By: Avery Lin

You walk past Washington D.C. and keep walking until you reach the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. You keep going, deeper and deeper. But you can breathe and see, even when your head is completely submerged. You keep walking straight for four miles. You look right. There is a small village submerged in the water, but inhabitants are walking on dry land. This is not Atlantis. The people here are living in an air bubble. This is the village of Dharl.

This year is different. The villagers were going hungry because there had been no rain in the past year. For a village that is located under the ocean, you would be surprised how little rain they get. But the rain was always enough for their crops.

Due to the famine spreading through the town, the chief was forced to call upon the three most powerful wizards in the neighboring village of Kharl. The first wizard was young and almost always had a twinkle in his green eyes. He said he needed a high tower to meditate, and there he sat for three days straight. On the fourth day, it started raining. But this was not rain. The sky was raining grasshoppers. The grasshoppers rained down in droves and gnawed at the crops. The whole village was in lockdown for a week. They could only watch helplessly as the grasshoppers ate all of their hard work away. The young wizard was sent away.

The second magician was a wizened old grandpa who said he needed the last of the village’s supply of food for the gods. It didn’t work. It turned out that the hunchback was only using that as an excuse to steal their food.

The last wizard needed only a few coins as an offering to the gods. The next day, the wizard said the offering wasn’t enough and demanded for more. A week passed, and the wizard’s demands became more frequent. He asked for diamonds the size of a fist, two tons of wood, and ten paintings by the best painters in Kharl. Finally, the chief became infuriated with these demands and ordered the magician to give all of the offerings back. The wizard refused and the chief had him thrown out of the village.

The chief racked his brains and pulled his beard all night for an idea. Finally, the lightbulb above his head shone. He thought that they could just dig a well. That way, they could have fresh water. He didn’t think about the fact that the citizens could just walk out of Dharl and onto actual dry land to collect water.

All day and night, the citizens hauled bucketloads of mud and rocks on wagons, ready to sell in Kharl. After the well reached a certain height, the water in the ground started to show. After five days, the well was ready. The villagers fashioned a wooden machine to haul water up. Soon, the village of Dharl was bursting with lush vegetation. The villagers always had a full stomach and prices in the supermarkets of Dharl decreased dramatically. After two days, the neighboring villages noticed that Dharl, normally a busy but dry village, contained more trees and plants than its last five vegetable harvests combined. It is said that the neighboring villages are still scratching their heads, wondering how so much vegetation suddenly popped up in Dharl.