Fox Kirby's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Rhys led him up through the leaning stack of shacks. Ladders climbed to doors that opened onto other roofs. Wash hung between the windows. Boys came and went on the crooked stairs, some no older than Fox, some near grown. Rhys called each one brother. None of them called Fox anything yet. He was the smallest by a head, and he could feel them measuring him as he passed. The room at the top was warm and close. A older boy sat cleaning a knife on an overturned crate. He looked at Fox the way a butcher looks at a thin hen. "He eats, he earns," the older boy said. "That's the rule." "He'll earn," Rhys said. "How? He's a stick. He can't lift a purse without falling over." Fox's face went hot. He had nowhere to go if they threw him out. Five days on the street had taught him that much. He looked at the floor and counted the knots in the boards so he would not cry. Rhys pulled him back down the stairs and out to a narrow yard between two shacks. He took the slingshot from his belt and pressed the smooth wooden frame into Fox's hand. "You've one good eye," Rhys said. "That's one more than most need." He set a tin cup on a barrel ten paces off. He handed Fox a smooth stone. Fox drew the band back. His hands shook. He let go. The stone sailed past the cup and cracked into the wall. "Again." He missed again. And again. His shoulders climbed toward his ears. Upstairs, he knew, the older boy was waiting to hear he had failed. Rhys stepped behind him and turned his chin a hair to the left. "Aim with the gold one," he said. "The dead one lies to you. Trust what sees." Fox breathed out. The pale hazel eye found the cup. He saw the dent in its rim, the way the afternoon light bent along the tin. He drew. He let go. The cup jumped off the barrel and rang against the stones. Rhys whooped. Fox stared at his own hand. "Do it again," Rhys said. He did. Five stones. Five hits. A bottle. A nail. A knot in a plank across the yard. He did not miss. Rhys took him back up the stairs. He set the slingshot on the crate in front of the older boy and told him what Fox had done. The older boy grunted, picked up a copper coin, and flicked it into the air. Fox tracked it with the gold eye, drew, and struck it clean out of the light. It rolled to the older boy's foot. The older boy picked it up. He looked at Fox a long moment. Then he nodded. "Marksman earns," he said. "Get him shoes." Rhys grinned. Fox closed his hand around the slingshot and did not let go.