The Color of Magic

Once upon a time there was a young man who saw the world around him in shades of black and white. Now, this young man did not know that there was anything different about the way in which he viewed the world. You see, when he was just a baby, his father accidentally angered a witch by picking flowers out of her yard to bring home to his wife. The witch saw this as stealing, and decided to get revenge on the man. However, she did not want to cause any true harm for such a minor infraction, and so she decided to curse his first born son with only black and white vision. The man and his wife did not want to tell their son that his father's mistake had given him a disability, so they never told the young man, and never mentioned colors around him. Throughout his whole life thus far, the young man had no idea that he was different from the rest of the world. One day, he went into town to the market, needing to buy a few items for dinner, including a lemon. Normally, the market the young man frequented had signs near each pile of fruits or vegetables noting their name and price. However, there were no signs in sight this time. The young man asked a kind-looking older woman if she happened to know which pile of fruit were the lemons. The woman looked a bit confused, and hesitantly said, "The yellow ones." Now this certainly puzzled the young man, who asked what 'yellow' was. When she told him that it was a bright color, he became even more confused. He had never seen anything like what the woman described as 'yellow,' and knew something was wrong. He asked her a few more questions, and found out that there were many colors in the world that he had never experienced.

Troubled with this newfound information, the young man went home and asked his parents about colors. They sheepishly told him of his curse, and apologized for keeping it a secret from him for so long. The young man had heard rumors of a magic well and decided to seek it out and try it for himself. After a long and arduous journey, he took a rewarding drink from the well. After a few moments, the world around him was completely transformed. The sky was a dazzling and deep blue and the grass beneath his feet was fresh and green. The young man was in such awe that he stood next to the well taking in his brand-new world for what must have been hours. He finally decided to start his journey back home after watching the most gorgeous sunset. The way in which the blue sky faded and blended into shades of peach and violet as the bright yellow sun fell behind the mountains changed the way in which he would see the world and its beauty for the rest of time.

Author's Note: For this story in my portfolio, I decided to use the story of The Magic Well by Katherine Neville Fleeson as my inspiration. The original story comes from Laos, a country in Southeast Asia. In the original version of the story, the main characters discuss a dream and a subsequent long journey to a well whose water has healing powers. The original story focuses on a man who is very ill, and has a vision of a magic well that will heal him. A few men accompany the ill man on a long journey to find this magic well, and drink from once it is found. The original story ends by telling the reader that the water in the well is used for healing to this day.

Because the original story does not spend a lot of time on the specific magical properties of the well, I thought that it would be fun to make up my own story of someone visiting the well. I decided to write about a man who saw the world in black and white because I thought that it would be really interesting to describe someone seeing color for the first time. My original story was much shorter, so I decided to expand it by exploring the origin of the young man's malady. I had a really fun time writing this story, and would love to write more entries about people who visit this magic well.

Banner image of a sunset