The thief shut his eyes tight and clutched his cape, pulling it tight across his chest.
The urchin looked at him calmly and beckoned with one
sapling arm.
‘Come farther into the forest. We need to speak without the gaze of Rapaz on us.’
In a twinkling he was gone.
The man, shaking all over, pushed himself up
and walked deeper into the trees, desperate to get away
desperate to stay.
‘I know now how Orpheus felt…’ he said to himself
clutching for even a thread of his bravado.
He sank against the trunk of a huge tree
venerable and moss striped.
The urchin spoke from over his shoulder, making the man start.
‘Surely you knew that would not end well. You are a man of some magic, true, but only its trickery. Charms and glass jewels and deceptive hands. But none of it real. Hers is. Did you really think…
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