A Beginning

• Holly Taylor, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2014

“Found you!” screamed my friend Thomas, scaring me half to death. We were playing hide and seek in Huckleberry Wood and my friend Thomas had just found me. The rest of my friends started to flood in, ready to start the next game. I sighed, then covered my eyes and began counting. I could hear their feet pounding the ground as they ran to find a hiding spot. I took my hands away from my eyes, the boys were gone. It was a damp day and I smiled when I saw trails of muddy footprints covering the grass, this was going to be easier than I thought. I picked a set of footprints and started to follow them. They were quite small footprints, and I wondered who they belonged to.

I came to a large hedge. The footprints seemed to go straight through it, so I pushed the branches apart and squeezed through. The other side of the hedge was quite tidy and neat looking, unlike the rest of the wood. Once I was finished admiring the setting, I set off following the footprints again. I had been walking for a while now and I was just about to give up searching when I came to a small, welcoming cottage I'd never seen before. By now I was feeling a bit lost, so I knocked on the door to ask where I was exactly.

The door was answered by a young girl with sparkling eyes as big as the moon and as blue as the sea on a stormy night. Her short, scraggly, brown hair fell over her carefully painted face. Her cheeks were rosy, ripe strawberry red. She had a petite button nose and a small friendly but shy smile. Her boldest feature was a bright, red, hooded coat that gently blew in the wind. She looked familiar for some reason.

“Hello!” she said in a friendly voice. “I’m Red, What’s your name?” Then it hit me. She was the Little Red Riding Hood from the nursery rhyme. “Are you okay?” She said as I stood there gaping with astonishment. “I-I’m fine” I said “My name’s David, nice to meet you, Red.”

After talking to my new friend Red, I learned I was in Merryville, a place where all nursery rhyme characters lived together harmoniously. All except the Big Bad Wolf (BBW), who lurked in the darkest part of the wood alone. Furthermore, for me to return to my own world through the hedge, I must wait for the next full moon! To complicate matters further Red’s wise old Grandma, had discovered the BBW knew of my arrival and was planning to ambush me on the night of my return home.

Red had invited me to stay with her until the next full moon, which was a month from now. I was nervous about the ambush the BBW was planning, but most of all I wondered what would happen to my friends, and my mother and father. They'll be worried sick, and my friends will think it’s all their fault. I wish they knew I was okay. I miss them; however, I would have a great story to tell on my return!

Not “The End”
A Beginning...