It was a bright Sunday morning, bustling with the boisterous banter between Sarah and her friends. The children were playing hopscotch by the lake which was close to Sarah’s home. Mrs. Rodrigues was watching them from the kitchen while preparing sandwiches for the children to feast on. Suddenly, there was a loud scream. It was Mrs Rodrigues’ scream as she saw man-eating night crawlers. She called Sarah before she jumped into the lake to get stones. But it was too late as Sarah had turned into a skeleton. She called up Mr. Rodrigues for help, but he didn’t answer the call.

Mrs. Rodrigues ran to find the children as they were escaping from the man-eating night crawlers. Even after running too far, children were nowhere to be found. She ran into the forest of Ghosts following the children’s footprints. Mrs. Rodrigues felt as if someone was following her. She looked back but found no one. Suddenly her phone rang, “tring tring……”. She got scared. It was Mr. Rodrigues.

“Did you forget documents, watch”, she fumbled with words.

“No no”, interrupted Mr Rodrigues, “I was just errrr…”.

The phone line got disconnected.

When she kept her phone back in the bag, she heard a gallop and saw the heartless Knight. There were children’s footprints behind him. She ran after the Knight and reached the waterfall of Diamonds. As she stepped into the fall, she got hit by a diamond on her head and the diamond broke into pieces. She followed the footprints through the waterfall to fortress of fear, where she met the Witches. She gifted them the Kabasa plant they needed for the potion. Kabasa had never grown in witch-land for thousands of years.

Mrs. Rodrigues asked for help from the Queen of Witches, for which she agreed. They reached the cave of 500ft Night Crawler where children were imprisoned. The Witch Queen commanded the Night crawler to release the kids or face death. The Night Crawler challenged the Queen and released a vicious spell. The Queen was ready and she blocked the spell with one whip of her wand. Not waiting for the Night crawler to recover, the witch queen raised her wand and said, “expeliaurmus”.

With this spell, a strong ray of light hit the Night Crawler and he was defeated. The Queen freed the kids from the cage. They thanked the Queen for her bravery and left for home with Mrs. Rodrigues.

//This story has been submitted by Ryan Bhathija, aged 9, from Hyderabad. This entry has won 2nd prize in the first contest conducted as a part of BTB “Children’s Corner” initiative. Children were given a prompt of few lines and they had to continue the story with their own interpretation.//