Chapter 1 — The Trunk
Her grandmother’s attic was like another house: beams, dust, and something in every corner that nobody had used for twenty years.
Zsófi was eleven, and on the first day of the summer she went up there with a torch, because she was bored. That is the best reason there is for going up into an attic.
Beside the back wall she found the trunk. It was wooden, with brass clasps, and somebody had written on the lid in ink: “Whoever finds it, take care of it.”
“Is this serious?” Zsófi asked the air.
The air did not answer. Zsófi opened the trunk.
There was no treasure in it. There was a folded piece of paper: a hand-drawn map of the house’s yard. On it a red X, and beside it three words: “Where the sun stops.”
Chapter 2 — The Trail
Zsófi took the map downstairs and showed it to her grandmother.
Her grandmother looked at it for a long time. Then she said:
“Your grandfather drew this. Fifty years ago.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” Her grandmother smiled. “He never told me. He said we would find it one day.”
Zsófi went out into the yard. On the map it said: where the sun stops. Around four in the afternoon the sun stopped every day at the end of the garden, behind the old walnut tree, before it dropped below the fence.
Zsófi went there. Under the tree there was nothing. Only grass and a stone.
But the stone did not belong there. It was too regular. Zsófi pushed it aside — and underneath stood a jam jar, with a rolled-up piece of paper inside.
Chapter 3 — What Grandfather Wrote
Zsófi opened the jar. This was written on the paper:
“If you are reading this, then you are big. This summer does not last forever, but the garden does. Plant something under the tree, and write down the date. In fifty years somebody will find it, and will know that you were here. — Grandfather”
Zsófi pressed the paper to her chest, then laughed out loud, because she had realised: her grandfather had not hidden a treasure. He had hidden a task.
That summer Zsófi planted a currant bush under the walnut tree. She wrote the date on a stone slab and put the slab beside the bush.
When her grandmother came out to look, she was silent for a long time.
“This is a good place,” she said at last. “Your grandfather would have done the same.”
The attic is still there. The trunk is empty, the brass clasps open — because Zsófi said the trunk is never to be closed again.
Whoever finds it, take care of it.
