I gently grab the dilapidated book from the shelf where it has so long rested forgotten— where it has observed years pass, unheeded by the girl who once could not relinquish the feeling of it in her hands. As I open the cover and turn a frail, once gilded page, I remember a day long past when my young mind sought the adventures contained within the printed words.

    Just by looking at the pictures, I knew the tale concealed within the pages. Word for word the story recited itself from my four-year-old lips, a song embedded in my memory, despite the incapability of reading. My mother’s sweet, gentle voice played in my mind— a candle lit by a picture my dark brown eyes had encountered so often for as long as my memory could tell. For so long, my mother read to me this story of the twelve princesses who went out of their glorious castle in the night through a secret passageway and danced until their shoes were full of holes, and of the forests of gold, silver, and diamond leaves. This time, however, my eyes wandered from the bright illustrations to the black, seemingly meaningless, printed words. Consumed were the words by my eyes as I recalled, recited, and read.

    My heart could scarcely contain the joy it felt at the discovery of authentic magic— not the magic of the cloak that rendered the gift of invisibility to the prince, not the magic of the secret passageway of the princesses’, but the magic of words. Words were the natural wizards that could do anything a person could ever envision. Words were storytellers, artists, and magicians, but above all else, the magic of words was available to me.

    It wasn’t just another fairytale book. I look upon the faded words and realize that all those times I had begged my mother to read me The Twelve Dancing Princesses, I had ached for the enchantments contained within the lustrous, colorful pages. It wasn’t just a fairytale; it was the embodiment of magic in itself, the essence of mysticism now held so dearly in my mind. I gently place the enormous, now ramshackle book back in its honored place so that it may again watch through the years once more until a young mind once more seeks out the magic conserved in its pages.