The Forbidden Book

• Helen-leigh Simpson, Grade 11, Heights College
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition

Until this very moment on a fateful November day, Saskia never had the audacity to disobey her mother’s singular rule, never open the forbidden book. She sat quivering with guilt on the chaise lounge of her mother’s lushly adorned library, with the rough black leather cover of and gold intricate swirling designs of the forbidden book strewn across her skirt clad knees. Her steel grey eyes narrowed on the inscription burned in bright golden lettering across the cover of the book. She shifted slightly, the books thin, yellowing pages brushing against the soft skin of her exposed palm. The question of the books contents burned assiduously in her mind, building into vivid and wild images of just what this book may hide. Slowly, she peeled open the cover. Lucent colours burst into her vision. The startling beautiful image of a hidden oasis blossomed from the pages. Lush green forestry, auroral wildflowers swaying gently in the breeze and a crystal blue lake, that’s surface rippled like a thousand diamonds gleaming in brilliant sunlight. She reached out to touch the splendid image, feeling the sun’s ray’s beam down her skin, the glittering water cool to the touch. She gasped audibly when her hand sank unexpectedly into the page, now unable to see her fingertips. Suddenly she felt herself pulled by an unknown force, into a swirling vortex of intensely radiant colour. When she finally stopped spinning, she was greeted with the feeling of floating; thought the familiar wetness seeping into her clothing told her she was submerged. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the brilliance of shapes and colours surrounding her. Incandescent corals in statuesque patterns adorned the white sand, slippery green kelp lapped lazily around her ankles and schools of lustrous fish darted all around her. One in particular, a playful orange spotted fish stopped to glide through the strands of auburn hair coming loose from her tight braid, darting through the strands before hastily re-joining the school. Saskia pushed off from the sandy bottom of the lake, a trail of small bubble in her wake as she swam swiftly towards the surface. Air rushed into her lungs, filling them to the brim in one large gulp. The warm yellow glow of the sun enveloped her body as she took in the scene. Every detail, down to the very shade of the colours, the curve of the leaves, the way the sun set the water’s surface aglow was to the exact detail of the page she had touched. The forbidden page she had carelessly let herself be memorised by. But she drank in the moment, all of sounds, smells and sights working in melodious harmony to create the most fantastical paradise she could not have even conjured in her wildest dreams. Hours later her mother had noticed Saskia’s absence. The door of her study was ajar, and on the floor the forbidden book lay open to a vivid page of an oasis, with her daughter swimming gleefully in the crystal clear lake.