The Underneath by Ellie, 8
Jade woke her twin brother Michael.
“Come
with me,” she said.
“No!”
Michael replied. He knew right away where his sister wanted to go. “You know we
are not allowed to go down to the underneath.”
The
Paste family lived in a floating house hundreds of meters above the surface of
the Earth. Twenty-five years ago, the children’s mother, a scientist, and their
father, a doctor, decided to leave the surface of the earth and move to their
house in the sky. They left because they were tired of living in the pollution,
and illness, and greed that nobody wanted to fix. Their parents always told
them the underneath was a horrible, dangerous place where people could never
smile. But Jade was curious. She wanted to see for herself what was actually
down there.
“I’m
going with or without you,” Jade said.
Michael
knew she meant it so he followed her. Jade had a secret. She was very good with
animals. She tamed an eaglet three years before and she was finally ready.
She’d been waiting for this day for years, and now that she was eight she felt
like she could finally take her backpack and go. She packed her bag with water
bottles, blankets, and a bag of potato chips to share with Michael, maybe…
“Michael,
let me introduce you to STRIKA!” Jade said proudly. She whistled for the
giant bald eagle with flashing eyes. The eagle looked ready for the ride down.
Michael did not.
The
kids climbed on the magnificent eagle. Michael’s face was a purplish green.
“This
might be a bit bumpy,” Jade said, “but it should be perfectly safe…for me.”
Michael
wished he was still in bed.
The
bird swooped down. The wind in Jade’s ears sounded glorious. Strika caw cawed.
Jade caw cawed. Michael screamed, “Watch out!”
It
was dark. He saw giant clouds of toxic fumes and he thought Strika would fall
dead to the ground taking them with her. The bird swooped around tall smoke
stacks. They saw ugly shopping malls. In the distance, the sky was turning a
light orangey pink. Then they heard a moaning sound.
“ZOMBIES!”
the children yelled. They had heard stories from their parents about the people
who turned into zombies after getting horrible diseases like the X plague.
Strika
was getting tired. She landed by a big building. The kids got off of her. The
moaning was getting louder. Jade went inside curiously.
“We
are going to go see the zombie,” Jade said. “Get your weapons ready.”
“What
weapons?” Michael said.
The
kids walked inside toward the moaning and met an old man with white hair and
white beard, tan skin, and fresh, glittery blue eyes. He was singing a song
called Ladidahdidah. He didn’t sing very well.
“You’re
not a zombie,” Michael said.
“Zombie!
Of course, I’m not. I’m just old Mayor George Palycarry.”
Jade
was hungry. She took out her bag of potato chips.
“Where
did you guys get that?” George said. “Plastic bags are extinct now. They’ve
gone the way of the Tasmanian Tiger. I haven’t seen one since I was twenty five
years old. We only use nudie zips to hold food now. We can reuse those.”
“We’re
very sorry,” said Jade. “We have never been to the underneath.”
“What
do you mean the underneath?” asked George.
“We
were born in the sky,” Michael said. “Our parents gave up on the world. We’ve
never been here before.”
“Oh
kids are so funny these days,” George said.
“No,
we’re actually saying the truth,” Michael said.
“Well,
let me show how the world is now,” George said.
First,
George took them towards his window. The toxic clouds were actually big, clean
fluffy clouds. They looked over the city at the giant smokestacks. In the
daylight, the smokestacks were scary looking. They hid behind George.
“What
is the matter?” George asked.
“Sm…sm…smoke
stacks!” said Jade. “So many toxic fumes!”
George
laughed. “We’ve converted the smoke stacks into beautiful vertical gardens. The
only thing that comes out of them are seeds and oxygen. Let’s take a walk.”
George
and the children walked outside. They saw lots of really, really, really old
people.
“How
are these people still living?” Michael asked.
“We
have regenerated our medicine into super medicine and now everybody is very
healthy and they never get sick.”
They
walked towards the giant shopping mall. Michael and Jade thought they would see
people fighting over tea pots and stuffed animals inside the shopping mall.
When they walked inside, it was a giant library filled with beautiful
illustrated books. Jade ran to get a book about baby octopuses.
Michael
asked, “What happened to all the stores?”
George
said, “People don’t want to buy things they don’t need anymore. We don’t even
have money or banks anymore. We treat everybody fairly now, and people work
just to help each other.”
They
walked through the library to a beautiful botanical garden. It was filled with
people hugging trees and smelling flowers. Michael couldn’t resist the flowers.
Jade whistled. Strika flew to her.
Jade
said, “Let’s hop on and tell mom and dad they are wrong about the underneath.”
“You
can stop calling it the underneath,” George said. “You can call it fantasy
land.”
Michael
wasn’t ready to leave. Jade pulled Michael’s hand. They got on to the eagle and
flew home to their very worried mom and dad.
“The
underneath is wonderful,” Jade said.
“It
can’t be,” the parents said. “It was so awful when we left.”
“People
worked to change things. They concentrated on making out world better. We can
finally have friends and be around other people,” Michael said.
“It
can be a new step in our life,” Jade said.
“It’s
not safe down there,” their parents said. “We have a beautiful home up here.”
“We’re
going down to live there, with or without you,” Michael said. “It’s time for us
to all be brave.”
The
children left on Strika again. Two days later, their parents finally joined
them. The kids showed their parents around and introduced them to George.
“Hi,
my name is Amber, and this is my husband, Clark,” said their mother.
“Can
we stay here forever?” asked Michael and Jade.
“We
have a lot to think about,” said their father.
THE END for now
The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke, Review by Noah
