England 1890

A barking cough echoed like a crack of thunder down the empty corridor, followed by an unsettling, gurgled gasp of air. Vera winced at the sound, removing her hands from the stairway bannister to cover her ears.  The rest of the family stood around her mother's sickbed, unmoving for hours except to wail pitifully at the sight of her.

"Alrigh', duckie?"

Vera frowned up at Halsten, the family's butler.

"No."

He placed a large hand on top of her head and ruffled her already mussed hair. She squirmed out from underneath his touch and stood up, balling up her fists.

"She is going to be fine," Vera stated, emphasizing the last. "Everyone is crying like mother is...like she...She will get better soon. She will."

Halsten looked away from her toward her mother's room. His worried gaze made Vera even more angry.

"Stop that!" She shouted, her voice carrying and drawing attention from family inside the room. They, like Halsten, all had pity in their eyes. "I refuse to weep and hover around her bed like some vulture waiting for her to die!"

"Vera," Halsten chided, shaking his head. "They gather around her because they care and don't want her to be alone."

She glared at them, wanting to march into the room and shove them all out. "I wish they were all gone. I wish everyone would just disappear. I hate them."

Halsten sighed. "You don't mean that. They mean well."

"Yes, I do," she argued, her eyes sparkling with tears of defiance. "Mother would get better much faster if I could get in there to take care of her. They are all crowding her, making her worse!"

"So that is what this is about," he said, his voice low and kind.

Vera refused to look at him now, her eyes burning with unshed tears. She refused to cry. There was no reason to cry. Her mother was going to be just fine.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "The real reason you are upset has nothing to do with them. You feel helpless because you can't save her and afraid she will die before you can get in to see her."

Vera jerked away from his arm and shoved him away. "No!"

"You are a child, Vera," he continued, despite her outburst. "There is nothing you can do for her. Except go be with her, like the rest of the family."

Vera was silent. Seething. Her breath  inhaled as hiccupped gasps and exhaled as pants. Her whole body trembled and flushed with rage.

"I wish it was all of you instead," she choked out. "If I had a genie, I'd wish for all of you to die instead of mother."

Without waiting for his reply, she fled to her room and hid. For hours she refused to come out, no matter the amount of pleading she heard from her family. She hid so long that when she finally emerged, the house was dark and silent.

There were no sobs, no sniffles. No whispered voices coming from the hallway.

A shiver of panic raced down her spine.

No coughs. No gasps. No sound at all.

Vera raced into her mother's room, only to find it empty. Empty except for a lone figure lying still under the blanket.

Her shaking hand reached out to pull back the sheet. Bit by bit, the farther she moved it down, the lower her heart sank. Her mother's blonde curls, her mother's freckled nose, her mother's...frown? That couldn't be right. Her mother never frowned.

But still, here she was. Cold. Frowning.

Dead.

Vera collapsed to the floor. Halsten had been right, of course. She didnt really hate anyone and she had felt helpless to save her mother. But her last wish felt genuine. It was terrible, but she truly did want to trade all of their lives for her mother's.

When her father found her an hour later, she was in the library, searching for any book on genies, wishes, death, and deities she could find. Her eyes were blurry with tears, but Vera refused to leave until she found something to bring her mother back.

And for days, she obsessed over it -- until her mother's funeral. On that day, when they lowered her mother's casket into the ground, Vera got lost in her grief and forgot about all else for a long time. She forgot about genies and wishes -- let go of her desire to bring those she loved back from the dead.

Until ten years later when the first wish she had made would come true.
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