The Wizard’s Box

Whilst trying to get our 3-year old to sleep I brought her to our bed, on which there happened to be a box of sweets. With the lights off I hoped she hadn’t seen it but when she asked what it was I decided to tell her a story about the box to distract her from the real contents (and avoid the inevitable “I want to eat one”). It’s ended up being requested a few times so I thought I’d write it out — Nothing too exciting going on. Dull enough to lull them to sleep, but hopefully enough interesting concepts to make for creative or thoughtful dreams. Over the holidays we had watched a number of films, see if you can spot some of the influences.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a powerful wizard. He was a nice wizard who would always help everyone he could. People would come from far and wide to ask him questions. One day he decided he was getting old, so he should take on an apprentice to whom he could teach his magic.

Lots of people wanted the job but the wizard chose a young boy. Over the years the wizard taught the apprentice lots of magic. But the apprentice noticed there was a hidden room, where the wizard would not let him enter.

Finally, after many years, the wizard called his apprentice and said “I have taught you as much as I can. There are certain things that are too powerful for you to use, but I can no longer keep them hidden from you.” The wizard took the apprentice to the hidden room. Inside the room, there was one thing. A simple wooden box.

“This box contains very special magical objects. Once I am gone the evil wizards of the world will come looking for it. I’m giving it to you now so that you can take it far away. Never use it and keep it secret, keep it safe.”

The apprentice set off immediately. Travelling very, very far away to a new country. There the apprentice became a popular local wizard, helping people where he could, but never revealing that he had trained with such a great master. Never using any big magic, so the evil wizards of the world never thought to come after him for the box.

Around this point, perhaps suspecting some level of subterfuge my daughter said “Daddy, I think the box has sweets in it.”

The apprentice never tried to open the box, and when he started to get old the apprentice decided it was safest to get rid of the box, so he put a special guarding spell on it. This spell protected the box by making it look like a sweet box. Anyone who wasn’t magical would look at the box and just see a box of sweets.

Having done this to keep the box secret he called a friend of his who often travelled deep into the local forest. The apprentice asked his friend to take the box and bury it away deep in the forest. Once his friend came back the apprentice used his magic to make his friend forget where the box was buried. Now the box was safe as it was truly hidden away from everybody!

Many, many years passed. Over time people’s need for wizards started to reduce. In the olden days, if you wanted to send a message far away then someone would take it on a horse and it would take a long time to reach. Wizards could send messages to each other straight away. If you wanted to travel very far, wizards had magic that would help them to move faster than any horse, so they could help people travel quickly. Wizards were also very well read, able to remember vast amounts of information, so people could ask them if they needed to know something.

As time went on people invented tools and technology to help them. They built cars, trains and aeroplanes so they no longer needed wizards to help them travel quickly. They made telephones so they could talk to people on the other side of the world, then mobile phones so they could send messages instantly to one another.

As people stopped needing magic, they started to forget about it, and stopped believing in it, and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. Knowledge of the box, passed into myth and legend.

As technology developed, people started building more things. Their cars needed roads so that they could drive quickly to far away places. So they started cutting down forests and digging up the ground.

And one day, whilst they were digging, someone found the box. But this was a non magical person. So he thought, “How strange, it’s a box of sweets.” The magic was working well, he didn’t realise that it was actually a box of very powerful magic objects! Not being keen on sweets himself he decided to get rid of the box, giving it to a friend who had small children. The children’s mum decided that a whole box of sweets was too much. She didn’t want to spoil her children’s teeth so she thought. “This box is in really good condition, it looks like new. I can sell this and buy some nice vegetables that will not spoil my childrens’ teeth.”

So she went online and put the box up for sale. Just at that time another lady was looking for a box of sweets for her daughter’s birthday. She was going to put one sweet in each party bag.

That lady was Mummy, so that’s how the box ended up coming to our house.

The first time I told the story by this point my daughter was tired enough that I could put her back into her bed. On a retelling of the story I got asked how I know about the box, naturally I told them that “Daddy is a little bit magical”. On a couple of occasions in the day time they have got the box and asked me what I can see. I run my finger along the text of the box saying “Very special Wizard’s box. Full of powerful magical things. DO NOT OPEN.”

Films seen over the holidays that influenced this work: Onward, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogies.