The skies were perfect blue and filled with inviting marshmallow clouds, and Miri sighed as she looked up to them. But despite her desperate wishing, her feet stayed stuck to the ground. She stood at the bus stop nearest her apartment, backpack slung over one shoulder and purse over the other. Her feet were beginning to ache, and Miri considered sitting on the bench inside the little bus stop. But from there she wouldn’t be able to stare into the blue sky.
Another woman walked to the bus stop while Miri stared into the sky. The new woman was dressed in an airy blue shirt and tight jeans with gold sandals on her feet. Her slightly wavy blonde hair and radiant smile were model-perfect and the envy of many women. She smiled at Miri and stood a few feet away while checking her phone and minding her own business.
Something broke through Miri’s reverie of the sky and she looked at the newcomer. There was something different about this woman, and Miri had no idea what it could possibly be. An aura or feeling radiated off her in warm and calming waves. The woman noticed Miri’s gawking, but looked up without surprise. She smiled and Miri felt enthralled.
“Is there something I can help you with?” Her smile never diminished, as if she knew the answer was yes.
“Yes. . . well, no” Miri said quickly, “I mean, I don’t think you can help me.”
The woman cocked her eyebrow, “I doubt that. I’m a genie, you see, and I can grant you one wish. Just one.”
Miri knew her wish. She had known it the first time she looked up to the sky and saw birds soaring in the air. “I wish I could fly.”
“As you wish,” the genie said, and without a special effect in sight she cast her spell on Miri.
Before the Genie even finished speaking, Miri’s body began to tingle, shudder, and change. She wouldn’t have time to react to the transformation, and even if she did, had no idea what to make of them. Thick purple and violet thread wove a rectangular cocoon around Miri. It pressed tightly around her body and pushed her hands and feet out to the corners of the weave, and she stood for just a moment as if she was jumping jacks.
But that didn’t last long. Golden tassels exploded at her corners, and delicate gold thread wove intricate designs across Miri. The designs traced a dizzying path over her, and within them contained magic words. Words that if spoken would make Miri do amazing things.
The cocoon of cloth pushed down on the woman trapped inside its threads, as if it could squeeze her out of existence. And indeed it could. The body Miri once had wafted away back into the world, but her soul remained trapped inside the magic threads.
Miri no longer had skin, but threaded yarn. No longer hands and feet, but tasseled corners. She was less than an inch thick, but over six feet long. Without muscles and bones to hold her up, Miri’s threaded body crumpled to the ground as if she were utterly lifeless.
But she was not lifeless. She couldn’t see or hear the way she once had. But she had an awareness of her world. Of the green grass, the glass and steel bus stop, and tall apartment buildings around her. She felt the warm concrete below her, and wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t want to be on the ground. That wasn’t Miri’s wish.
The carpet tried to stir and move, memories of a cartoon rug from her childhood playing in her mind. But Miri’s threaded body had no way to move itself, and she was at the complete mercy of the Genie who transformed her. The still too human mind could not accept this. She kept pulling on nerves and muscles that no longer existed. It took all her strength and nothing happened. She was a carpet now.
She felt the cool shadow of the genie fall over her. She felt dainty sandals step onto her. The feeling would have made her shudder, had she been able to. She felt fingered hand run tickle and brush across her threads.
And then she heard the genie speak. The sounds of the world, the birds that sang and the cars that hummed were muddled and weak, as though Sejah heard them from beneath water. But then she heard the genie speak in a clear, perfect voice.
“Amerk aretfa'e,” the genie said and her words touched something completely unexpected inside Miri. The carpet heard the sounds, but understood their true meaning “I command you rise,”. and the magic woven into her threads obeyed this command. Miri the carpet rose into the air in a wave.
Where once she was just a rug to be walked upon, Miri was now a magic carpet hovering in the air, her flat woven body rising and falling in a gentle wave. She felt the genie push down on her right right tassel, and Miri responded by banking slightly to the right. . Her rider pressed down on both tassels in the front and Miri sped forward, flying just feet off the ground.
The wind that rushed through her heavy yarn excited the carpet. The earth and sky tried to grab her any which way and force her to obey their laws. But Miri had found a form that was not obedient to gravity and wasn’t about to let it hold her down any more. Her rider on her back shifted her body to make Miri bank right. She trusted the rider, and when she straightened out, she heard her the Genie’s clear, commanding words.
“Amerek al'ealey” Miri knew those words and she obeyed. She pushed her body higher, well above the street, above the trees and the houses, toward the domain of the clouds.
Miri didn’t want to be a carpet. She felt trapped in the purple and golden thread that was now her body. She didn’t like her hands that were now tassels and skin that was now a weft. She didn’t like that someone had stood on her. That someone was riding on her. That she couldn’t move without human hands to push and pull her. But despite all that, Miri was flying. And she loved it.
For Miri, time had no meaning, nor did space. The world was the tickling winds and guiding hands of her rider. And while the skies were still blue and sun still warm, she heard her rider’s commands.
“Amerk sha’hotta,” and Miri responded at once. She didn’t want to, but she began to lower herself from the high clouds back toward the Earth. There was nothing she could do about it; the magic woven into her body simply left no room for argument. But even in this, the carpet found acceptance. Even if she wanted, she could not stay in the clouds forever.
So she went down and down and down until she touched a concrete sidewalk. And then the magic commands left her and she was just another carpet. She lay helpless on the ground next to a strip mall and a store she had never seen before with strange and exoctic objects in the windows.
The genie stepped off her, and Miri wondered if she was about to become human again. But without saying a word, the genie dashed those hopes when she grabbed Miri on her long edge.
The carpet couldn’t remember if that side was her left or her right. She tried to think, and didn’t actually know anymore which of her corners had once been hands and once been feet. Or which edge had once been her head. None of those things meant anything to her now.
And then the Genie who had made her fly began to roll Miri up end over end, wrapping the carpet in her own purple threads. It wasn’t been till that moment that Miri understood how helpless she was. She didn’t want to be on the ground; she didn’t want to be rolled up; she wanted to take to the skies again and fly. But Miri was a carpet now, and her life was out of her control.
She was lifted off the warm ground and carried away from the bright skies into a dark building that had walls that would keep Miri from flying.
“Ah, Ceri, I am so glad to see you.” The carpet heard a man say, “What have you brought for me today?”
“A carpet,” the Genie said. Miri wondered if she would elaborate any further and tell the shop owner that the carpet had been a human. But once again the Genie dashed Miri’s hopes.
“Ah. My, my, my. Can I have a look at it?”
“But of course.” The Genie laid Miri on a nearby table and unfurled the her with one good push. The table, though, was not quite long enough for Miri’s flat body, and almost a quarter of her threads hung over the edge.
Miri was aware of the shop owner as he hovered over her. His features were indistinct, and quite frankly, unimportant to the carpet. Maybe, just maybe, she thought he might have some gift. That he might have some ability to see the human soul inside the carpet threads.
But while his gaze was thorough, he didn’t see beyond her physical form. His hands ran across Miri’s threads. Miri would have shuddered if she still could.
“Do I sense some magic here?” The man asked the Genie, oblivious to the thoughts of the carpet.
“But of course. Amerk aretfa'e.” The command sent a wave into Miri and she rose from the table and hovered over it, her threaded body moving in gentle waves. All of Miri’s consternations and worries went out of her mind.
The shopkeeper marveled, and the admiration in his voice somehow made the carpet proud. “Magnificent work, as always, Ceri.”
“Your compliments are always appreciated.”
“Perhaps we should talk price?” The man said, and his words, simple though they were, cut through to Miri’s core. She realized again how different her life would be. She was an object to be bought and sold, and her wishes or desires no longer mattered to those who would own and possess her. None of whom would know that she was human. Or used to be human. She would be a carpet to each and every person who would ever lay eyes on her.
“Oh, this carpet is a gift to you for freeing me from that cursed lamp so long ago.” The genie said. “and I do hope this carpet will bring you the fortune you seek.” Then Miri felt a gust of air as the genie vanished into a cloud of blue smoke, and a moment later the carpet heard a barely there voice tickle along her threads,
“And I do hope you will bring joy to your owners, Miri.”
The only person to know the truth about Miri vanished as if she never existed, leaving the carpet in the care of a store owner who would have been more interested in selling her than changing her back into a human. Soon after, Miri was put on display in the front window where she could be seen and attract people into the store. It was the first time Miri was put on display, and it would hardly be the last.
Miri would be a carpet for the rest of her very long life. Though she would never forget her human life, she would never again touch the ground on human feet or speak her mind with a human mouth. She would be haggled over, put on display, walked upon, and laid upon. Her threads were vacuumed, steamed, and cleaned. She was a prized possession to all of those who owned her, and she was frequently passed down through generations as a prized heirloom.
She would decorate the floors or walls of her owner’s houses, or sometimes just rolled up and left in attics away from the world. Miri came to accept this as a fact of her life, but she always wished to be owned by someone who knew the magic words that could make her fly through the endless skies. And she very often got her wish.