 |
||
 |
|
|
February 13, 2013
The Unknown Thief
•by Mikala Metzger
It is a cold, cloudy night with the moon only half full. A boy, aging around sixteen years, sprints through the lifeless town towards the castle. The late autumn night is deathly quiet, but he is even more so. He soon meets the castle walls, giant slabs of stones piled high on top of each other with ivy growing between the cracks. The thief follows his uncle’s map, an old, faded thing, and finds the hole that leads under the wall. He climbs through and finds himself facing the castle.
Once inside the castle, he follows the map until he finds a grate. The boy lifts the lattice and starts crawling through the dusty tunnel inside. While he’s moving, he thinks about how these vents were only used to get air down to the workers when the castle was built, but are now forgotten. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, he chuckles to himself. Soon, he comes to a small, cobwebbed room with other vents branching out from it. The thief inspects a vent on his left and finds that it matches his uncle’s description. This is it.
Sliding down the duct makes his stomach fill with butterflies and he almost laughs like a little kid when the vent flattens and he stops. The thief quickly regains his posture and looks down into a lattice in front of him. Through the grate, he sees large windows covering one side of the room, letting moonlight pour into the chamber. In the middle of the room is the Coronation Crown of the Queen. It is a beautiful crown that’s made entirely of emeralds. The boy jumps into the room and is about to grab the crown when he hears a blade being unsheathed. Before the guard can do anything, though, the boy captures the crown and crashes through the window. Adrenaline fuels him on his escape and when he finally reaches the forest, he laughs. He laughs so hard that he starts to cry, for he is the first thief to ever succeed in stealing the Queen’s crown.
© Copyright Dodge County Independent 2013
507-634-7503 - 105 1st Ave NW - Kasson, MN - dci@kmtel.com
