Until The Last Page

Chapter Five

GREENSPHERE QUEST by TOM HOLLIDAY

PART ONE

                   Long ago, on a planet called Greensphere, there was a 60 year old lady named Helena Cures who was a white witch (a good witch). She was always making potions to solve her own and other people’s problems. For the past few months she had been working on a potion that would solve the biggest problem of all: the poisoned grass. The land was infested with this poisonous plant and it had a serious dislike towards the good people – it was almost as if it wanted to kill good people instantly by piercing into their legs and injecting a vicious venom into their veins, eventually poisoning the heart. However, if a person of pure evil should step on it he or she could unleash a monster army from the grass beneath them. This would allow them to do whatever they wished. To stop this, Helena had been working on the potion for 10 months and all it needed now was to be mixed with one final ingredient, water, to make it ready to use.

                   Further down the land was a long dirty graveyard where only the creepiest went wandering in. There lived a large shadowy creature with oversized hands and feet and extremely long limbs. It had an oval head and blood red pupils. It stared at a mirror but in fact saw through this mystical mirror right into Helena’s tower. The creature yelled, “Argggggggh, HELENA! You try to stop my army of mutant monsters! My squid-faced monster, my green skeleton, my winged mutt, my ice-eagle and my vampire lizard! NOOOOOOO!” Then it grinned and smirked. “You won’t get a chance!”

Back in the village, Helena was heading down to the river when a shy twelve-year-old boy came along and spotted her. He thought I recognise her! I should be a bit more sociable, I should stop her.

                   “Hey,” he said.  “Where are you going?” he asked.

                   “To the river. Don’t you live next door? I don’t see you a lot, what are you called?” Helena asked.

                   “George,” replied George.

                   In the village the houses were like towers with no ground floor where the poison grass was growing. This was so no one could get poisoned but this made it so hard to talk to neighbours. Helena was happy to see a smiling face.

                   Suddenly a long dusty carriage showed up on the street near the river. The evil villain from the graveyard stepped out.  “Hey Helena!” he scowled.

                   “Kildark!” Helena scowled back.

                   Kildark grabbed a short pistol out of his leather pocket. It had a grappling claw sticking out of the end with a coil of thin rope. He fired it at Helena. The claw grasped the potion, which at this point was in a ruby-encrusted necklace around her neck. The chain snapped and Helena was knocked to the ground, almost catching her finger on a blade of poisonous grass. Helena was distressed, but relieved at the same moment not to get stung.

                   George, on the other hand, was plain shocked! He watched as the necklace on the rope zipped back to the pistol.

                   “Oh ho ho!” Kildark laughed. “Try stopping me now, Helena!” He chuckled as he rode off.           

                    

                    Helena knew the importance of this potion. It had taken 10 months to create and would solve the world’s biggest problem. It was so devastating that it had been taken. As a result of all this horror she started to cry.

                   George had seen it all. He spoke to Helena, who was sobbing in her cloak. “Don’t worry, I will help you get your potion back. It will be okay.” 

                   And from that point their adventure was engaged.

                   George’s parents owned a stable so George ran in for something to help them. Helena looked up to see what he had.

                   George had prepared a horse and carriage. He was a talented carriage driver, to be honest he was good enough to be in the Skill Games. “Hop in,” he beckoned to Helena. As she climbed in he joked, “I said hop not climb!”

                   Helena managed to smile.

                George rolled his eyes and whipped the horse. “Giddyup!” he yelled as the strong stallion hoofed it towards a very dark forest.

(Copyright: Stephen and Aidan Barnard)