Aladdin - the Arabian Nights

Chapter 27

Jasmine stirred sleepily in her bed. She felt the midmorning sun coming in through the window, a little weaker than most days, she thought, but that was all right. She was looking forward to a fun morning in the market, after her father came to see her as he always did, and most of all to seeing Aladdin again when he got home later. Of course she had seen him since he had come home from that war, but even so... she missed him. Jasmine sat up and stretched her arms over her head, and opened her eyes.

And she blinked several times, sure she couldn't really be seeing what she thought she was.

The room was red. It was much more dimly lit than usual, probably on account of the black curtains which had gotten on the windows somehow, and everything in the room had changed from the cheerful purple or turquoise it had once been to a deep blood-red.

Jasmine blinked several times in case she was still dreaming. The red remained stubbornly there... Where had it come from?? Apart from that, this was definitely her room in her palace... the structure of everything was exactly the same... but then where could all this red have come from?? It couldn't be just this strange new lighting.... Just in case it could, Jasmine pulled the unfamiliar black curtains back from the window to let in the sun.

And stared in horror at the barren landscape before her. Where were the beautiful palace grounds? Where was her father's palace? All she could see was a blank expanse of land, some strangely white peaks in the distance, and some strange trees with spiny leaves and many-fingered trunks stretching up towards the sky, which she was sure she had never seen in Agrabah. No, what was she thinking... of course she was still in Agrabah! This was her palace, wasn't it? It couldn't have just moved somewhere else! That was impossible... although she had been mysteriously moved somewhere else once before, back when Aladdin was rescuing her from having to marry Jafar....

Decidedly nervous now, Jasmine made for the doors that led from her bedroom into the grounds. She would go out there and show herself this was still Agrabah and she was still inside her palace. Jasmine pushed against the doors and threw them open.

It was the same as the view from the window. A stretch of dry brown earth lay before her, no sign of the beautiful gardens that normally surrounded her palace. She could see one of the fountains off to the side, but it stood dark and silent and oddly twisted, the water no longer playing. The air felt damp and oddly cold. There was no sign of the familiar desert, no sign of her father's palace or any other buildings. And everything was much too quiet, none of the usual cries from the marketplace which normally drifted up to the palace in the mornings.

Where was everything?? Jasmine wanted to run, to get as far away as she could from this strange unsettling place. She took one step out the door, determined to keep going until she found something familiar or some answer to all of this, but as if some unseen hand had pushed her, Jasmine found herself stumbling back into the palace, nearly losing her balance.

What had just happened?! There was an odd sort of red glow pulsing around her, mostly between herself and the doorway, between Jasmine and her only way out of this terrifying place. Jasmine took another step into the red glow, and found that, once again, she could not move around it. It pulsed in the air all around her like a prison guard, preventing her from leaving. Jasmine spun around in alarm, and found this red energy surrounding her on all sides, enveloping her, silently pushing her away from the doors.

"What are you doing?" Jasmine demanded of the red energy. "Let me go!"

There was no answer from the red glow.

Now decidedly frightened, Jasmine turned back to the room. It was her and Aladdin's room, and yet it wasn't: everything in it had turned red; it was much darker in here than it used to be; the gold accents were still there, but darker and twistier than they had once been; and now that she looked closer, Jasmine could see snake motifs. On everything. What would that be doing in her palace?! Jasmine didn't like snakes, much as she loved animals normally – maybe they reminded her too much of Jafar.