THE STORY TELLER’S CLOAK
by Edward Butters
5J – Walton Priory Middle School
It was a normal school day except there was an author coming in. The rest of the school and I were all in the gym. The head teacher was talking about the author reading to us.
Then the lights went out and the curtains closed themselves. The room was pitch black. When the lights came back on a hooded figure was standing next to the head teacher. It was like a human version of the grim reaper but with patches all over the cloak. I focused on one of them, it was a mixture of greens and browns. Then the colours changed places and made a picture of a forest. Before I knew what had happened, I was sucked into the picture!
I didn’t realise what had happened at first. All sorts of thoughts flowed through my head. Where had the school gone? Where was I? Was anyone else here? I started calling. “Hello, is anyone there?” Then I heard two voices.
“Did you hear something?” asked one.
“No” said another.
The voices came from my left so I ran out of the trees right in front of a horse and cart. The horse reared up and the two men tried to keep the horse under control.
“What are you doing?” asked one man.
“Have you run away from the village?” asked the other.
“No” I said “I’m just lost”.
“Well take my advice and keep away from that village” said the first man pointing.
“Yes” agreed the second “otherwise you will end up just like a Christmas dinner!” The two men left laughing.
Now I’m usually told to do as I am told, but I’m also told not to talk to strangers, so I decided to pretend I had never met them.
I went to the nearest village. (The one that the man told me not to go to). It was much different to a modern village, everything was old fashioned. “Maybe they are having a festival or something,” I thought to myself.
Then a huge creature flew over my head, it was a large, black reptile with smoke coming from its nostrils and wings sticking out of its back. It landed just outside the village, then there were soldiers taking a screaming child to the creature. I soon saw that the child was food. I followed one of the soldiers and they told me that a dragon burned all their crops so they had to feed it children to make it stop. I had heard about something similar to this in R.E. lessons last year. But I couldn’t remember which topic. Then a knight came riding into the village.
The mayor started begging the knight to slay the dragon. “Please George slay that beast!” pleaded the mayor.
Then I suddenly realised where I was. I was in the story of St. George and the dragon. That was where I had heard about the dragon. In the story the dragon lived in a cave on the hills. Then I saw it. It was listening. “The Dragon is here!” I shouted at the top of my voice.
We all ran away as the dragon flew down breathing fire at the village. Then it grabbed the man in its scaly hand and flew away with him. St. George had grabbed the mayor as well so the dragon tried to shake him loose. I could see he was struggling so I rode up to him on the horse. For some reason he pushed me off the horse and rode away.
“Hey!” I shouted, running after him. When I caught up, St. George was trying to distract the dragon so that the mayor could get away. Then the dragon’s tail hit me and I went flying back to where I first arrived.
I had crashed into something. I looked around and saw a dent in thin air. I soon realised that this must be the edge of the cloak and that I had to make a hole in it to escape. So I threw a stone at the dragon and it chased me into the forest. When it tried to breathe fire at me I ducked and it burnt a hole in the edge of the cloak. I jumped through it.
When I got back, the cloak was on fire. The Dragon poked its head through the hole. Everyone screamed. All of a sudden a sword came flying out of the cloak and into the dragon’s neck. It stopped breathing and collapsed into the cloak. A scale had been chipped off the dragon’s neck when the sword stabbed it and I kept it as a souvenir of my adventure.