# Deal's Worth

Part 16 of 22 (1,662 words)

Chapter 3: Slice of Home





The wind set Yogi down on the front lawn the way a toddler sets down a full glass of milk: with enormous confidence and very little follow-through.

His shoes touched grass. The rest of him kept going. He completed one last slow quarter-turn on his heels, like a weather vane settling an argument, and came to rest facing the mailbox.

"Welcome to my house," Jeff said.

Yogi turned around, "That," he said, "was the craziest lift I've ever gotten."

Jeff let his wings fold in and looked at the place like he always did after a long day out, as if checking that nobody had moved it. One story, cabin-built, split-log siding weathered to the color of old honey. Garage on the left. A little attic window tucked under the peak of the roof like a raised eyebrow. Out back, the shed leaned slightly toward the house, the way it had for years, like it was trying to hear what was going on inside. Past the trees, the lake threw sunlight around in pieces.

His phone said 1:47 PM, barely visible under a stack of notifications that had doubled since the forest.

He was halfway up the porch steps when a voice came through the front door.

"Why do you smell like a pond and an old man?"

Yogi's head came up. "Who said that?"

"The dog," Jeff said.

"The dog."

"He's family."

The door swung open. A young yellow Australian shepherd stood in the doorway, not jumping, not wiggling, just leaning a shoulder against the frame with the unbothered posture of a teenager who has been waiting for his ride for eleven minutes and wants that noted. His nose picking up scents.

"Pine sap," Biscuit reported. "Pond water. And a sweater that's been in a closet since before phones."

"Cedar block," Yogi said. "Keeps the moths honest."

Biscuit's nose swung to Jeff, and his ears went flat with disappointment. "And you smell like cooked thumb. You were smoking. The usual."

Yogi's eyebrows had climbed so high over his sunglasses they were in danger of leaving. "Your dog talks clearer than my nephew."

"Cost me a wish," Jeff said. "It's one of my best ones too."

"He wanted somebody to argue with about the playoffs," Biscuit said.

"I have Alicia for that."

From deep inside the house, without a trace of hesitation: "You have me for losing that! Jeff! Get in here!"

The living room was warm in the way rooms get when people actually live in them. A couch that had surrendered its original shape years ago. Two quilts, one on the couch, one on the floor where it had apparently been kicked. A lamp with a slightly crooked shade that Jeff kept meaning to fix and had decided, at some point, was simply the lamp's personality now. On the side table sat a thick, plain book with a coffee ring on the cover. Every room of every home had one. This one had the coffee ring.

Alicia was on the couch with her knees pulled up, hoodie sleeves pushed down over her hands, dark brunette waves escaping a clip that had given up an hour ago. She had her phone in one hand, thumb scrolling without her looking at it, because her hazel eyes were locked on the television with the focus of someone defusing it.

"Jeff. Sit. No, don't sit, there's no time. Look."

Jeff looked.

The screen showed a canyon from high above, the way a hawk would see one. Sandstone pillars stood up out of the ground like the knuckles of something buried. Glass-like crystals glittered among them in scattered clusters, orange here, green there, one far off throwing back light like a signal mirror. And in the middle of all of it, very small, a figure in red armor was fighting a dragon.

The dragon was not small.

It opened its jaws, and a column of blue flame poured out and missed the armored figure by a body length.

Alicia gestured at the TV with her ring hand. "It's streaming on the main Smart TV app for Sports. Some guy wished for himself to be streamed this morning and it's been streaming since. The view is from high above and follows him."

The sports bars are furious."

She turned the phone toward him without taking her eyes off the screen. A news feed scrolled past. Headlines. Clips of the same footage recorded off people's televisions.

Jeff stared at the tiny armored man, who was shouting at the sky between swings.

A dry voice from the doorway said, "Somebody want to tell the blind man what's happening on the television?"

The room went quiet in a new and uncomfortable way.

"Oh my gosh." Alicia finally looked away from the screen, saw the short bald man in the cardigan and sunglasses, and was off the couch in one motion. "Hi. I'm so sorry. I thought you were a neighbor. I'm Alicia."

"Yogi. I get that a lot."

The dragon's back is doing the thing again," Biscuit said, trotting to the middle of the rug.

"What thing?" Yogi asked.

"Its back plates," Alicia said, and there it was again, the tone. She'd been sitting here for an hour and a half, and she had notes. "Before it does anything that isn't biting or clawing, the plates on its back stand up. Different arrangement every time.

"The armored man turned into lightning," Biscuit said.

"How long's this been going?" Jeff asked.

"Since about noon." Alicia was practically bouncing on her toes. "He was just walking around this canyon on camera, showing off. Posing on rocks. Nobody knew there was a dragon there. He didn't know there was a dragon there. It wasn't in a cave, Jeff. It was one of the rock formations. He walked up and knocked on it with his axe, like knocking on a door, to see how it sounded."

"And it sounded like a dragon."

"It sounded like a dragon."

Jeff watched the dragon track the lightning streak and pivot, it fought like something that had done so many times and had kept track of what worked.

Jeff looked at the screen. At the canyon floor, the pillars, the scattered crystals, the tiny armored man and the huge dragon. He looked at every part of the picture he could.

There was no genie anywhere in it.

"Well," Jeff said, and felt his pulse pick up, and felt the familiar heat bloom behind his eyes. "It just so happens I've got two wishes left."

Alicia spun to face him so fast her hair clip finally gave up and hit the floor.

"You found another genie?"

Jeff pointed both hands at Yogi, like a game show host revealing the car.

"Oh," Alicia said. "Oh, you're— I thought you were a neighbor!"

"You mentioned," Yogi said.

"Your eyes are doing the thing," Biscuit told Jeff.

"They're excited."

"They're very excited."

And then Biscuit went completely still, in the particular way that means everything inside has started moving at once.

"Two," he said.

"Two," Jeff agreed.

"Jeff." Biscuit stood up. "You promised."

"I didn't forget," Jeff said.

He pulled the cyan die out of his pocket and held it up out of habit, for nobody in particular. "Real quick. Yogi, Alicia. Alicia, Yogi. Yogi, Biscuit. Biscuit, Yogi. Found him through this in the woods, he's great, he's blind, he knows where your hand is anyway, don't ask how, he'll say later. Okay."

"Starts with 'I wish,'" Yogi said.

"I know it starts with 'I wish.'" Jeff squared his shoulders. "Yogi. I wish for Biscuit to change into a human."

"Granted," Yogi said.

Light came up out of the rug.

It didn't flash. It poured upward and wrapped around the dog in slow, shifting ribbons, patterns folding inside patterns faster than Jeff's eyes could agree on, and the shape inside it stretched, and rose, and kept rising.

Alicia had the couch quilt airborne before the glow had even started to fade. It landed square on top of the new shape like a net dropped over a bird.

"Uh," said a voice from under the quilt. It was Biscuit's voice. Same kid. It just came out of a different throat now, a little lower, a little rougher at the edges, like a song played on a new instrument. "Why is it— oh. Oh. I have hands."

Two hands came out from under the quilt and held themselves up in front of the fabric. Then the quilt got pulled down to the shoulders, wrapped tight like a cape, and there was a boy standing on the rug. Fifteen, maybe. Tan skin tone. Very dark brown eyes. Wild, spiky blond hair that was, to the shade, the exact yellow of his coat.

He took one step, and his knee made a decision without consulting the rest of him. He caught the arm of the couch and hung there.

"Whoa. Whoa. Okay. Everything is really far down."

"The dog got taller," Yogi observed.

"How do you even— later, right, later." Jeff's grin was taking over his whole face. He couldn't stop it and wasn't trying.

He watched the boy test his own weight, and a quiet thought slid in under the noise. The wish hadn't made anyone new. There was no stranger in the living room. It was the same someone who'd been there the whole time, who argued about the playoffs and read the book on the side table and waited by the door. The wish had just handed him a different set of hands.

Biscuit let go of the couch. Stood. Swayed. Stayed up.

"Two legs is so much easier than I thought," he said, amazed. "You guys make it look hard. You guys are so dramatic about it." His hip twitched. He looked over his shoulder. His hip twitched again. "I keep trying to wag. There's nothing there. It's like reaching for a step that's not there."