I always knew which arrows were hers before I read them. It was obvious. They were cleaner, tied. Except today—today they were late. They hadn’t shown up for a week, an eternity when they usually arrived three days early.
My finger twitched, then twitched again. I tensed my hand to stop it. I stood, going to the window, but my eyes didn't make it more than a meter. Instead, they settled on the wall. The wall had a knot in it. I stared at it until it stopped looking like anything.
I turned from the wall and picked up a piece of wood from the floor. It was rough, crooked, the kind of thing I’d normally toss into the fire without a second thought. But my hands needed something to do, something that wasn’t pacing or staring at empty roads. I pulled out my knife and began to whittle, letting the curls of wood fall around my feet.
She could be sick. That was the most likely explanation, the one I kept returning to. Maria had been sick before, two winters ago, and her arrows had still come. Late yes, but they’d come. Her sister had brought them, apologizing for the state of them, for the way they’d been bundled with twine instead of her usual leather cord.
I nicked my thumb, a bead of blood welling up, red and dark. I sucked at it absently.
What if she wasn’t sick? I’d seen the posters peeling from the bakery windows, the warnings about war zones, the lists on those detained. The were always small type, as if making the fonts tiny would make the named less real. I told myself Maria was too smart for trouble like that, but that was always the beginning of the worst stories. A loud knock. I jerked, dropping the stick, then snatched it up, hiding the knife in my pocket. I tried to look casual, like someone who wasn’t expecting news that could bend the shape of their world.
“Yeah?” I called, voice shaking despite me trying to stop it.
The door opened, hinges shrieking, and for a second I hoped it would be her standing there, clutching a bundle of arrows.