Fiction: Group 3
New Tales of the Pearl River Delta
St. Mary's Canossian College, Kot, Erica - 13, Fiction: Group 3
loved the sea.
I liked to swim in the great beach and enjoying the cool waves, gently slapping me as I go.
But I definitely do not like falling towards it at the speed of a bullet. I have watched enough
television to know that if you plunged from places high enough, you would crash and end up having your
organs mashed up like potatoes.
How did I manage to get myself into such a mess?
I dimly remembered something about…an invitation card? It was something about a competition.
Thirty seconds till impact now. I quickly did a posture --- what those divers would do if they are near
surface.
Splash! I hit the water surface, loud and hard. If I ever had to make a top ten list in my finest moments, I
would not add that sound in. It sounded like your normal diving noise, only ten times louder.
Frantically, I looked at my surroundings. After a lot of swimming, I found a raft.
The owner of it, a boy about twelve peered at me curiously, even when he was helping me onto his
little raft. He had large round eyes and wore clothes that were ragged and drenched, meaning it wasn’t in
much better shape than mine. Finally, he asked, ’Who are you? How did you get here?’
‘Err, I am Lily, and I definitely do not know where I am, why I am here, and how I got here. Who are
you anyway?’
‘Okay, I’m Tim. You must be new here. Guess I’ll give a couple of pointers to you. First off, we’re in
this lovely place called the Pearl River Delta. In case you don’t know where it is, you can just forget about
it. Second, why we are here… well I’m not that sure. Third, I think I just got an invitation card and the
second later I was here. Now you know as much as I do.’
Suddenly a loud voice pierced from nowhere.
‘Hello contestants! Welcome to the battle arena!’
The battle arena?
I looked at Tim, who shook his head, meaning he didn’t understand much more than I do.
The loud blaring voice continued.
‘Contestants, sail and survive through the Delta! Win, you shall be rewarded! But if you fail, you shall
linger here forever! Your mission, your place to go is…Hong Kong!’
Somewhere, a loud horn sounded.
And the battle began.
We rowed. We rowed and paddled until we had energy to only sleep. One day after a nauseating day of
constant rowing, I asked Tim, ‘If we won what would you like to do?’
‘I would go to the wonderful school, which I dream about always.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ I said. I would’ve jumped from astonishment if I had that energy to do so. He
looked at me crossly ’Really? Try growing vegetables all day and suddenly you find out you can learn
reading and writing. I grew up in a small village and my parents were just poor farmers, so poor sometimes
we are forced to starve in the winter.’
Poor boy. No wonder he was fighting so intensely, even more than me, who is desperately trying to get
out as soon as possible. He is fighting for his future.
Then one day we spotted a sea serpent, but it found us before we saw him.
We were trying to fix a little hole with a little duct tape I found on the waves when…
Wham! A giant knocked our wooden raft over, causing it to do a double flip and land in a crash.
‘Incoming!’ Tim yelled, thrashing in the water to get back to the raft. Meanwhile, I noticed the great
serpent, a huge, mottled green snake with very bad dental care was staring at us, quivering like…laughing.
‘Stop that!’ I yelled.
Tim looked at me, confused. Then he looked at the snake.
‘Um, hello.’
The serpent rolled his eyes(or what I think he is doing) then said, ’Well?’
‘Hello, my name is Lily.’ I tried for a charming smile, but my face wouldn’t budge. It was stuck like
cement.
I
