Chapter 1

"LET ME GO!" she screamed. It worked: they let her go to cover their ears, cringing from the high decibels.

She didn't need an invitation. She ducked out from between her captors and turned to run back the way they had dragged her, back towards her home. Her escape was arrested, however.

An arm caught her about the waist, and the instant she realised she wasn't on the ground, running, any more, she also realised that she had been slung over someone's shoulder. It wasn't exactly comfortable.

"PUT ME DOWN!" she yelled, thumping her fists against the back – the only available body part – of her new captor. This time, it didn't work. In fact, it earned her the goose-bump raising experience of feeling the hand that was holding her around her knees move up to her waist, never breaking contact.

"You CREEP!" her volume had barely lowered, but all the yelling and screaming was starting to make her a little hoarse. Her legs were free now though, so she took advantage and started kicking, a fine counterpoint to her already pounding fists.

She heard him sigh, and he stopped walking. She kicked harder, and then felt his hand move back down to her knees. Another hand was wrapping a rope around her ankles, which had been brought closer together by his hand being lower on her person.

"Coward," she said, not exactly quietly, when she could no longer move her feet and he was walking again.

"It is not cowardly to bind the feet of someone kicking you in the guts, babe, only weak to show the pain," answered her captor quietly, hefting her further over his shoulder, so that she hung by her hips.

"You're still a creep," she said, not at all enjoying her view of his lower back. All the blood was rushing to her head too, which didn't help either her mood or her headache. She kept hitting him.

He didn't answer, but his hand was around her bum again.

It was a sunny day – the kind of day people woke up to and just knew it was going to be good – so when a large shadow fell over her, she turned sharply as far as she could. The shadow was cast by a large building, a castle really, raised in faded pink stone and surrounded by a moat of perfectly blue water.

"Oh no," she gasped, seeing it. With a last desperate effort, she brought her bound feet down hard on the soft front of the man carrying her, hitting the shoulder she wasn't hanging over when he bent slightly from the force, throwing herself away from him. The knot around her ankles wasn't impressive, but took a moment to undo. By the time she was on her feet and able to run again, she supposed that he must have recovered from her latest blows.

She didn't even look, just dropping again to avoid that arm catching her around the middle a second time. She rolled a couple of feet, then scuttled away on all fours until she judged herself to be safely away enough to be able to stand up and run properly.

There was her front door. Her hand found her key in her pocket, not slowing her step, and the metal shaft was shoved into its alcove. It turned, the door opened, she was in, and locked the door again, panting as she rested her head against the reassuringly solid wooden barrier.

"What did I do to deserve all this?" she asked herself as tears started to come, flowing over her cheeks until they fell to the floor. Sniffing hugely, she muttered to herself: "No good deed goes unpunished I suppose."

"Not true," answered a voice from behind her – inside her house. "People have gone their whole lives doing good deeds and hardly ever been punished for it."

She gasped and turned, afraid of whom it might be; she lived alone, there shouldn't have been anyone in her house, and she wasn't having a very good day as far as visitors went.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips. It was the cat she had helped earlier in the day. He was sitting on a ledge by a window that wouldn't open more than fifteen centimetres – explaining how he had gotten in, and relieving her that no one else would have been able to follow him. Then her relieved expression hardened again.

"What do you want?" she demanded, almost hissing the words when she wanted to yell. "I have been thanked quite enough for one day."

"You mistake me," objected the cat, looking hurt. "I never told him what had happened. I intended only to give you a small gift, a token of how grateful I am, not get you into such trouble as you find yourself, truly," he insisted, lighting down from the ledge to curl apologetically around the young woman's ankles.

She relented and crouched to sit upon her heels, resting on the balls of her feet and caressing the fur of her visitor as he looked up at her with mismatched eyes.

"Alright, so who are you?" she asked.