I sat on the wall after class, nervously fingering the box and swinging my legs. It was the first day of school after spring break and had been one of the most stressful I'd ever endured. I hadn't dared carry the box around with me all day in case I misplaced it or someone thought they might borrow it, and that meant leaving it in my locker. That turned out to be an even worse plan: I was on the edge of my seat throughout every class, worrying that someone would break into my locker and take the box. It was irrational anxiety, and I knew it: the lockers were all well-protected with combination locks, and it was vastly unlikely that anyone would ever keep anything in there which was particularly valuable. Plus it was a good school; everyone was pretty honest in general and we'd only had a very few incidents of theft in all the time I'd been there.
I was waiting for Nathen, my best friend for as long as I can remember. I'd been waiting to talk to hir for over a week, but since I had spent spring break travelling with my family, it had had to wait until we had gotten home. And we had no classes together this year, so this was the first chance we'd had to get together for a while.
Finally, I spotted hir strolling towards me across the yard. Shi was wearing a rather worn old Chicago Fire jersey and tattered denim jeans. Nathen was an only child, and shi lived with hir dad after hir parents got divorced, so shi often didn’t have much money to spend on clothes. Hir dark brown hair was cut short in a crew cut style and shi displayed hir quirky grin as shi spotted me slouched on the wall. As the faded jersey showed, Nathen was a soccer fan, and as such, shi was pretty athletic. Shi was even on the school’s soccer team before shi decided to quit because of hir parents’ divorce.
When shi finally reached me, shi leaped up onto the wall confidently and with a lot more ease than I'd managed earlier. Although I was more of an outdoorsy kind of person, I wasn’t quite as athletic as my best friend.
"Hey, Zane-gurl! How's it going? Good break?"
I grinned sheepishly. "Was okay. You?" I asked.
Shi smiled, "It was ok, although it would have been better if my best friend was around. I spent most of the week on my Xbox playing FIFA.”
I smiled back. "Sounds alright… I might take you up on that offer sometime. See if I can finally beat you on that game.”
We both laughed for a moment before I turned serious.
"I need to show you something.” I reached around and picked up the box off the wall. Nathen blinked as shi realised that I was not joking.
“What happened?” Shi asked.
"My grandmother died," I stated sadly.
Hir face fell, "Oh, Zane, I'm so sorry. I know you were close. What happened? Shi wasn't all that old, was Shi? I thought shi was off on one of hir expeditions just a few months ago."
I shrugged slightly. "Heart attack, apparently."
Nathen frowned. "You don't seem overly upset."
I took a deep breath and took the plunge. "That's because I'm not convinced shi's actually dead."
"I presume we're not talking adolescent denial here," she asked, with a raised eyebrow. "I mean, how can they diagnose a heart attack with no body?"
"Oh, there was a body, I'm just not sure it was hir." I realised I was probably giving hir images of mutilated corpses or worse, but I was genuinely nervous about what I was about to show hir.
"Erm. Then what makes you think..." shi started, obviously somewhat bewildered.
"This," I interrupted, holding up the box. It was fairly unimpressive, about one inch by four and an inch deep, made of plain dark wood with a few obscure markings carved into it.
"What is it?" shi asked, intrigued. I think I was probably playing up the cloak-and-dagger stuff too much, but it was quite mysterious, after all.
"It's my inheritance." I opened up the box. Inside was a rather crumpled piece of paper and a rather unusual, if plain-looking, stone. The stone was slightly metallic, rather like haematite, but with a reddish hue to its surface, rounded, flattish and about an inch across. "Read the note," I instructed hir. Shi did so, with much eyebrow-raising in the process. The note was from my grandmother and what it said was this:
Dear Zane,
If you are reading this, it means I have passed on. Do not mourn my leaving; although we shall no longer be able to spend time together, be happy knowing that where I am now is just a new start and a different perspective than before and that I shall just look at it as my next great adventure.
The stone you find in this box is my legacy to you. Treat it with care, it does not look much, but has immense power. I have entrusted it to you, as my favourite granddawter and friend, to be its keeper and guardian now that I am gone.
I found the stone on my latest expedition to South America and I believe it to be of Incan origin. How it works, or where it came from beyond that, I have no idea. All I can tell you is how it works and trust you to use it wisely.
Bear with me on this next bit; I know it sounds fantastic, but trust me when I tell you that I am telling the truth. All I say is real and it will not take much experimentation for you to prove it.
While holding the stone against your flesh (I recommend just holding it in your hand as the simplest approach), simply use the words 'I wish' followed by whatever it is you want the stone to do. There is no limit to the number of times you can do this, as far as I can divine, but beware for the words of a wish can be reinterpreted but not changed once the breath is over. The stone has great power, but is not unlimited. Changes made will be as if it has always been so, apart from for those within earshot of the wish or out of the range of influence of the stone. This range I estimate at several miles, but I fear I have not been able to determine an exact figure.
I must go now. Use the gift I have given you wisely, and think of me often.
Your friend, always,
Grandma.
~~~~~~~~
Nathen finished reading the note and looked at me accusingly. "Is this a wind-up, because it's not funny if it is?" I shook my head. "You can't be serious. If this note is real, your grandmother faked hir own death or something similar and has left you a magic Inca stone which grants wishes."
I nodded. "Yep."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"Yep."
"Not a chance." Shi crossed hir arms over hir chest. "I mean, I'm as open-minded as the next gurl, but this is just plain silly."
"See that branch?" I indicated a piece of wood that had fallen off one of the nearby trees. I grasped the stone in my hand. "I wish the bark on that branch was blue."
I was used to the sensation by now; it was like momentarily getting something in your eye, forcing you to be unable to look at the object the wish was affecting. Nathen was a little taken aback by the strange sensation.
"Hey, weird, it was like..." Then shi caught sight of the branch. Which was bright blue. "Holy shit!"
"Impressive, huh?"
"My goddess, it really works!?" She was agape.
"It does indeed. Wanna see the scary part?" I grasped the stone again and wished for the branch to be red.
Nothing happened.
"Why didn't it work?" asked Nathen, looking puzzled.
"Because it was contradictory to a previous wish. Basically, you can't undo wishes, which is what makes this thing so scary to me."
"You aren't kidding, that is scary!"
"There is, however, some room for movement: I wish the branch was very dark blue." The sensation was felt by both of us again and when we looked, the branch was indeed a dark, almost black blue, which was a lot more innocuous than the bright blue it had been moments ago. "So, you see, I was able to make a new wish which didn't contradict the old one and have it work. The branch is still blue. However, if I was to try and move the branch back to its previous brighter blue, that would fail as it contradicts the latest wish."
Nathen was clearly astounded. "This is great. Scary but great. We can have lots of fun with this."
I wasn't so sure. "I dunno, Nathen, it seems very dangerous to me, I'm thinking of just locking it away and throwing away the key."
"You can't be serious. You have the most amazing discovery ever, and you want to lock it away. How about this: how about we try it out for a while and if anything disastrous happens or looks like happening, then we'll decide to put it somewhere safe."
Shi was making a reasonable amount of sense. "Okay. We'll use it for a week, but not for anything drastic. We'll have a little fun and nothing more. Agreed?"
"Sure thing. Can I have a go?" I knew shi'd ask, and I'd never had any intention of saying no, but shi did seem a little over-excited about it. In the end, I knew I trusted hir and handed over the stone.
Nathen fingered the stone, passing it from hand to hand, feeling its smoothness. The first thing shi tried was wishing the branch back to light blue, with no success as I had predicted. Shi was just contemplating updating hir jersey so that it was the one from the latest season when we were interrupted by a deep, sickeningly sweet laugh.
Cherry Quinn, the best junior cheerleader and general class-A dog, was wandering across the yard followed by hys usual entourage of drooling, over muscled football players and other assorted estrogen-fueled flunkies.
Nathen was unimpressed. "Can you explain to me why women are so shallow? Everyone knows that Cherry is a total dog and yet, because hei has blond hair and a big penis, every gurl in the school spends half hir life dribbling down hys chest."
“Not every gurl,” I noted. Since mom’s law firm had started being successful, Cherry and hys siblings had been giving me a hard time at school just because hys dad and mom seemed to think that we were challenging their status as a family within the neighborhood. It seemed that that jealousy trickled down to the younger generation.
“Okay, not every gurl. Goddess, hei already has a gurlfriend, why do those jocks have to follow hym around as well? It kind of sets a bad example doesn’t it? Bois probably think that all gurls are big-muscled and handsome. Look at Cynth Cook, for example.” Cynth Cook was Cherry’s gurlfriend and all-around jock. Shi was on the junior varsity football team and looked like shi was in a position to make starting quarterback once Sarrah McMillan had graduated.
“What does shi have that I don’t?”
“Big boobs?” I offered, chuckling a little. Cynth was as muscular as any gurl and hir boobs showed it. Cynth always bragged in the locker rooms about how big and firm hir boobs were.
Nathen laughed and glanced down at hir tiny B-cups.
“I suppose that you’re right there, Zane-gurl.
“Goddess, I wish that I was as handsome and had big boobs like Cynth Cook, then maybe I could get a boi as hot as Cherry.”
I think it dawned on us both at the same time what shi had said and we just looked at each other, a look of slight shock on our faces, but it was much too late by then. I found I had to look away from Nathen, as I got something in my eye, or so it seemed.
I knew pretty much what to expect when I looked back, but it was still weird.
The size difference was instantly noticeable, Nathen had always been on the smaller side for a gurl and I suppose that hir jersey made them even more noticeable than usual. What was also noticeable was the fact that they appeared a lot firmer than before. Basically, It looked like shi had been working out.
Nathen looked down and felt hir new breasts, feeling their firmness. “Fuck.”
"Indeed. This is why I wanted to lock this thing away. This sort of thing was bound to happen,” I sighed.
Shi shrugged and then looked disconcerted at the new boobs hanging out on display in front of her. "Could have been worse. I could have wished..." Shi realised Shi was still holding the stone. "Never mind. Here, take this thing back before I mess up some more." I took the stone and put it back in the box, out of harm's way.
"We could make some more wishes to try and limit the damage. You were pretty vague,” I noted.
"No. At least not yet. Let me go home and sleep on it and decide what's best. I don't think now is the time to be rash." With that, she was up off the wall and walking away. "Meet me here again tomorrow," shi called back before shi disappeared around the corner.
I looked down at the box and shoved it in my pocket. I decided that tomorrow I was going to leave it at home, well-hidden from Dad. I figured it was less likely to cause more trouble if it was less directly accessible.
I looked around the now-deserted yard and decided it was time to head for home. Tomorrow was a new day and there was only one way to find out what it would bring...
