Summary

The story begins with the narrator describing the summers of his childhood. The summers “lasted forever,” but they were also “always ending” (77). He laments the fact that the long summers taunted him with an expiration date. One summer, he began to notice children in his neighborhood acquiring some carpets. They had magical qualities, such that they allowed the owner to fly on them.

Not long after they became popular in his neighborhood, the protagonist’s parents bought a flying carpet for him. At first, he was careful with it. He practiced “cautiously” (78) while his parents watched. The protagonist enjoyed carefully gliding around his garden for the first few days, but when he saw his friend “skimming over his low picket fence” (79), he decided to become bolder with his carpet.

One day, while his mother was sick in her bedroom and his father was...