too many snakes, tide, goldfish in Flash fiction

The day Little's prayers conjured a goldfish was the day Jonny had to reconsider. The rest of her haul could have been any old junk. She wished for cartoons and came running in one morning with a soggy, ruined picture book. She sent off for a bike and all that came was a bell that rattled more than rang. But she was getting the hang of it, she claimed. The inventory of things dragged in from the mud grew and grew.

I'm learning what to ask, she said. She dropped the flapping, bedraggled animal into a vase of water. The vase was cracked but watertight and -- said Little -- had arrived as a result of a request for flowers for mama.

Carent you wish for something useful, he said.

He left Little with mama and went upriver to drink with the men that afternoon. He had his own seat now, an overturned tub that had once contained lard or somesuch. The men had stopped counting his turns with the bottle since the doctor last came, but they noticed when he stumbled over the tub on his way back from a piss. By then it was too late. Gilo and Brown Jim slung him up between them, he gave himself up to their care without a struggle. It was getting dark, and all the way home he laughed and cried and told them all about the gifts the tide brought his little sister.

The next morning he woke with a sore head and a fat tongue, but there was a cool hand on his cheek and mama was shushing him. The smell of sizzling meat filled the room, and mama's hymns were playing on the radio.

A good breakfast will put you right, baby.

He woke up in a hurry then, tried to make her go back to bed but her eyes were clear and the fever gone. He was rejoicing with Mama and the radio and the Lord when Little came in with her hair mussed and her boots still on.

You told, she said, and began to sob.

What are you crying for? Look at mama, look how good she looks!

Little nodded and let herself be swallowed into their embrace, but into his stomach she continued to sob. There are too many snakes here, they made me wish. They made me ask for too much.