De Vliegende Koffer

One of my most favorite fairy tales was a pop-up book, with beautiful art, called "De Vliegende Koffer". That is Flemish for "The Flying Trunk". It was the sad and exotic story of a Turkish magician who had a magical traveling trunk that could fly him wherever he wanted to go. So, naturally, he flies all over the world and has many exciting adventures. Then, one day, he flies to India and sees this beautiful princess sleep on this magnificent bed, in this gorgeous palace. In the book, since it was pop-up, you could carefully swing the princess on her exotic bed. The magician falls in love with the princess, and she returns his feelings. But, as the magician is rather addicted to the excitement of travel in his flying trunk, he asks the princess to be allowed one more adventure before he marries her. The princess reluctantly agrees, and off he flies, leaving sparks behind. In the book, this part is quite fun, because his arms and legs stick out, and really add to the realism of the crazy flying traveling trunk. Then, tragedy strikes. It turns out the magical trunk only had a limited amount of spark to fly, and in the middle of his last escapade of bachelor hood, the trunk runs out of fuel, for good. The distance to recover his princess is much too large, and they are forever separated. The last three dimensional picture was so beautiful and sad: it shows the princess in a gorgeous shimmering light blue wedding gown, crying on the balcony where she first met her adventurous lover, wondering what happened, under a crescent moon and starry sky. I never forgot that image, nor did I forget the sad picture of the open, broken trunk with a terribly regretful magician mourning his tragic foolishness. I absolutely loved fairy-tales when I was a child, and that one left a deep impression on me, the excitement, mingled with the visual beauty and the terrible sad ending. This was definitely not a "and they lived happily ever after". The tragedy was not caused by an evil step mother, or a witch or an evil dragon. No, this tragedy was wrought by foolishness. At age ten, it left me with a rather dim view of the world of love and adults.