Finn Ashworth's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Finn Ashworth ran the last stretch to the shed with his father a step behind him. He was fourteen, and the rifle on his back belonged to a man who had not asked if he wanted it. The shed sat low in the scrub, a patched thing of salvaged wood and mismatched metal, and he had been praying since dawn that the girl had found it. His father wanted her dead. Finn wanted her gone before that could happen. He had seen her once, in a market crowd, looking tired, and he had decided then. A pile of sun-bleached stones outside the shed pointed south in a rough arrow. Someone had stacked them in a hurry. Finn read the shape and his stomach pulled tight. She had passed here. She might still be inside. His father saw the arrow too and grunted, pleased, and shoved the door open with his boot. Marta was at the back wall, glasses crooked, a worn satchel across her chest. She froze when she saw the man. Finn stepped between them before his father could close the gap. "She's tired," he said. "Let her cook. I'll watch her. You check the ridge." His father studied him a moment, then nodded and went back out into the light. Finn pointed Marta at the small stove in the corner. He crouched beside her as she struck a match, close enough that the satchel brushed his arm. He could smell the dry herbs inside it, sharp and green. "Go," he whispered. "Out the back. The well house behind the hut. Wait for me there." She did not ask why. She looked at him once, straight on, and said, "Okay." Then she was through the back door, quiet as a held breath. Finn counted to thirty. He pulled a grenade from his coat and set it on the counter where his father would not see it, then put it back. He needed his father confused, not dead. Not yet. He knelt and untied his boot. He untied the other. He waited until his hands stopped shaking and then he called his father back in. His father turned a slow circle in the empty room. "Where did she go, Finn." "I don't know." Finn held up the loose lace. "I was tying my shoe. I looked up and she was gone. Back door, maybe." His father went to the back door and stared out at the flat land, already reading the ground. Finn kept his face still. In his head he was already moving: out the front, around the long way, past the dry well to the small house behind it. He had bought her minutes. He had to reach her before the man who taught him to track did.