Jinxed chapter sampler

and needed to be avoided at all cost. And what was worse was that Cora had completely forgotten about them. Hastily, she checked her pack to see if anything was missing. But nothing had been taken. She let out a sigh, thanked Wilfred and continued down the road, keeping her eye out for any sign of a Trapper. ‘Have a beautiful day in beautiful Urt!’ Wilfred called to her over the crowd. Cora smiled. Nobody loved Urt more than Wilfred. Urt wasn’t a place many people wanted to be. Not even the man the city was named after, Edwaldo Urt, wanted anything to do with it. She imagined him at parties pretending as though he was hard of hearing whenever the city was mentioned, ‘Burt, you say? Never heard of it!’ Dot had told her that when an earthquake struck the city, a lot of people left and never came back, including Edwaldo Urt. Large parts of Urt were abandoned and forgotten in rubble. She tried to picture Urt when it was the beautiful, prosperous city Dot sometimes told her about. She looked up at the lopsided, grey and crumbling buildings next to her and tried to picture them new and sparkling instead of cracked and worn. She tried to picture the people beside her as cheerful and happy instead of grim and gruff.

15