No Adults Allowed

Nine

"What?" Eva twisted away from examining the lock and put her hands on both his shoulders. 

"Robin stayed at the other village. The nice one."

"Oh," Erik said, frowning, "I thought because he wasn't here that he was dead. Like Harry."

"That was really different, Erik," Rufus said, trying to smile reassuringly and failing. "Try not to worry."

"But we're in a cage."

"OK, but try not to worry about Robin."

"What about us?"

Rufus looked pleadingly at Eva, who rolled her eyes. "We just need to think it through," she said. Standing, she continued talking through options with Ramin, ruling each out in turn.

"I'm starting to think," Tilda said slowly, "that maybe I should have stayed at home."

Rufus nodded. "You might have a point."

His legs ached. He wanted to sit but there wasn't enough room on the ground - not without sitting in an especially wet corner. Unable to contribute usefully, instead he let his mind roam, as he used to when sat on the watchtower back at Cragside, overlooking the lake. He wanted to think of better times, or different times at the very least, but his thoughts kept returning to the current predicament. Lacking Eva's analytical brain, instead his solutions trended towards the more dramatic. Using his raw, brute strength he turned and took hold of two of the bars, wrenching them apart until Erik could squeeze through and release the locking mechanism. Or supporting Eva on his shoulders, he lifted her just high enough so that she could unhook the latch above the cage; shortly afterwards they both collapse to the floor, on top of one another, laughing triumphantly. At the sound of a horn, Tommy and the others from Cragside, accompanied by Robin, Sinda and the villagers from Goff's Hill, crested the hill outside the village, bearing flaming torches, then charged and broke them free of the cage. Ramin didn't feature in many of his ideas.

He was so pre-occupied with his exciting and hopelessly unlikely scenarios that when he first saw a shape crawling along the top of some of the longer wooden buildings at the end of the alley he for a moment thought he was imagining it. It drew nearer, shimmying effortlessly along the rooftops, leaping silently from one building to another.

"Everyone," he said, pointing, "look."

The shape, now clearly human, thankfully, made one final bound and landed on the top of the cage, with a barely audible clang. It pulled back the hood of its cloak to reveal a face.

"Flick!" Eva squeaked, only barely managing to control the volume of her voice.

"Hi, Eva," said Flick, casually, as if this were an entirely ordinary situation. Rufus had a vague notion of Flick's existence, though he couldn't recall ever meeting her. Flick moved over to the locking mechanism, balancing her feet on the bars of the cage. "How does this work?"

"Latch on top, then slide the cover over so we can lift the pole."

"Ah yeah," Flick said, "got it."

The pole lifted, scraping a little against the door, which in turn creaked insistently as they pushed it ajar.

Flick dropped down to the ground, landing with perfect balance. Rufus resisted the urge to clap. This was much better than anything he'd come up with.

*

"Time to go," Flick said.

Eva shook her head. "We need our things." She looked older than Flick remembered. Beautiful, still, in that studious way of hers, but older.