Jake made his way down the steps of the house very carefully. It was night-time, of course, because To’phoro had watched it during the day and discovered that the woman of the house didn’t leave very often. She had a loom on which she mostly worked at weaving during the daylight hours. So the safest time to carry out the theft was night. But this meant that he had to watch his steps all the more carefully to avoid tripping or making a noise.

He absolutely had to ‘make this hit’, as To’phoro’s gang called it, to carry out this theft, in order to pass his initiation and join their gang. They wouldn’t accept him otherwise, and if they didn’t accept him, he didn’t know what he was going to do. He would be out on the streets alone, with no money that was worth anything in this strange country, left to fend for himself. The gang was the only semi-reliable connection he had to food, to shelter, to some kind of stability that would provide him with enough thinking space to work out how he had got here and how he was going to get home. So he had no other choice, he told himself over and over.

He had been lucky so far. It was hot in Ubal at the moment, so the family who lived in this house in Sepher Street had left one of their top floor windows open by mistake. Thankfully it wasn’t the window to their sleeping quarters, only to a corridor. It was a difficult job, climbing up the side of the house using the next building along to support himself and push himself up. But he didn’t mind. He loved climbing. It had been one of the things he had done with his Dad before his Dad had gone away. He made it to the open window, leapt, and grabbed the sill. One of his hands slipped, but he clung on with the other one for dear life.

There was a subdued gasp from the boys watching him somewhere in the dark below.

“Come on Jake, you can do it!” called up To’phoro in a whisper.

Egged on by the encouragement, Jake pulled the window open further with his free hand, clasped the sill with again and then wrenched himself up. He managed to get himself up into it on his chest and then pulled himself in further to sneak through.

Through the window and he was on a landing. There were three doors off of it and some stairs. Not much room to maneuver. Jake needed to go downstairs, so he edged over to the steps.

Jake froze as the floorboard underneath him creaked, an excruciating noise that seemed horribly drawn out. He waited in silence, his breath held, to hear if anyone would stir above. When after a while nobody did, he let out a sigh and continued down the stairs.

At the bottom, he turned into what he could just recognise in the darkness was the sitting room of the house. There was the woman’s loom, its coloured threads glistening like gossamer in the fragments of moonlight that fell in through the gaps in the curtains. There were a couple of chairs near a fireplace where the family would sit and talk in the evenings. There was the wooden bookshelf stacked with a number of different tomes. And there was the book! On the top shelf, by itself, in prime position, balanced upright so that the spine was nearly vertical. This was the object that he was required to steal. To’phoro had seen the family reading it often while he had been spying out the house and had become convinced that it was valuable.

Jake crept over to the bookshelf to perform his task. He reached up to the top shelf to get the book. There was just one problem: He couldn’t reach it! He stood on tiptoes and stretched his arm as far as it would go, but he could only make the third-from-top-shelf. After pondering what to do for a moment, he put his climbing skills to use again and set a foot on the second-lowest shelf, then clambered up the bookshelf, grasping onto the higher shelves.

He reached the top shelf and grabbed the special book with one hand. It felt good. That was half the job done, he thought, now he just needed to get out of the house.

As he was thinking this, the book shelf toppled over backwards, the weight from his body pulling it off balance.

Jake jumped clear just in time to avoid being crushed by the bookcase. It hit the floor in front of him with an almighty bang, books falling out everywhere.

He swore under his breath.

And then there were noises upstairs, voices shouting. He heard a thud and then footsteps on the ceiling above him.

Jake’s mind raced. He was alone in the dark in some strangers’ house, a treasured object of theirs in hand and with no clear escape route. He had been planning on leaving by the way he had come upstairs, but there was no chance of doing that in time now. He looked around frantically. The front door.

He ran through the sitting room, back past the stairs and into a small corridor that led to the front door of the house. He turned the handle but it did not move—locked! He could hear steps coming down the stairs.

“Hey! Who’s down there?” shouted a man’s voice. “What are you doing in our house? I’m warning you, I’m armed!”

Jake fumbled with the lock but there was less moonlight in this corridor and he couldn’t see what he was doing. Suddenly an orange glow lit up the corridor behind him. Someone was carrying a candle. In the flickering light Jake saw a key he needed to turn, span it anticlockwise with one hand, the book clutched in his other hand , yanked open the door and—

“Not so fast!”

A hand caught him by the arm. He turned to look into the angry face of the man he recognised as living in the house, muscular and dark-skinned with a thick black beard. He carried a drawn short sword in his spare hand. A few paces behind him stood his wife, wide-eyed with fear and carrying the candle.

“How dare you try to—” started the man. Then he stopped. “Hold on,” he said, “you’re just a child!”

“He’s only got the Book, Skopos, that’s all he was after!”

His angry look changing to puzzlement, the man let go of Jake’s arm. Seizing his chance, Jake dashed through the open front door and ran as fast as he could into the night.

Around the corner, he was greeted by To’phoro, Yathom and the rest of the gang of boys. They didn’t pause for one moment. Seeing that he had the book, they took off with him, whooping and cheering with exhilaration as they hurtled through the streets together.

“Well done Jake!”

“Perfect hit!”

“First time and everything!”

Jake felt excitement swell in his lungs. He had made the theft successfully. He had passed his initiation test in order to become a member of the gang of boys. He was one of them now. He was a thief. He belonged. It was thrilling.

But underneath his excitement and pride, a few things kept niggling at him.

Why had that man let go of his arm and let him go free?

Was it because of his surprised reaction?

Or had it been deliberate?