After nearly four hundred years of being stuck like some mewling kitten in that forsaken tower of stone and magic he was finally out…

And being sent to a deserted island.

Life, however long, remained cruel.

As his punishment for a sharp tongue and clever lies, he had been sequestered from the world. Years locked away with every amenity he could ever need, yet the real punishment… he could not tell a story or lie. He couldn’t write the tall tales he had so loved, nor force them through his lips, he had not an ear to hear them, nor a voice willing or able to speak them.

Free from one curse but under another, he now had only ten items to gather before he and the girl who had saved him were shipped off to a much more barren isolation.

Still, with her with him it was the preferred of the two. The silence in the tower still rang in his ears, no matter how he had tried to stifle it with music or drink.

She was anything but silent.

Alas he had brought this upon them both, now under the eyes of his jailors he found the pen slick in his grasp.

What should he bring?

1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

A good start.

2. Complete Brothers Grimm Fairytales

This should last him a while, he did love stories that could be retold.

Hmm… what next… he needed to think these through carefully. Without anything he needed just the essentials.

3. Black Beauty

Another book that had come out after his imprisonment that had not spontaneously shown up one day on his shelves like the rest. In his short period of freedom he had taken quite a liking to the book.

4. Painkillers

He found that even after he was free from the tower, free to explore, his habits of self destruction were harder to break. Oh, and of course they could come in hardy for medicinal purposes as well he supposed.

5. Motor oil

He was not allowed traditional drink in his imprisonment once the area surrounding it had banned it for people “his age”. But given that within the tower his body was trapped in time, he found himself entirely indestructible.

It was nearly 300 years in that he had started drinking motor oil, it made him incredibly sick, mostly certainly would the smallest swallow have killed him had he been allowed the sweet exit of death.

Still, he liked the smell and was virtually indestructible after his last round of curses.

Only magic would kill him now.

For those of you wondering, it tasted horrendously chemical, with the faint must of mould or a toadstool.

6. Liquorice

The girl who had freed him had shown him this treat and he found himself thinking of it nearly as fondly and often as he found himself thinking of her.

7. His green silk duvet

He simply would not survive without it. Four hundred years of living in isolated luxury had shown him the value of something good.

8. Matches

Just in case.

9. A large bathtub

However deserted they were, he would still find a way to soak.

10. A notebook and pen

Never again would he be stranded without the ability to tell his stories.

As he exited the darkened room, meeting with the girl to compare lists, he found her gawking at him, an incredulous expression on her face that he couldn’t quite decipher. She sputtered before him, and he watched with removed curiosity.

"YOU DIDN'T BRING WATER???"