Jade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Jade woke to hoofbeats on the forest path, and she knew the riders had finally found her. She had lived seven years in the small stone cottage at the edge of the pines, hidden well enough that even the crows forgot her name. She was the eldest daughter of an elven house, promised at eighteen to a lord she had met twice, and she had run rather than sign the marriage papers. Now the sound outside her round door meant her parents had stopped searching politely. She rolled from the cot and lifted the white birch bow from its hook above the hearth. A small stoat with pale fur uncurled from the hood of her cloak and blinked at her, ears pricked. "Stay," she whispered, and set him on the table. She strung the bow with steady hands. The blue grain along the wood caught the morning light. Her grandmother had given her this bow the winter before she died, and had told her a woman who could shoot did not need permission to live. Three riders reined up in her yard. She recognized the crest on the lead rider's cloak: her mother's household guard. He called her name through the door and told her the wedding had been rescheduled for the next full moon. He said her father had lost patience. He said if she did not come willingly, he had orders to bring her in a locked carriage. Jade opened the door and stepped out with the bow drawn. She sank the first arrow into the dirt between the lead horse's hooves. The horse reared. The second arrow split the guard's saddle strap, and his saddle slid sideways under him. "Tell my father I am not property," she said. "Tell him the next arrow finds a throat." The three riders turned their horses and rode. She watched the trees swallow them, then lowered the bow. The stoat climbed to her shoulder and pressed his nose against her jaw. She knew what she had just done. The guard would report. Her father would send soldiers next, not messengers, and the cottage would not hide her a second time. She went inside and began packing a satchel: dried meat, a whetstone, her grandmother's arrows. She had chosen The fox-Blossom woods and the bow over the marriage to, and that meant choosing the road. She wouldn’t marry an acquaintance. She was not made for what he was seeking. Somewhere out there was a life she had not yet met, and perhaps a person in it worth standing beside. She wanted someone who would guard her back the way she had just guarded her own, and she wanted to use what she carried to shield people smaller than herself. She shut the door of the cottage behind her and did not lock it. There was no longer anything inside worth keeping.