A young boy discovers that he has a limited ability
to travel back and forth through time.
Boston, who spent much of her life restoring
old houses and their grounds, made buildings and
gardens such a vivid part of her novels that they are
almost characters themselves. Two other children’s
fantasies have very similar themes. In Guardians of
the House (1974) a young boy is brought to a
sprawling, apparently deserted mansion by a woman
and left to explore, and he discovers that many of
the furnishings have magical powers. There is little
actual plot, just a series of episodic encounters.
More interesting is The Castle of Yew(1958), in
which two boys explore a magical garden partially
laid out as a chessboard and find themselves magi-
cally reduced in size, providing some low-key thrills
as they encounter animals and insects.
As with the similar writer Edward EAGER,
Boston seems to go through brief periods of popular-
ity separated by longer intervals of neglect. She also
wrote several other titles for very young children,
some of which have marginal fantastic elements.
“The Bottle Imp” Robert Louis Stevenson
(1896)
Robert Louis Stevenson was the author of several
classic adventure stories, but he is also remem-
bered for the classic horror tale DR. JEKYLL AND
MR. HYDE(1888) and a handful of short stories of
the supernatural of which this is the most famous.
In form this is a variation of the deal-with-the-
devil story, of which there would later be so many
variations that the device has become a genre
cliché. Stevenson’s devil is an imp imprisoned in
an ornate bottle who grants any wish made by
its owner, although usually with some undesired
consequences.
There is a way to beat the curse. Whoever
dies with the bottle in his or her possession is
doomed to hell, but it is possible to sell it before-
hand and escape that fate. There are rules to the
transaction, however. The buyer must know the
terms of the curse or the sale is void, and the pur-
chase price must always be lower than the price
the seller originally paid. The protagonist is Keawe,
a Hawaiian who encounters the bottle’s current
owner by chance. Although skeptical, he pur-
chases the imp and wishes for a mansion on the
coast of one of the islands. Returning home, he
discovers that his uncle and his cousin both died in
separate incidents, that his uncle had accumulated
an unsuspected fortune in recent years, and that
Keawe is now the sole heir. Before long, an impres-
sive house is under construction, and Keawe, con-
vinced that he is set for the balance of his life, sells
the bottle to his friend, Lopata, who wishes to own
a sailing ship.
Having escaped the curse, Keawe meets and
falls in love with Kokua, a beautiful young girl who
soon reciprocates his affection. But just as his life
seems complete, Keawe discovers that he has con-
tracted leprosy and is thus barred from marrying
the woman he loves. His only hope is to recover
the bottle from Lopata, wish himself free of the
taint, then sell it again. Unfortunately, the imp has
passed through numerous hands by now, and when
Keawe finally tracks it down, he is forced to buy it
for one cent. Although he is cured and marries
Kokua, his happiness is corrupted by the knowl-
edge that he is doomed to damnation. This gloom
begins to affect the marriage, until he finally tells
Kokua the truth.
Kokua suggests that they go to another island
where the currency includes centimes, or fractions
of a cent. Unfortunately, the restriction that they
must describe the curse prevents them from find-
ing a buyer until Kokua, who feels guilty about the
sacrifice Keawe made for their love, hires someone
to buy the imp for four centimes, after which she
purchases it for three. Keawe discovers what she
has done and returns the favor, but the drunken
villain who acts as his agent refuses to relinquish
the imp, convinced that he is going to hell anyway
so he might as well enjoy the remainder of his life.
The establishment of clear rules for the fantas-
tic element adds a structure that is often absent
from modern horror tales. The complexity of the
situation and the clarity of the solution have rarely
been equaled in the many similar stories published
since Stevenson’s classic.“Bottle Party”John Collier(1941)
Genies, or djinn, rarely appear outside Arabian
Nights–style fantasies, and when they do, they30 “The Bottle Imp”