Outstanding Stories » The Lost Basket

“The Lost Basket” is one of the outstanding stories (junior) of the second biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Abhay Vij, Global Indian International school (GIIS), PG Smart campus, Singapore.

The Lost Basket

One pleasant morning, Jack, along with his two friends Jonny and Rony, went for a picnic near a mountain outside their village. They played and hopped until it was time to eat. While eating, suddenly the whole area was covered with white dense smoke. It made all area blurry. Jack couldn’t see even his friends and his friends were also not able to see each other too. They tried to communicate each other by shouting and talking. Slowly the smoke started fading away and they saw a shadow nearing to them. The shadow came near and suddenly picked their food basket and disappeared. The smoke also phased out.

The three friends were puzzled and started searching for the basket as the basket had their only meal for the day. While searching they saw the bread crumbles on the ground which was perhaps from their sandwiches from the basket. They started following the trail and at a small distance they saw the basket floating in air. The more they went closer to the basket, the farther it was going.

As they were following the basket, they came to a place where there was a ridge filled with hot flowing lava. They were able to see their basket on the other side. It appeared to them like they were in the middle of the game and the path was to solve to get the basket. So the three friends started thinking on how to solve it. Then Rony had an idea and suggested that they can use the bamboo trees which were near the ridge to cross it. One by one they used the bamboo tree as a sling to cross over and they found themselves nearing to their basket.

As they stepped forward they entered a maze which was like snakes and ladders game. It was time for Jonny to show his talent and he climbed the ladders so fast that snakes were not able to even get near to him. The three friends moved slowly following their floating basket. All three were getting curious and also scared thinking that why they had followed the basket and instead might have returned home, but all three were determined to get their basket back.

As the moved ahead they saw a door and something was written on it. As they went closer it was written as “to open color me purple”. Jack, Jonny and Rony started looking for any colors around. They saw that the pots near to it were filled of colors red, yellow, and green, black, blue but there was no purple.

Then something strikes Jonny’s mind and he said impatiently to his friends that he knew how to make purple. He mixed the two colors and made purple. All three friends together painted the door with purple color. As soon as they finished, the door got unlocked and opened by itself.

They saw the shadow standing with basket on the other side. The shadow approached near to them and it turned to a nobleman in white clothes and it said “You three boys have shown great strength, you have shown faith in your friends and believed each other. This is great teamwork and friendship”.

While handing the lost basket, he said to them, “Here is your reward for solving the three puzzles and the lost basket turned into three golden baskets. The three friends were very happy to receive a gold basket and happily returned back to their village.