A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 23

Arrows

It came to pass, in the days that followed, that Ombri's memory seemed to return in full, along with the rosy glow of life to her cheeks. Now that she was herself again, the perks of her being began to shine through. She was most handy at mending, lending a deft hand to Enda's designated pastime (which had suffered, lately, from arthritic fingers), and she was a whistler. She whistled while she worked, aimless little tunes that passed the time, and switched to more keening tunes when she took to the porch at night to distance-gaze.

It was here that her own quirky little pastime proved itself a true talent – gift, even – when it lent itself to awakening the weedflowers. It was eerie, and beautiful – and, seemingly, possessed with just the right quality of charm to do the trick.

Ombri was a saint. A charming, mystifying little saint delivered to us on the current of blizzard winds, through rubble doors, in the guise of a forsaken halfbreed slave. Guises were big in Dar'on, but things had decidedly taken to speaking for themselves. She was no exception.

*

I came out on the porch for the evening, my calling working like clockwork inside me, and that's when she said it; “Look.”

I directed my eyes out to the field, where everything was as stagnant as she might have claimed – until she began to whistle. All across the field the weedflowers perked up – ever so slightly at first, the most tentative yawn of light, and then stronger as Ombri went on. I stared, dumstruck. “You do not even have to go among them,” I breathed. How many times had I weaved the painstaking pattern, fraught with the fear of getting lost in the mist?

She whistled them to full strength, effortlessly, from the comfort of the porch. As the sound died down I looked at her, stirred with astonishment. Perhaps I ought to have felt the threat of replacement, but I felt only intrigue at the things I did not fully understand about her, the extent to which the visions I had seen meant she was someone special.

Besides, replacement meant nothing for someone who finds themselves thrust into greater experiences of their own. As far as I was concerned, she could whistle the flowers awake to her heart's content – for, later that week, I learned what it felt like to fly.

*

Having already made me armor, Tanen seemed loathe to stop there. He finished his chores early one day, and went into the city. When he returned, he carried with him some wooden shafts of different lengths, an assortment of feathers, and numerous lengths of string and wire.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Watch and learn,” he said, and so I was forced to humor him for curiosity's sake. I watched silently from the sidelines as he laid out his supplies and went about his craft for the afternoon, guessing to myself at what he was doing until the product at last began to take form. A bow – and arrows. He could scarcely be serious.

“Do you know how to use those once you make them?” I challenged, skeptical.

“Of course,” he replied without pause.

Somehow, I did not suddenly swell with new confidence in him, corrected.

I would believe it when I saw it.

Then, later, I did see it. He picked up those tokens he had fashioned, put them together in his hands, and aimed an arrow out to pasture. He drew the string back with two careful fingers, the end of the arrow resting between them – much like the smoking stick used by the Ambassador for the Angel of Death. (I shook her from my mind, perturbed that she could worm her way into every-day matters. It was unsettling that there were things that reminded me of her.) Tanen released the string, and the arrow sang out across the field in a graceful arc.

“Did you hit anything?” I quipped.

He put a hand to his brow as if to shield his eyes from the sun. “A Crassweed. I'm sure of it.”

“That is not the most efficient way to weed, just so you know.”

He grinned at me. “I don't suppose you want to be the guinea pig and play fetch?”

“I don't suppose so either.”

He bent to grab another arrow. “Come on. I'll teach you,” he urged.

“Who taught you?”

“Well, growing up... I was a boy,” he explained as if that sufficed, grinning again. “I taught myself.”

“Perfect,” I grunted. Something else to enlarge his head about.

“Actually not. It makes for rather crude method, teaching yourself. But I can hit things, with practice. Come on.”

A little grudgingly, I relented my station by the house and hopped down to join him.

“So, here,” he said, and handed me the bow.

I did my best guessing at the classic hold, but of course was still at a loss as to how to handle the thing.

“Alright.” With his free hand, he swept the arrow out of his opposite grasp, brandishing it for the task. “Not to make an advance on you, but...” he excused himself, flourishing around behind me and folded me into a tutoring hold. His left hand folded around mine on the bow, while his right slid the arrow into place, his head cocked over my shoulder to oversee the maneuver. “Now draw it back, see – lower; you're not as tall as me, sweet, hate to break it to you. You'll only end up shooting your toe, that way.”

“You're not that tall.”

“Now poise your fingers, like this.”

I suffered his tutelage, intent on doing my best.

“And what will you be aiming at for your first epically failed kill?”

“Anything beyond my toes, since I know that's bad.”

“Fair enough. Release at your leisure.”

With a twang, I freed my first arrow. It whistled out into the afternoon yonder, a triumphant vessel. If I had been aiming at anything specific, I'm sure I would have been way off the mark, but at least the arrow did not fall limp at my feet. Tanen spoiled that triumph by shielding his eyes same as earlier, and saying,

“I think you missed.”

I sent a glare and a thwack of the bow his way, and trudged off to retrieve my arrow. He followed in search of his, and we spent a good part of the afternoon tracking down the things.

“We need someone to stand out here for us while we shoot,” I proposed after the last arrow of the bunch proved dedicated to its hiding spot. I poked under another weed, to no avail.

“Then we would shoot him,” Tanen said.

“Well,” I said, “That's one way to get a target to stand for us.”

“Avante of Manor Dorn,” Tanen scolded good-naturedly. “I didn't know you sheltered such sentiments in all of your being.” He bent to peek under a weed as well. “Then again, you could probably count on not hitting them.”

I threw a handful of brush at him.

“Oh, here it is,” he said, and as he stood the brush spilled off his back.

“Perhaps we should paint them?” I suggested next. “A bright color, so they'll be easier to find?”

“A valid solution. Let's.”

Sow we painted them red, and set them to dry propped up against the house, and then sat down and spoke almost as if friends. Tanen went in before sunset, and I followed to put a pot of stew on. After that, Ombri emerged to whistle the weedflowers to light – not as if the task had suddenly become her responsibility, but as one still taken with her own ability to charm them – and as I stood outside admiring her handiwork after she had gone in, Tanan reemerged to check the arrows.

“Dry,” he announced.

“Let's shoot one out there – see if we can't find it in the morning,” I proposed.

“Alright. You want to do the honors?”

I retrieved the bow, and selected the arrow that sported my favorite feather. I had it half-nocked when Tanen moved to help me, and I obstinately shrugged him off so as to do it myself. But it seemed I had not judged his intentness correctly, and he was more difficult to shove off than I thought. The impromptu scuffle saw me slip, and as the bowstring was prematurely released my fingers slipped down the arrow shaft, over the feather, and off the end.

There was the vision of a bloodbath – administered red paint – the smell of red-tailed hawk, and then...the shared sentiment of the arrow's last flight. As the newly-painted arrow arced out over the field, disappearing into the dark, I staggered back, balance lost from the scuffle, and sat unbidden on the ground. The feeling of flight – a memory that lived in that arrow, which I had tapped into with the friction of its release – breathed through my mind. In awe, I stared out after the arrow from my seat on the ground, caught completely off-guard for the sensation. As surely as flying with the arrow itself, I had felt its course.

“Gods, Vant,” Tanen said, sounding both defensive and apologetic at the same time.

But I was not really listening. “Another one...” I prompted, fascinated.

“Another arrow? Tonight?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

Flying again was not the sort of thing fit to wait for morning.