The thief fell from the tower’s upper window.  She had lost her precarious grip on the pitted brick.  She remembered that she should roll herself up into a loose ball to protect her head and neck.  But by the time she remembered, she had already struck the first branch of the tree in the orchard below.  Then she struck another and another.  Scratched and thrashed and bounced about, she finally reached the ground, thankful that the soil was soft.  She lay there for far too long a moment.  The breath had been knocked out of her.  And she feared moving for fear she might discover that she could not.

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