Travel writer Vita Kirk is an enigma; though she's written guides to places all around the globe, she has never been to any of them. Vita prefers the physically and emotionally insulated life she lives in her antique-filled home, keeping family and friends at arm's length. Even the hedge outside her office window has been allowed to grow past the panes, effectively sealing her inside.

When she searches her favourite antique store, Pastimes, for a box to hold the CDs and floppy disks she uses in her writing, she chooses The Enchanted Treasure Box, as the handpainted lettering on the lid proclaims it. A Victorian trinket, the box is just the right size and motif for a travel writer; shaped like a treasure box, and covered with a painted map of the world in enchanting detail. A mysterious elderly man tells her that love is the key that unlocks every portal, and is gone.

What the box brings to Vita is beyond her imagining. Intrigued by the box, she tries to research its origins, leading her to an internet address that takes over her computer during a freak thunderstorm. Suddenly there is no more screen, no more wallpaper, only a starscape with a rotating lock in the center. Her cursor is a key. When she clicks on it, Vita finds herself witness to a story that explains not only the box's past, but her own. Past, present and future all change as Vita deciphers the events played out on her screen. She begins to question what she has always thought to be true, while remembering a past that never was.