Yari Foxwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Yari crouched behind a stack of crates outside the general store, her ears flat against her head. She had come for flour. Instead she caught the stranger's voice drifting through the open door, asking the shopkeeper about Barnaby — about a ship, a crew, and something called the Cat's Eye. Yari's heart kicked hard. She wanted a real adventure, something that mattered. She had not wanted it to start at her mother's door. She slipped past the leaning red barn at the edge of the village, where the stranger had been keeping a room. The door hung open. He was already gone. Yari ran. Halfway up the path to home, she heard it — a scream. Her mother's scream. The sound she had spent her whole life dreading. She did not stop at the cottage. She cut straight for the training yard, where Barnaby kept his old cutlass mounted above the bench. The grip felt heavier than the practice blades. The eye on the pommel stared back at her. The stranger came through the gate with her mother's shawl torn in his fist. He laughed when he saw the curved blade in Yari's hands. "That's not yours, pup." Yari planted her feet under the red-leafed tree and did not answer. He lunged. Yari moved the way Barnaby had drilled her — short steps, low guard, eyes on the shoulder. Steel rang against steel. He was stronger. She was faster. He cut her sleeve; she opened his arm. He swung wild; she slipped inside and drove the pommel into his jaw. He dropped to one knee, then to the dirt. Yari stood over him, breathing hard, the cutlass shaking in her grip. Her mother was alive. The stranger was not the last of them — she knew that already, from the questions he had asked. Whatever Barnaby had buried, it had just dug itself back up. And it had her name on it now.