Quick, This Way

PART 1

The charging constable waved his billy club at Ava. She’d been hungry and sloppy. Hungry was normal. Sloppy was not. Dodging a horse-drawn cart, she dashed across the cobblestones.

“Quick, This Way.” a disembodied voice called from her left. Normally, she’d be leery of a disembodied voice, particularly one offering help. No one helped a sneak thief, and disembodied voices wreaked of magic. She couldn’t steal magic or wield magic, therefore, she had no use for it, but another constable barreled down the alley to her right. So, she obediently turned left.

“Through here,” the voice directed. Seeing as she was headed in that direction already, she followed the voice straight through a doorframe, standing in the center of the alley.

A door slammed shut behind her, and a metal carriage roared down the street. No horses pulled it as it growled at her then honked like a goose. She jumped aside, and an angry face sped past, glaring from behind glass. The alley had changed. The cobbled street had turned black as pitch. The buildings had grown twice as tall.

A goat-bearded satyr with stag horns leaned against a glass wall chuckling.

“Where am I?” Ava demanded.

“Not where, when, which is a great deal later than you were.”

Another growling metal carriage sped by. Ava shrieked, “Why?

“To sneak and to thieve, of course.”

“What?”

“Not what, who.” The satyr stepped through another door.

“Who?”

The satyr gave a sly smile. “Me.”

The door slammed shut and disappeared.

Composite Photo