Pine Tree
Yoyo Li, Gro
ROLOUGE
tree
tree
up 2: Fiction, Diocesan Girls' Junior School
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“
Aww, just one more bedtime story, please! Then I’ll sleep. I promise!”
“
Fine,” Father droned, “just one more.” He sighed and began, “Once upon a time, there was a little
.
It was tortured by the scorching heat and bitter cold, ruthless winds and merciless storms. But the
survived through it all, and has stood majestic and proud in the forest from then on.”
“
What do you mean, Father?”
But he had already left the room.
CHAPTER 1
“
NO!” I screamed as the carriage faded out of my sight. “FATHER!”
It was a cry of agony, despair, a cry of a baby bird when its parents fly away, leaving it to survive in the
wild…
The King had once announced that the most able-bodied man in each family would be taken away to build
the Great Wall and never come back. In my case, it was Father. The time had come.
Then a thought struck me. Had he known? I remembered Father’s bedtime story last night, his seriousness,
how he had avoided my sight… Had he known?
But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that my Father had left me forever. Or perhaps not.
I knew what I must do
CHAPTER 2
The journey to the Great Wall’s construction site would be a long and treacherous one. Father once taught
me what I should be equipped with and how I should hunt in the mountains. Having remembered his teaching, I
arranged my waterskin, a fair supply of dried food, a quilt, a reed jacket and my bow and arrows in an orderly
fashion and thrust the bundle over my back.
Then I froze. I hadn’t the faintest clue about Father’s whereabouts. Anxiety and confusion collided into me
all at once as I paced back and forth, desperate for a solution.
But it came to me. Find Father.
CHAPTER 3
My heart was a ball of fire burning with determination. You must do this, I whispered to myself.
Days and nights passed by as I trudged though hills and mountains, through plateaus and valleys. But as
time crawled slowly, almost agonizingly by, problems dawned on me. There was not a single lake or stream in
sight, and there seemed to be no sign of animals. Starvation and dehydration tormented me, making me grow
weaker and weaker in a matter of hours. Every bone in my body moaned with pain whenever I made abrupt
motions, and my tongue became sandpaper. Then came the time when I was too frail to move on, and could only
lie in a fork of a tree wrapped in my quilt.
The quilt kept me warm, but my heart had frozen. The thought of losing Father forever, after all I had
done…it was unthinkable. When reality revealed its ugly self, I could feel a million arrows stab into my heart.
CHAPTER 4
My future was as dark as the night sky. I was a pile of broken wood, waiting for a spark to be ignited and
fill me with fire again.
That was when I saw a pine tree. I knew it was young by its slender branches and the size of its leaves. “We
have a lot in common, don’t we?” I whispered to the tree. We were both in our youth, and fighting for survival.
Then I saw Father telling me the story of the tree again, how it endured Nature’s merciless torture…
I could feel a spark of hope light me up again.
CHAPTER 5
“
ARWWW!” A shrill scream came from behind me. I was paralyzed by fear as I recognized the sound. It
was a mountain lion.
My instinct told me I must run. Yet the glowing red eyes of the mountain lion came nearer and nearer, and it
wasn’t long before it caught up on me.