Ron put the lamp down on the table and waited expectantly. The lamp glowed brightly as a parchment slowly materialized on the table next to the lamp. Ron picked up the parchment and saw that it had a verse calligraphed on the paper in jet black ink. The language was English and the script appeared to be one of the European Blackhands. It read;
May all your wishes be a delight unto Allah’s eyes, Inshallah.
Abdul Al Karim, maker of the magic lamp.
“Well!”, said Ron to himself, “That explains where the nursery came from and how Deedee became a baby again. I got what I wished for and apparently so did Deedee. She wished that she would be a baby for twenty four hours and that’s what she got. At least I hope that’s what the lamp did.”
Ron thought about the verse and realized that the homeowner had never had a wish granted so the lamp had remained with him more than one thousand days. It was the bit about “feeding” the crystal that intrigued Ron. How had he and Deedee “fed” it, when the previous owner hadn’t? The man had said he had spent hours polishing the lamp when he was a child and nothing had happened so that wasn’t it. Ron looked at the box of salt on the table next to the bottle of vinegar and realized that Deedee must have been using a mixture of salt and vinegar to clean the spots off the metal. Wasn’t there something he had read somewhere about salt used to “feed” quartz crystals? He had a vague memory of looking at a pamphlet at a shop one time that talked about the care of quartz crystals. He had dismissed it at the time as New Age nonsense. Now he wasn’t so sure.