New Tales of the Gobi Desert
St. Margaret’s Co-Educational English Secondary and Primary School: Secondary Section
Secondary, Felicia Pokta, Fiction: Group 4
Y
ou thirsty, Sally?” Luke asked me.
“Oh no, I’m fine,” I answered.
“I reckon we should get back to the shelter. It’s getting dark,” Luke said.
“No. We’re not going back until we find more clues,” I responded.
I was walking through the Gobi Desert with my research assistant, Luke. We were doing
research. Both Luke and I worked as archaeologists, you see. We suspected that there was some
sort of chamber buried underground that was never discovered. We were very interested, therefore
we chose the Gobi Desert as the destination of our research.
So far we had only found some back dirt and biface tools, and planned to figure out the
absolute dating of the objects before other archaeologists do. Soon we went back to the campsite.
It was cold that night. We brought just enough clothing and food to keep us warm.
The next day, we continued our investigation. We found assemblages of the underground
chamber, such as stones covered with different types of writing, which were not likely to be found
in the area we found them. It was quite strange. It would be amazing if we could find out the
mystery behind these attributes first, before anyone else. Oh what a fortune we would have made!
We figured that the calligraphy on the artifacts were some type of old Chinese characters. We
decided to bring them home to the laboratory to analyze the material and the writings.
“Sally. Look!” Luke exclaimed, and pointed forward, “What’s that?” I squinted my eyes and
looked the direction he was pointing. There was a dark figure from a distant approaching us.
“Isn’t that a person?” I asked.
“Right. Well... Nothing. Yes, that ‘s a normal person on a vacation in Gobi Desert,” Luke said.
There was some sort of uncertainty in his voice, but I guess it was nothing.
The person didn’t change his direction, he just continued walking towards us. I was curious
about him, “Luke... I don’t think he’s a normal person on a vacation. He doesn’t even have a
backpack... Or anything with him. Should we ask him whether he needs our help or anything?”
Before Luke could even answer, the figure approached us. He had a hood which covered half of
his face, and therefore we could only see his mouth. By the looks of his wrinkled lips and crooked
back, I imagined that he was at his old age. He stood in front of me for a few seconds, and his
mouth opened, and said in a hoarse voice, “greetings, my name is Solomon. I would like to travel
with you for the rest of the journey. Can I know your names?” I looked at my brother. He seemed
stunned and didn’t know how to react to this question. Therefore, I spoke for both of us, “sure, no
problem, nice to meet you, Solomon. My name is Sally, this is my assistant, Luke.” The old man’s
face lighten up a little when I introduced us, but he didn’t say anything, as if there was something
holding him back.
Solomon didn’t talk much. He didn’t seem quite friendly, since he only gave one word replies,
nodded or shook his head whenever I raised a question or statement. Soon, I gave up socializing
with this mysterious old man. We searched for more until the sun was setting. It was time to get
to the campsite again. “Would you like to stay one night with us, Solomon?” Luke asked politely.
The old man nodded. Soon, we found a cavern and settled down.
“
