The Seven Boys and One Sister

“The Seven Boys and One Sister” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Arya Mukund, GIIS Queenstown, Singapore.

The Seven Boys and One Sister

Once there were 7 boys in a house with their mother and their only sister whose name was Katy. They were very happy and as usual their father would go and get some fresh grass for the cows to eat. The cows enjoyed their meal and provided milk to the farmer. Thus, he got fresh milk every day. Sometimes, he and his family drank the milk, but sometimes, they used it for making curd. He also had vegetable growing farm and rice fields. He used them for home use. They were leading a happy life. But, one day, their life overturned.

One day the father told the boys that he was going out to chop some trees. The boys were asked to feed the cows in his absence. The father also warned the boys that he grows poisonous grass and fresh grass on this field. He advised his sons to feed the cows only with fresh grass. The fresh grass was planted in the left side of the farm.

The boys were mischievous, so they mixed the grass and fed it to the cows. After 2 or 3 days the cows fell ill and died. The father came back and saw the mother crying he sat down and asked her ‘Why she is crying?’, she told that the boys had mixed the poisonous grass and the fresh grass and the cows had fell ill and died. The father also felt sad and told the boys angrily that now we don’t have anymore milk to drink and the boys at that time started laughing. So the mother got really angry and shouted at them and said that she wished her sons were crows and suddenly a mysterious cloud came over the 7 boys head and it rained over them and over a little while they turned into crows.

When their mom had seen this she immediately fainted and later she had woken up. The sister had become older so she asked her mother if she could go and search for them. After walking for a few days her shirt and pant were torn and she had eaten all her food, so she was hungry. She saw a little house and went inside, it had 7 bowls with soup in it and she had eaten a bowl of soup quickly. She went up and there were her brothers as crows. The sister said let’s go home, so the brothers told her no because they made their mother sad and the sister told, “No you have to come back so that our mother can be happy again”. So later the brothers said, “Yes”. They also brought a big diamond which they found in the forest and gave it to their mother as a gift. When they came back to their house they gave the diamond to the mother and the boys had turned back into humans and the mother, father and sister hugged them, they later lived happily ever after and the boys were not naughty anymore.