Title: THICK AS THIEVES
Genre: MG Fantasy
Word Count: 74,000
Query:
Fourteen-year-old Farne would be thieving his way
to the Capital by now if not for Lidi. Her friendship, plus working in her
father’s stable, keeps him in their mountain village.
With Lidi bound for boarding school, Farne thinks
he's back to a career as a pickpocket. It's not like he can hide in her
suitcase. Lidi, not any fonder of leaving than Farne is of her going, convinces
their parents that Farne must come, too. The school, nestled in a valley of
parched soil and dust, has only one neighbor: a recently reoccupied military
base. Soldiers hunt the waste for vicious beasts long thought extinct. Lidi
sees one of the creatures shot down and saves its cub… chick. She and Farne
can't hide the gryphon, and it's too young to survive alone. Aided by a little
thievery, they sneak out of school and search for the cubchick's family. Maybe
their plan is reckless, but how dangerous are gryphons as long as you don't
shoot at them?
They aren’t sure until one carries Lidi away.
Taken in by gryphon-tamers, Farne and Lidi realize that the military is threatening
more than a dwindling species. To protect their new friends and themselves,
they must stop the soldiers from finding the gryphon's caves.
First 250:
Perhaps
by coincidence, perhaps by design, neither of Farne's friends knew about the
rumor. In a village as small as Mernick, a good rumor spread quick as a flash
flood and was just as hard to stop. Farne had been a suspected changeling, a
fae doppelganger switched for his mother's real child, since the cradle. Even after
fourteen years, every once in a while someone rehashed the story with new
evidence.
First
it was his sawdust colored eyes, much lighter than the brown eyes of his
parents and most of the people in Mernick. Many blamed his mother's declining
health on a changeling taint. Farne was too young to remember her death during
the birth of his sister, Melder. He wondered if any credulous neighbors had
told his father to abandon him. If Da had ever looked with doubt toward his
toddling son, Farne didn't recall.
The
thing about being a suspected changeling is after the idea has been planted,
one can do nothing to escape it. As a boy he was wild and troublesome: clearly
influenced by fae mischief. When he grew wary of the village's opinion and
acted more carefully, they claimed him secretive and reticent to associate with
those "not of his kind." He could never admit his ambition to leave
Mernick, never spoke of wanderlust for fear of arousing yet more suspicion.
Lucky for him, Melder was an unrestrainable gossip. Though he'd rather his
sister had never known of the rumors, she was at least willing to dispel them.
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