Free No One's Chosen by Randall Fitzgerald Page A

clipping the shoulder of a rickety old man in her haste. She
turned to make an apologetic plea with her hands, but he was
gone.
    "Surely there had been an old man," she thought.
    Óraithe's mind drifted for only a second but it was
enough. Her foot caught a snag and she found herself staggering.
For half a heartbeat, she thought she would find her footing but it
wasn't to be. She fell, bracing for impact. The unforgiving
hardness of stone hadn't come as she quick expected. A split-second
glance revealed a stair below her and that was the last thing she
saw.
    Hours later, Óraithe sat up to find herself on a
stone landing at the bottom of a short set of stairs. Her back was
against a wooden door. It was an unremarkable thing, to be sure. It
didn't look to have been touched in ages, a crust of filth from the
streets above dried on the boards. The door wasn't one of the newer
handles that most shops had on their doors, it was an older,
ring-style handle. There was no apparent keyhole. No lock. Strange
to find that anywhere in the slums. Even the poorest among the
elves closely guarded what little they had. Whatever lie on the
other side of the door was abandoned, and had been for some
time.
    Óraithe wanted to see. She gave a sharp pull at the
handle. Her fingers slipped from the ring and she fell onto the
stairs at her back with a weak thump. She cursed the handle and
stood, readying for a second try. This time she wrapped the bottom
of her dress around the handle to give her a firmer grip and
yanked.
    Nothing.
    She yanked again. There! It was faint, but she heard
it. A cracking sound. The door was barred shut but weakly.
    Óraithe planted one foot and placed the other against
the stone wall beside the door. She pulled with all that she had,
hoping her meager weight would be enough. Before long, she heard
the sharp cracking of wood. It grew louder and more frequent until,
finally, the door swung free, sending her onto her bottom a second
time.
    The job was done and Óraithe leapt to her feet to see
what prize she had won herself. She burst into the room with
unfettered excitement. As her eyes ran over the empty room, her
smile disappeared. There was nothing. A rotting old table and a few
dust ridden chairs which had seen better days, though just
barely.
    For whatever reason, Cosain's cutting words crept
back into her mind.
    "Childish, was it?" She laughed at herself.
    Her eyes crawled slowly over the room, wondering what
she had expected. What use was a place such as this? She thought of
what Cosain would say. He was apt to chide her for forcing her way
in and then liken it to some smuggler's den.
    Óraithe lit up. That was it. In a flash she was out
the door, stopping for just the briefest second to consider the bar
she had broken off. It was a weak thing, it would need replacing
with something much sturdier. And the hinges were in a terrible
state. But no matter!
    She erupted from the stairwell and ran at a full
sprint the entire distance to the scrivening shop. Óraithe had
never quite understood how Teas's father managed to keep the shop
open. While many elves of even the Low District were more than
capable at their letters, most found the act of writing to be
burdensome and unwelcome. A waste of time better left to people
with cause to worry over words and the exchange thereof.
    It wasn't ten minutes before she came to a stop in
front of the shop, wheezing in exhaustion. She hadn't been so
excited in as long as she could remember and she simply had to
share it with someone and the only someone she had was Teas.
    "Teas!" She let fly a ragged bellow that scared off a
few of the marmar that lined the top of the shop. It was all she
could manage and she put her hands back to her knees to continue
catching her breath.
    She had pulled in another breath in preparations for
another grand shout when Teas poked her head out. The breath seemed
to tumble out of her when it was decided she need not shout
again.
    "Shhh!" Teas scolded her