February 27

A Harris Burdick Mystery: The Harp

     I felt wind gently caress my cheek, and a scent of fresh pine filled my nose. Towering oaks surrounded me, casting my whole body in harsh shadow. My Goldendoodle, Molly, scampered beside me, thinking that this was just a normal walk through the woods.|

It wasn’t.

A shiver went down my spine. A burning filled my lungs, yet I continued to trudge forward because I needed to know if it was true. If something unearthly truly did lie in that beautiful, slow-moving creek so deep in the woods. For years, a small creek in the exact middle of the only undeveloped forest in the city had gone unnoticed, until the disappearance of a logger. A logger directly in the middle of a group of 20 other loggers. My mother, being on the Search-and-Rescue team had gone to look for him, saying that the logger had friends and family and couldn’t have just disappeared.

My mother never came back.

The group she had gone with visited me personally, claiming they heard nothing, saw nothing. They consoled me, said they wanted to help me in any way they could. After all, I’m only a 14 year-old girl who’s mother had just disappeared. Yet no one went to look for her or the logger, and for a week it had stayed that way.

Until now.

My breath came in ragged gasps, and my limbs felt like jelly. I heard a soft gurgling of water, and knew I was close. I started to hum my favourite song to calm my nerves, and despite myself, I almost hoped I didn’t find anything. I didn’t want to be taken like my mother.

All of a sudden, I stopped humming. Yet I still heard the fast melody echoing through the trees, and realized that I heard nothing else. No birds, no crunching of my boots against ground. Pale, I peered through the bushes in front of me, slowly sneaking up to the edge of the brush. I saw the creek, but nothing else. No beasts.

Relieved, I walked past the bush, watching the river from behind a large tree. A golden flash caught my eye, and I whipped my head to face what I was sure was going to take me from my home. Instead, I saw a harp sitting on a rock on the river’s edge, still playing my song.
And I saw the water rippling from a single point next to the harp. 

Hey! This is a story that I based off of a picture by Harris Burdick. What do you think is going to happen next? Have a great day!

~Sarah

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted February 27, 2018 by Sarah in category Creativity, Learning

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*