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An unseen hand painstakingly covers the bare trees with white snow. It doesn’t leave a square inch of land untouched, filling the brown earth with clean white. The snow forms a blanket, worn like a...
Stories
Original fiction by young writers ages 8-13
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An unseen hand painstakingly covers the bare trees with white snow. It doesn’t leave a square inch of land untouched, filling the brown earth with clean white. The snow forms a blanket, worn like a comfortable sweater by every tree and every foot of ground. Slowly the hand encases each pine needle with clear ice, adds a slick layer of black ice to every driveway.
This story takes place in 1976, in South Africa. At this time in its history, the country was in the middle of apartheid, a governmental policy that discriminated against non-whites and gave authorities nearly unlimited power to arrest and kill civilians. By 1976, students in the Soweto township were staging protests and uprisings, and a secret guerilla army called the MKs had formed.
Jess sat dejectedly on the playground swing. She kicked the sand around her feet as if personally punishing it for her lack of friends. It wasn’t fair that she should have to sit here on this swing, lonely and bored, while the other kids had a great time.
The boy stood, facing the early morning. He let the gentle breeze caress his dark skin and play with his hair as he stared thoughtfully off into the distance. Today was the day of his first buffalo hunt. Today he had a chance to become a man. Ten years old, he had been waiting many months for the time to be right.
Arachne was my sister, but we were as different as night and day. I was tall and lanky, tanned from hours spent on the seashore hunting for the shellfish that Father used in his dye. She was small and pale from hours in front of the loom, doing the weaving that had brought her fame.
Every day, you wake up, eat breakfast, and walk down the five flights of steep, stone-cold stairs. As a cheery neighbor greets you, you put on a fake smile and fast walk out the door. You’ve never been a big “people person,” or a dog person, or even a cat person for that matter. Should you be someone?
A gloomy hole sheltered the shivering cardinal during a raging thunderstorm. The hole was an incomplete snake house, burrowed with consummate skill. The cardinal knew he had to get out before the hole filled with rainwater. Ever so carefully, he worked his way up the shallow passage, his gorgeous red feathers now streaked with dirt.
“He was mostly your dog.” The words flew in flurries around my head. I shall never forget them. “He was mostly your dog. Mostly your dog. Your dog. Dog.” Never-ending words, a round of angels whispered in my head. A comfort I drank like I would drink elixir. I found a blanket in those words. A mission. A dream that could never be reached. To find him.
It’s funny, sometimes some things that are supposed to make perfect sense are actually totally the opposite from the truth. Like the fact that opposites attract.
Mike and I met in the good old days. Second grade. The good old days. It was actually the day I came to my first elementary school, Floral Street School.
Reject. That’s what I was. My parents claimed that eight children in the house was too much for them to handle, and that they couldn’t support them all, so they sent me away to live with my grandparents. That wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, except that Granny and Gramps lived in Maine, thousands of miles away from my original home in Salem, Oregon.