Getting cracking on book 2 - finally!

WARNING - Minor spoilers

I wasn't going to post an excerpt from book 2, because I'm worried about spoilers and the freshly-written, unedited (read: needs a lot of work) chapter 1 is full of them.

However, I'm so bloody proud that I've FINALLY started writing book 2, and a whole chapter to boot, that I can't resist posting a little bit. And it is from the point of view of a character who's only got a minor part in Book 1 but becomes super important in Book 2. So important, in fact, she's a POV character.

*Edit: Ok, now re-reading it, I'm not sure it deserves pride of place on the blog, but I'll leave it here just because it has been such a long time since I've written anything.*

So, for your eyes only, I present...

Book 2 - The Timekeepers' Island

Chapter 1

June knew her sister thought she was stupid. Otherwise, why would she bring her to all these private meetings? Summer thought June too thick to understand what was going on, that was why.

And it was true that when Summer asked her stuff, June gave her the silent treatment and it didn’t make her look bright. But Summer was too superficial to stop any further than appearances, and whenever June opened her mouth, her lisp and her stutter were exactly where Summer stopped to assess her intelligence. Besides, why should she say anything about what made her cry at night to total strangers?

‘Times have been very tough for us, Mister Galloway,’ Summer would say in her sweetest voice, dripping like honey all over the fat sorcerer. If they had any money, they were always sorcerers. ‘June, won’t you tell Mister Galloway how hard things have been for us?’

At other times Summer would act angry, the righteous kind of anger, like today.

‘What of our hard work?’ she shouted now to the men in the room. ‘They call us roaches and lazy, but do you know how much magic is used each day to restore and grow food for our people? Free magic, which costs nothing to the governors! June, won’t you tell these gentlemen how hard our people are working? And for no rewards! Until our work is recognised as worthy, how can we stand a chance of making a contribution to this society?’

The five men and women were seated around a large polished table made of one slab of mahogany. Like everything else in the room, it screamed of understated opulence. The war had obviously not reached this part of the city. The table alone could have fed June’s school for a week.

June never said anything at these meetings. She didn’t want to do anything that would help her sister and she didn’t like the pity-disgust in the gentlemen’s eyes when they looked at her. She knew exactly what her sister was trying to do, which was to get Faerie back on the map and move back there, and June had no intention of ever setting foot in that damned place again, and if the spirits wanted to curse her for swearing, let them! As far as she was concerned, not struggling against her sister’s grip and sitting there looking like a dirty street urchin to make rich sorcerers pity her was as much as she would consider doing for her sister’s cause. Even if it made her look like a stupid, dirty street urchin.

But June wasn’t stupid, and as her sister droned on and on, June’s head was full of schemes to escape her sister’s clutch.

She had tried many times before, and been successful on a few occasions, but then had been caught. She knew she would be caught this time too, but the question was always: when? How much time could she buy for herself? Time free, away from the bullies at school and Summer’s snarky remarks, from the expectations and the meetings. Time to just be June.

~ Edit, 28th March: I did some editing on this today! Whoop whoop! I won't post it as this is meant to be a raw post, and also because I am sure it will change so more. ~

Editing example

Back in March (how time flies...) I posted my prologue. Big shout out to the lovely people who commented, privately or on the blog, to give me their feedback. It is much appreciated.

I have since edited said prologue, and I thought it might be interesting to show you what butchering editing looks like. In red is additions, crossed out are deletions and in green is where the sentence was kept the same but was moved. Needless to say the original prologue was itself far from a first draft.

~*~

A shadow sneaked through the small opening. A cat flap closed without a sound. Velvet paws jumped onto the counter and pushed the lock open. A small click of the keyhole later, the door opened shyly to reveal the dark and sleeping house. The hinge should have creaked, but the spell muffled the sound. A cloak billowed through the dark and sleeping house. Yet there were noises, so many noises: buzzing from the refrigerator, a tick-tock from a grandfather clock, a car revving past on its way back from a drunken night. Probably. Who knew, with these foreign sounds? Back home it would have been creaking wood and wind in the trees, perhaps hooves striking damp earth and friendly barking. But he was a long way from home.

The man He waited until he was sure his entrance had not set off any alarm, then he crept up the staircase. It was pitch black there – they must have closed all doors before going to bed – but he knew which door to head for. He had studied the comings and goings on the inhabitants enough to know. Not enough to displace himself straight to the room – no, that would have been too dangerous. In any case, he did not need to. The shadows he had summoned cloaked him. It was as close to being invisible as he could, without overexerting himself with illusory magic. He felt his way along the rough painted wall, his fingers exploring the surface for clues as to where he was. A corner later Around a corner, his hand closed around a handle and pushed it down.

He tiptoed past the chest of drawers to the bed and the girl stirred as though she felt his presence. As though she sensed all that would happen next. A silver blade appeared from the darkness and neared moved towards the pillow. The moonlight shone through the window, but he was safe. Even if she woke up now, all she would see was shadows.

If she woke up now, she would be able to see him. “But she won’t”, he told himself.

The dagger fell toward the girl's bare neck.

In a flash of silver and the swish of a cloak, he was down the stairs and out of the house, clutching a lock of silvery-blonde hair.

~*~

Now if you found that a bit confusing, this is what the prologue looks like now:

Prologue

A shadow sneaked through the small opening. A cat flap closed without a sound. Velvet paws jumped onto the counter and pushed the lock open. A small click of the keyhole later, the door opened shyly to reveal the dark and sleeping house. The hinge should have creaked, but the spell muffled the sound. Yet there were noises: buzzing from the refrigerator, a tick-tock from a grandfather clock, a car revving past on its way back from a drunken night. Probably. Who knew, with these foreign sounds? Back home it would have been the wind in the trees, hooves striking damp earth and friendly barking. But he was a long way from home.

He waited until he was sure his entrance had not set off any alarm, then crept up the staircase. It was pitch black there – they must have closed all doors before going to bed – but he knew which door to head for. He had studied the comings and goings of the inhabitants enough to know. Not enough to displace himself straight into the room - no, that would have been too dangerous. In any case, he did not need to. The shadows he had summoned cloaked him; it was as close to being invisible as he could, without overexerting himself with illusory magic. He felt his way along the rough painted wall, his fingers exploring the surface for clues as to where he was. Around a corner his hand closed around a handle and pushed it down.

He tiptoed past the chest of drawers to the bed and the girl stirred as though she felt his presence. As though she sensed all that would happen next. A silver blade appeared from the darkness and moved towards the pillow. The moonlight shone through the window, but he was safe. Even if she woke up now, all she would see was shadows. The dagger fell toward the girl's bare neck.

In a flash of silver and the swish of a cloak, he was down the stairs and out of the house, clutching a lock of silvery-blonde hair.

The promised surprise

I said I would post an extract, so here it is. 
I wrote this at the very end of the NaNo and I was quite tired - I'd been writing 3k a day for a week by that point - so it might show. It's still very rough, I haven't gone over it yet. Don't be too hard on me!

The reason I picked this one is because the character I'm introducing popped into my head as I was writing. I knew the characters had to get into the town, find their way to the pub and that the owner there would be difficult. But I made up the rest as I went, and suddenly this woman became their guide, and I hadn't planned that at all.

It's quite a long extract, but it also gives you a insight into the world I have imagined.

Anyway, this is what it looks like when characters crash my story uninvited:

~*~

The sun is piercing through the clouds when we reach the harbour. Row after row, sailing ships are moored along quays, their masts clinging and swaying as the waves rock the hulls. The smell of the sea is stronger here, mixed with paint and resin and less noble scents. The buildings are even more impressive than they had been near the entrance, so glossy I can see my reflection in the walls. Steps lead to grand entrances with arches and statues carved from the same dark stone.

‘How do they get it so beautiful?’ I ask.

Rowan shrugs, his wings flapping as he does so, and for a second I am so distracted I forget I asked a question. But Izzie’s voice brings me back. ‘The rock around here is obsidian, that’s why the mountains are so dark. They used to be volcanoes. The rock elves polish the rock to make it gleam, but they also use spells on it so that the seawater does not erode it. Very costly. But they have the Worth. Morin is one of the main trading ports in Meuriaden, and only a handful of families own the trading fellowships.’

And indeed men and women are busy hoarding goods from the ships, scuttling about with their loads. It is obviously a working place, and I can’t see many children around unless they are helping carry goods. Transactions are not made in the street, but rooms behind balcony windows hint at luxurious offices.

The ships, on the other hand, vary in stature and condition. Some are tall, with many masts, their hulls freshly painted and their lower decks loaded with richly decorated cabins. Some of the larger ships are so narrow they look like fuselier fish, perhaps designed for speed. Other ships are hardly more than sailing boats or are decrepit. The paint is peeling off hulls covered in shells and their rotting masts creak as their frayed flags flap about in the wind.

Izzie tries her luck a few more times, but she is still unsuccessful.

‘Maybe you should ask, Lacie. You’re younger, and you look quite innocent. You almost look like an elf yourself. They might be more willing to help you.’

‘Nnno nonononononono!’

I think the expression of sheer panic on my face is enough to make Izzie think twice, but she has no time to argue. A roar of laughter behind us makes us turn around.

A young woman is sitting on the pier, her legs crossed and her arms folded behind her head, as though she were reclining in a lounge. Her hair is light and floats in the wind along with a scarf she wears around her neck. Her pale tunic and skirt puff as the wind rushes into their folds and leaves again. She seems so unsubstantial for a moment I wonder if she is one of the sprites they have told me about.

‘May I ask what’s so funny?’ Izzie asks, her chin raised.

‘You may,’ the young woman says, but she tilts her head back and closes her eyes.

‘What’s so funny?’ Izzie repeats.

‘You come into an elvish town asking for help while you’re pulling that poor beast around? And then you wonder why they won’t help you?’

We all stare at each other then at the unicorn. She looks happy enough to me, but I remember what Theo said about elves thinking animals can’t be owned.

‘Well, Lacie, maybe you can go back to the entrance to the town with Cleo and we’ll…’

‘No, no, please no!’ I protest. ‘I don’t want to stay by myself!’

‘But Lacie…’

‘Take the bridle off,’ I say in a brilliant flash of inspiration.

‘What? But Lacie, she might run away.’

‘She won’t! Take it off!’

Izzie hesitates. The elvish woman opens an eye and smirks.

‘Fine. But stay close in case she… you know.’

Very carefully, Izzie unbuckles the bridle and slides it off.

Cleo takes a few steps forward, and Izzie holds her breath. But the univorn turns her head to me and nudges my shoulder.

‘See, I told you it would be okay,’ I say.

‘Well, that was quite entertaining,’ the elf says, stretching her arms as though he’d just woken up. ‘But quite unnecessary. I’ll help you. For a price.’

Rowan and Izzie share a look, while Cleo begs me for more scratches.

‘How much do you want?’ Rowan asks.

‘How much are you willing the pay?’ the elf asks.

‘A featherweight, but no more.’

The woman tilts her head to consider them.

‘Two featherweights,’ she declares.

‘That’s too much,’ Izzie says. ‘We’ll meet you halfway.’

They continue haggling until they agree on a featherweight and a half of Worth and two unicorn hairs. Cleo is not happy about the last part of the deal and snorts and nibbles by shoulder in protest when I pull the two hairs off her mane, but she doesn’t run away.

‘My name is Emerald Spall,’ the elf says, offering us a slender hand to shake. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

‘We are looking for a pub called the Dark Crow’s Start. It was here a really long…’

‘Oh that dank place?’ Emerald interrupts. She makes a face like she’s just tasted something nasty. ‘You’re sure you want to go there?’

‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’ Rowan asks.

‘Well, it’s not shiny like here, that’s for sure.’

‘We’re… er…’ Izzie starts, throwing glances at Rowan. ‘We’re looking for a place around here that sounds similar. Something with references to crows and eagles maybe.’

‘Don’t know about eagles, but there are crows plenty around here. And gulls. The damn thing stole some of my lunch!’

Rowan winces, but Emerald continues. ‘I’ll take you to the Dark Crow, though, that’s no problem.’

We follow Emerald through the town, or up, since part of the town clings onto the mountain side. Every now and then she greets someone and the looks we get are less threatening now that Cleo is following us of her own free will, but the elves’ welcome could hardly be described as warm.

Soon the mansions of the seafront become sparse, replaced by more modest houses of black slabs. The mountain is now visible behind the roofs. The uncertain weather and the colour of the rock, covering every inch as far as the eye can see, give the town a grim atmosphere. My thighs are beginning to sting from the climb when we enter a part of town that would look completely abandoned if it wasn’t for the ribbons of smoke coming out of the chimneys. The houses are tall and narrow, as though the people who built them had tried to squish them together to make space for more. The smell of seawater is long gone, replaced by the stench of sewage. A river of brown liquid flows down the sides of the street, and I don’t want to know what is in it.

Our pub is at the top of the street, ensconced into the mountain side, which now towers around us on all three sides. A wooden door has been drilled into the rock and a stone sign hangs off rusty hinges; letters and pictures were carved into it once, but the wind, the rain and the brine have long eroded any meaning. I look up at the vertical plane of rock rising above it, and notice a series of large holes, regularly interspersed.

‘What are those? I ask Emerald, pointing at the holes.

‘Windows, of course! The whole of the old town is inside the mountain, but the rich folks left a long time ago. Bit too dark and damp. Still, it makes for a cosy place when the sea is stormy.’

A tunnel on the left of the pub catches my attention. It is a hole of darkness and I have no idea how far it extends, but something about it is attracting me towards it.

‘Wouldn’t go in there, if I were you,’ Emerald says, catching my arm. ‘Bad people down there.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s the entrance to the old town. But the folk in the old town aren’t very nice, are they? No money, and all those beautiful ships with exotic goods on their doorsteps… Would try to rip all of you apart to get your valuables, and if you don’t have any, they’d rip all of you apart trying to find them all the same.’

I give the tunnel one last look and shudder.

Izzie is still staring at the stone sign hanging above the pub door, as if to find any clues.

‘Shall we go in?’ Emerald says, and she barges past Rowan and Izzie to make her grand entrance.

I come in last, trying to make myself very small. The inside of the pub is so dark it takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust. The only light comes from the tiny holes in the rock above our heads and a feeble blue light in a lantern hanging in the middle of the room. But perhaps that is for the better. The absence of light makes it easier to ignore the sores and scabs covering the faces and arms of the pub regulars, the layers of grime on the counter top and the rivulets of undetermined liquid on the floor. The stench on the other hand, is suffocating. A mixture of rancid sweat, unwashed feet, old beer, with an undertone of urine and mouldy linen that has seen too much seawater and not enough sunshine. Breathing with my mouth open is not much help, and the smell is so strong I can almost taste it. It is all I can do not to run out of the door. My feet stick to the floor each time I try to take a step.

The pub is quite busy considering it is only early afternoon, but Emerald strolls in as if she owned the place and elbows a few people until she has a space at the bar. We manage to squash in beside her, and I try not to look at the faces around us; the few I caught were not friendly, and I find it difficult not to stare at the missing teeth and broken noses. Better not look at all. Emerald hollers at the man behind the counter, who was wiping some glasses with a dirty towel, until he turns his attention to us.

‘What’ you doing here, you bloody useless leech? I told you I didn’t want no business from you!’

Emerald doesn’t seem put off by his greeting, nor by the fact that he spits when he talks and is missing an ear. On the contrary, she beams and points at us.

‘I brought you customers!’ she says.

‘And are those customers of yours gonna pay what you owe me?’

‘Maybe,’ she says with a wink.

‘We just want to ask you some questions,’ Izzie says, having managed to wedge herself against the counter.

‘I don’t answer no questions. This is a pub, lady. I serve customers. What’ you getting?’

‘A round of cider and some of your chestnnut stew,’ Emerald says before I have time to look around and realise there isn’t a menu.

‘We’re not of age!’ Izzie protests. ‘And sylphs can’t eat stew.’

‘Arf, don’t fret, girl,’ Emerald laughs. ‘You’re not gonna wanna eat or drink any of it anyway. If you’re turning up your nose at this place, wait ‘til you see kitchen! Ts’all to keep old grumpy here talking, isn’it!.’

Emerald leaves the counter as suddenly as she had come and finds a table in a corner. I lean on the table as I sit down on the stone stools and put my hand leaves with a gooey residue. I try to wipe it on a corner of my stool without anybody looking and hug myself tight to avoid touching anything else. At least the smell in the corner is not as bad as near the bar. The order we came in means that I end up sitting between Izzie and Rowan, which rather pleases me, though they are both so much taller than me that I suddenly realise how small I must look to them.

‘You have nice clothes,’ Izzie says to Emerald.

‘Why, thank you!’ Emerald replies.

‘Why do you have debt, then? If you can afford nice clothes.’

‘Ah, but would you rather look like them lot, grimy and stinky, or owe a grumpy man a bit of worth? When we get off the ships, they give us only some of our worth. Some men drink it all in the first night, you see. I choose to have a bath and some clean clothes. The grumpy old sod’ll get his money when I get mine. Only fair.’

The one-eared pub owner soon brings us glasses of frothy cider, limping as he walks and spilling half of it on the floor. He’s back moments later with four cups of broth with a couple of lonely chestnuts floating in it. We all look at it in disgust except Emerald, who grabs a spoon and slurps the stew, washing it down with large gulps of cider. In spite of her warnings to us, she seems to be rather enjoying it. All three of us watch her, half with awe and half with revulsion. 

Autumn

I must be in a sharing mood, because here is another extract!
It's the first time we hear from Lacie's point of view, and I've often debated as to where I should put it, but it's currently the start of Chapter 2. For a little bit of trivia, it sets the time in our world at the autumnal equinox, which in 2010 also coincided with a full moon.
This is something that has been written for quite a while, so perhaps a bit more 'matured' than the previous extract, and one I particularly like. Hope you do too! :)

~*~

For years I felt as though nothing tied me to the little girl I was when I left Brittany with my parents. She was a stranger. I knew nothing of her. Peter’s death had turned me into a blank canvas. But it seems the past had only been frozen in time; since being back, wherever my gaze drops risks shattering the surface of my consciousness with long-lost memories: an oddly coloured brick on a house, an old tree by the road, the taste of a foreign sweet. The tiniest word, written on an object as innocent as a school diary, can trigger a flood of thoughts. Autumn.

Tomorrow it will be autumn, but you couldn't tell, with the stifling heat that makes strings of hair, beaded with pearls of sweat, stick to the damp skin on my neck.

Autumn. Peter loved autumn. On Halloween day, he would get up at dawn to carve the pumpkins and decorate the house with paper garlands and crumpled leaves. Then he would spend the rest of the day re-enacting to our family audience spooky stories of spirits and ghosts coming back to earth for one night. If I ever got scared, and I often would, my brother would reassure me with his expert knowledge on how to keep the sprites at bay.

‘It's autumn tomorrow, Mum,’ I say, breathing in the air from the open window in the car driving me back from school.

‘That's lovely, dear.’

Her eyes do not betray even a flicker of life. She's somewhere else, or years behind, when worries had not yet made her fair hair white, her eyebrows fade and her grey eyes become empty.

I clench my jaw and hug my school diary closer, a pain in my throat. It has always been beyond me why she became this nothingness the day her son died and, most of all, why her other child was not good enough a reason to stay alive. Dad was the same. A part of them died that day, I'm sure of that. They say that it's just that ‘Mum and Dad don't love each other anymore but they still love you like before’. But I’m thirteen and I understand a lot more than my parents give me credit for into why we left Brittany and Grandpa's house in a rush after the funeral, why we moved to London, and why Mum and I have to move back to Grandpa's house now that Dad and her have split up. The truth is that the day Peter died they forgot how to live.

The turn of a road, a graveyard behind a stonewall and it all comes back to me with the brutality of the storm at Peter’s funeral: the rain, the casket, the days of frantic phone calls and endless hours of waiting, someone telling Mum and Dad that they had found Peter’s body. I remember now. The visitor looked like an important person; he had a shirt on in spite of the stuffy summer heat.

‘I have to warn you, it might be quite upsetting,’ the man said to my parents. ‘It looks like he's been attacked by some animal. The marks look like wolves' but there haven’t been wolves in Brittany for hundreds of years.’

He seemed to find this idea very puzzling, which I thought was strange; all the fairy tales Peter had told me said the woods were full of wolves.

‘Forensics will tell’, Dad said, grabbing his coat as Grandpa’s car revved in the driveway.

‘Did the Big Bad Wolf eat Peter, Daddy?’ my seven-year-old self asked. ‘Like the Little Red Riding Hood?’

Mum hugged me between two howls of pain and stroked my nose with her finger.

‘Yes, Lacie’, said Dad, looking surprised to find me there, ‘but be a good girl and don't ask questions, you're making Mummy cry. You stay with Grandpa, we’ll be back soon.’

So I stopped asking questions, even when I wondered why there was a thunderstorm that evening, as if the weather-man had waited for us to be sad to start the rain after the days of heavy heat, why Peter was buried in an ugly cemetery and not in his beloved forest, and why his favourite plush dog, Barney, had to go with him, even though Barney was promised to me and would be lonely in a dark coffin with a dead body.

Worst amongst all the questions I was forced to swallow back down with breakfast every morning was why, within weeks of losing my best friend, my brother, my Peter, why on earth I had to lose the second best person in the world, Grandpa. How sad I was to be forced into a cloudy London life with grey parents. It is this same life my parents' separation has made me leave as well to go back to Brittany to the house we had so expediently fled.

Now, being back, I don't know how Grandpa could stand it all these years, every piece of furniture and every stone of his old Breton house tainted by the past, dragging the unaware walker-by into dark corners. Halloween has come early this year; this place is full of ghosts.

First words

There's something always incredibly scary with sharing a new piece of work, no matter how many times I've done it before. These are the first 500 words or so of my new first chapter, straight after the prologue. I hesitated posting this, because I was worried I would be told the descriptions are too lengthy (my rationale being that it is a rather strange world I need to set the scene to). But then again, I should post the words as they are if I am to be honest. If you want to throw me a morcel of sympathy, see my other post on why I find first chapters so difficult to write. 

~*~

This, thought Stus, was History being made.

Near to a thousand sylphs had gathered inside the Ebony Hall – before then, the highest number of people Stus had ever seen there was twenty. The Hall, dug inside an old tree on the outskirts of town, was at breaking point. From his vantage point near the entrance to the hall, a good five wingspans above the ground, Stus could survey the whole assembly of Tree Circle members. Along the bookshelves, row after row of dusty books swarmed with excited faces and fluttering wings of all colours. The garish mix of wing patterns and the constant buzz from the voices had breathed life and chaos into the once stern library. Luminoths clung onto the ceiling, their claws dug deeply into the wood; they cast a dim light onto the Hall, and shadows danced over the crowd. It was dizzying just to look around the colossal room. With the raised platform in the centre of the hall, crowned with the pulpit, the Hall had an atmosphere of a performance waiting to begin. A grim and tense performance. The same words were on everyone’s lips. Marec is dead. The Oak Heart is dead.

As well as latecomers, rumours flew around, too. Some were half-truths, some buried desires now free to emerge and flourish. Marec had been found in a pool of blood. Marec had been a secret drunk and had too much hydromel. Marec had so completely lost his mind that he had flung himself from his tree and forgotten to fly. No theory made the slightest bit of sense to any who had known Marec but Stus was too busy to stop and point this out. As a Rosewood and Faerie Guardia in his public life, he had been given the task of making sure the gathering went smoothly while the Wind Chimes, the leaders of the Wind of Change, made their announcement. The excitement had built up as the number of sylphs had grown, and in Faerie this only meant trouble. His experience patrolling the city had taught Stus that heat, emotions and long waits were rarely good companions. Only his vigilance and the strength of the fifteen minors under his commandment would offer any protection should a spark ignite the crowd. Under the stream of gossip surrounding the nature of the gathering, many Tree Circle members were mourning the loss of their leader, and both men and women could be seen dabbing at the corners of their eyes with handkerchiefs to avoid their tears leaking over the intricate patterns painted on their cheeks – though some did so with such a great deal of noise and fuss that even for sylphs it lacked sincerity.

Stus was not one of them. As grieved as he was by Marec’s death, he knew there were greater things to come. Nate had only hinted at them, but the loss of an Oak Heart meant one thing for sure: there would need to be a new one. Stus’s wings twitched whenever he thought of it. It would not be long until the announcement now.

Prologue

This is the scariest part: actually posting something I've written.

I wrote this a long, long time ago, then took it out completely, and put it back in again slightly modified. It's a prologue. 
Now I'm not sure there is a need for one, and it never gets completely explained either, only hinted at, which is why I had taken it out. 

But Stus has the first chapter, you see. And then we are in this world, and it might feel strange to be back in normality. So I thought the prologue helped bridge this gap. The idea is that the reader knows from the very start that some of the story will take place in our world.

Then we get to Stus and Faerie.

Of course, it might be giving completely the wrong message, like my synopsis. Or not make any sense. Or be rubbish. You tell me.

~*~

A shadow sneaked through the small opening. A cat flap closed without a sound. Velvet paws jumped onto the counter and pushed the lock open. A small click of the keyhole later, the door opened shyly. A cloak billowed through the dark and sleeping house. Yet there were noises, so many noises: buzzing from the refrigerator, a tick-tock from a grandfather clock, a car revving past on its way back from a drunken night. Probably. Who knew, with these foreign sounds? Back home it would have been creaking wood and wind in the trees, perhaps hooves and barking. But he was a long way from home.

The man waited until he was sure his entrance had not set off any alarm, then he crept up the staircase. It was pitch black there. They must have closed all the doors before going to bed, but he knew which one to head for. He had studied the comings and goings of the inhabitants enough to know. He felt his way along the rough painted wall, his fingers exploring the surface for clues as to where he was. He encountered a corner, then his hand closed around a handle and pushed it down.

He stepped past the chest of drawers to the bed. The moonlight shone through the window. If the girl woke up now, she would be able to see him. “But she won’t”, he told himself. A silver blade emerged out of the darkness and neared the pillow.

In a flash of silver and a swish of a cloak, he was out of the house, clutching a lock of silvery-blonde hair.