Once upon a time, there was a beautiful land with a very kind-hearted king ruling over it. The king was caring and loving to all his people. Everyone lived happily. But one day, an ugly monster came to their land.

The monster looked like a huge bear with big sharp teeth and long nails. Its body was covered with dingy hair and had curly horns. It destroyed the fields and crops. It took away many animals of poor peasant and ate them.

At first, the people tried to fight the monster on their own but when they realised that it was a monster and not an animal that could be controlled, so they ran to the palace and asked the king for help. The king ordered his brave soldiers and knights to fight and capture the monster immediately.

The fight began; all the knights and soldiers tried to take down the monster but failed as the monster was huge and very furious. It also killed many of the knights. After causing a great loss to the army of the king, the monster ran away into the thick forests.

This gave the knights and the soldiers some time to gather strength and arms to get rid of it. So whenever the monster tried to come out of the forest, the knights would start firing at it and it hurried back to its shelter.

The monster was getting furious with the passage of time. The king knew that they would not hold back the monster for much longer so a solution had to be found quickly. Therefore, the king summoned all the wise men of his kingdom to come and advice him about how to get rid of this evil monster.

After listening to many wise men, an old man’s suggestion appealed the king. He advised that they should dig a big trench and tie some animals across it while all the soldiers must hide. The monster was probably hungry so it would come out to eat those animals.

Thus, they dug a trench and put some animals as prey and watched while hiding. Suddenly, the loud roar of the monster was heard, everyone was terrified. The monster came out of the forest and rushed towards the animals to eat them as it was very hungry. As expected, it fell into the trench and started to struggle to come out of it, but to no avail. His eyes went red like fire. His voice became more furious and terrifying.

Then all the soldiers and the villagers became united and started to fill the trench with soil. The monster was furious but it couldn’t do much as the trench was very deep.

And so it was buried and the people cheered loudly on their victory and began to dance. The king was also happy for his people and invited the old wise man to his palace and gave him lots of presents.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 11th, 2017