Highly Commended Story - Two Kings

“Two Kings” by Aleen Abdul Rehman, BeaconHouse School Systems, NNP6 Branch, Karachi, Pakistan, is the Highly Commended story in the sub-junior category of the second biannual Short Story Contest 2018.

Eight-years-old Aleen Abdul Rehman, a grade three student at Beaconhouse School Systems, Primary 6 Branch lives in the City of Lights, Karachi. Her hobbies are art, music and writing. She is a gold medalist in writing. She always wants to do something good so she decided to participate in this competition.

Two Kings

Once upon a time, there lived two sisters named Rosy and Clara with their dad who was a king, so the sisters were princesses.

Rosy and Clara loved each other and their family too, but for last few months their father’s activities and attitude were bothering them and they started noticing abnormal behavior of their father like if he was not a king. To clarify all that, they started spying him. After many months of observation, they came to know that their father went somewhere on every full-moon night.

Rosy frightenedly asked, “Is our father a wewewe…werewolf”

Clara said, “No this can’t be… it’s not a movie, stupid”

One fine night, both Rosy and Clara followed him and marked the route by throwing white pebbles on the way so they could track the route afterwards. They both got astonished when they saw their father entering into a dark cave, where he met an old beard man shackled at the darkest end of the cave.

Clara clarified Rosy, “Father goes in full-moon nights because the cave is at darkest place and he needs a little light to reach there that’s why he goes in light of moon”.

Next morning Rosy and Clara reached the cave following the marked path and met that beard man. Once they saw him they were shocked as he exactly looked like their father. That beard man told them that he is their real father and the man who is living with them as their father and the king of the empire was fake as he took advantage of similarity with the real king. Fake king was actually a sailor who met the real king on a journey to the north of the country. That fake king betrayed the real king and got him imprisoned in the cave and became the king to enjoy the luxuries of royal life with power and wealth.

Sisters started crying on listening the story and that their real father and the king was in darkest imprison. Rosy and Clara freed the beard man, groomed him and took him with themselves to the palace. When the real king and the princesses reached the palace, everyone got amazed by seeing the two kings. The real king told them the story, everyone believed him because the princesses were on his side.

People and other members of the royal family got angry and punished the fake king by throwing him in that similar cave for lifetime. Then the palace was freed from all evils and all lived happily ever after.