Haggis Cadabra

Liam had been separated from his tour group for an hour now, his Braveheart hoodie damp from the highland mist, his blue-and-white face paint melting into the loch that stole his phone. The Cleveland Ohio William Wallace Admirers Society had nearly two hundred Instagram followers, and Liam was determined to upload his greatest piece of content to date.

It was on his ninth take of telling his fellow warrior poets that their ‘heart is free’ and they ‘need to have the courage to follow it’, that a rather annoyed ospre snatched his device and dropped it into the fog-covered lake.

Liam dove into the freezing water, unaware of its depth, ignorant of the mystical light surrounding him. Yet he plunged deeper, all the same, flailing his hand around, hoping to feel solid in the void.

And alas, he did. He grasped something larger and rounder than a phone and, running out of breath, brought it back with him to the surface. It was an impossibly old and imperfectly crafted bit of pottery with a strange pattern of twisting branches etched throughout. Its handle was made of polished moorestone, and, without the aid of the water, was much heavier than anticipated.

Grabbing it by the handle, he carried it to a nearby stump where he marveled at its shine and wondered if Robert the Bruce had drunk from this very pot. When he traced the pattern with his finger, it began to boil and nearly burned it off.

“Fuck. Son of a bitch. Damn fucking, piece of shit.” He screamed, causing a family of red deer to take to the hills…and the teapot to whistle.

A spattering of tartan smoke emanated from the spout, snaking upward and forming the torso of a kilt-clad man with a solid tail of Scottish dew. “Well, get on with it then, I don’t have all day,” the creature said.

“What? How? But…are you a genie?” Liam stuttered. “I didn’t even rub the…how did you…?”

“We’re a little fuckin’ far from the desert, laddy. Wouldn’t ya say? The name’s Haggis Cadabra, and it’s the lamps that need all that rubbin’ nonsense. Scottish teapots just require freezing air and a bit of foul language.”

Liam jumped up and grinned, his mind running too fast to register the havoc the cold wind was wreaking on his wet skin.

“Does this mean I get three wishes?”

“Well, aren’t you full of yourself? You get two. Twin wishes…and then a kick in the arse.”

“But you don’t have legs.”

“That’s the part of this whole thing you find unbelievable, is it?”

Liam paced around, running his hands through his clampy hair. “The guys as C.O.W.W.A.S. are never gonna believe this,” he said to the verdant hills. “I wish I had my phone.”

The ground began to shake, and a handful of small fae appeared through the mist and spun themselves in a colorful circle. And when the commotion subsided, lying on the ground before him was his water-damaged Nokia G60.

“Wait…I didn’t. That wasn’t a wish,” he pleaded.

“You weren’t speaking Gàidhli, mucker. You said wish, plain as day.”

Liam noticed that his limbs were trembling and rested on a bed of moss. “Fine. I’ll make the next one count.” His body grew weaker as he slipped in and out of consciousness, frequently awakened by his own violent shivers. “I wish for a hundred million dollars,” he said through chattered teeth. “U.S. dollars.”

“Are ye stone deaf? I said twin wishes. You can’t be asking for a phone with one hand and wealth with the other. They gotta be in the same bloody ballpark, as you yanks would say.”

As the world darkened around him, the words bled from his lips. “I wish I had my long johns and my coat and my grandma’s blanket and maybe a fire to warm my feet. I think…I think I’m dying.”

“For Christ’s sake, lad, that’s like four feckin’ wishes.” Haggis floated over toward Liam, his kilt flying in the wind, tartan buttocks taunting the Scottish skies. “You got some gall, mate. But I’ll tell you what I told the last guy who found me seven hundred years ago: ‘Every man dies, but not every man truly lives.’”

The ground shook once again, and an army of fae kindled a flame and bundled Liam up in the warmest of clothes and the softness of his childhood blanket.

A smile painted Liam’s face as he slowly drifted into oblivion.

Then the fae crawled up Haggis Cadabra’s kilt and formed a giant foot. “My job is done here,” he said, before giving Liam the hardest kick in the arse he’d ever felt, filling his body with adrenaline and endorphins he didn’t know he had. 

Liam ran and ran and yelled and yelled until a distant voice called to him.

“Well, there you are. We’ve been looking all over. Let’s get you back on the bus…and maybe to a hospital,” said the woman in a windbreaker emblazoned with the Braveheart Tours logo.

Liam looked back toward the loch. In the sky, an ospre soared, a teapot clenched in its talons. The feeling returned to Liam’s legs as the bird released its grip, and the loch swallowed Haggis Cadabra once again.