The Threshold

The string bites your fingers. Your shoulder blades draw together, the muscle between them turning to wire. The bent wood strains to straighten. Every tendon pulls towards release. But you hold, and the bow holds you. As the draw deepens, the anchor settles against your jawbone. Everything holds. The string snaps free; the arrow is no longer yours. You let the breath go after it. Your arm falls, empty.

The Way

You feared the string. The bow became a cage in your hand. But the bow was never the cage. Your flinch was. Draw by draw, the string writes itself into the pads of your fingers. Skin answers with callus. The string rests where it once broke through. The hand learns the shot's weight before the mind is told. The release leaves a hollow in the air. A whistle. A strike. Your mind arrives late to the snap. Long after the arrow buries itself, the wood still hums in your grip.

The Shadow

The Gentle held once. Held until the muscle obeyed and something beneath it gave way. With it went her belief that tension becomes flight, that the bow would keep its word. Her hands learnt the flinch and would not forget. At each draw, her fingers open at the first bite; the arrow leaves early, low and harmless. She never misses. She never draws far enough to threaten the target. The string never stays to write itself into her hand; her fingers keep their first softness. She leaves the grass sown with a thousand arrows, each a handspan short of the target. ❖ The Unerring draws; the string bites. Not yet, he whispers. He has learnt to live in the last handspan before release. As long as he holds, the arrow stays perfect; as long as he holds, he cannot miss. He has watched too many arrows take flight, only to fall as dead wood in the dirt. A crescent bruise blooms against his jaw, shaped like the string he will not release. The shot he denies the air, he gives his own body. His shoulder quivers, then spasms: small mutinies he refuses to hear. His fingers split against the string, a thread of blood running down the shaft. The bow remembers the bend and forgets the shot. His fingers will not open. The target softens, then vanishes into the grey. His arm keeps its shape in the dark. The arrow is perfect. The target, unseen.

The Cut