Three Wishes Read Free

orange, clung to the edge, half in the water. I smiled and moved on to the next. There I found four orangies and two purplies. I gasped and looked up at the fisherman as he moved past, hauling his heavy bucket. I’d never seen six in one pool before. Abuela would have loved it…
    “You like sta’fish?” he asked in a heavy Asian accent.
    “I do. They…they remind me of someone I loved very much. There are six here!”
    “Hmm,” he said, studying me with a stroke of his beardless chin. He moved away, suddenly, when a wave crashed toward us. The wash narrowly missed him. I watched it recede, and then felt the older man’s gaze still on me. A shiver ran down my back, and I slowly rose. What was his deal? What did he want?
    “You like sta’fish, go to pool over there,” he said, nodding to one closer to the water. “Befo’ tide comes in.”
    I smiled, relaxing as he moved on, wondering why I’d suspected the gentle old dude was up to anything bad at all. Another wave washed over the rocks. With a glance out toward the water, I thought I might have just enough time to check out the pool the fisherman had gestured toward before the next big wave came through. I picked my way forward, jumping from high point to high point among the rocks. When I arrived, I looked down and let out a small cry.
    He’d been right. The pool was teeming with starfish, several layers thick. Orange and purple, and a couple that were red and gold. Even a few brittle stars, with their long arms. I’d never seen anything so amazing in all my life. It was so beautiful, so cool, that I ignored the wave that came in then, striking the boulders in front of me. I barely felt the spray across my face and hair. A wash of water covered the pool and went up to my knees. When the bubbling foam receded, I laughed at the massive starfish, all moving at once at surprising speed.
    But then I frowned as two edged in opposite directions. Was that … ?
    Another wave crashed against the boulders, the tide clearly intent on retaking the rocks. Again I ignored it, intent on the pool before me, waiting for the white froth to recede and clear water to show me I’d been wrong…seeing things. I squeezed my fingers impatiently, waiting, waiting.
    But when the water was once again clear to the bottom, I saw that the starfish had moved away from the center, all clinging to the edges now. It made no sense. Starfish were too slow, edging quietly over a rock in the course of an hour, not minutes. I looked to the center of the pool and frowned. There, nestled among the rocks and sand was the glint of gold.
    Not starfish gold. Gold-gold.
    I didn’t hesitate. I stepped down and into the pool, my skirt rising around me, and leaned down and grabbed the edge of the object. It lifted easily, as if it’d been placed there just for me, and I looked around for the fisherman, now gone, even as another wave crashed against the rocks and thoroughly soaked me.
    I clambered out of the pool and waited for the wave to recede back to the sea, leaving my path exposed. Then I hopped from rock to rock again, until I was at last climbing on soft sand between the big boulders that rose on this side of the beach. Safe from view of any early-morning runners, I sat down heavily, pushed aside my dripping curls, and studied the golden object. It looked like a small oil lamp, encrusted by a bunch of tiny white sea creatures of some sort on one side. It was clearly old, really old. I looked out to the Pacific, wondering if it was a remnant of some ancient galleon that had run aground, crashing on the reef that bordered the coast or even in our small cove. In all my years of walking this beach, I’d never found such an object—or heard of anyone else finding one like it either.
    I used my nails to try and pry off some of the ocean muck that clung to it, then ran my fingertips over the soft, golden lip and then across the worn, foreign lettering that wound around the width of it. The lid was