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She hops to the other foot. “I don’t do pens. You’ve got one in your jacket. It’s leaking.”
A large inky splotch stains the left side of my Windbreaker. Annoyed, I wipe the pen off and sit on the only dry patch of ground. For the longest time, I listen to the soft percussion of the rain while trying to word my wish airtight. None of that “I want to be famous and instead I get a guy on the beach” crap for me.
“How ya doin’?” Dulcie asks. She’s stretched out on a branch Cheshire-cat style.
“Do you mind? I’m thinking. This is for the big money.”
She spreads her hands in a no harm, no foul gesture. “Don’t let me rush genius.”
Finally, I write down the only thing I can think of and stick it on a branch. My wish disappears into the tree, and a baby leaf pokes out. In the veined paper, I can see the words struggling to be born.
Dulcie hops down. “What did you wish for?”
“Use your X-ray heat vision super angel powers to find out.”
“Just a messenger, remember?” Dulcie winks. “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll come true.”
“Sort of,” I say.
“Sort of.”
Suddenly, she reaches her arms around my neck and just as quickly, she jumps back. I feel the empty space between us like an extra person.
“Got it!” she says, waving something in her hand. It’s a really old one. A last plea to the universe from some weary traveler passing through Hope on the road to wherever he’s going.
“Ah,” she says, smiling. “Now, this is brilliant.”
She opens her palm, exposing the heart of some anonymous desire to me.
It reads only, I wish …
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
In Which I Pick Up a Necessary Part
I don’t know how long I sit with Dulcie. Time seems elastic there under the Wishing Tree. We play charades, which are an exercise in the completely indecipherable and unintentionally hilarious. Mostly, Dulcie hops and twirls and makes wide-eyed faces that, I learn, could stand for anything from Bolshevik Revolution to aurora borealis. My body feels loose and light from laughing. A few feet away, Dulcie totters around like a cat with something on its tail.
“Alcoholic ballerina!” I shout, and she rolls her eyes. “Blowfish in a death spiral! The reason the dinosaurs are extinct!”
She stops, hands on her hips, and blows a lock of hair from her forehead. “Falling star!”
“Wow. You officially suck at this game. I just pwned an angel at charades. Go, me.”
Two of the paper leaves drop to the ground. The ends curl up and decompose.
“What just happened?” I ask.
Dulcie plops down next to me. “Those wishes have been granted. Sort of.”
There’s something that’s been nagging at me for the past hundred miles or so.
“Dulcie …,” I start. “What happens once I find Dr. X and he cures me and the wormhole is closed?”
Her eyes are closed, her head back. “The world is saved, and you are cured. Huzzah!”
“Yeah, I know. But, like, what happens to you? Do you stay here or go back to wherever it is you’re from? Will I ever see you again?”
She jumps up suddenly. “Hey, wanna see me pretend to be an ice sculpture? I’m really good at it. Watch this.” She stands perfectly still, hands pressed together, her left foot balanced against the inside of her right knee. “You kinda have to imagine the caviar in small bowls around my feet.”
