Waking Up in China
Harriet Ketchum, Group 3: Fiction, West Island School
addy and her family were driving across the China to go to the Great Wall for the first time in their
lives. But Maddy’s dad was being uncooperative.
“
But Dad….”
“
No.”
“
Why not?”
“
Because I say so.” Maddy knew it was useless. She gazed out the window at the fields of rice. Last
night she had stayed up really late because she was excited for the next day. Too bad she was not as excited
now…. But, because of that, she was really tired. She thought she would fall asleep right there and then. She put
her headphones in and started listening to her music.
As they arrived Maddy thought she would try one last time. “Please?”
“
It doesn’t matter how you say it, or when you say it, I will always say no.”
An official looking man dressed in long robes rushed towards them. As he came up, she realised that
she was wearing a robe too, only purple and gold. She looked up, and all her family was dressed in a similar
way, even her sister, who, even with her obsession with make-up, had ridicules amounts of it on. But as she
looked up at her dad, she realised how grand he looked. It seemed as if he were the king of the whole of China,
or maybe the emperor.
“
Finally, you are here! We must start immediately.”
“
Yes, I am so sorry; I had a bit of an argument on our journey here.”
“
Well, you’re here now.” The family started walking down the wall.
“
What a brilliant view we have from up here.” Maddy’s father exclaimed. “Why, I bet you could see
the whole of China, if you were standing in the right place.”
Maddy was really confused. What’s with the clothes? Maybe this was all just a prank her little brother
was trying to pull on her…
Just then, they heard a loud noise, and saw a bright light. “Mongolians!”
“
Why won’t they ever stop? Don’t they ever get tired of making my life miserable?” said the father as
he ushered the family inside the nearest watch tower. Now Maddy was really confused! Who were the
Mongolians? Maybe they were dangerous… Never in her life had she seen a Mongolian, and now she was not
going to give up that chance just because her dad said so.
“
If I go up to the top of the watch tower it will surely be safe!” she thought. As she got up to the tower,
a ladder bumped against the side. A head looked up at her and she looked down at the head. They were both too
stunned to speak. Suddenly, the head jumped up, so that is was a head no longer, and snatched her before she
had time to do anything. “They must be trained to do that,” she thought. “Oh, how dad was right! You should
never trust a Mongolian!”
He grabbed her and she struggled to escape. But he was stronger than her. He pulled her down and tied
her hands together. Now she was done for! He picked her up and threw her off the edge of the wall. There was a
moment of free fall. She knew she was going to die. But then someone caught her and shoved her onto a horse.
They started moving. She looked at the rider of the horse, but before she could take a good look at him, she was
blindfolded. The world went dark. The next thing she knew was someone was shaking her violently.
“
Get off me….” She was too dazed to talk properly. Too dazed to think strait. She sat up and then
everything came back to her. Unfortunately, the idea of being on a horse came too late. She had bumps and
bruises all over. “Just another one to add to my collection” she thought. A man rushed over, and she felt him
touching the blindfold she was wearing as if he was about to take it off.. Someone not very far away yelled
really loudly then the man yelled back. They were all talking in a different language. He took the blindfold off,
but it took a minute to adjust to the light of the setting sun.
The first thing she saw was the outline of a small village. The man put her back up on the horse, and
she felt a bit better, considering she now knew which way was up, though she still had her hands tied behind her
back. They kept going forward. It was useless to yell and scream, because there was no-one to yell and scream
to. There were only the sad, tired, depressed faces of the people around her. She saw one kid who had no shoes
on and another girl who’s hair was all messed up and in her face. They came to a small hut and the man who
was steering the horse jumped off, pulled her off after him and shoved her into the hut.
Maddy realised she had to get out of there. She once saw on TV a survival show on kidnapping. It had
said that the first thing to do was to get out of your bindings.
M