I slipped onto the wet floor, fell down the stairs, and hit the water bucket, spilling water all over the clean, just polished floor. I watched in horror at the scene, and as the cleaner was an irritable person, I thought of fleeing the scene of the crime, but as soon I had decided upon the course of my action and turned around to run, the cleaner appeared behind my shoulder, with the bucket in his hand, a malicious smile, and the coldest hardest stare ever, which felt as if it was piercing right into my heart.
I walked out of the principal’s office a little while later, having gotten a sound scolding from him, even though I tried to explain that it was not my fault. Shane, my friend who was waiting for me gave a sympathetic sigh when he heard about the incident, and tried to cheer me up, which actually made me feel even sadder.
I felt gloomy the entire day but thought that my emotions would turn positive at home. But, my bad luck struck; my grandmother got sick suddenly, and so my parents had to leave me alone at the house to tend to her. I lay awake in bed, reading a comic for the heavy downpour rapped hard against the window panes, the sound rendering me devoid of sleep. All of sudden, a flash of lightning, and a smiling, ghostly face is illuminated behind my bedroom window. At first, I thought that it was a ghost, and then as my realization hit me within a second, I thought that it was a thief and instinctively picked up a bat to arm myself. A second brilliant flash and I saw that it was my friend Shane, who was the thief. I went and opened the locked window, and let him in. He jumped in, and told me excitedly,
“Come with me, now”
“What!” I exclaimed. ”Go with you, now? Where do you want to take me in such weather?”
“Just come with me, Deep ok?” he replied clearly excited and agitated. “I can promise it will be worth your time.” And so saying he jumped out again, leaving me with the decision of whether to follow or not, especially because I may not have time to reach home before my parents, and if such a thing happened, I will be left in a dire situation.
Shane and I walked with the rain pushing against our bodies, and wetting our shoes.
“Well, I am soaked to the teeth, and where is that you are taking me?” I asked, after a good five minutes of half walking, half running. He did not respond, but kept on walking, first in the direction of our school, and then to the forest close to it. We entered the forest, and finally reached a sort of half-clearing inside. It was outside the clearing that Shane crouched behind a bush and pulled me down as well.
“Wait now.” He whispered
Soon, people appeared in different groups, and the most surprising part was that one of them was our principal. The groups met, and then one of them said to our principal,
“We know the purpose of the visit, so get to the point Will. Where are the rings?”
“I don’t have it now Jack, somebody stole it off me” said Will.
Just then, Shane showed me a ring, and pointed towards them, and I nodded for I understood.
“It’s a magic ring Will.” Said the man called Jack. “You were careless enough to let someone nick it off you, and now how are we going to find it? And don’t forget the punishment for failure. We Venusians find it hard to forgive, remember that.”
Hardly had William opened his mouth, that there was a great flashed of lightning, which made everyone jump, and also set fire the bush behind which we were hiding. We jumped up just in time to save ourselves from getting burnt but were seen by the men. They gave a great shout and started to run towards us, with none too friendly relations by the look on their faces.
We reached home, completely drenched and mud sticking all over us. I looked around at Shane and looking at me he turned ghostly pale, and then he asked,
“How are we going to go to school anymore?”
“What do you mean?” I asked back at him
“They saw us. It’s too much of a chance that our principal did not recognize our faces, seeing as we are summoned to his office about fifty times a week.” He explained.
I pondered over what he had said and then asked another question, which had been nagging me all the way,
“Why did you nick the ring?”
“Well, it’s like this.” He explained. “I was on my way to the principal’s office on a matter when I heard a conversation in progress inside. I eavesdropped on the conversation, and found about everything, about the rings which can do magic, about our principal being an in league with the Venusians, and their plan to find the rings.” He said hurriedly.
“Wait a minute, rings with power?” I asked
“Yes, rings which can do magic.” He repeated. “It’s all in this book” and saying so he handed me of small notebook.
I opened it and started to read, and found that it contained translations of Venetian symbols to English. I took the ring from Shane and saw that it also had a kanji type symbol on the stone. Its literal translation was an illusion, from which I could only make out that if the ring could do magic, it could create illusions.
“Did you steal more rings?” I asked
“I would have stolen all the 10 rings that he had in his bag, but he came out of the lavatory before I could get my hands on another.” Shane went on.
“Well we are in trouble.” I said after some thought.
“You think?” asked Shane sarcastically. “Well we need to tell someone about this.”
“Like whom?” I enquired with a frown. “Who is going to believe us?”
“That’s true as well, but we are in danger.” He said. “HUGE danger”
Shane then bade me goodbye, and went home, as I pulled the bed-covers and rolled over, to give the impression of being asleep.
The next day, I woke up very late, as I had not slept half the night. After my parents had gone to sleep, I had been awake for hours, reading the notebook Shane had given me. There was a great deal in it about the rings, which I won’t be mentioning, for the later incidents are much more interesting.
I reached school in a hurry, and reached class late, again. But I was in for a rude shock, for as I looked inside to see the teacher, I recognized the cold face of the man Jack of the day before. I looked back at him dumbfounded, as he bade me to my seat. I looked across the room to Shane, who was sitting as a statue, trying hard not to betray his emotions. I noticed that Jack had a ring on his last finger, with the kanji I recognized as fire, after checking in the notebook. Seeing the notebook, Shane passed me a paper saying
“Put it away. If the idiot sees it, the game’s up in just one day”. I kicked myself for not thinking about it myself after reading, and hastily stuffed it away in my bag. Well, the game really did not even last a day actually.
When the break bell rang, everybody including me and Shane ran out to reach the cafeteria first. When I reached back to class after my stomach stuffed, after almost ten minutes, I was horrified to see that all the bags were lying hither and tither, and Jack was standing over my bag, holding the notebook. He looked at me with scornfully, and said,
“I knew that I saw you yesterday, boy. Where’s the other nosy parker, who was with you today.”
I shook my head, which was answered with a blast of ice from my adversary. I managed to dodge it, but fell and was too confused to get up again, at which point, Shane picked me, and bolting the door, started to run, with me behind him. I looked back to see both Will and Jack behind us, Will flinging handfuls of fire, and Jack ice. We got out of the school gate by scaling it, and ran full speed towards the jungle.
We hid in the jungle, and we could hear our adversaries looking for us. When finally we could feel them going farther away from us,
“Here wear this,” Shane told me handing a ring. “It’s the ring of luck and we both could do with some right now.”
I looked at him accursedly, after all, he had told me he had not nicked any more, but he just shrugged in return. Barely had the ring entered my finger than we were blasted apart from each other by something. When I looked up, Jack was leering down at me saying,
“Thought you could hide did you? I will teach you to meddle with things which do not concern you.”
“That’s where you are wrong, it concerns me directly.” I replied. And so saying I kicked him hard in the crotch, and as he howled with pain, I tried to make a break for it, but instead in turn was grabbed by the hair by Will. I tried to free myself, but I was under his total control, and if I moved much the pain was intensifying. He slowly raised his hand towards my face; and I thought that this was the end of me.
“But then how did you survive, father?” my seven year old daughter asked me, clearly excited and anxious to know how the story ended, while unknowing she had been strangling and tearing her pet rabbit. Shane was sitting a little distance away from me with his son, looking at me with a huge grin on his face, for he too took delight in reminiscing about our adventure.
“That’s the end, darling.” I replied to my daughter, who seemed as if was both disappointed with the ending. But then she started to think hard, by putting her finger on her forehead like a cartoon character, brightened up suddenly as if a bulb had clicked in her head, and suddenly looked at me and said in accusatory tones,
“You told me that you thought you would not survive, but you did survive, otherwise how would you and Uncle Shane be sitting in front of me?”
“Well survive it we did,” Shane said. “I had before-hand called our headquarters at mars for reinforcements and it was those who saved us, for after all we Martians are the worst enemies of the Venusians and we could never let them take control of the magic rings and of planet earth, and so I am your father, special field operatives, were sent here to ruin whatever plan the Venusians was cooking.”
“But what did we gain from the conflict?” asked Shane’s son. “And why did you and Uncle Deep stay here on earth?”
“We did not gain much, but it was the action against the Venusians which was more important, as you will understand as you grow, and as for why did we stay, let’s just say we stayed because we liked the place, which led us to design and lead a normal life on this planet.”
“I thought there were no people on Mars?” said my daughter, to which I only smiled and replied curtly,
“Well there are.”
Shane and I then went out of the house, leaving the two kids in more conversation. As we walked, I started to rub the ring I had taken from Jack years ago. I then took it off and flung it into the ocean, as did Shane. It had been 15 years, and everything was well.
