This book had been my mother’s. I hadn’t seen it in seven years. I had thought it had been lost after she died.

I pulled Daddy’s sweater on, my fingers tracing the book’s supple cover. The scent of the fabric and the leather drew me back to warm days beneath the shade tree with Momma. To starlit nights on my parents’ balcony. To Momma reading its stories aloud, and Daddy acting out the parts of witches and kings and brave tailors. Momma would always laugh and warn him not to rile me up so much I couldn’t sleep. Afterward, they’d carry me to bed, take off my shoes, and tuck me in, and dreams would claim me.

I loved stories of all sorts, but somehow I always came home to these. Alessandra had never understood my taste—“Aren’t those for children?” she’d ask—but I didn’t care. Though not for lack of searching, I’d never met an elf or a witch or found a magic kingdom in the woods. But though the stories weren’t real, they were fundamentally true. I’d learned firsthand.

In the old stories, change came in waves, quick as lightning or a gathering storm. And when the skies turned black, the heroes and heroines had to stand on their feet and their wits and find their way back home with what friends they met on their way.

I turned to the back of the book. The last page and the page glued to the binding, the endpaper, were covered in script that told the tale of a girl who for her father’s sake became prisoner to a ferocious beast in a magic castle. One of Momma’s favorites.

I found a pencil in my trunk and put a single tick mark in the top left corner of the page, above the illuminated start of the story.

Mark one. Day one.

Once upon a time, there was a man with three daughters. The youngest was called Beauty.

My fingers traced the illustration of a girl reaching out to her father on horseback, their hands not quite touching, his eyes already on the road ahead.

I was lost out here on the ocean. But somehow, I’d found a map.

10

Perrault was waiting for me when I stumbled onto the deck, squinting into the setting sun. Homer stood at the helm, his shadow streaming out before him.

“There you are!” Perrault’s dark eyes studied me, evidently approving my change of clothes. I’d fallen asleep after unpacking. When I awoke, I’d washed my face and put on a cozy gray dress and Daddy’s sweater, apparently just in time to wobble to the galley after the rest of the crew.

“I was tired,” I said, not looking at the protocol officer.