“Okay, let’s get this going,” I said. “First, we’ll get Jode outfitted with the bow, then go over some safety measures and work our way to doing drills.”
“Can’t we work with the horses first?” Jode asked. “I know how to ride.”
My immediate inner answer was, well, I don’t. With regard to that particular topic, I had decided I’d be a horseless horseman. I’d loved my armor during the few hours I’d worn it. I hadn’t battle-tested it yet, but my instincts told me Kevlar had nothing on it. And the sword was starting to grow on me, too. But I wasn’t excited about working with a creature that was essentially aggression in the form of fire.
“We’ll get to the horses,” I said. “Weapons first.”
“If you insist.”
“I do.”
Jode frowned. I could tell my answer had disappointed Bastian too—understandable, since Shadow was awesome—but I kept us moving along, turning to helping Jode call up his weapon. Marcus walked away almost immediately and sat against a tree along the trailhead. Daryn joined him a few minutes later, creating a nice, condensed visual focal point of distraction.
So, I was going to bust my ass while he sat around and talked to her?
Unbelievable.
An hour later, with both Bas and I taking turns providing instruction, Jode still couldn’t call up the bow. Daryn and Marcus chatted away over by the tree. Marcus was actually smiling.
“Again, Jode,” I said, rubbing my tired eyes. Last night had been another struggle. I’d tossed and turned on the hard floor in front of the fireplace. I just needed one night without seeing my mom standing over my grave. “Keep trying. You only fail if you quit.”
“That’s right,” Bas said. “When you fall off the horse, you need to just saddle it back up.”
I looked at him. “What if the saddle didn’t fall off? What if only you fell?”
“Speaking of horses,” Jode said.
“No horses. Go again.”
Another hour went by. Bas and I started to get punchy.
“Go to the light, Jode,” Bas said. “Your most precious inside light.”
“Just feeeeeeel it. Feel it like you mean it.”
Jode smirked. “I’m English. I don’t do anything by feeeel.”
We kept at it, but both Bas and I had exhausted our vocabulary for explaining how we reached our powers. We did it by tapping into a certain purity of intention. A will to do what was best, what was needed, what felt right. Part of it was control, and part of it was surrender. I’d been joking, but in a lot of ways it was like finding a particular thread of feeling. I couldn’t reach in and find it for him. He kind of had to work it out on his own. Finally, though, he did.
The instant the bow came up, his left arm shot straight out. “Now what?” he asked, his eyes flicking to me.
“Breathe, Ellis. Relax,” I said. I took his wrist, keeping it steady, and took a close look at the weapon.
The bow was radiant white, on the verge of being hard to look at directly. In construction it was long and tapered, and looked balanced and light. The bowstring was so thin at points that it disappeared the way spiderwebs did in sunlight. It was the prettiest weapon out of all of them, no question. I thought of my sister, who had a real eye for seeing beauty. Anna would have liked that bow.
I didn’t see any arrows but I had a gut feeling.
“Point it ten feet away,” I said, “right at the ground and draw back on the string—slowly.”
“Ground,” Jode repeated as he turned the weapon down. “Draw.” The bowstring brightened as soon as his fingers touched it. He glanced at me, like if this goes wrong it’s on you; then he pushed out a breath and pulled the string back.
At roughly half draw, there was a flash of brightness and the arrow appeared. Slender. Luminous. No fletching. Just a streamlined bolt of lightning.
Sebastian started hooting and slapping Jode on the back. I couldn’t keep a grin off my face, either. A complete set now, the bow and arrow were even more impressive. And here was a weapon that actually made sense. That resembled a little bit, sorta-kinda, the weapons I knew.
“About time,” Marcus said as he and Daryn walked up.
“What now?” Jode asked.
“What do you think?” I yelled. I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Let’s shoot something!”
We hiked downriver. I wanted to find a closed environment, minimizing the margin for causing damage. A shooting range, essentially. What I found was a saddle between two hills that would do the trick.
I made everyone stay put on the eastern slope while I jogged down and then back up the scree slope on the other hill. Along the way, I picked up a branch about as thick around as a baseball bat, but twice as long. I wedged it into the loose rocks, piling more at the base to keep it upright. Then I took a step back and congratulated myself. Good target. We were almost set.
Turning, I looked at everyone on the other slope, trying to eyeball the distance. Tomorrow I’d bring the radios and use the GPS to get exact distances, but it looked to be about 120 meters or so.