Three Wishes

Chapter One
 Present Day
 “Did you enjoy your stay, Ms. Porter?”
 Elise gave the young woman behind the front desk a pleasant smile. “Yes, Bindi, I did, thank you. Everyone was lovely.”
 “Excellent.” Bindi slid her credit card back across the counter. “Will there be anything else?”
 “Yes, may I store my luggage here while I take one last walk around the marketplace before I get the ferry to the mainland?”
 “It would be our pleasure.”
 An hour later, Elise was heading back to the hotel feeling a strange sense of loss. Something she felt every year at the end of her annual trip to Nosy Be. She had first visited as a teenager during a family vacation to Africa. Part of the tour included a few days at a resort located on a small island off the coast of Madagascar. The moment she had stepped off the ferry she felt as if she were home. The feeling had deepened, and a sense of déjà vu had almost frightened her when she and her family visited the ruins of a past kingdom. When Elise told her mother, she had teased her, saying maybe she had lived there in another life. The day they left, Elise felt such an intense sadness and loss that she had cried as she stood on the ferry back to the mainland watching as they drifted farther away from the island. Her family had never gone back to Nosy Be, but Elise knew, someday she would. She never forgot that feeling through the years. Had even looked up the history of the island and had found nothing on the mysterious ruins there. There were no records of any society of the grand scale of the ruins found having inhabited the island. As a matter of fact, the first recorded inhabitants were Swahili and Indian traders in the fifteenth century. The ruins dated centuries before that, but Elise knew, deep within her soul, that there was more to the small island than anyone knew.
 When Elise went off to college, her obsession with Nosy Be dimmed as she threw herself into her studies, campus life, and then building her career and starting her own interior design firm. It wasn’t until five years ago, on her thirty-fifth birthday, that Nosy Be became a focus in her life again. Her parents were downsizing and selling the family home. Elise and her twin brother, Marcus, were helping them go through boxes in the attic when she found a small plastic genie lamp she had bought while in Nosy Be all those years ago. The vendor who’d sold it to her, a tall, elegant man with long white hair and beard dressed in brightly colored robes, told her that it was once rumored that an evil genie had been the downfall of the mysterious kingdom on the island. That it was believed that it would rise again one day when the kingdom’s princess found her true love who had been trapped in a lamp by the genie. She had been charmed by the story and bought the lamp. 
 She returned to the marketplace to find the vendor the next day to hear more of the story, but he wasn’t there. When she asked some of the other vendors about him, they had no idea who she was talking about. She held that lamp close to her heart as she cried upon leaving the island. Elise had stroked the lamp lovingly and felt a tear roll down her cheek. She had quickly wiped the tear away and tucked the lamp in a box of old toys to be tossed, but she couldn’t toss away the renewed need to return to Nosy Be. So, the following spring, and every spring after that for the past five years, she made a sabbatical to the little island, always returning to the ruins with flowers and a prayer. For what, she didn’t know, but the need to pay her respects was always there. She also looked for the mysterious vendor who had sold her the plastic lamp but never saw him again.
 As Elise finished her stroll through the marketplace, something pulled at her. She turned to find the vendor from all those years ago smiling at her from an over-ladened cart she hadn’t seen the whole week she had been there. She stared wide-eyed as he waved her over. He looked exactly as he did when she’d first encountered him so long ago. How was that possible? She walked over to him.
 “You’ve grown into quite a beautiful woman, Elise,” the vendor said.
 “H-how do you know my name?”
 “You told me when you bought the lamp all those years ago and I would never forget such a beautiful face,” he said cheerfully.
 Elise didn’t remember that, but how else would he know her name?
 “Come, I have something I’ve been saving just for you.” He walked around to the back of the cart, out of sight of the other vendors. She was hesitant to follow.
 He poked his head back out. “There is no need to fear me, child.”
 Elise looked around and noticed a few vendors smiling her way. Feeling a little better knowing that others saw her with the strange man, she followed him to the back of the cart. Without even looking, he reached into the cart and pulled out an oil lamp that was a larger, real-life replica of the plastic one he’d first sold her. Even under the layers of dust, the large opal on the side of the lamp caught the sunlight. There were a few other, smaller jewels decorating the top and base of the lamp, but the opal alone would be worth a fortune. The vendor held the lamp out to her.
 “It’s beautiful, but I couldn’t possibly afford it.” Her business was doing well but not enough to afford a lamp with a handful of precious stones.
 The man gazed down at the lamp