Warriors Of The Woods

• Maria Hatem, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2021

One dark night, the bright grey moon shone through my blue blinds. A strange shadow was standing over me. Suddenly, the shadow screamed as loud as a lion's roar. It woke me from my sleep and I jumped out of bed with fear! It turned out it was only my brother Matt.
It was time for our camping trip to the mysterious Miombo Woodlands. As I grabbed my suitcase to pack, a strange feeling came over me but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. I packed some t-shirts, shorts and track suits, as well as hunting socks and hunting gear. I was going with my two brothers, Matt and James. I was very excited so I ran as fast as a cheetah to sit in the front seat. While I was waiting for my brothers James and Matt to hurry up, I heard a mysterious and scary sound coming from the direction of the Miombo Woodlands. I looked towards that direction to see if anything was there, but nothing.
When my brothers finally arrived at the car, they saw I was sitting at the front and began callously complaining about why they had to sit in the back. While they were rattling on, that mysterious sound came back and was spinning in my head. We began our trip to our camping destination and I fell asleep with the droning noise.
“LUCAS!” shrieked my brothers, trying to wake me up.
I slowly opened my eyelids and saw something unimaginable. We arrived at Miombo Woodlands earlier than I expected as it was still light. I rubbed my eyes to get a better look and discovered a whole new land. Surrounding the car was completely beautiful green grass. There was only a few minutes left of the drive before we arrive at our destination. The road was very bumpy and ragged. As we pulled over to stop, I noticed unusual footprints in the hideously brown mud. My curious soul wanted to find out what it was. I tried to tell Matt but he couldn’t hear a thing as he was listening to music, so I screamed out to James, and he agreed with the plan and veered off the infinite long path and followed the footprints into a mysterious cave. The cave was humungous, but we decided not to drive it in, as we would be in a lot of trouble if the car was scratched. James parked the Toyota Hilux ute on the side next to a tall tree, we jumped out and grabbed three torches and started heading towards the cave to explore.
As we were investigating inside the appalling and damp cave, we noticed some unusual movements in the plants coming from the roof of the cave. Instantly, a pack of grey fury wolves approached us and circled around us. They were like a pack of sharks wanting to eat their prey. Unexpectedly, a random door to the cave shut and all we could see was darkness. We heard a vicious growl coming from the west, this was it! We would become wolf dinner! All of a sudden, I had a thought. “WAIT, DON’T MOVE!" I yelled. My teacher gave us an essay about warriors of the woods! It said something about wolves and that we should howl really loud. All we need to do is flash our bright torches on their eyes and they’ll fall into long-lasting sleep! In 3,2,1 flash your lights. The wolves dropped to the floor into a deep sleep. As the wolves fell asleep, the doors to the cave opened and a light shone upon us, it was the Warriors of the Woods.