The Wild Wizard is a short but interesting story written by Shashank Shekhar Shukla who is a 7th grader at The TonsBridge school, Uttarakhand.

                           

                         The Wild Wizard   

On a pouring day amongst the towering trees of the Amazon forest lived an old tribal wizard with a long white beard and a brown magic staff with a blue sapphire gem which he made with luxury and rare wood. He was as lethargic as a sloth but as kind-hearted as a human. Once upon a time after more than 2 years, he went out to take a brisk walk by the greasy and messy animals and surroundings which he thought were the worst place to live in as he had never been to the polluted and 'not good for health' yet advance city life where trees and plants are not to be seen in the whole range of eyes. A chill ran down his back as he passed by, and he heard a sharp grin from all four directions.

 At first, he thought that it must be a wild dog just trying to be a little crooked creep. But soon he was proven wrong as he saw a group of four hyenas who looked pretty much like they hadn't eaten anything in 10-20 days. They came together making the circle even smaller as the wizard backed up being cornered by all the four hyenas.

One of them jumped right into the wizard grabbing the wizard's hands but had extraordinary reflexes and he put his magic staff between the hyena's jaws and flung it to his back with a gliding fly. No normal human could have done it, but it was easily possible due to the wizard's staff's eternal powers. After the act of bravery, the circle made by the hyenas broke leaving a gap for the wizard to make a run to escape. The wizard then ran for about 100 meters but very soon realized that he couldn't escape from the hyenas on foot.

But no problem for a wizard like him, he took a break from his run for life behind a broad tree and converted the staff to 'fly mode', and climbed on it. After getting on it he saw a group of dangerous eagles waiting for him to go up from the canopy just to be their lunch. So instead he pulled the 'low to the ground' twig and drove the broomstick smoothly through the forest though, he was at the speed of about 243 km/h on the broomstick.

 After about 20 minutes he saw behind him and realized that he was going too fast for the hyenas to track him, so he got back on the ground but heard a mixture of many unique sounds like grin, bark, roar, hiss, chirp, and many more. Soon he saw the whole jungle running toward the wizard. The wizard was so confused but yet he had to make a quick decision and he spelled the freezing charm which goes like 'immobulus', he said in a deep and powerful voice with a change in tone.

 Suddenly all the animals froze and the wizard then thought about it in vain because the only thing that made sense to do in such a situation was to run. After all, the freeze charm lasted for only about 10 minutes, out of which 9 were already over. So, he hopped back onto his broomstick and got out of there at a high speed. Soon he realised that he had reached the outskirts of the Amazon forest. He squeezed his eyes in complete surprise as he had never gone to the outer world outside of the forest as the forest was big enough to explore. He saw many things at first sight, moving mechanisms with four wheels, shops where people were buying confectionaries and groceries, etc.

 After a while, he started to grab the attention of people around and one of the females said to the wizard in a confused voice "Who are you?" After that another man of about 20 years of age asked "What are you doing here?" And just like this many more voices started coming up "Get going", "I don't want to see you", "'never come back", "go...….". The wizard, frustrated, said in a deep, loud and type of spiritual voice “Silence”. There was dead silence and the wizard started to feel awkward just standing there with people staring continuously at him thus, he hopped back again on his broomstick and flew away in the high skies of the cities to explore the new area he had just discovered. The city looked nice to him, at least nicer than the forests. He decided not to leave that beautiful place where people would respect him and give him what he deserved thus, he lived in a 5-star luxury hotel for 2-3 months for free as the hotel owner made a trade with the wizard for free living but in return the wizard will mint money for him using his magic staff.

After 2-3 months of peaceful life in the city, he realized that the air in the city was not as fresh and good as the forests and there were also no trees. There, he could only find artificial trees kept in the hotels and along the road with fake leaves that could not carry out photosynthesis. He decided to study nature and how it works to find answers to his questions which took him 3 years to learn. After that, he realized why forests are to be conserved and why life without forests is impossible. He started to go back to the forests but….

“Stop the play for today is over “a 7^th class teacher named Sonali in The TondBridge school making the participants of the inter-school skit competition practice for the show day. One of the participants took out the thread from the back of the prop wizard and the background of the city and the sky made out of cardboard by Shashank started to appear. One of the participants complained to the teacher in a questioning voice “How will we win the competition if we don’t practice the skit for a much longer time”. The teacher said in a motivating voice “Child, you were so much into the skit practice that you didn’t realize that we have practised the skit for 5 hours already”. The participant said ok and started to pack up things fast.

The show day finally came and all the participants were proud of their composing and practice. They were also confident about the competition. They prepared the props and background and got backstage and Sonali Ma’am said to them the last motivating words before the show time “Competition is not about winning but about the will to participate and show your talent in front of such a huge audience”.

After the show, the judges decided on the winner and The TonsBridge School won the competition bagging the first position.

 

Written by Shashank Shekhar Shukla

School- The TondBridge School

Class- 7^th- G

Age- 12 years

 

The end