Under The Apple Tree

• Luka Good, Grade 3
• Short Story
• 2017

Under The Apple Tree

And yet it was he who noticed it under the apple tree at Ginger Park as he plunged into darkness.

Jake! Time to get up! Jake woke up to the luxury not unusual to a king, and to go to a school like his, cost millions, but that was hardly anything to them. He loved school and loved writing even more. He devoured books and dreamed of being an author one day. But this wasn’t the case. No one expected what was to come.

On the weekend Jake went to quiet spots to write. Then on one particular weekend he went to a different spot to write. Ginger Park.

From that day on Ginger Park was a very special place to him. It was quiet, beautiful
and it gave him great ideas to write about. It was the best place to write for a long time until one day, it all went wrong.

Jake had been going to Ginger Park since he was 8 years old and 3 years later he was still going. On this specific day he was planning to finish a story he had been writing for months! He was not sure how to finish but he knew that Ginger Park would give him the answers to this inconvenience.

He set up under his most reliable apple tree and waited for some inspiration. It never came. Jake knew something was wrong. The tree always gave him the answers, no matter how hard they were. Something was up.

No birds. No people. No movement. No sounds. No life. Jake felt alone. He was lost in a sea of dark deliberations. “Yet I am I writer. Everyone tells me I am I writer,” he thought to himself. “Or has something gone seriously wrong.”

Something went totally, utterly seriously wrong.

At home Jake’s mum was reading the newspaper but frequently drifting off to thoughts of Jake. She wondered if he was writing yet, and even if he was coming home. This book was different to the all the rest and he would not stray from it until he was completely finished. “He is probably scribbling down the end right now,” she said to Jake’s dad.

Sadly however, that was not the case. It is true that he had come up with an idea but that was not all. An invisible sign stood right in front of him. It had intrigued him from the start. He wondered if it had always been there, it seemed that he had never noticed it before. He sat there staring into it.

And yet it was he who noticed it under the apple tree at Ginger Park as he plunged into darkness. Darkness, darkness, darkness. Until one day, out of the darkness came a girl holding light.