Loretta of the Lamp

Slept so long

Loretta stopped, "What do you mean?"

"It's the wick alight with flame in the spout of the lamp."

"No way." Loretta's eyes were wide.

Something about Loretta's surprise both amused and irritated Akil, and his face contorted into a sardonic smile.

"How does night come then?" she asked. She had already observed how darkness fell within moments of evening setting in, a phenomenon that she had previously decided not to question him about, given that he didn't seem to want to talk to her.

"At some hour, somewhere, the night eventually turns to day and the lamp is no longer needed," he said, like it was obvious.

Loretta had more questions, but she remained silent and watched the sky.

Within a short space of time, the light was abruptly eclipsed by the darkness. She let out a long sigh. Akil opened the pack he kept slung over his shoulder, and dug out one flatbread and the water skin. The flatbread he divided in two and handed half to Loretta. Three days out of Rama, it was pretty stale, but Loretta was hungry, and she hadn't eaten anything since the bruised apple she had downed for her breakfast. They ate in silence, and Loretta chewed each bite over and over to make it last.

"Why were you asleep for so long then?" she asked, after she had finished the bread and taken a mouthful of water to clear her throat. "I mean why were you sleeping when everyone else here is awake?"

"The people you saw in Rama? They are not 'genie' as you call me," he said.

"Why are they in the lamp then?"

"Well they are not human, they are the people of the lamp, just like I was."

"You know, they do look fairly human to me."

"Well they aren't."

"Do they have genie powers also then?"

"No of course not."

"So you do have powers." His answer confirmed her suspicions. "But you were once like them, the people of the lamp?"

"Several thousand years ago, yes, I was."

"How come you look so young?" Loretta wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned in. The interview was getting interesting.

"Because I am cursed."

"You keep saying that. What exactly do you mean? How are you cursed? Why are you cursed?"

He paused, and Loretta was sure he was going to shut up like a clam again, but something prompted him to keep sharing. "I was sacrificed to keep the lamp alive," he sighed. It seemed that with his sigh, he relented all he had held back. He lay down on the ground and stretched his hands behind his head, looking up at the starless sky as he continued, "You will see the Mountain of Smoke when we come to Misbah," he said. "That is where I have slept for the last thousand years, and several more before that. When I was a boy I lived in Doua, a principality on the very western edge of the lamp. But every so often, the lamp must take a new sacrifice to keep the world alive. To be honest I don't know why. I heard legends when I was very young that our world floats like an island on the ocean of oil that fuels the lamp, and to keep the island afloat we must send sacrifices to the mountain of smoke."

"Sacrifices?" Loretta shivered at the word.

"Yes, the lamp feeds off the lives of the Jinni, but it will only accept a few – no more than nine at one time. Most sacrifices die, I was one of the few the lamp accepted, so when I was sent to Misbah and entered the mountain of smoke, I did not die. I fell asleep instead, cursed to be chained to the lamp, asleep in this world forever, keeping it alive, and waking only when I was summoned out of the lamp and into your world,"

"But why my world?"

"I don't really know, but from what I see the lamp is connected to your world – somehow a part of it, existing because of it."

"Why are you awake now?"

"Again I am only guessing, but I believe it is because of you. Because you came back with me I seem to have been expelled from the mountain of smoke, which is why we woke outside of Rama, on the very southern edge of the lamp."

"So you are no longer a genie?" Loretta had so many questions. The plot behind her existence in the lamp was thickening, but she feared Akil knew so few of the answers.

"Oh no, I am definitely still a 'genie'. I exist exactly as I existed outside the lamp in your world, except now I am in mine."

"Is that normal?" Loretta asked, worried.

"Not really no. The Djin king is the same, and maybe more living in Misbah, but I cannot know, I was only young when I was sacrificed and there was much I never learned."

"He must have the answers then," Loretta said with confidence.

"We would hope," Akil replied grimly, as he shifted to make himself comfortable for the night, "but I have fears in my mind."

Loretta sat in the sand, cross-legged and contemplating as Akil fell asleep. There were no stars in the night sky inside the Lamp, and the darkness she looked up at was a dull caramel, almost molten and glowing like a polished piece of brass under moonlight, except there was no moon in the Lamp.

She finally lay down on her mat, with a mound of sand underneath shaped carefully into a pillow, and a good yard of distance between herself and the genie. Eventually she found a position where she was comfortable, and when she did she stared up at the night sky again, humming tunelessly to fill the silence until sleep took her.