Chapter 4 #3
I left her with that for a moment while I jogged back to the house and retrieved my bow from the room. The quiver followed, though I only took three arrows. Enough to make the point. Enough to remind my body what it knew. I also grabbed my old practice spear and the boomerang.
Back in the clearing, I propped a target against a tree.
Then I nocked the first arrow, drew, held, and released.
The arrow found the center of the distant target, the straw bursting, the shaft buried to the fletching.
I nocked the second, drew, held for half a breath longer, and sent it through the first arrow, splitting it clean down the middle, the two halves falling away from the target like opened wings.
The third arrow I sent high, arcing it over the tree line in a trajectory that should have been impossible, the shaft vanishing into the leaves and then, a heartbeat later, emerging on the far side to strike a dead branch I hadn’t even been aiming at, the wood splintering, the branch falling in a slow arc to the grass below.
I lowered the bow and looked at Gabriella. Her mouth was open. “How did you do that?”
“Practice,” I said. “Also desperation. They’re similar teachers.”
I set the bow aside and picked up the practice spear, a straight shaft of ash with a weighted tip, and ran through a basic sequence, thrust, parry, recover, thrust again, the movements flowing from muscle memory so deep they felt like breathing.
I’d done this ten thousand times on training grounds and battlefield both, the spear an extension of my body, the weight familiar and right.
The grass whispered around the shaft as it cut the air.
When I finished, Gabriella was already moving, already reaching for the leather case. She pulled out the boomerang with both hands, holding it carefully, turning it over to examine the carved patterns along its curved edge.
“Can I throw it?” she asked.
“It won’t come back to you. It only comes back to me because it’s tuned to my hand, my release. Six years of throwing the same weapon does that.”
She handed it to me, her eyes bright. “Show me.”
I took the boomerang, feeling the familiar weight of it, the smooth grain of the wood worn to a polish by years of use. I’d practiced until my shoulder ached, until the boomerang knew the shape of my hand better than I did.
I drew back and released. The boomerang left my hand with a clean snap, climbing into the morning sky, its arc wide and graceful, cutting a perfect curve through the blue before banking and returning, the wood singing as it came, and I caught it one-handed without looking, the impact solid and familiar against my palm.
Gabriella laughed and clapped her hands. “Again!”
I threw it again, higher this time, letting it climb until it was a dark shape against the sun, then curve back, slower, drifting on the thermals before dropping into my waiting hand.
The third throw I sent low and fast, skimming the grass, the boomerang cutting a horizontal arc that seemed to defy physics before banking upward and returning to my fingertips with the precision of a trained animal.
“Your turn,” I said, and handed it to her.
She threw it. It sailed out in a wobbling arc, turned lazily, and dropped into the tall grass thirty yards away.
She jogged to retrieve it, laughing, and threw it again with more determination.
Same result. On the third attempt she managed to get it to curve, barely, before it buried itself tip-first in the soft earth near the tree line.
“I’m terrible at this,” she said, grinning.
“You’re terrible at everything the first time. It’s normal. I was worse.”
She threw the boomerang at my head. I ducked. It sailed past and hit a tree with a satisfying thunk.
We spent the next hour like that, alternating between impressive demonstrations and incompetent attempts, the clearing filling with the sound of her laughter and the occasional profanity when a throw went wrong.
I showed her the basic grip for a spear, corrected her stance for the bow, let her hold the boomerang and feel its weight and balance.
She was a quick study, her body finding the movements faster than her mind expected, and by the time the sun had moved past its zenith she could draw the bow to half-length and hit the target on her third attempt, which was better than I’d done at sixteen and I told her so.
“You’re just saying that to be nice.”
“I’m saying it because it’s true. You’ve got good hands.”
She lowered the bow and looked at me, her eyes moving from my face to my shoulders to the scars visible across my chest and back. “You’re different,” she said.
“Six years will do that.”
“Not just different. You’re …” She hesitated, searching for the word.
“You’re who they talk about. The stories.
The Queen’s Falcon. You became so famous the entire sky talked about you.
And I always knew it was you, but knowing and seeing are different things.
” She set the bow down carefully. “You’re actually him.
The man in the stories. And I grew up with you, which is stranger, because you used to trip over your own feet and cry when you stubbed your toe. ”
“I still cry when I stub my toe. I’m just more selective about my audience.”
She smiled, and the smile reached her eyes completely, and for a moment the clearing held nothing but the two of us and the happiness of an afternoon that had started heavy and found its way to something lighter.
We walked back to the farm together as the day began its slow tilt toward evening, and I carried the weapons and she carried the boomerang, and neither of us felt the need to fill the silence with words. Some afternoons didn’t need translating. This was one of them.
* * *
Dinner was stew and bread and the comfortable noise of a family.
Angelina talked about the preserves she was planning for the autumn, the blackberries from the eastern field that had come in better than expected.
Gabriella was quiet, picking at her food, her eyes finding mine across the table and then moving away, and I could tell she was still somewhere in the afternoon, still turning over what we’d shared on the ridge and in the clearing, the emotional weather of the day not quite settled yet.
When the plates were cleared, she pushed her chair back and stood. “I’m going to take a bath,” she said. “If that’s alright.”
“Hot water’s ready,” Angelina said. “I stoked the heater after lunch.”
Gabriella nodded, kissed Angelina’s cheek, and disappeared upstairs. A few minutes later I heard the pipes groan and the muffled percussion of water filling the copper tub in the bathroom, and then the house went quiet.
Sabrina was already on her feet, gathering plates.
She’d been out all day, somewhere between the village and the eastern islets, and she’d arrived back just as dinner was hitting the table, windblown and bright-eyed and full of stories she’d apparently decided could wait until we’d all been fed.
Now she moved through the kitchen, stacking plates, scraping remnants into the compost bucket, her wings folded tight against her back, her light blonde hair coming loose from whatever arrangement it had been in that morning.
“You want to walk?” she asked, not looking at me.
“Sure.”
We left Angelina to do the dishes, which she insisted on, and stepped out onto the porch as the last light was fading from the western sky.
The air had that evening quality, cool and still, carrying the smell of cut grass and distant apple blossoms. We walked the path toward the orchard without discussing direction.
“So,” Sabrina said. “You and Gabriella. Big day.”
“Big day.”
“She came back different. Whatever you two talked about, it left marks.”
I looked at her. “Is that concern or curiosity?”
“Both. Always both with you two.” She kicked a stone off the path and watched it vanish into the tall grass. “She’s been carrying things. Things she wouldn’t tell me. Things she wouldn’t tell Angelina. I could see it, but I couldn’t reach it.” She paused. “You reached it.”
“We talked about the playground. The bullying. What it was like after I left.”
Sabrina nodded slowly. “That would do it.”
We walked in silence for a while, the orchard trees darkening around us, the first stars appearing overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a skybird called, its voice carrying across the open fields.
“Did she make any friends?” I asked. “While I was gone.”
Sabrina’s step faltered. “Not unless you count Angelina and me.”
The answer sat between us, heavier than it should have been. “That’s …” I started, and didn’t finish, because there wasn’t a word that felt adequate to the weight of what she’d just told me.