The White Book

by Emily Isip and Glenn Ricafrente

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. The book had been forbidden to her, but Kayla had read it anyway. She had not finished it, because she was afraid of how it would end. Nevertheless, the book had already started working its magic and things began changing.

It was snowing outside, though she lived in a small village that had never seen snow – and anyway, it was the middle of summer. The landscape and the buildings were the same, but the people were no longer her neighbors, the villagers. They were exactly like the characters she had just been reading about. They were all playing in the snow. Their jaws, mouths, and noses were stretched out in foot-long, downturned beaks – like the protective masks people wore during the plague in medieval times – only the beaks were outgrowths of their faces. They were all wearing silk – the men in stockings and tunics, the women in long dresses with long sleeves that flowed past their arms – and some of them were skating on a frozen pond on ice skates made from animal bones.

A man on a flaming black horse came up the road, and everyone stopped and turned to him – then began running in all directions. Within seconds, everyone was gone. The man, who wore a black cape and black armor (with a helmet that extended outwards to conform to his long beak), rode up towards her. She was petrified. “This is impossible,” she said, “how could the book have come to life?”

She rubbed her eyes, and suddenly felt something push on her hands. She opened her eyes, and saw that her mouth and nose were elongating. She was growing a beak of her own. The black knight drew his sword and spurred his horse onwards, charging directly at her. She screamed, but it came out a loud squawk.

She leaped back inside her house and shut the door. Her beak disappeared, which allowed her to holler, “MOM!!!”

Her mother suddenly appeared right in front of her, a look of alarm on her face. Kayla ran to her mother’s arms, and her mother asked, “What’s wrong?”

Sobbing, she confessed to what she had done. Her mother held back her anger and said, “I told you to never open that book. And yet you did. I can see you are really upset right now, so we will talk about your punishment later.”

Kayla said, “How could you keep such an awful, horrifying book? How could you put a spell on it so that anyone who read it would see all those horrible people come to life? That black knight almost killed me!”

Her mother, who was the village sorceress, stared at her, then said, “It’s not an awful book. It’s just that anyone who reads the book writes the story. Here, let me show you.”

Her mother let her go and took the book from the table. She started opening it. Kayla backed away in fear. Her mother reassured her, “Nothing will happen. I removed the spell for now.”

Her mother opened the book and showed it to her. The pages were blank.

(March 2012)