Flying Fish Parade
Josh tightened his grip on Sarah’s arm as he slowly lowered her onto the balcony beneath him.
“That’s as far as I can reach,” he whispered, staring down at Sarah’s tangled auburn hair blowing violently in the wind.
“You can let go. I can make it.” Sarah exhaled and felt Josh relax his hand, and her arm slowly slid through his widening grip. When her hand finally made contact with his, she paused and gently squeezed his hand before letting go and landing softly on the floor beneath her. The muscles in her legs tensed as her bare feet touched the cold marble floor, sending shivers up her spine.
“Are you sure about this? You’d be lucky to get five years if you get caught.”
“Relax. Just be ready at the exit with Tim, okay?” she whispered back, extending her arm to the closed doors of the small balcony and pointing straight towards the apartment’s entrance on the opposite side.
“Alright, just be…careful,” Tim added.
Sarah took a deep breath and crouched at the corner of the balcony. She looked towards the ceiling and listened until she could no longer hear her friend’s footsteps sneaking out through the apartment above. Reaching into her tattered shorts, she pulled out her pocket watch and winced as her finger slipped on the broken glass of the watch face, leaving behind a smear of blood. She stared at the watch, trying to make out the time through the fresh blood seeping into the cracks of the watch. It was now, or never she thought to herself. The Witch’s pendant had to be in the apartment somewhere, but the hard part would be finding it, and Sarah had never seen an apartment so massive in her life.
Sarah closed the lid of the watch and gently slid it back into her pocket, and wiped her blood-stained palm on the side of her shorts. With her watch safely stored in her pocket, Sarah carefully stood up, lightly outstretched her right leg, and started to tear at the fabric of her shorts. She may have cut herself already, but that didn’t mean she was about to break through the balcony’s glass door with her bare fist. In the midst of wrapping her hand with the tattered cloth, an idea occurred to her. It couldn’t be, right? She thought to herself. Sarah figured, what the hell, it couldn’t hurt to try, and she reached out to turn the handle on the large balcony door. Much to her surprise, the door opened with ease. For the leader of the city guard, the Witch was surprisingly lax with her own security. Sarah imagined that the Witch must’ve thought that no one would be daring or dumb enough to try to break into her apartment.
With pride, Sarah strolled into the living room and let herself carelessly fall back onto the tan leather couch at the center of the room. She took in the spectacle of the Witch’s opulent apartment. A series of medals and commendations adorned the wall opposite the couch. Sarah began to wonder how much she could make from pawning off each item. The smile growing on Sarah’s face quickly disappeared when the faint echo of music playing in the distance entered her ear. Had the Witch come home early? Normally, on the day of the annual flying fish parade, the Witch would make a long-winded speech to the city guard, patrol the upper city and the slums, and then change her clothes back at her apartment before finally joining the parade procession. By Sarah’s count, she should have had another twenty minutes before the Witch came home to change into her formal attire. Why did today have to be different? Before she could react, the bedroom door swung open, filling the apartment with the sound of swing music. The upbeat tempo of the music clashes with someone with a reputation for cunning and cruelty. While the warm music seemed to fill every corner of the apartment, Sarah only felt cold. Frozen in place, she stared straight ahead, hoping she had sunk down far enough into the couch so as not to be seen from behind. While she often claimed to be fearless, the fact of the matter was that the Witch terrified her. To the wealthy citizens of Pendragon, she was Commandant Miranda Weston, but to people of the slums, she was known only as The Witch, though no one ever dared to call her that to her face. To this day, the only person that had gotten close was Alex Tate, a twelve-year-old orphan, who spent a week locked in the stocks in the Pendragon town square for simply mentioning the word itch within earshot of the commandant.
“Who’s there?!” Miranda asked, certain she had heard a noise from the living room. She tensed her muscles and leaned her head out of the bathroom doorway. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her balcony door cluttering in the wind. After enjoying breakfast on her balcony earlier in the morning, Miranda figured that she had closed the glass-paneled doors to her balcony. But, perhaps she hadn’t closed them hard enough. Besides, she thought to herself; it wouldn’t have been the first time that high winds, commonplace in the city, had blown the balcony doors open. She relaxed her muscles, sighed, and began to walk from the bathroom to the balcony. She passed through her bedroom and gently closed the door behind her, leaving a small gap. As she walked through the living room, she ran her hand across her old couch, stopping slightly to feel the rough spots where the leather had become scaly and brittle. She reached for the balcony doors and firmly pulled them both toward herself. With the doors closed, she reached for a key hanging off a small belt wrapped around her dress. She inserted the key into the door and turned it until she heard a familiar click. She jostled the door handle, checking to confirm that it was locked.
Confident that everything was now in order. She turned around, ready to return to the bathroom, when she noticed a spattering of red dots – a trail made all the more evident by the contrast of the gleaming white marble floor. At first, she thought another cat had dragged a dead bird into her apartment through the open balcony, but there was something different about these marks. As the trail led to the couch, the specks of blood flattened out into a broken pattern resembling a footprint. Someone was in her apartment. For the first time in her life, Miranda felt naked. As the leader of the city guard, she could defend herself, but she had never been caught unprepared and in no way expected anyone to break into her home.
Careful not to alert her intruder, she slowly reached for the sword hanging off her hip. Despite changing into her formal attire, she had insisted on carrying her combat sword instead of the prop that the city magistrate requested she was to wear for the parade. With her hand resting on the hilt of her sword, she calmly calculated her next move, cursing herself for changing into something as impractical for combat as a dress. The dress be damned. She had her sword and wasn’t about to let anyone intimidate her today. In an instant, she turned, drew her sword, and violently plunged it into the couch.
Surprised, Sarah muffled a scream as the Witch’s sword pierced the couch. She was sure she would now be dead if she had not slowly crept from the couch to a new hiding spot in the hallway corner when the Witch passed by the couch. The Witch seemed to move inhumanly fast, and for a split second, Sarah thought she looked just like an angel as she gracefully lunged at the couch in her white dress. With the Witch in the living room, Sarah knew there was no way she could make it to the front door, which lay in plain view, but she had to do something.
“Look, I know you’re in here. Give up, and you won’t have to spend your prison time with a limp!” the Witch yelled, tightening her grip on her sword. The bedroom. Sarah figured she could slip out of one of the windows if she could make it to the bedroom. She quickly spun around and squeezed through the small opening between the bedroom door. In the bedroom, a panicked Sarah looked around for the nearest window when she saw it. Sitting atop the dresser in the bedroom was the thing that had caused Sarah to risk her life, the Witch’s pendant. If she had to run, she wouldn’t do so empty-handed — she had come too far. Ignoring every impulse telling her to leave it, Sarah ran to the dresser and threw the pendant into her pocket. As she turned to face the bedroom window, she felt her right foot slip on the marble of the bedroom floor and fell helplessly to the ground. She kicked at the floor, desperate to gain traction, as she crawled towards the window. With her head ringing, she picked herself up and stumbled towards the bedroom window, the sounds of footsteps growing louder as the Witch raced to the bedroom. Knowing she had only a few seconds at best, Sarah threw open the window with reckless abandon and called out to Josh and Tim, both boys nervously pacing outside the Witch’s front door.
“Hey, I’ve got it! I’m going to jump!” she yelled. As she climbed out the window, Sarah screamed as a sharp pain cut across her back. Beneath the window, Tim and Josh closed their eyes as Sarah fell from the window. When they heard Sarah still yelling, the two boys opened their eyes to see Sarah violently kicking at the woman holding her by the ankle. The Witch had caught Sarah. Fearing for his friend’s life, Josh ran directly under Sarah and readied himself to catch her should she fall.
“Sarah” he yelled, signaling to her that he was in place to catch her.
“Let go of me!”
Hanging upside down, Sarah pulled back her leg and firmly kicked the Witch in the head, causing her to release her grip on her ankle. Sarah screamed as she fell headfirst into Josh’s waiting arms. Unprepared for the intense impact, Josh found himself stumbling backward from Sarah’s momentum when Tim grabbed his arm and steadied him. The three children scrambled to regain their footing and ran out towards the city streets. Sarah clutched at her chest. The adrenaline had made her heart feel like it would explode but also dulled the pain of the large gash on her back, so she was thankful. She had made it out of the apartment, but the Witch would not be far behind now Josh and Tim were in danger too.
“Split up!” she yelled as they ran through the city streets.
“No!” both boys yelled in unison.
“Look, I’m faster than the both of you, but she’s faster than all of us, so do what I say!”
As they approached a fork in the road, the three children nodded, and each ran off in a different direction, with Sarah taking the more visible path. She started to panic as the sound of the Witch’s signature spurred boots grew louder and louder. Sarah looked ahead and saw the beginnings of a line of battered old booths – a familiar vestige of the bazaar. As she ran, the comforting smell of fresh cinnamon bread began to overwhelm her, and, despite the danger, she couldn’t help but smile as the cobblestone beneath her feet started to crack and break. Sarah could never forget this particular corner of the slums. Every day, at the corner bakery, old man Barthanus would set aside whatever old scraps of bread he had left from the days’ sake. For Sarah and the other orphans, those pieces of bread were often the only meal they had to eat. The baker had a kind heart, and his generosity often put him at odds with the city guard, especially the Witch. She had wished she could hide at Barthanus’ bakery; he had never gone to the parade himself, so she knew he would be there slaving away in the bakery just like every other day. Sarah quickly dismissed the idea, knowing she couldn’t get him involved again. Barthanus had saved Sarah more times than she could remember, but asking him to harbor a thief after she stole from Witch no less, was something she couldn’t do. Instead, Barthanus’ bakery would have to settle as a comforting marker that she had almost reached her real destination. Her shortcut. All she had to do now was make another right at the next alley, and she would be safe. The sound of the Witch’s boots echoing throughout the alleyway grew louder, and Sarah could practically feel the cold steel from the Witch’s sword cutting into her flesh again. Josh was right. She would be lucky if she ended up with only five years in the gallows – the Witch was going to kill her.
Just as she heard the Witch draw her sword, Sarah lunged, skimmed along the slime lining the gutter, and slid into a small drainage ditch at the end of the alley. She had made it. Ten minutes later, Sarah found herself at the other end of the slums, far away from the hunt the Witch was no doubt organizing for her. In the distance, she finally saw Gilroy’s Exotic Wares. Panting, she threw open the door, staggered to the dusty pawnshop counter, and slapped the Witch’s pendant down on the counter.
“Three…please!” she said, exhausted, between breaths.
“Didn’t think you actually get it. A deal’s a deal, but are you sure you want these? The parade’s already started. I was about to close up shop myself.” replied Eric Gilroy as he held out three red tickets. Sarah grabbed the tickets, turned, and walked towards the exit without saying a word. As her hand touched the dirty, faded brass handle, Sarah paused and turned to Gilroy.
“Well, if you’re about to close things down here, could you deliver something for me? He should be on the way,” she asked. Sarah handed Josh and Tim their tickets to the Flying Fish Parade outside Gilroy’s shop. When the two boys noticed Sarah only had two tickets instead of three, they paused and looked at her quizzically.
“Aren’t you coming?” they asked.
“Pfft. They’re just fish. And I should probably have this looked at, you know.” she replied, pointing to the large cut on her back.
“Next time, guys. I’m sixteen. I have my whole life to see that dumb parade. See ya later.”
As she walked back towards the interior of the slums, Sarah stopped for a moment to feel the broken cobblestone underneath her feet as she found herself in her favorite corner again. She glanced back at Barthanus’ bakery and smiled at the red sign in the window that read, “Back in Twenty. Off to see the parade!”