A Most Unusual Bottle

"I'm coming!" I shouted as I hobbled to the door, muttering under my breath, "40 is too young for this pain. I wish I could get these knees replaced, and go back to living my life."

I had been expecting the courier. The woman who'd raised me had died a few days ago, and the lawyer had called about the package. I took it with a polite smile and hobbled back over to my armchair before opening it.

Inside were a letter and four most unusual items. A silver pocket watch, what looked like a golden cigar box, a fist sized stoppered crystal vial with some dark liquid inside of it, and an old, battered leather-bound notebook or journal with the word GRANTED stamped into the leather and embossed in gold.

The letter read:

My Darling,

From the moment I adopted you, you have been the light of my life. I know that I never let you get very close to me. I've had many secrets to protect. I hope that after reading this letter, you'll be able to understand and to forgive me for keeping you in the dark.

I come from a place so far from here that it's almost a different world.

I grew up in a small house that my father built by hand, with the help of a few men from the local village. My parents were farmers. We were what some would consider poor, but our lives were rich and full of love, and hope.

We didn't have any of what are considered by most to be 'modern necessities'. None of the farmers had cars. There was no electricity, no running water.

We didn't have store bought toys, we played with things we found in nature. Our clothes were hand sewn, made from cloth that Mother purchased at the market when our wrists and ankles started poking too far out of our garments. Because cloth was expensive, we had to be careful with our clothes, and they had to be made with growing room. In this way, until we stopped growing, our clothes were almost always too big or too small.

Bu the time I was seven, I had learned to read well enough to go to the big village school with the older children. It was a five mile journey. The neighbors took it in turn to gather us all up into a horse-drawn cart in the mornings, but we nearly always walked home.

Life was simple. Wake up, do our chores, go to school, walk home, do our chores, go to sleep. There was rarely time to get into mischief. On weekends and holidays when school was out, we cleaned the animals and their stalls, and hauled water from the river to fill the big barrels that we drew from during the week.

Life was good. We worked hard. But we were happy. Celebrations were a sight to behold. People would come from miles around to share in a birthday cake or wedding feast, and to exchange small handmade gifts on holidays.

My favorite place on earth was the small schoolroom. I was good at school. I loved to read! I read everything I could find, every one of the teacher's textbooks, and each volume contained in the small local library. I learned about people and places, real and imaginary. I read poetry and medical journals, almanacs, encyclopedias, and fairy tales.

I knew that if there was ever anything that would change the world, it would come from a book.

My life continued on in this way until I was grown and had taken my position as teacher. Every week on Saturday, when Mother shopped at the market, I went to the library to gather the new books that had been collected there. Those residents who had children in the school brought books to the library for us to use to teach ourselves and their children more about the wide world.

One Tuesday in August, not long before my 17th birthday, I bit into an overripe peach. The pit had shattered, and a small piece of the shell broke my tooth. I was in devastating pain. There was no dentist in our village, and only one healer.

He told me that I'd have to go to the city, one hundred miles away, to get it fixed. If I didn't, it would likely fester and kill me. I took the medication I was given to stave off the infection, but we didn't have transportation to get over the mountain pass. I was stuck.

That Saturday, my mind was lost in pain as I browsed the new crates of books. It felt as if a white-hot poker, heated by Satan himself in the deepest pits of Hell, had been driven into my face. I shivered a little with fever and wished and prayed for something to make this pain better, or kill me.

On the verge of tears, I lightly ran my hand over the books that had never before failed to bring me joy. My books were the only magic I had ever known. I found myself praying that I would live long enough to find magic again.

Suddenly, a thread from the binding of one book caught my finger. I was so surprised that I forgot about the misery of my tooth, as I pulled an old, black leather bound journal out of the crate. On the front, stamped into the leather and embossed in gold was the title: Granted.

The smoldering ember of curiosity that had driven me throughout my life was ignited. As I opened the cover and gently turned the pages, it blazed into inferno intensity. Sweat beaded on my forehead, as my full concentration was captured.

The script was hand-brushed in ink, in a dialect of Cantonese that I was familiar with but not fluent in. I had been studying the language as much as I could on my own, hoping to better come to understand the words of Confucius.

The weight of the book in my hand was unusual. It was very heavy for its size. My hand shook slightly as I flipped through it, from excitement as much as from fever.

Page after page was filled with beautiful illustrations, I could piece together the stories by 'reading' the pictures (the way you might read a comic book in a language you don't understand). There were three.

1. The Magic Watch

The first story was about a pocket watch that allowed the user to travel to any date and time. A beautiful young woman used it over and over again to go back to the same moment, the moment of her parent's deaths in a horrible accident, to try and stop the trauma from ever occurring. Over and over again, she went back, her face a little older, a little more haggard each time. She had wasted her life away, trying to change the past, and had never even lived. A heavy tear fell from my eye, blurring the corner of the final drawing.

2. The Magic Box

The second story was about a small golden box that, once a day, contained an amount of currency. The box passed from one sailor's hand to another. It seemed that no holder of the box was ever able to avoid the trap of greed, and it was stolen repeatedly. Scene after scene showed time passing, the world changing, the holder of the box changing, and the currency changing along with it. A handful of sand dollars in 1590's South Africa, a pound sterling note in 1650's England.

3. The Magic Vial

The third and final story told of a vial of elixir, one drop of which would bestow immortality on any living human being, which a second drop would take away. The woman in the story was very sick, and dying, and she promised to do anything if she could be allowed to live. She made the elixir and took a drop of it, and was unable to die from that day forward. She hadn't understood, until it was too late, that the elixir would allow her to live forever as she was when she took it. She suffered in misery, too afraid to die, for two hundred years before she found the strength to take another drop and allow herself to pass on into peace.

I put the notebook back into the crate and lifted the lot onto my hip. I waved at the librarian, and as I placed the load into the back of the cart, the pain hit me anew. When Mother came with her armload of groceries, I was doubled over on the side of the road, in tears. She helped me into the cart and drove us home. She gave me some of the medicine she'd just purchased, and I slipped into a deep sleep, dreaming of the stories I'd 'read' in the library.

The next Monday morning, as I drove the cart full of children from the neighboring farms to the schoolhouse, I met a courier. He had a package for me, much like the package that you received this letter in.

That was on my 17th birthday. August 19, 1720. Three hundred years ago, I grew up in what is Ohio, now.

Inside the magic box were three Spanish silver coins. Spanish dollars were the unofficial currency of the Colonies. I used the money to get to the city, and to get my teeth fixed, not just the one that had caused me such pain, but all of them. I got married and had a family.

I took the elixir on my 50th birthday, having already decided to take the next dose 250 years later. I read every book I could get my hands on. I went to University many times, I got degrees in several subjects. I traveled across time, and ventured across the whole of the earth. I lived simply, and moved on when people began to wonder why I wasn't aging. But my life was never complete.

Something was missing, until the day that you came into my arms. I have never been more grateful for anything, not even for the gifts that magic gave me, than I have been for you.

I love you very much. Mind the morals of the stories when using the gifts, and you can have a long and happy life. Don't live in the past. Don't be greedy. Immortality is nothing without health. Most importantly, don't dwell on your pain. All things in this life are temporary, if you let the dark moments take over, you will forget how to see the light.

Love,

Auntie

I put the letter aside and pulled the black leather notebook from the box, wondering if the author of the journal had signed it somewhere. I would have to learn Cantonese, I decided, and learn what I could about them. I studied the illustrations carefully, and took their lessons to heart.

When I opened the cigar box, there was twenty thousand dollars in it. I would finally be able to afford the knee surgery I'd been putting off. I'd be able to travel, not only across the globe, but through time. I'd never go hungry, or without shelter. I would live until the end of time, if I chose to.

I never put much stock in the old 'three wishes' stories. Until the day that a genie arrived in a most unusual bottle, and changed my life forever.