Recurve

by Shannon Mayer

  I let out a howl of excitement, unable to contain the wild energy pouring along my muscles and heating my blood, sending a bevy of birds into the air with disgruntled squawks.

  And then, I was there, at the southern Edge, the recluse’s home in front of me.

  I stumbled to a stop and checked the sun’s position. Less than a half hour for a trip that should have taken closer to five.

  “Mother goddess,” I whispered.

  “I wouldn’t go invoking her here,” a gruff voice said.

  I dropped to a crouch and pulled the bow and an arrow from my stash of weapons. I set the arrow, nocking it with a single smooth motion. A tall, broad-shouldered man grinned at me from the log where he sat about twenty feet away in the shade of a small fir tree. He had dark hair shot through with silver flecks and eyes three shades of black from darkest night, to moonlight sky, to the moment just before the sun rose. If I were to guess, I’d put him in his forties, in human years. But I knew he was a supernatural, so I didn’t know how old he really was.

  I shook myself, and relaxed my hold on the bow.

  “Niah sent me.”

  “I know, she warned me you would come.” He didn’t move, just watched as I unfolded myself from my crouch.

  “She said—”

  He held up a hand, stopping me. “Don’t matter what she said. You need a bit of help, yeah?”

  I didn’t answer him, mostly because I had no idea what kind of help he could give me. “Do you have a name?”

  His grin was lopsided, and it reminded me of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “Griffin. In the human world I go by O’Shea.”

  I narrowed my eyes, and really looked at him. “May I ask what you are, exactly?”

  He barked a laugh, which only emphasized my feeling that there was wolf in him, a hell of a lot of wolf. But not werewolf. No, something else.

  “You already know, so what does it matter?” His eyes met mine in a direct challenge, and I didn’t back down.

  “Then you know who I am?”

  “I do. I know that you are blocked from your abilities, and the mother goddess hasn’t given two shakes of a rat’s ass to help you. She’s bitchy like that sometimes when she thinks she’s been snubbed. You not reaching out to her, that’s a snub in her books.” He rubbed his hands over themselves in a dry wash.

  “I can’t reach her, I’ve tried,” I cried out.

  “She don’t see things the way we do. That’s the problem with gods, they only see what they want.”

  He closed the distance between us, eyes roving over me, not lecherous like, but as if he wondered how I worked.

  “You want to figure out how to tap into your abilities?”

  I snorted, and shook my head. “You think you’re the first to try? You think my father didn’t try to find someone who could teach me? He brought in healers and shamans and even a Daywalker once, who happened to be more interested in getting me into bed than helping me, the little green-eyed lech. None of them could help me; none of them broke through because there is nothing to break through. I’m weak and that is all there is to it.” The words hurt me to say, but I kept my face blank. Something I’d worked hard at being good at over the years. Being weak was one thing, letting other’s see it was totally different.

  Griffin shut one eye and squinted the other at me. “Not weak, blocked. There’s a big difference between the two. Just got to figure out what it is that’s cutting you off, yeah?”

  He stood and walked away, obviously expecting me to follow. I hesitated. What the hell, I had nothing to lose. I followed him down a narrow path, the trees tight to us on either side, crowding close and blocking out the sun better than the fog could have. Griffin stopped and I stepped up beside him. We looked over a cliff’s edge, the view stunning as the world seemed to drop away into a deep ravine, the tops of the trees below us looking like waves on the ocean being ruffled by a steady wind.

  “That’s very pretty, but—”

  Snarling, he backhanded me, hitting me hard enough my vision blurred and warm, wet copper flavor burst in my mouth like an overripe grape.

  I rolled, stopped only by sheer resistance on my part as I scrambled to grab the bare dirt with feet and hands, right at the ledge. He didn’t pause, didn’t give me a moment to breathe. Shifting into a huge wolf, his body contorting as fast as one of our shifters, the wolf Griffin lunged, teeth missing me only because I scrambled backward along the cliff. Panic reared its head and I fought to slow things down.

  “What are you doing? You were supposed to help me!” I lost my bow and arrow in the scramble and I heard them clatter down into the ravine, bouncing off the rocks; my fate if I didn’t do something, and fast.

  Niah had sent me here, was she trying to get me killed? Was it possible they were working for Cassava?

  I didn’t know, and didn’t have time to think on it. I pulled my dagger and he bit down on my wrist, snapping clean through the bone. Screaming, I punched at him with my left hand, but my blows bounced off his thick skull. I kicked out as he shook me like a rag doll, the muscles and tendons tearing in my arm under his strength and teeth. Blood flowed down my arm, a warm trickle that pooled underneath us, making a slippery patch of mud.

  He spit me out and I cradled my arm as I struggled to my feet, my back to the cliff’s edge. His dark eyes narrowed and his shoulders bunched. I knew what was coming, but I was powerless to stop him.

  I pulled my spear with my good hand and swung it toward him, but I was too slow. He dodged the blow, but in dodging it, slammed his shoulder into my hip sending me over.

  The world slowed holding me lightly for a moment. Weightless, I fell, looking up at the sky, and the earth seemed to whisper to me what I already knew. I was going to die. I knew it to the bottom of my heart and soul. I said my goodbyes quickly, breathed a hope that the mother goddess would accept someone so weak, and begged that I be reunited with my mother and baby brother.

  A voice that was not my own whispered along my senses.

  Call on your power.

  I didn’t question the voice, just reached for that part of me connected to the earth. The part that hurt every time I tried. But what did it matter if I was going to die anyway? One last attempt before I bit the dust. I envisioned the ground softening, accepting me like a soft, moss filled bed, easing my fall. A flare of green filled my vision and instead of hitting the rocks a hundred feet below, I . . . bounced. A scream ripped out of me as my broken and mauled arm twisted under my body. I tumbled down the sheer slope until I hit the trunk of a tree, the bark biting through my clothes. But I was alive and the shock of that hit me hard.

  I sat up in a puff of dirt, the pulse of green power gone from my eyes. There was a scrabble of rocks and Griffin slid down the rest of the slope, back in his human form. In desperation, I reached for the power connecting me to the earth again. A hum began low in my belly and rose up through me until my hair danced in a breeze. Terror lit me up like a bonfire on the night of the dead. “Don’t come any closer!”

  He held up his hands and then squatted to a crouch twenty feet from me. “I told Niah there was only one way you would learn.”

  Trembling, the pain was making itself known in a bad way, and I struggled to keep my breakfast down as the nausea rose. “What are you talking about?”

  He spread his hands, a smile curving over his lips. “When someone has been blocked as long as you have from their natural born powers or talent, it takes a life or death situation to begin the road to opening you up. You had to truly believe I was going to kill you. Had anyone you’d known tried this, it wouldn’t have worked. You wouldn’t have believed them, yeah? But me. You didn’t know me. Still don’t.”

  Even as he spoke, the power slipped through my fingers and the pain I’d always associated with trying to touch it rammed its horns deep into my brain. I screamed and tried to grab my head with both hands, which of course just set my arm off again.

  The scent of wolf, musky and earthy,
surrounded me and a hard vessel pressed against my lips.

  “Drink, it will ease the pain in your arm and speed the healing.”

  I gulped the liquid, which warmed in my mouth, and then burned down my throat. A curative from the Pit, if the hint of sulfur was any indication. Salamanders were known for their abilities with healing. Distantly I wondered how he’d gotten it. The Salamanders were not known for letting outsiders into their burrow. We were the only ones who allowed outsiders this close to us. I pushed the flask away. “Enough. You try to kill me and now try to heal me?”

  He shifted, scooting back, but still staying crouched low to the ground. “First time you ever touched your power, yeah?”

  I thought back to the day my family was killed. “No, but it’s been a long time. A very long time.”

  “You’re welcome, then.” He grinned and my jaw dropped open. “It’s the first step back, Lark. And it won’t be easy, but I believe it will be worth it. Unless, you like being weak?”

  I shook my head, and drew in a deep breath. “No, of course not.” I flexed my right hand, the pain receding as the bones and muscles knitted themselves together. “What if I hadn’t been able to reach my power? I would have died.”

  His eyes were dark and fathomless, sending a chill through me as I saw the unbending spirit of the wolf in him. “Then you would have died. Your death wouldn’t have been a loss if you were truly a useless elemental.”

  We stared at one another and the truth of his words curled around my heart. “Maybe to you, no loss. But to me, I am rather attached to this side of the dirt.”

  Laughing, he offered me a hand and I slowly gave him my good one. He jerked me to my feet, drawing a sharp breath from me as my bad arm even healed as it was, dangled.

  His eyes were hooded as he spoke. “It’s time for you to be retrained, Lark. Your life has bent you to the winds around you, forcing you into an unnatural state. If we don’t recurve you now, you may not ever be able to undo the damage.”

  “You say that like there is a time limit.” I clutched at my bad arm.

  “There is.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “And?”

  “You need only know time is short. Train hard, and come to see me as often as you can.”

  “So you can beat the worm shit out of me?”

  He laughed and chucked my chin with two fingers. “No, so I can teach you what the others can’t. So I can make you the weapon you were always meant to be. The Enders can only teach you so much, I will teach you the rest, and together we will make you into your destiny.” He paused, tipping his head to one side, drawing in a gulp of air as if he were tasting it, before going on. “You better head back. It’ll take you ‘til your curfew to reach the barracks.”

  Wobbling still, I didn’t argue with him, or wonder how he knew so much about the barracks and our curfew. None of that mattered. I climbed the ravine with difficulty, and when I reached the top I looked down to see the wolf was back. He tipped his head back and howled, the sound curling around me, driving into my soul.

  Be strong, child of the earth. Death rides on the wind. You escaped him once, and he hungers for a taste of your blood.

  I turned my back on him and slowly started for home. My arm still throbbed, and I was beaten and bruised despite the curative I’d drank. His warning should have scared me, but a slow sense of exhilaration began to fill me. I had tapped into my abilities; I wasn’t useless.

  I reached for the power of the earth, thinking I could just take hold of it again, that now I could show people I was better.

  I was wrong.

  Pain lanced behind my eyes, like a thousand stabbing needles. A cry escaped me and I dropped to the ground as I whimpered, unable to even think about moving.

  Son of a bitch, the wolf had made it worse.

  Chapter 11

  Limping into the barracks, long past midnight, I didn’t see Ash until he was right in front of me.

  “You’re late.”

  I glared up at him, snorted. “What are you going to do about it?” My encounter with Griffin had given me a lot to think about and I’d had a long walk. So when Ash moved as if he were going to hit me, his body tensing, I reacted. I spun my spear out and had it slicing through the air toward his head between one heartbeat and the next. His eyes widened and he dropped to the ground, rolling out of the way, my spear slicing through the strands of his hair as he fell.

  He flicked his hands and the green glow that was the earth’s power surrounded his fingertips. I leapt from where I stood, straight back, avoiding the hole that opened up where I’d been standing.

  “Why do you hate me?” There it was, the question burning in me for all the time I’d been training.

  He sneered and the hate was there in his eyes; an anger so intense I knew I wasn’t seeing things. “Because you think you’re above the law. That you’re better than the rest of us, but you aren’t. Royal blood doesn’t run pure, it runs putrid. You attacked our queen and instead of being killed, you were given the opportunity the rest of us have to fight for. You should be banished, sent far away from here. Better for all of us if you just disappeared.”

  “I didn’t attack her, you were there!”

  “Liar!”

  We circled one another and I didn’t think, just reached for that part of me connected to the earth. The pain would be worth it if Ash was trying to kill me; I had to be strong enough to stop him. I imagined a huge hole under him, one that would suck him down and keep him from hurting me. A hole so deep he’d never dig his way out.

  I was wrong about the pain being worth it. The lightning bolt of agony toppled me in a blinding flash that left me gasping for air and flat on my back.

  Ash stood over me, honey-colored eyes full of contempt. “Useless. One day, you will die.”

  I lay there, panting as the pain and his footsteps receded. “No, not useless.”

  It took everything I had to get to my feet and make my way to my room where I promptly passed out in my bed, not even bothering to remove my weapons. Griffin’s voice echoed in my head as I slept, a single word over and over until I murmured it out loud.

  “Recurve, I get it.” A faint glow of green hovered behind my eyelids as I drifted off, and I slept, deep and dreamless for once.

  Still, the morning came too quickly for my liking.

  Someone banged on my door and I let out a groan. “Go away.”

  “Hurry up, you’ve got to see this!” Blossom stuck her head in. “They’re bringing your father in to seal it up.”

  That got me sitting up. See what? “This had better be good,” I grumbled, stretching my arms over my head, my vertebrae popping one by one, muscles aching from everything that had happened the day before.

  I stood, and my body only gave a faint protest. Damn, that potion of Griffin’s worked better than I thought it would.

  I made my way to the training room. Or at least, to the edge of it. The entire floor had collapsed, a hole that ran around the edges of the room so that there was barely room to stand. A sinkhole. My eyes widened as I peered down, into the cavern. No bottom that I could see. Just like the hole I’d wanted to drop Ash into; but this couldn’t have been me, could it?

  Granite, standing to the left of me, shook his head. “Aren’t many who could pull this off.” He never even looked at me. No one did. Why would they?

  But my father, standing in the entranceway . . . his eyes landed on me, weighing me. I couldn’t meet his eyes. The thing was if this had been me, I didn’t remember it. A niggling piece of doubt curled around me, the faint memory of the green glow behind my eyelids as I passed out the night before. My father raised his hands over his head, the power clinging to him.

  His hands weren’t the only things that glowed green, the air around him pulsed with magic, as if it drew strength from his heart, the beat creating a rhythm. The glow expanded, growing with each second that passed until it surrounded his body. He was our king, my father. And his blood ran in my veins, his pow
er was the same as mine. I straightened a little. I didn’t dare to believe I would ever be as strong as him, but maybe soon he would see I wasn’t powerless, useless.

  “That’s amazing,” I whispered, and Granite gave me a sharp glance.

  “He hasn’t done anything yet.”

  I swallowed my words and just watched as the glow gave a final surge and the ground below us rumbled in answer. The earth bucked and filled in the hole, as if the soil were water, sloshing and gushing upward. I stepped back from the edge as the cavern slowly disappeared.

  “Granite, I would speak with you. We have word from the eastern front, I may have to send . . . .” my father’s words slipped away as he turned with Granite at his side. The rest of us stared at the newly made floor. Even though my father had fixed the hole, I didn’t truly trust it would hold up if we stepped onto it.

  Blossom came to stand beside me, her riotous brown curls barely coming up to my chin. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  I shook my head. “No, never.”

  There were murmurs all around and the speculation lasted through breakfast and until we started to train, at which point Granite put an end to the talk.

  He tucked his hands into his belt loops, a grimace on his face. He said only one word. “Sandlings.”

  The Enders working with us grinned as a unit.

  “About time,” Ash muttered and I frowned at him. He gave me a grin that was in no way nice.

  If he was happy, we were in deep worm shit.

  The Enders hands glowed green, the color spreading up their arms as they drew a lot of power. More than I’d ever seen them draw. The green faded into a thick black glow which made me stare at them, instead of what they were doing. Why would the color change? Shouldn’t it have stayed green regardless of what they were doing?

  My thoughts scattered as a blow hit me in the center of my back, right between my shoulder blades. I rolled as I hit the ground, coming up with my spear in my hands. In front of me stood a man, only it wasn’t a man, it was a contrivance of a man made up of dirt and clay. It had teeth, but they were broken shards of glass and rock, and eyes made out of chunks of coal. Legs and arms were thick and blocky, but it still moved with the fluidity of a predator. Hands tipped in uneven sizes of rocks, embedded in the thickness of his fingers.