I don’t think the Djin king will believe it either. He will most likely assume I have committed some dark curse in order to bring you here, thus incriminating me,”

“Still better to kill me then?” Loretta interrupted his train of thought.

“Of course,” he gave her a sarcastic smile that mimicked her own. “The only small, thin thread prolonging your existence right now is just that – your existence. I do not know how you came to be here, nor how ‘bound’ to me you really are, and having survived several millennia of human stupidity already, I don’t particularly fancy a foolish mistake ending it now.”

“What about what I want in all this?” Loretta asked suddenly.

“What could you possibly want?” he asked, his voice bored.

Loretta smiled at him as she said, “To get away from you.”

He grimaced back.

She sighed, “Seriously, I want to go home,” she told him, “and the way you are talking it sounds like this Djin king is the only one with the power to do that kind of thing,”

He glared at her, “Yes, what you continue to insinuate is true. I don’t know how you managed to get into the lamp so I certainly don’t know how to get you out of it by myself.”

“But the Djin king might.”

“He probably would, if he cared for it. Most likely he would get rid of you first.”

“Ahhh!” Loretta grinned and crossed her arms. “You said genie are forbidden to kill humans,”

“I didn’t say it was impossible,”

“Still, if this king is the one who makes the rules, then surely he is going to stick by them?” She turned and began to make her way down the alley once more.

“He doesn’t make them,” the genie muttered. Louder he said, “That’s the wrong way,”

Loretta spun around, “Of course it is!” she said, as he paced off in the opposite direction, not waiting to see if she followed.

*

She did follow, begrudgingly of course, as he made his way back into the souk, wending into narrower and narrower alleys where the cloth merchants, tailors and dye makers resided. By the time they emerged from the covered markets Akil had a purse full of gold and an armful of new clothes for himself. Loretta on the other hand down-right refused his attempts to clothe her. It was dark now inside the lamp, so dark it was like a night without dusk, and Loretta could not even remember the sun setting. The day seemed to have magically switched from unbearable heat and golden light to a night full of sticky warmth and complete darkness.

They found themselves back at the door where Akil had attempted to leave her earlier.

“Will you wait here this time? Please?” He really did force out the word. “You can sit at that cafe over there,” he pointed to an odd assortment of benches and cushions beneath the lamp-lit boughs of a merchant’s tent. “Eat whatever you want and I will pay for it,” he promised.

She was trapped, and she knew it well now. No better than a prisoner, she turned from him without a word and wandered across the darkened town square toward the light of the cafe.

The meal they served her while she waited was of snails in the shell, boiled in salt water and served with a mug of mint tea. She downed the tea but absolutely could not bring herself to touch the bowl of floating, slimy dead molluscs. The wait that followed her meagre meal was so long that by the time the genie returned she was asleep on the cushions by her table, but she stirred when his shadow blocked the lamp light on her face, she’d always been a light sleeper.

“Come,” he said roughly, though his voice was a little softer than it had been earlier. He was clean now, and fully clothed, but Loretta hardly noticed as she slumped along in the dark behind him till they came to the door of an inn.

“It’s late.” The man who answered the door growled at Akil. Loretta hung back in the shadows.

“We have come a long way, we needed food and supplies before we found somewhere to rest.” Akil said simply.

The inn-keep didn’t seem any kinder on hearing his explanation, until Akil opened his purse, and he opened his arms wide to welcome them. Holding his candle aloft, he brought them into the central courtyard of the inn and served them lotus tea and pastries while he roused his family to prepare rooms for them.

Loretta ate hungrily, and then sat in silence, her mind heavy with sleep and her eyes in a blur as Akil negotiated for two rooms, one for himself and a separate one for his ’cousin’. She was so tired, and her world so blurred that she begun to hope she was waking up from the dream finally. The bad dream. She rested her head on the arm of the chair while Akil conversed with the innkeeper.

“Oh, don’t worry about her, she is fine,” were the last words she heard from the genie’s lips before she slipped into a heavy black slumber.

Next Chapter: 3 | My cocktail of misery