The Dragon's Chest

• Marion Esguerra, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2016

Ding dong! We stepped into a humongous, Op-Shop filled to the brim with items. Harriet and I explored everywhere. Left to right, forwards and backwards! It’s like a maze of goods! We kept on running until, something caught my eye. It was a beautiful, brown map framed with gold and shiny jewels. I bought it. Anyway, it was only $1.50.
Now here at my house, with Harriet my older sister, we’re just patiently staring at the map, wondering what to do with it.
“Charlotte, should we hang it here?” Harriet suggested. It kept on swinging to the side and I kindly said,”No.” Then I realised something I couldn’t believe. It looked exactly like our backyard! Except, there weren’t any houses. There was a red cross marked just next to the Oak Tree. I told all the news to Harriet. When she heard the
news, she squealed with excitement!
“Let’s tell dad!” she said with such a happy voice.
“Shhhh! Let’s keep it a secret!” I commanded.
We went outside, with a heavy shovel. I asked if I could dig, but as always, she wanted to keep all the excitement to herself! It’d already been half an hour, when CLINK! Harriet hit something! She struggled to get the shovel back out. I ran close
to her to see what she had hit. It was a treasure chest ! A big brown treasure chest? I was relieved to have finally found it because she had already dug down to about 2 metres deep. We helped each other carry the chest out.
We returned inside, trying to hide the chest behind our little legs.
“What’s that girls?” mum asked in suspicion. Harriet said “Nothing!” and we rushed up the stairs. We finally arrived to my room and realised that we needed a key to open it up. We frowned upsettingly. We were looking forward to what ever was inside it. Then, I saw something. It was a map stuck to the chest. We decided to go there.
Harriet drove and I directed where to go. Surprisingly, we ended a up in the park!
We when got out of the car, we realised that we were actually in a cave! We couldn’t see anything! All I could see was darkness! “Harriet!” I shouted, “did you bring the chest?” In a blink of an eye, the light flashed on. I glimpsed at Harriet.
She was staring at an ancient, golden dragon. Then we heard a voice. “Have you brought the chest?” it asked with a deep, old voice. “What’s that?” Harriet
whispered. “It must be the dragon,” I answered. Then we saw a little, rectangular hole that said the word CHEST. We put the chest in.
“Ahh!” Everything turned white! We hold each other’s hand. Then we appeared back at home, sitting on the couch. Everything was back to normal.