Author: Anika Vyas, Class VI D
One day Lia was cleaning up the attic with her mother. She moved a pile of boxes and found a secret compartment. She opened it and found a yellow envelope that had a crumpled piece of paper in it. She thought it was a treasure map but she was not sure. She went to ask her mother but remembered that her father had a lot of old maps. So, she went to ask her father about the treasure map.
Her father said he had seen such blueprints in Lia’s grandfather’s study room. Lia’s dad was curious so he had asked his dad about them, but Lia’s grandfather never told him. When he grew up, Lia’s father was still curious, so he scanned the blueprints and found out that the building had never existed.
Lia researched everything that she could find on the crumpled piece of paper and got to know that the location of the nonexistent building was occupied by the public library. Behind the map there were some faded words, she could make out the words “solve ….. puzzle ……. secret …… treasure”.
Lia thought that she had to solve a puzzle so that she would get to know the secret of the treasure. The next day she went to the library with her dad. There were some places on the map marked ‘C-1, C-2, C-3’. Lia’s dad said that those might be some clues. They went to the place marked C-1 and saw a little statue of some golden painted books, the top book was different from the rest: it had no title, and as the wind blew in from the window the top book opened and inside the book was a bronze key!
They then solved the next two clues and found a silver and a golden key. Now they just had to find where to fit those keys. Just then Lia noticed that on the map at only one place there was a little figure shaped like a key. They went to that place and unlocked the doors quietly, inside the door was another door and yet another one.
When they had unlocked the final door they saw a chest full of gold bars, gold coins, sparkling silver jewellery sets and a big hand painted portrait of a man, a woman and a boy who was not more than 4 years old. The frame of the painting was shimmering and was also made of gold.
Lia and her dad were speechless not because of all the gold and the riches but because the woman in the painting looked just like Lia’s great grandmother. Lia and her father went to talk to the owner of the library and got to know that the owner who was known as Mr. Miller was a very good friend of her great grandmother and he had promised to protect the treasure until one day one of her daughters or sons would find the treasure.
Mr. Miller asked Lia what she would do with all that gold and the painting. Lia had a great plan. Instead of wasting the money in buying things, she would donate some of the money to different charities and give the painting away for display in Mr. Miller’s library. He was very grateful to Lia and told her that she was truly a worthy heir to her grandmother’s treasure.
