My Treasure Garden

One sunny morning, whilst I was playing in my garden, a piece of paper landed by my feet underneath a big tree.

Oh, it looks like a map! I thought. I decided there must be treasure in my garden.

Pirates bury treasure and pirates don’t have gardens so maybe they borrowed ours overnight. Under our big tree are some muddy bits where the grass doesn’t grow which is exactly the sort of place pirates would pick.

I got my blue shovel from the sand pit and started digging.

The dirt was cold and smelled like worms. I looked up at the tree and thought to myself, this tree looks like it has secrets!

After a while I found something small that looked a little bit shiny. “Gold,” I whispered. It was small, but maybe pirate gold shrinks when it’s underground for too long, I thought to myself. I rubbed it on my shirt to make it shinier.

Then I heard a caw.

A raven landed on the wall and looked at me like it knew my secret. “Shhhh no telling,” I told it. It cawed again which I think means okay in raven language.

Then it flew away. Pirates always have birds so maybe this raven used to belong to the pirate who buried the gold.

That made the hole feel much more important. I dug faster. Dirt went everywhere, my knees got muddy, and my hands looked like chocolate, but sadly dirt doesn’t taste like chocolate. The hole got deeper and deeper until it looked like the start of a secret tunnel.

Then my shovel hit something with a clonk! I scooped the soil away and saw something that looked like a treasure chest, a gold one to be exact. I pulled it out. Inside was a rusty gold coin and a marble.

“Treasure,” I shouted.

I picked up the marble, the sun shone right through it and made sparkles on the ground.

I think the raven from earlier has gone to tell the captain ghost I’ve found their treasure first.

I put the treasure in my pocket because explorers always keep the best treasure. Maybe the gold coin is worth a lot of money and I could take my family on adventures around the world.

Then mum called me for lunch. I looked at the hole one last time. Maybe there is more treasure in there. Tomorrow I will dig again.

The end

Harris Gould, 8.