The Adventures of Isabel

The Thief

"I just did tell you!" I shouted, putting my hands on my hips, "So just give it back."

"No," the boy said holding a finer up; he acted as though he was right and had an argument I couldn't dispute with.

I raised my eyebrow and leant back crossing my arms, "Oh? And pray tell why not?"

He gave a lazy smile, "I can't be held responsible for past crimes," I cursed, he was right you couldn't arrest someone for something they didn't know. That meant he wasn't going to give it back. He was smarter than he looked, and that made me hate him more.

The thief stood up to leave; he was tall, surprisingly so; when he was curled up on the curb he looked smaller. I wouldn't have put him taller than me, but in actual fact I barely came up to his broad shoulders. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and I realised he was much older than I'd estimated, he was closer to fifteen. He turned and started to walk away from me. "But," he called playfully over his shoulder, his voice now suddenly deeper, "I'll take it on board in the future."

"Wait, please I need my necklace back," I called desperately.

He shook his head still strolling away, "You go to a fancy school, what does it matter? If I sell this I'll be able to buy food for others."

I thought furiously for a way to get it back, it needed to be something good as he was doing this for others. I decided to play to his biggest flaw - arrogance. "What if we had a competition for it!" I blurted out. He stopped and looked back curious; he raised both his eyebrows as if to say, 'You've got one chance to make this interesting.' I took a deep breath, "A magic competition, whoever can do the most powerful spell without it backfiring wins the necklace."

He ran his hand through his greasy hair, brushing it out of his eyes again, "Alright, what real magic could they even teach you at that stupid school of yours?" he said snickering. I looked down the end of the Wizard Way, my class were entering the school, and they had not even noticed I was gone. I looked back at the boy, he smirked as if to say, 'see they don't care, those idiot wizards couldn't teach you to do a simple spell like making something float.'

I clenched my fists, "Where do you want to have the competition then?" I growled, his haughtiness was so ridiculous, he couldn't possibly have had any proper training, at best all he could know are simple spells like a lock pick spell and the one he used on my necklace which was retrieve, if you concentrated on and object and said the spell it would appear in your hand, stupidly simple.

He smirked again, and beckoned for me to follow him. He slipped down a cobbled side street, and walked briskly across a busy courtyard. He slipped between the populace unnoticed my progress was slower. People would look at me questioningly recognising my uniform. When I finally made it across the court, he stood at the entrance of an empty passage tapping his bare foot impatiently. When I got within a meter of him he took off down that path, I jogged after him, where could he be going?

We were now well and truly into the poorer housing of the city, the streets winding, crowed and narrow. The worst part was that it was the afternoon rush, the rush off people carried you along, often people were pulled on past the way they wanted to go, until they somehow managed to wriggle back the other way into the group going your way. The streets were filled with people yelling and cursing each other about pushing, being clumsy, or even a mother yelling for a lost child.

I had lost sight of the boy, I cursed myself, this had all just been a trick so he could keep my necklace. I started to push my way back through the crowd, when a firm but gentle hand clasped around my wrist and pulled me out of the rabble through a big purple door and into one of the houses that lined the street. The boy gave me a crooked grin, "Get lost, did you?" I snorted in reply and smoothed out the creases in my dress.