Jordan Mitchell's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Jordan slept badly and woke before dawn with the answer half formed. The lizard would not strike a person because it did not read a person as prey. It read painted wood as a task. Jordan had trained the task and starved out the hunt. Three days remained. Jordan carried the box down to the cellar, set it on the stone floor, and did not light the lantern. They opened the lid a crack and let the lizard smell the dark. Then they closed the lid again and left it shut for the whole morning. No food. No handling. No praise. When Jordan came back at noon they brought a live mouse in a jar. Jordan tipped the mouse into the cellar and lifted the lid. The lizard came out slow, tongue working. It saw the mouse and froze the way it had frozen at the coat on the peg. Jordan's chest went tight. Then the lizard moved. It crossed the stone in one line and struck the mouse behind the skull and the mouse stopped. The lizard ate. Jordan sat down against the wall and watched it feed and understood what had changed. The creature had been full and safe for weeks. Hunger had made it a hunter again. Jordan fed it nothing that night. In the morning they hung the coat on the peg once more and tied the red scrap at the throat and gave the strike command. The lizard hit the red scrap and clung there with its jaws locked. Jordan pried it off and put it back in the box and latched the lid. The weapon worked. Two days remained until dawn at the trial field, and the champion had promised to kill them both on sight.