15 Nov 2021
WriteOn 2021
WriteOn is an annual writing competition open to all NSW primary students in Years 1 to 6, including home-schooled students. This competition provides students with the opportunity to become published authors and showcase their incredible creativity and talent.
Rafa won GOLD in the Stage 3 Section with his writing called Maliyan.
Maliyan
I am Maliyan, the eagle who sees all. Flying between the Heaven and the Earth. Giver of life, and bringer of death.
The eagle’s screech is so loud it pierces the boy’s ear drums. He looks up from the melting tar of the bitumen to see the eagle soaring majestically in the pastel hues of the late summer afternoon. He fears and reveres the wedge tails. He has heard from his mother and aunties the Gamilaraay legends of great Maliyan, the protector, but he has also heard the urban myths of eagles carrying off and eating young children. It’s a big one today. He pushes off and slowly begins to follow the eagle flying east through the town.
Up ahead a curly dark-haired toddler is crying on the side of the road. The eagle starts to dive. Realising the danger, the boy pushes the pedals of his bike faster and faster. Closer and closer flies the eagle. Faster and faster pedals the boy.
The eagle shrieks as its razor-sharp talons sink into the hot flesh of its prey. The boy stops sharply on the asphalt as the eagle’s wings beat dense air in his face. The snake struggles in the eagle’s claws and strikes the air in desperation, but there is no escape as the aerial apex flies upwards.
The boy reaches the baby girl, now screaming, at the same time as her mother. The boy runs his eyes up and down to see if she is hurt. His eyes catch a dark scratch on her leg. Snake bite. Generally painless and difficult to detect, but the boy knows that is not a graze.
“Don’t move!” he tells her. He quickly takes off his old dirty tee shirt and tears it into strips as he binds her leg tightly. He looks up to tell the girl’s mother about the snake bite and to take her quickly to the hospital. He can’t. She is on the phone, as sirens start up in the distance.
I am Maliyan, the eagle who sees all. Flying between the Heaven and the Earth. Giver of life, and bringer of death. Today I have chosen life.