As look back on my life, I know my last magical act was the best. Not because it involved great magic on my part; it didn’t involve near as much magic as the rash acts of my youth (ah, the days when I granted all wishes, when I had so much power, when magic was so strong, how I long for them). What made my last act so good was the grand tool that I used, the tool that is so feeble and everlasting: love.

Of the two wishers, Lilly came first. She carried a basket of fine laundry while dressed in rags not suitable to be called clothing. A small smile graced her perfect behind the mud face. I am not abashed to say she sparked my interest on many levels. She set down the laundry basket and pulled something out of her pocket. Knelling on the step next to me, she looked into clear me. She closed her eyes and sat there, bringing me into a state of perplexity. Then she spoke.

“This might be a new request for you, but it may not. I feel that I should explain my wish before telling you. My mother is always being contemptuous to me, that is, if she is feeling anything for me. I am the almost middle child of twenty. And that’s in a poor family. It’s either the streets or twenty hours a day working for our mother. She sees us as money, not humans. And defiantly not something to love.” She stopped and outstretched her hand.

“I wish for someone, anyone, to love me.” She let go of her copper halfpenny, wiped a tear from her eye, and left with the laundry.

The other wisher came the next day, in the evening. He had a propriety, doughty air to him. A flower was clutched in one hand. On the way up the stairs, he tripped and put a curse on all stonemasons. He calmed and picked himself up, and spoke.

“Well, that was bad. Now for my wish, o’ wishing well. My wish is to love someone because I do not love now. My parents make it so I cannot love them. My friends, I don’t have.” He took out two coins—a golden penny and a half penny. The penny he threw in to me, and the gold went to a ragged boy near him.

Over the next few years, I watched them grow older, mature into healthy younglings. But they always wished the same thing, never changing their minds. And then it came to me: get the two together, make them love each other. I wanted them to be happy, and they would, as soon as I had a plan.

The plan eluded me until one day. I was listening to the boy tell me about a party he was attending early the next morning, and how he had to look all fancy. As he spoke, I remembered the girl telling me earlier that she had a sister’s wedding she had to dress pretty for, and how would have to visit me later then usual, one hour before he came. I had a plan, an almost perfect one.

I started swelling the underground water a half an hour before she was to come. By the time she came, the square’s entrances were flooded, except for one: the one he came in through and the one that would take an hour to get to for her.

I waited, and they came. First, the girl came and sat next to me. Then he came. He caught sight of her and couldn’t take his eyes away. She looked up and was entranced, like him. Peasants and nobles alike moved around the slightly flooded square, but they didn’t care as they stared and then as they talked. And as they walked away, hand in hand.

For eight years I didn’t see them. Then they came back, with two loved twin daughters, and one baby boy. And happiness. I waited until they left before I drifted into the sleep I am in now. And into the state of happiness I am in now.