Young writers in 11th-annual Creative Spaces Writing Contest; MLC’s Sajban, Dick get noticed for fiction entries
Students in grades 3-12 (from area public schools, private schools, home schools; regular education, students with special needs, gifted and talented, etc.) recently participated in the 11th-annual Creative spaces Writing Contest. They were able to enter through a classroom assignment, or on their own. The contest was open to young writers in Regions 6 and 8 of the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative. That area stretches from Belgrade/Brooten/Elrosa at the far north to the Iowa border to the south, and from the South Dakota border at the west to Glencoe/Silver Lake and Lester Prairie to the east.Categories included Poetry, Fiction and creative Non-Fiction. Grade level competition was divided into Grades 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10 and 11/12. A total of 288 students submitted 393 entries, as recorded by the service cooperative. Awards were presented for first, second and third place in each grade level competition of the three categories. This year’s contest featured an “open” theme.
Students from the Creative Writing Program at Southwest Minnesota State University-Marshall (SMSU) handled the preliminary judging. Final judging was completed by SMSU English Department faculty: poetry – Professor Marianne Murphy Zarzana, fiction – Steve Pacheco and non-fiction – Lisa Lucas Hurst.
Two students from Mountain Lake Christian (MLC) were noticed for their Fiction writing – Rachel Sajban of Windom won first place in the category of Fiction writing for Grades 9/10, and Danica Dick of Mountain Lake, was second in Fiction writing for Grades 9/10. Rachel is a freshman, and Danica a sophomore, at the school.
All winners, their families and teachers were invited to an Awards Ceremony held this past Sunday, April 26, at SMSU. where students will claim their price. This is held on Sunday, April 26, 2015 at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall.
The keynote speaker at the Awards Ceremony was Jim Zarzana, an English professor specialising in fiction at SMSU. His first novel, The Marsco Dissident, is the first of four dystopian works in the The Marsco Saga. More info at www.TheMarscoSaga.com
Medals were awarded to all students, along with an anthology of the winning entries. First place winners in all categories and grade levels were given $20 gift certificates to amazon.com. First place winners in the Grades 11/12 level also received a $2,000 scholarship to SMSU. A reception followed the awards presentation.
This program was established as a partnership between SMSU’s English Department and the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative to encourage a love of language and writing for all students – and as a way to recognize the talented young writers in southwest and west central Minnesota.
MLC students participated through submissions of writing assignments from the first semester of this school year. MLC’s High School Language Arts instructor is Kim Friesen.
Below is a photo of MLC’s award-winning young writers:
Below is Rachel’s winning Fiction entry for Grades 9/10:
atiee
Phoebe Rose and the Elder’s Curse
By Rachel Sajban
How would you feel if one day your father just dropped life changing news on you
with little to no warning? Depending upon what the news was you might experience
varied emotions, in my case it was a mix between anger, sadness, and a sense of
betrayal. You see, I had lived in Dallas, Texas my entire life, I’d made many friends
there, and I had to leave them all behind.
Let me explain. When I was younger, my dad had received a job offer which was
too amazing an offer to pass up. Ever since Mom died money hadn’t been as plentiful
because she had had the highest paying job that provided the most for our family. Since
her death it had been getting much more difficult to support ourselves. So I understood
why he took the job, but I couldn’t help feeling as if he had betrayed me by not sharing
the news with me sooner. It was quite a shock to hear that we were moving to Canada.
Rather than discussing it with me a little, he just threw the big news on me one day,
only one week before we had to leave our home, and journey to Canada. I mean, sure I
did enjoy a nice adventure every once in a while, but leaving all my friends to move to
Canada so suddenly?! Was that really an adventure worth taking? At the time I thought
not.
I, Phoebe Rose Johansen, had to accept my fate, and I didn’t let it bring me down…
Okay, maybe I let it bring me down a little, but not as much as you’d expect from
someone who had just been told that they had to leave everything that they’d ever
known behind to go to a place absolutely foreign to them.
Despite my doubts about coming to Canada, it was probably one of the best things
that could have happened to me. “Why?” You may be asking yourself. Well, let’s just
say that moving here is the reason I met my life long friend, Zachary Levesque, though
I recommend calling him Zach. If not, he’ll threaten to send some of his little robotic
bugs after you, and I learned the hard way that he wasn’t kidding. Sometimes, even
now, years after it occurred, I can still feel the tiny feet of a robotic spider creeping its
way across my skin. But that fact is besides the point the point is, that this is a story of
Zach and me, and the first of many adventures we had, and are still having today.
“Aw c’mon dad we just got here, I don’t wanna unpack everything right now can’t
we just relax a little” I slumped down onto the floor.
“Phoebe, the sooner we get it done the sooner we can
relax,” my dad said, turning around a corner into another room.
“Ugh, fine,” I muttered. “Just great! First I get taken away from all my
friends, and now I have to work on the house that I don’t even want to be living in.”
“I heard that,” my dad said poking, his head around the corner.
“Of course, you did,” I grumbled, and then got up from my spot on the floor and
trudged outside to where the moving van, carrying all of our worldly belongings was
parked. I mean why fight my dad when I knew I’d end up helping out in the end
anyway?
I picked up a box that didn’t look too heavy, but boy was I mistaken. As soon as I
had pulled it out of the truck I almost collapsed under the weight. That’s when Zach
comes in. Zach rushed to my aid and helped me to carry the box into the house, I didn’t
even bother asking who he was. I was just thankful someone had come to help me.
“Thanks, er-?”
“Zach, Zach Levesque” He extended his hand in gesture for me to shake it and of
course me being ever so kind, I shook it. “My mom told me that there was a new family
moving in down the street from us, and asked me to ask you if you needed any help,
and it looks like I came just at the right time. So, how about it? May I help?”
“Sure, I’d appreciate it,” I said, walking back out to the moving van. “The name’s
Phoebe by the way, Phoebe Johansen.”
While, bringing dozens boxes inside I got to know Zach pretty well, He was 14
years old, just like me, he took an interest in mechanics, unlike me, and he had lived
here all his life yet, didn’t have many friends. I also learned that the the forest at the end
of the street was to be avoided at all costs (according to his parents), but of course
hearing that is was to be avoided just made me long to go on an adventure to explore
the forest.
“Have you ever asked why you weren’t allowed to go into it?” I questioned.
“Well, not exactly..,” Zach rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “I’d always just
assumed that there was some sort of harmful animal or poisonous plant that was in
there.”
“Have you ever wanted to journey into the forest?”
“No! Despite the fact that I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, it’s always given me
an eerie feeling that something was off.”
“Man, but wouldn’t it be so exciting to go and see what is in the forest? C’mon why
don’t we just go right now? We don’t even have to go in very far, maybe just in a
couple of feet? Or, are you too chicken?” I taunted him.
“Pfft, I’m not too chicken.” I had definitely struck a nerve. “In fact, I think that we
should go into the forest right now, I bet I can beat you there.”
“Oh, it is so on, Levesque” And with that we were off on our first adventure
together, and man could Zach run. I didn’t even stand a chance against him. Once I got
to the forest’s edge I was having trouble breathing, and yet Zach looked completely fine.
“Man, I beat you by a lon-” Zach started, but then noticed I was having trouble
breathing. “Wait, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, just a little out of shape, so, you won fair and square. BUT, you
still haven’t proven to me that you aren’t a chicken. C’mon let’s go ” I grabbed his
wrist and dragged him into the forest with me, not giving him any chance to object . . . or
escape.
“Gosh, Phoebe you have a stong grip” Zach said rubbing his wrists.
“Sorry, just didn’t want you to back out when we had gotten so close.”
“I wasn’t going to back out!” He protested.
I just gave him a look that seemed to say “mhmm, sure you weren’t going to.”
“Fine. Maybe, I would have backed out, but would you blame me? This place is
creepy!”
“Okay, I will admit it is kinda creepy.”
“Thank you for your honesty. so can we go back now?”
“Oh, you won’t be leaving,” a high pitched voice said. “Once you enter this forest
you can’t ever leave, unless of course you defeat the Elder of the Woods, but no one can
defeat him. By the way, I’m Grace, Fairy of the West, or am I Fairy of the East?” The
fairy questioned herself. “I’m always seeming to get the two mixed up.”
I spun around to try and find the source of the voice and then a saw it, a little
glowing fairy was sitting on a leaf.
“I think I’m hallucinating, or maybe this is all a dream. It has to be one of the two
options because you,” I gestured to Grace, “do not exist, you can’t exist, fairies do not
exist.”
“Man, why does everyone who enters the forest automatically assume that fairies
don’t exist? Are there no fairies in the land beyond the forest?”
“No, and quite frankly I don’t believe that there are fairies anywhere.”
“Phoebe, just let it go and focus on the important questions we should be worrying
about, such as, oh, I don’t know, how are we going to get out of here?!” Zach said. “ I
knew this was a bad idea. If you had just trusted me that this place was bad news we
wouldn’t be here and in this mess right now.”
“Of course, blame it all o-” I started but Grace cut me off. “Look, I understand that you want
to blame this on someone but there’s nothing you can do about it unless you try and defeat
the Elder of the Woods, which would be a stupid decision unless you have been trained by
one of the best warrior.” Grace said, and then gave them a confident smile. “Lucky for you,
I have a friend who’s an Elven warrior; she could help you to take him down. I could show
you the way to her place, if you’d like?”
“I’ll do anything to get out of here, so how about it, Phoebe? Wanna go learn how
to defeat an old elder dude.” Zach said, giving me a lopsided grin.
“Well, if it’ll get us out of here, I’m in. Plus, it does sound kinda fun!” I said. “ So,
Grace, where does this friend of yours live?”
“Not too far from here, you just have to travel across the creek and then you’ll see a
little hut built out of twigs and leaves to the left, Have fun journeying there.”
“Wait, but didn’t you say you would show us the way, what if we get lost?” I said
nervously.
“Did I say that? Oops, what I meant to say was that I would inform you of the
correct path to take, anyway you don’t need me, no one could get lost on the way there,
not even a human, like you.”
“Oh, okay, thank you, then – HEY WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘not even a
human’ ARE YOU IMPLYING THAT HUMANS ARE IMBECILES?”
“Oh, silly girl, not all humans are stupid, just most of them are.” Grace clearly
didn’t realize that what she was saying was extremely insulting towards us, or maybe
she did know and just didn’t care. I wasn’t sure which so I just shrugged it off.
“Okay, well – maybe we should go on,” Zach said. “ I would like to get home as
soon as possible.”
“That would be good,” I agreed. “ Grace, could you repeat to me the way there
again, just in case i forget?”
Grace repeated the directions, muttered something about “forgetful humans”, and
fluttered away.
“That was rather interesting,” I said, looking back over my shoulder at where the
small fairy had been floating a moment before.
“It surely was,” Zach agreed, and we began our trek to the Elven’s house.
Little did we know that Grace wasn’t kidding when she said it wasn’t far from
where we had entered the forest, in fact it seemed like we hadn’t walked even five
minutes before we arrived.
I’m not sure what kind of welcome I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting
this. A tall, dark-haired elf, at least I assumed she was an elf from what Grace had told
us, held a scythe up to Zach’s and my necks.
“Who are you, and what do you want from me?” The elf (?) demanded.
“Man, Grace didn’t warn us that her Elven friend was a psychopath” Zach
whispered to me.
“Zach, now’s not the time to make jokes,”I muttered out of the side of my mouth.
“Anyways she did inform us that her friend was an Elven warrior, emphasis on the
warrior part.”
“You are acquaintances of Grace?” The elf asked looking at me expectantly.
“Yup that would be us, unless that’s not a good thing, if its not a good thing then
I’ve never heard of Grace” Wow, was I smooth.
“Grace has been a friend of mine for quite a while, and she only sends people here
when she feels they need something important, so what is it, what do you need?” The
elf lowered her weapon, and gave us a smile.
“Well, she said you could give us training,” I began carefully, afraid that if I said
the wrong word she would swing her scythe and well.. Lets just say ‘bye bye to me.’
“Training to defeat the Elder of the Woods, we want to get home but Grace told us the
only way to break the curse of the forest was to break his wand. She also mentioned that
it was less than possible even with training but she said the training would help.”
“Well, I would be delighted to assist you in your endeavor.” She said
enthusiastically, wow I would never imagine that the girl who had been trying to kill me
moments before could seem so friendly now. “The name’s Madeleine”
“Hello, Madeleine, I’m Zach and that’s Phoebe,” Zach said gesturing to himself and
then me.
“We really appreciate you assisting us with this,” I said.
“Hey, no sweat, I’m always happy to help friends of Grace” Madeleine gave me a
smile, and I noticed an excited glint in her eye. “So shall we begin?”
From that moment forward Zach and I began to train with Madeleine. Lucky for us
we were speedy learners. By the time a week had passed we had learned enough skills
that she believed we were ready. I hoped she was right.
Madeleine led Zach and I along on the long trek to the location of the Elder of the
Woods. This journey was much longer than the one to Madeleine’s hut. Each time we
stopped to rest for the night Madeleine would give us more battle tips, a whole long list
of battle tips. I wasn’t positive that my brain could handle this intake of information.
Thankfully for me my brain did survive the information intake. Once we climbed to
the top of the mountain on which Madeleine informed us that the Elder lived. I felt like
I had all the knowledge I needed to break the curse.
“We should rest for the night, and then attack at dawn,” Madeleine said yawning
dramatically.
“I like that idea, I’m dead tired,” said Zach, already halfway asleep.
I myself wasn’t tired at the time so I pretended to sleep, but really my mind was
racing with worries about tomorrow. What would happen if we were to fail? What
would happen if we were to succeed? What if we got killed? I thought about this for
what seemed like an excruciating amount of time and then the sound of muffled voices
broke my train of thought.
“Yes, Grace, they fell for everything, and believe that they are some kind of
professional warriors,” a voice that sounded like Madeleine’s snickered.
“Good, so everything is going according to plan?”
“So far, so good. They don’t seem suspicious of me.”
I got the feeling that the “they” they were referring to was Zach and me, and I
didn’t like it one bit. I rolled over on my side and silently reached my arm over and
shook Zach awake, covering his mouth with my hand in case he might make a noise.
Zach woke up and stared at me in a way that seemed to say, “what exactly are you
doing?”
I put a finger to my mouth in a gesture for him to stay quiet, and then I leaned
closer to him and whispered, “This was all a trap, we need to get out of here quickly and
quietly,” I was terrified to even whisper this, who wouldn’t be if they were in this
situation? But Zach needed to be informed of what was going on.
He nodded his head to show me that he understood. We quietly got up and began to
tiptoe in the opposite direction of Madeleine’s voice. I wasn’t sure how we were going
to pull this off, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?
Wrong, almost as instantly as we had become more relaxed and felt safest all of my
fears collapsed down onto me, and became a reality.
“Did you really think getting away from me would be that simple?” Madeleine’s
voice came from somewhere behind us. “I can run 5 times faster than an average human
so even if you got away I would find you simply enough.”
“What do you even want with us? I don’t exactly understand what the point of
tricking us was,” I said looking to Madeleine. “All we are is just a couple of kids, how
could we be of any importance to you?”
“Foolish children, Do you not understand how so many long for the youthfulness in
you? What if I told you that the Elder of the Woods could give someone that
youthfulness if they brought him children to take the youthfulness away from?” Then the
realization hit me like a truck.
“You are going to have us killed, just so you can be young for a longer period of
time? Is that really a life worth living?” I couldn’t comprehend how someone could
stand to live longer knowing that they had killed someone to achieve this extended life.
“Don’t you understand? Time is valuable, the more of it you have the better your
life will be.”
“Is it really worth it if you have to live knowing that you killed someone?” Zach
questioned.
“The lives of others are of no importance to me. I take what I want when I want it,
that’s the way things work around here,” said Madeleine in a vicious tone of voice.
“That’s a horrible way to live your life,” I said. “I can’t even imagine living in such
a way, it disgusts me.”
“That’s just how it works around here, kid. I would just tell you to get used to it,
but it seems to me that you won’t be alive long enough for that,” Madeleine snickered.
I was about to argue that Zach and I would find a way to survive, but, almost as if
she had read my mind, she said.
“You should forget those foolish thoughts, I have the magic of Elven ancestors
coursing through my veins, even if you try to run I will always find you and I will
always be able to bring you back to me. In fact, I could just teleport us to where the
Elder of the Woods abides. Now that you are aware that I have the magic I may as well
utilize it to my advantage.”
With that the world turned dark and I felt a spinning sensation. After a few minutes
of what seemed to be me spinning in total darkness I saw a light that kept getting closer,
and closer. Was I dead? I didn’t know for sure, all that I knew was that the light was
rushing towards me faster now.
CRASH! I crashed onto the hard ground of what seemed to be a cave, I looked to
my left and saw Zach sprawled at Madeleine’s feet, He seemed to be breathing still so I
wasn’t particularly worried about him. I was more worried about what was about to
happen to the both of us.
“Who dare enter the domain of the Elder of the Woods?” Came a booming voice
from somewhere behind me. I turned around and saw a cloaked figure standing at the
top of a tall staircase. “Well, I’m waiting? What is the explanation of all this?”
“I have come to gain a longer life,” Madeleine said bowing. “I have brought two
humans with me as the offering.”
The cloaked figure removed the hood from his head and looked straight at me.
“Are you sure, young one, that you wish to proceed with this?” he raised an
eyebrow.
“I am positive that I wish to proceed. Do what you must.”
“Very well.”
The Elder began to chant words in a language I couldn’t understand. I looked over
to Zach and saw a look of terror on his face that showed that he was just as scared as I
was. I sat there listening to the chanting and it was beginning to drive me to the point of
insanity. Then, a bright light flashed over the whole room and I saw that it was coming
from a third eye that seemed to have magically appeared on his face.
I cowered behind my hands because the sight before me was terrifying, but then I
got the urge to just look right up into his eye. I tried my hardest to fight this urge, but
soon I wasn’t able to control myself. I looked straight at the eye and then everything
went black.
I assumed I was dead, but it was all just utter blackness, shouldn’t there have been
something more. I called out to see if anyone was there with me. There was no response.
I felt like had my eyes closed but they refused to open. I began to feel around me to
see if there were any walls or surfaces I could feel. Stepping forward a few paces I felt a
doorknob. I turned it slowly and then I realized that I was laying right outside the forest.
I groggily sat up and examined my surroundings. I noticed Zach on the ground a
few feet away from me. He slowly sat up and looked at me.
“What exactly just happened?” Zach asked.
“I have absolutely no idea, but I think it had something to do with an elf.” I
laughed.
Zach and I then went back to our homes surprised to find out that only about and
hour had passed by even though they had spent what seemed to be weeks in the forest.
This was the first adventure I had with him. Afterwards while I laid awake in bed
all I did was hope for more adventures. And now, looking back, I’m very thankful that I
moved to Canada, and started this lifelong adventurer friendship. So many adventures
have gone and passed since this one, and I do believe there shall be more to come. One
can only hope.
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