A pretty blonde, draped in long and covering, dark shawls slithered soundlessly through the busy crowds. Among the many, she blended seamlessly, like wet paint on a canvas.
She was a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, a trick on the edges of your vision. But to catch her in the light when she thrived in the shadows was like snatching a rabbit right out of its burrow.
One such boy, not having yet reached his sixteenth birthday, had let the beguiler catch his eye.
He blanched. The adolescent took a hard look at her stony face, quickly flicking back to her uncanny likeness painted on the newspaper pages that lay idly at his father's stall.
And he ran.
Off and into the city, to find the nearest copper there. The one thing on his mind was acquiring the hefty reward wanted for the woman he'd just seen in the market.
And when he found a man, clothed in the uniform he would usually regard with disgust and bad memories, he willingly approached him, whispering incriminating words into his ear with his mouth covered by his hand.
As soon as his words were ceased, the officer stared hard into the boys eyes and uttered a single word.
Where.
Then the boy pointed to the lithe blonde in the crowd, who had stopped, feeling eyes burning into her back. Tara paused, the feeling of being watched enveloping her keen senses like a featherweight pressing against the back of her neck. She turned quickly, eyes frantically dancing from person to person until she found exactly what she was looking for.
A young, thin boy with dirt on his face and tears in his dull rags. He stood on the other side of the wide street, next to a copper with thin, focused eyes . Both were staring right at her.
They'd found her.
A weighted shiver crawled it's way down her back, her shock slowly wearing away as she watched the stocky policeman take a heavy step forward, and then another, and two more.
Her feet moved completely of their own accord, tumbling backwards in an attempt to get away from him. The frightening officer only matched her retreat with a quickened approach. Tara watched with horror as his strong legs powered him imminently towards her.
She managed to snap from her freeze and slither away into the packed mob with the help of her thinning figure. She wiggled desperately between people, having pulled up her shawl to cover her stark blonde hair.
There were bodies pushing down on her from every angle. The air was tight and humid, shared by too many breaths. It was hot and Tara's skin had turned damp with perspiration and panic. Every now and again, when she shoved someone aside to escape her pursuer, she would be met with another shove in retaliation.
The policeman dashed over the street that had separated them and hit the crowd. With a hurried glance over her shoulder, Tara quickly realized that the officer had fallen out of his depth.
He towered over almost everyone, but his size meant the only way he could navigate this cesspool was by bulldozing through it all. It wasn't long until Tara could hear the outcries of protest behind her.
Without needing much more reason, those afflicted with the brunt of the officers elbows quickly turned on him, shoving him every which way until he could barely see the outlines of Tara's head.
"Move! Everybody move! By order of the king, step aside!"
Tara powered desperately through the crowd. The people shrouding her were becoming expressly aware of the the fleeing woman amongst them as well as the infuriated officer with an extended baton now in his hands and many began to dissipate, making it remarkably more difficult to blend in.
The copper behind her was gaining ground now. Tara doubted anyone at the police station would care very much if she arrived a little mangled and he looked in just the right mood to perform a mangling.
Her breathing had turned significantly heavier. Beads of sweat ran down the side of her face. She would not be caught. Tara would rather die. Her cowardice would never let her return to the cruel hands of her father in fear of what he had in store for her.
At the edges of the market, Tara spotted at least a dozen more officers prowling. It seemed the young boy who had first caught her had alerted them in the hopes of increasing his chance of reward.
When she found a slight gap in their loose line, Tara shot out of the crowd and into the open to run for her miserable life. Her shawl billowed behind her, having fallen off her hair and hanging on precariously by a loose knot in the front.
The guards had broken from the crowd too, and were already gaining on her steadily. Their heavy feet pounded loudly against the pavement, echoing in her ears like thunder while she ran.
Tara zipped into a narrow alleyway, crashing lightly into the opposite wall from her sharp turn. She was nearing the sea now. Unless she planned on diving into the freezing waters and swimming to the US, Tara had to turn pretty soon.
Down the alleyway, Tara made a hard left, followed only a second later by the police. She sprinted straight for the bustling port. They were so unbearably close behind her now. Every hard footfall sent her heart into complete consternation. Tara could hardly breathe by the time she escaped into the crowd, and perhaps even less so then. Worming between hot bodies deadened her once lightening pace, but she was fairing better than the guards behind her that struggled to divide the monstrous gathering of people.
In the near distance, a ship horn blew to signal its departure. The sound flowed right through her ears for a moment before it registered and an entirely desperate idea began to form. Tara spotted a large cargo ship docked at the raised quay, it's last crewmen trekking up the ladder without a care of the scene happening back on land. The horn blew a second time, making Tara completely sure this time that the sound was coming from that ship.
Her entire brain paused at how thoughtless and irresponsible this new plan was, but every time she tried to think of something else, she came up blank. Tara was cornered and if she didn't do something and soon, she would be arrested and her father would drag her to hell by the soft part of her ears.
She made her decision, fleeing from the crowd one last time. There was no time to think, no time to wonder if it was the best thing to do or not.
Tara dashed her last length, her aching feet in immense pain with every slam onto the hard stone, shoes in no state for such exertion. Her young heart beat at a mile a minute. She was ready to collapse.
Connecting the ship to the quay was a single wooden bridge propped up on the concrete. The engine whistled with steam as it powered on and the ship began to move, dragging the wooden bridge closer to the edge. Tara bounded up the incline, lighting up her footfalls by the slightest so the crew didn't notice her entrance, if by some divine miracle they hadn't already.
Behind her, she heard the officers shouting. She clasped her hand onto the guard rail and in the same second, something grasped at the edges of her shawl where it flowed freely behind her in the wind.
Her upper body jerked backward in terror for an eternity of a moment before the knot holding the shawl to her came loose and the force pulling her away disappeared.
The shawl slipped from off her shoulders into the grasp of the officer behind her. Tara clambered onto the cold deck, eyes locked on the towering policeman in front of her with the stretch of cotton clenched between his knuckles.
A self-congratulatory smile glanced across his clean shaven face. The other officers had all broken from the crowd now and were screaming over at them, but Tara couldn't catch their words. He opened his mouth, as if to say something clever, only to plummet in the same breath.
The bang of the wooden bridge against the hull was followed a second or two later by a hollowing splash as Tara's captor barreled into the dark sea. She instantly recoiled her legs from over the edge and turned to look down into the water.
White foam glittered the sea where the waves crashed into stone. She could see the dissipating circle where the copper had fallen and she watched it, even as the boat pulled further and further from shore. He didn't emerge.
Tara tore her eyes away and looked wildly around her, nerves shot and legs trembling. She had another problem.
She scurried away from her perch and into the cargo hold before someone came to investigate what all the fuss was about. The stowaway now had to figure out how to stay hidden from all the crew members on the ship until they arrived at wherever the hell they were going and manage to keep herself alive on the way.
If Tara made even the slightest slip and alerted the crew of her presence, she was sure to be in chains the next time she saw land.