"You!"

Jackul yelled as blood dripped down his chin from his split lip. His tongue promptly moved to the vacant space in his mouth while his eyes found the small bit of tooth on the ground next to the girl. "Give it back!" he yelled again voice cracking.

"My master said you'd be dumber. How did you find me, whelp?" She let out with a giggle as Jackul wrinkled his nose at the smell of the alcohol on her breath. "The port will eat you up before anything beyond the wall if you keep playing slow, boy."

Jackul screwed up his eyes and looked closely at the diminutive girl’s features: faint creases around her eyes and hands callused from decades of work. She appeared far older somehow, yet she had the immediate appearance of a child. There was little doubt in his mind now that the woman made great use of her small stature and appearance in her thieving trade. And there was little more doubt in Jackul’s mind that the variance in form among humans he had seen in his home country was but a small slice of what the world had to offer.

A whistle blew in the distance. Jackul turned his head toward the shouts of nearby guards.

Jackul looked back at the tiny woman who was smiling still as she met his eyes with a fine powder from a concealed pocket. Light flashed as electric pain ran through Jackul's veins. He held back a scream as his eye sockets turned to molten sandpaper. Reflexively, he threw the small woman back into a rubbish heap causing a ruckus as pots shattered and a pile of stacked firewood tumbled over.

The shouts moved closer. Barking dogs joined the approaching chorus.

Still in a drunken haze, the woman gingerly rolled off the rubbish heap. Jackul willed his blood-red eyes open and started after her. The tiny woman wobbled up standing straight, slapped herself sober on the cheeks, and with the grace of an expert gymnast, vaulted from one window seal to another moving up to the resident rooftops above. She continued her accent up three stories as Jackul stared in bewilderment.

"No hunting for you!" she yelled when she reached the top of the roofs. She made an obscene gesture before scrambling off.

Jackul, still at the bottom of the alley, could hear the guards getting closer now through muffled shouts and barks. His thoughts moved to how he could explain himself to the guards, until he thought about the costly boots and linens in his satchel and what the guards might assume upon his possession of them.

With a haphazardness brought on by desperation, Jackul tried to copy her movements in pursuit up to the rooftop. With an awkward tenacity, Jackul climbed up the window seals and stacked crates copying her movements. Crates and roof tiles fell and tumbled as he struggled up to the nearby roof.

Armed Soldiers rounded the corner of the alleyway just as Jackul pulled himself over the edge of the roof. They made eye contact with one another.

"Stop you! Thief!" yelled one of the soldiers. Before the exclamation was finished, Jackul was over and on top of the roof canopy of the slum ward of Lizan Al Ghul.

With heaving breaths, Jackul whirled around in a circle to survey his surroundings looking for the tiny woman. Warm torch lights reflected up from the labyrinthine alleyways and streets of the slums casting an eerie subterranean glow against the black night sky above.

He saw the woman's small form not more than a stone's throw away near the edge of the rooftop's spine hopping from one leg to the other trying to maintain a drunken balance. As he started off in her direction, surprise ran through his thoughts as he could hear a song being sung against the backdrop of shouting below them.

Jackul slowed in his pursuit as the soft words grew in volume.

"So soon may I follow,

When friendships decay,

And from Love's shining circle

The gems drop away!”

The tiny woman promptly hiccuped and continued.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“When true hearts lie withered,

And fond ones are flown,

Oh! who would inhabit

This bleak world alone?"

With this last line still facing away from Jackul, she stopped and dropped her hands to her sides completely still. Having nearly caught up to her, Jackul slowed as the expression on his face turned from rage to incredulity. He raised an eyebrow as he witnessed tear drops falling onto the rotting rooftop. Even the chorus of pursuing guards below fell in volume as each falling tear reflected the full moon's light in their descent.

A moment of silence passed. "Are you… okay?" Jackul mumbled past his split lip with surprise as the words left his lips, only a few steps away now from the tiny woman.

The fire-haired woman looked back, eyes glistening. A soft flush filled her freckled cheeks. Jackul had a clear view of her features and could see she was actually quite pretty. They locked eyes and said nothing for a moment.

"No, boy. I'm drunk," she finally said wiping away the tears. "Best you don't become a hunter." She smiled, "You'd die out there like all the rest. When you get home, tell'em Rosie sent you."

Then, with gusto, she grinned and bowed to an invisible applauding crowd. Then she turned around and hopped over the end of the roof.

Jackul screamed and leaped forward to grab hold of her cloak. His hand caught and she swung against the edge of the building nearly pulling them both off the roof together. Jackul spread his legs as wide as possible and made every desperate attempt to turn the toes on his bare feet into grasping hands against the slipping roof tiles.

Hanging over the edge of the roof to a lethal descent, the tenderness from before vanished from Rosie. "Let me go you fucking idiot, or we'll both fall and die!" She tossed and turned trying to grab a hold of a nearby window with her short arm's length. She cackled madly in half anger and excitement, "Now don't drop me now that you want me, boy!" Her voice strained as she grasped, "Just a bit further no." She laughed and began rocking back and forth to get some momentum to reach the window.

Jackul's toes began to slip at the rocking motion. "Stop that or I'll drop you!" Jackul's voice cracked.

"Quit complainin," Rosie scolded as she rocked a bit further and got a finger's grip on the edge of a window.

Jackul's body began to slide forward as the roof tiles at his feet began to give way. Rosie lurched closer to the window now with two hands on its edge. "It's been fun, jackrabbit, but Rosie needs to go now."

The weight disappeared in Jackul's grip just after the roof tiles at his feet gave way sending him over the edge with a scream.

Still with a firm grasp on Rosie's cloak but relative positions inverted, Jackul now hung below Rosie staring down at a group of their pursuing guards who looked back at him mouths agape. Rosie joined in Jackul's scream as her own grasp on the window seal quickly began to falter.

Just as Rosie's fingers began to give way, a window below slammed open and two pale, strong tattooed arms surged out of the window grabbing Rosie's hands. With a strong tug and a curse, a man in a leather jerkin pulled them both through the window with one great heave.

Rosie and Jackul toppled through the window on top of one another in front of the looming figure of a tall pale-skinned man with blue eyes. Jackul's yellow eyes met the man's unblinking blue eyes as the man picked him up by his collar bringing him back to the window's edge. Before fear resettled, Jackul noticed the odd sight of the man's wild blond hair and beard burnt at its edges.

"What have we got here, Rosie?" the tall man said without taking his eyes off Jackul. "You've been making a lot of noise outside. The whole damn slum is awake. Adisu is talking to the patrol now cause of yah."

Rosie slumped over still on the floor pointed a finger at Jackul while rubbing a nasty bump on her head from being yanked through the window, "It's his fault! He's the one Adisu sent me after. Throw him over, Franzy!"

Franz finally blinked without moving his eyes off Jackul and replied through grinning teeth, "So yer the one Adisu didn't want, huh?”

The sound of creaking footsteps on the other opposing wall made everyone, except Franz, turn their gaze to the figure coming up the steps with low orange lantern light in hand. A bone lean ebony skinned man with tightly curled blond hair with black roots and spectacles peered at the whole bunch. He wore plain loose white linens, trousers, and a sleeping robe. The dark-skinned man didn't appear so much surprised as he was annoyed. Jackul noticed that the man knocked gently on the wall with his other hand the whole way up the stairs.

The spectacled man's voice was deep with an unfamiliar accent, "Come, less noise now. Bring the lad downstairs and we'll talk. I've already spoken with the guards outside." Without another word, the man turned and headed back downstairs gently tapping the wall with his free hand the whole way down.

Franz finally looked away from Jackul at Rosie letting his firm grip loosen. "Fancy that, Rosie. You're told to make sure he never comes here and you managed to hand deliver him yourself." He laughed heartily as he set Jackul down and padded down and checked the boy's satchel to make sure he wasn't hiding a weapon.

Rosie's reply was a simple, "Shut up!" as she dusted herself off and made her way downstairs. When her head passed through the floor, she popped her head up, made eye contact with Jackul, gave him a dirty look, and continued downstairs.

Franz chuckled to himself and slapped Jackul on the shoulder, "Come now, lad. We won’t kill yah, yet."

Despite being bewildered at the preceding series of events, Jackul's thoughts fixated on the man who had just entered and left. "That man's name was Adisu?" he asked Franz.

Franz grinned that toothy grin again with two icy blue eyes at Jackul. "Why, that's Ol'Adisu Wagaye!"