A Wish Granted

The genie was human-shaped, albeit ten feet tall and clad in a flowing robe. All around the massive cavern, birds twittered and chirped, fluttering from perch to perch in the half-lit depths. The supplicant held his string of one thousand folded cranes, the ends dragging on the floor.

“There is,” the genie was saying, “a grain of truth in it. The secret is not how many cranes, but how they are made.” He held up a hand. A bird landed on his outstretched finger. “For every wish that is granted, a thousand others must be sacrificed, to never come true.”