The Flying Trunk

Once there was a merchant who grew very rich. When he died, he left his only son a great fortune. The son had always had what he wanted, and now he wanted even more. He bought the finest clothes, gave grand parties, and threw away money as if it were pebbles. He sent coins sailing across the water just to watch them splash. He never thought of tomorrow.

Soon tomorrow came. The fortune melted like snow in spring. At last he owned nothing but a pair of worn slippers and an old dressing gown. Then a friend sent him a present: a plain wooden trunk with a lock on it and a note that said, "Pack up!"

"Pack up? I have nothing to pack," the young man sighed. So, just for fun, he climbed inside the trunk and snapped the lock shut.

Whoosh! The trunk shot up the chimney as if it were a rocket. The lid rattled, the wind whistled, and the city rooftops fell away. The trunk could fly! It carried him over fields and forests, over lakes and rivers, all the way to a far-off land—Turkey—where tall minarets rose like pencils and a great Sultan lived in a shining palace.

From above, the young man saw a lonely round tower with a single window high, high up. Inside the window sat a princess, as bright and beautiful as the moon. She was kept there because wise people had said a strange thing: her husband, whoever he might be, would bring her great sorrow. So no one was allowed to visit her—not from the ground, anyway.

But the young man had a flying trunk. He circled the tower and landed softly on the windowsill. The princess started, then saw a handsome stranger stepping out of a wooden trunk and could not help smiling.

"Don’t be afraid," he said. "I flew here to see you. My trunk can carry me anywhere. May I come in?"

The princess had never met anyone like him, and her days were very long. She nodded. They sat together and talked for hours. He told her about the cities he had seen from the sky, and she told him about the garden she could only glimpse from her window. When she worried about the old prophecy, he laughed lightly and said, "Stories can be wiser than worries. Let me tell you one."

He told a merry tale about the things inside a cupboard—how the teapot boasted, the saucepan puffed, the matches bragged about their grand family tree, and how the broom and the bellows danced until everything clattered and clanged. The princess laughed until tears shone in her eyes. The young man laughed too, and in that hour they both forgot the prophecy. Before he flew away, he asked, "Will you marry me?"

"If my parents agree," she said, "I will." And she gave him a silk handkerchief so he would not forget her.

The next day, the young man flew in his trunk to the palace and asked to see the Sultan and the Sultana. Guards pointed their spears and frowned, but it is hard to stop a visitor who arrives through a window. He bowed low and said, "Your Majesties, I wish to marry your daughter."

"What can you do for her?" asked the Sultan. "And what kind of man are you?"

"I can tell a story so good that everyone forgets to be sad," said the young man. "May I show you?"

Now, the Sultan and the Sultana dearly loved good stories. They sent for sherbet and candied fruits and settled on their cushions. The young man began. He told a lively tale about a whole kitchen coming to life: the pepper pot sneezing, the coffee mill grumbling, the butter talking about dancing in the pan, and the proud matches telling of the tall pine forest where they were born. The story leaped and twirled like a flame, and when it ended, the Sultan clapped, the Sultana wiped her eyes from laughing, and even the court officials forgot to look stern.

"You shall marry our daughter," said the Sultan, pleased. "On Sunday! And we will have the grandest wedding anyone has ever seen."

The young man bowed and flew back to the tower to tell the princess. They were both so happy that their joy seemed bigger than the sky. "We must celebrate," he cried. "On Saturday night I will set off fireworks so the whole city knows our glad news!"

He bought rockets and wheels and showers of stars. He spent the last of his coins. On Saturday, when evening fell, he set up the fireworks in an open square and sent them sizzling into the black air. Blue suns spun. Golden sparks rained. Red serpents curled and hissed. The people shouted with delight, and even the Sultan leaned from his balcony to watch.

But the young man had made a careless choice. He had hidden his flying trunk behind a pile of fireworks to keep it safe. A spark—just one—jumped the wrong way. In a breath, the spark found the trunk. The wood caught. Flames flickered, then roared. By the time the last rocket faded, there was nothing left of the trunk but a heap of warm ash.

On Sunday morning he ran to the ash and sifted it with his fingers, as if a miracle might lie there. There was no miracle. The magic was burned away. He could not fly to the tower. He could not reach the princess.

The princess waited in her window, dressed in her wedding clothes, the silk handkerchief in her hand. She listened for the whir of a flying trunk—once, twice, a hundred times. It never came. The day passed, and the prophecy sat heavy in the air. She waited still.

As for the young man, he wandered from land to land with only his stories to carry him. He told them in marketplaces and in inns, beneath bridges and beside warm stoves. People clapped and laughed and cried. But when the cheers faded and the night grew quiet, he thought of a high window, a princess in white, and a trunk that could have taken him anywhere, if only he had been careful.

And that is the tale of the flying trunk, which rose from a chimney like a dream and fell to ashes because of a spark.