Fiction: Group 3
Into the Dragon's Mouth
Discovery College (Primary), Swedenklef, Julia - 11, Fiction: Group 3
uddenly everything starts to shake, as the engine rumbles to life. I hold on to the side of the boat with
a grip that could kill, as my mother starts the boat up. Not many people know this about me, but I
really despise boats, for many reasons, one being I was stranded on a lifeboat for days after the South
Korean ferry sank. But somehow my parents got me on this boat, to go up to the Pearl River Delta to go do
some trading, they said that "it will be good for me".
Bang! The boat leant to one side and a giant crack forms in the bottom of the boat, I think we just hit a
rock. Another bang comes, but this time it sounded more like something just hit 'us'. Although my feet feel
like they are cemented to the floor, I manage to pick one foot up at a time and go find my parents, they'll
know what to do.
After looking absolutely everywhere around on the boat, I start to panic even more. The boat is still going
full speed ahead, with no one at the wheel. I am no longer just panicked, I am terrified!
I hear faint screams in the distance. Only to realize that those screams are coming from my drowning
parents. I have no other choice, but to figure out how to turn the boat around and pick up my parents. I
manage to slow down the boat, turn it around and park it next to them, by pressing a series of random
buttons and hoping for the best. I let down a rope for my mom and dad to climb up, and then I pulled them
onboard, and laid them down on the floor.
After my parents recovered from being in the water, we came up with a plan to repair the boat. Basically, I
would climb back into the water and use fabric from the boat interior to push into the cracks. This sounds
simple right, but of course waves, cold stiff fingers and sharp barnacles made the process almost unbearable.
Somehow I finished the task and I hope I will never have to do it again.
Now we could get back to motoring towards our destination. We were headed for a city called Pearl River
Delta. The city was a dirty place. There is rat poop on the street and drunken people everywhere, let's just
say it's not a place where children like me, should be left alone in.
It was a long hard journey, or at least it felt like one, but we finally made it. It took us 2 days with the minor
setback, but now we are here, and so are our twenty-five different varieties of vegetables, which we will
trade for supplies.
I clambered off the boat and stepped on the dock where we parked, and a family of rats greeted us, the air
was hazy and strangely quiet as we walked down the dock, no one was walking on the streets and all the
doors are bolted shut, even the fish ball stall that we always go to isn't there. We walk a couple more meters
down the empty street, and we come across and old blind man sitting on a bench in the corner. We come
to him and ask why nobody is wandering the streets, and he tells us a strange story about many people
getting a fortune on a Kau Cim about the great water dragon, LongWei, coming and swallowing the entire
city whole. Strange.
With everyone cowering in their homes, there is no one to trade with. So our vegetables will just have to
wait until this whole city-eating dragon thing has blown over, or at least that's what my parents say,
personally, I think we go find out what's really happening around here.
To find out what happening I will have to do some investigating, alone. So while my parents are arranging
the vegetables for the fourth time today, I sneak away to the river to try to find some clues about this whole
dragon thing.
I arrive on the dock and it suddenly just starts rocking violently, I quickly lay down and grip the edge of the
dock. As soon as it stops I look into the water to see what caused the shaking and I see a giant golden
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