Of Scallywags and Sorcery

A Reliving and A Recollection

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Note to the contest judges: I have purchased a lemon to cure scurvy for this island :)

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In the golden beach sand at my feet, a gilded, leather-bound book gleams. I don't remember enough about myself to know whether it belongs to me or if I've seen it before, but my instincts command me to pick it up.

I dust the cover. "The Ultimate Collection of Classics," it reads. It's heavy as if it was carved out of gold and twice as thick as any book I've ever seen. The embossed patterns feel familiar. A memory stirs within me but reveals no more of itself.

Maybe it needs a bigger nudge.

With that in mind, I open the book. Before I can read the story's title, my surroundings disappear as though I'm slurped up a straw and spat out into another world.

I gaze around in wonder at my surroundings. Gone is the endless blue sky and ancient Egypt's rolling, golden desert sand. It's as if I have fallen into a picture of the Palace of Versailles.

The floors are covered in black and white and grey tiles forming circles and stars. All around me are arched doorways etched out in white, leading out of the ballroom. Pristine marble pillars support the floor above that. A mural dominates the ceiling, a scene of magic and mermaids and music, oceans and galaxies and ancient gods.

I know without needing to be told that I'm somewhere in France. I even know who the couple waltzing over the glossy floor is.

One of the dancers is more monster than man, with tawny fur covering his bulky body. Gleaming fangs protrude from his snout. The woman in his arms is one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen, with skin nearly as pale as the alabaster statues surrounding the dance floor and a bone structure to match. Her dark hair falls in perfect curls down her back. Her midnight blue gown swishes as her partner twirls her. I see the adoration in her eyes as he draws her to him.

It's the unlikeliest love, that of a beautiful woman for a monster of a man, but it's also a tale as old as time.

No sooner do I think the words "Beauty and the Beast" than this story universe switches itself out for another.

This one is also unmistakable.

The studio is decorated with roses. Silk curtains frame its wide windows. A man reclines on a divan, smoking with the ease of one who had long assumed this position. He puffs out a cloud of smoke as he watches the other two men in the room, an artist standing before his easel and his subject, a man as beautiful as Belle. His is the beauty of golden afternoons.

Try as I might, I can't remember seeing anyone as beautiful as him. His physical form is a perfection I've only seen in my imagination.

And once before, when I read a book. I blink once, then again.

I see myself curled on the sofa with a novel in my hand. From the feel of the cover and the pages' scent, I know it's the copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" I stumbled upon in a charity bookshop a few months ago.

Excitement surges through my chest and dies almost immediately because that's all I remember of myself before I woke up on an Egyptian beach.

"The Ultimate Collection of Classics" takes me somewhere else so quickly I wonder if this must be a dream. If it is, it's very convincing. Either that, or there's magic at play, the same magic that transported me to Egypt.

Who am I? What if I don't exist? What if I was concussed, and I'm in a coma, and none of this is really happening?

I push my panic down as I arrive in a new setting in storyland, a kitchen somewhere very far away, many, many years ago. A man in a rough-hewn tunic and a woman in a pinafore crouch before a goose nesting in the corner. The white bird stands to reveal a golden egg cradled by the straw. The couple embraces each other with joy, but it pains me. I feel like disaster will soon strike, and they will learn a harsh lesson.

Then the world goes black, like the lights have gone out.

This is it.

Either the coma has taken what remained of my consciousness or the story world's magic has run out. Either way, it's over for me.

Then light floods back into my vision, and I see Belle crouching beside the Beast as he lies dying. I hear her profess her love for him while I hide my tears behind my hand, cradling their story on my lap. I see the Beast resurrected, and he and Belle embrace.

I dive into the book resting on my bed as Dorian Gray stabs the portrait that was created for him out of misguided love and devotion. I see him wither into the wicked sinner distorting the canvas while the image returns to the pure, unsullied youth who first posed for it all those years ago.

I listen to my older sister reading from the storybook as the woman grabs the goose by the neck so it can't fight back while her husband slices it open to find the hidden stash of golden eggs it had been laying. There's nothing, only blood and vessels and organs. The couple sinks to the floor, crying because they have killed the goose that laid golden eggs.

My breath rushes back into me.

I remember now.

My name is Chaitra. I was on a cruise with my family in the Mediterranean when we were shipwrecked. That was the start of this crazy dream and the one before it.

When I open my eyes, I expect to find myself in my cabin on our cruise ship or maybe in a sterile hospital ward.

Instead, I'm back on the golden beach, but there's no sign of the tome I found in the sand.