Free The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delaney

feel someone behind me tugging at the sack. Even then, I wouldn’t let go and I stared back into the piggy eyes of the leader, trying hard not to blink.
    At that moment something happened that took us all by surprise. There was a movement in the trees somewhere to my right and we all turned towards it.
    There was a dark shape in the shadows, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw that it was a girl. She was moving slowly towards us, but her approach was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop and so smooth that she seemed to be floating rather than walking. Then she stopped just on the edge of the tree shadows, as if she didn’t want to step into the sunlight.
    ‘Why don’t you leave him be?’ she demanded. It seemed like a question but the tone in her voice told me it was a command.
    ‘What’s it to you?’ asked the leader of the gang, jutting his chin forwards and bunching his fists.
    ‘Ain’t me you need to worry about,’ she answered from the shadows. ‘Lizzie’s back, and if you don’t do what I say, it’s her you’ll answer to.’
    ‘Lizzie?’ asked the lad, taking a step backwards.
    ‘Bony Lizzie. She’s my aunt. Don’t tell me you ain’t heard of her...’
    Have you ever felt time slow so much that it almost appears to stop? Ever listened to a clock when the next tick seems to take for ever to follow the last tock? Well, it was just like that until, very suddenly, the girl hissed loudly through her clenched teeth. Then she spoke again.
    ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Be off with you! Be gone, be quick or be dead!’
    The effect on the gang was immediate. I glimpsed the expression on some of their faces and saw that they weren’t just afraid. They were terrified and close to panic. Their leader turned on his heels and immediately fled down the hill with the others close behind him.
    I didn’t know why they were so scared but I felt like running too. The girl was staring at me with wide eyes and I didn’t feel able to control my limbs properly. I felt like a mouse paralysed by the stare of a stoat about to pounce at any moment.
    I forced my left foot to move and slowly turned my body towards the trees to follow the direction my nose was pointing, but I was still gripping the Spook’s sack. Whoever she was, I still wasn’t going to give it up.
    ‘Ain’t you going to run as well?’ she asked me.
    I shook my head but my mouth was very dry and I couldn’t trust myself to try and speak. I knew the words would come out wrong.
    She was probably about my own age - if anything slightly younger. Her face was nice enough, for she had large brown eyes, high cheekbones and long black hair. She wore a black dress tied tightly at the waist with a piece of white string. But as I took all this in, I suddenly noticed something that troubled me.
    The girl was wearing pointy shoes, and immediately I remembered the Spook’s warning. But I stood my ground, determined not to run like the others.
    ‘Ain’t you going to thank me?’ she asked. ‘Be nice to get some thanks.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said lamely, just managing to get the word out first time.
    ‘Well, that’s a start,’ she said. ‘But to thank me properly, you need to give me something, don’t you? A cake and an apple will do for now. It ain’t much to ask. There’s plenty in the sack and Old Gregory won’t notice, and if he does, he won’t say anything.’
    I was shocked to hear her call the Spook ‘Old Gregory’. I knew he wouldn’t like being called that and it told me two things. Firstly, the girl had little respect for him, and secondly, she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. Back where I came from, most people shivered even at the thought that the Spook might be in the neighbourhood.
    ‘I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘but I can’t do that. They’re not mine to give.’
    She glared at me hard then and didn’t speak for a long time. I thought at one point that she was going to hiss at me through her teeth. I stared back at her,