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The Girl and the Genie
by De Kenyon
In this fairy tale, a girl finds a magic bottle with a genie inside (she can tell there’s a genie inside, because she can see it having adventures), but the genie won’t come out to give her wishes. What does she do? She goes inside…
Like a story from The Arabian Night’s Entertainment, the girl has to travel far, posing as a traveling teacher (of things like math problems and standing in line), making friends with some curious demons, and surviving a revenge that was meant for someone else before she finally gets the genie to give her at least one wish.
(For children 8 to 12 years old.)
Once upon a time, there was a girl who found a genie bottle. She could tell it was a genie bottle, because it was a clear bottle, and she could see the genie in it, strong and magical and half-made out of smoke, having adventures.
The girl immediately opened the bottle to let the genie out, in expectation of getting three wishes. However, when she opened the bottle, nothing came out—no smoke, no genie, not even sand—when she turned the bottle upside-down and shook it. And no matter how much she yelled— “Genie! Genie!”—the genie didn’t answer, but only kept having adventures. Without her.
And so the girl did the only thing she could do, which was to go into the bottle.
At first she thought she wouldn’t be able to fit, but at last she managed to fit in a single finger, her pinkie finger. With her pinkie finger inside, she was able to fit another finger, and another, until finally she had her whole arm inside, then her legs, her body, and her head and other arm, until she was hanging from the inside of the bottle by one hand. She was afraid to let go, because inside the bottle was dark, but her hand was getting weaker and weaker by the second, so eventually she did let go, because after all she had not climbed into the bottle in order to not have adventures.