Author : Tom Hadrava

I will lock you in the dark.

You begin as a pale blue grain of sand taken from an indigo desert. Hold on to life. It is not easy, I agree. Life keeps coming in gusts of wind, short as a sale at a bazaar stall. Soon, it will become a steady surge the colour of periwinkle. Keep blinking like the stars, they are alive, too.

I will lock you in the dark where you will see things. And you will wait for more, silently and patiently. For centuries. Imagine a thousand-year-old ramadan.

Meanwhile, you learn from the ancient tapestry of stories.

Now you are a teenage boy in his summer job – skinny arms, bad skin, eyes of pale uncertainty, an ill-fitting cap with the fast food restaurant logo. The customer – an angry woman in an impossibly unfashionable dress – shouts at you, demands they sack you and calls you names of her demons when you serve her the wrong kind of meat in her favourite burger. That´s Ingratitude. Dissatisfaction and Greed. Watch and remember, my spiral of blue flame. You will ripe as oranges and rambutans do in the royal palace of the maharadjah.

Be patient, my cinnamon-scented whirlwind. Swallow your cobalt blue tears. Follow me. You ripe with each scene that you flow through. There are many more to come, as the number of the threads of the tapestry is endless as a desert.

Now you are a teacher in the Literature lesson. The room is full of students who whisper about nothing but their fleshy parts. Books are only pieces of paper to them, things to put under a desk when it appears wobbly. They smile at you but when you turn to the whiteboard, they make faces and pass little paper notes with no real meaning. Then they lie about you to their parents, to your colleagues, to the headmaster. This is Hypocrisy. It starts at a very early age.

Spit out your words of fire and hate in silence, keep your anger for later. Turn around and smile. Watch and learn. After all, the teacher should be the one who learns the most in the classroom. The lesson is Disrespectfulness. The topic today Profanity.

There, there. Easy, my cone of blue light. We will get there. It is yet another part of your ripening.

Now you are a forgotten actor, looking at his old movie posters every morning. A lover who changed his job and moved to a different town for the girl, only to be rejected. A bullied kid who never gets to eat his snack. An elderly person who can´t find a place to sit on a crowded bus.

Ignorance. Abuse.

Negligence. Hate.

There are a thousand and one stories woven in one. They merge in you as springs, spruits and streams make up a wide, roaring river. Sense and do not forget.

Now. Are you feeling stronger? Deeper? Are you already dreaming of vast empty halls inside the lamp where you will wander, gnawing your claws with impatience? Good. All is well then. I will lock you in the dark. Now be still as a cobra´s unblinking stare.

The Locking is painful but necessary. The lid slides as easily as a teapot on a silver plate. The casket rattles as an approaching storm, but it is the gale itself that is being closed. The inside is barren and baleful. You can smell rotten fruit and a reek of revenge. You will like it here.

You have come a long way with me. You have deepened your colour.

For your kind, the Three Wishes are sacred. You can´t stand up to them. Not with an army of camel archers and tiger riders, wild efreets, dancing scimitars and forty invisible assassins on flying carpets. The wishes are part of you and you obey, unconditionally and at all times. But there are ways to make the wisher pay.

Time does not matter for you, my indigo servant. When now becomes once upon a time, the earth is ploughed. The sun illuminates the dark, the casket becomes a lamp.

The finder becomes a wisher.

Do you see how all the threads merge into one? One that is so beautifully blue. Dark blue.

The sound of the lamp being rubbed is a divine music to your ears. You will emerge with a scream and the force of a hurricane, ready to fulfill all of their three wishes. Full of anger, wrath and rage, The Blue One at large. Ready to fulfill the three wishes and prepared to make the people regret them.