War

• Betty Geng, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2016

A siren wailed across the street. A moment later, all the houses in the street were crying, sobbing in the loudest of their voices.
A little child clambered blindly up their street's emergency car, followed by her uncle who lived with her, after the death of all their relatives. Danger crept into the small town. The car's driver sped off.
He headed for the hills in the south, mostly because they were facing the direction and he didn't have the time to think. The hills led to the mountains. The mountains weren't some place for fun and sledding like most children thought, but mysterious grassy slopes charmed by spells and magic. Nobody had been into the bizarre depths of the mountains before. It smelled too strongly of dangerous charms.
Yet the driver kept driving, almost blindly. The car made its way into the mountain. The path that was roughly lain with stones and rocks became narrower, bumpier.
The girl's eyes swirled. She thought she was seeing images. She blinked. The images were still there, only clearer. Straining her eyes, the girl made out faint pictures of things—and things she recognised, which made her heart break.
Her mother, her dear mother. And her father, her dear father.
Her brothers and sisters, except that they were all a fraction smaller, all cuter, all smiling, without a trace of the annoying siblings they had been before.
She saw her little pet chickens, the two fluffy little dogs, the one little flame-orange kitten, the countless but still cute little bunnies that hopped around, the countless little goldfish swimming around and happily eating the little pellets that she had always fed them with.
She wanted to cry, but no tears came. The pictures only got clearer, not faint anymore.
The images swirled and a cat appeared. Another cat trotted next to it, a rose in his mouth. Four little kittens bounced along at their heels. The little girl's breath caught in her throat, painfully. The cats were from a dream.
The cats faded. Then the picture of her mother, cradling her little sister.
“Do you want to join us?”
The little girl started crying. Her tears dropped down like the sweetest water flowing down a waterfall. She reached out through a crack in the window and gasped. The air was so cold it burned her fingers.
The little girl opened her eyes. Instead of her mother, there was a ghost in her place. She wanted to scream but her voice was frozen. The ghost then swallowed up the whole car.
It was as dark as an evil cat's eyes.
The little girl blinked, and found her voice where it was. She wasn't in the car anymore. Instead, she was in Candyland, where she thought she could scent the Gods.
She found all her loves. She found all that she had known. A few words floated up into the air:
Those who make war
Will be punished
Those who make peace
Will relish.