Archer

Chapter Two

Warning: This is a chapter with graphic content. Read at your own discretion, I would recommend no one younger than 14 reading this.

 Edited on December 30, 2013

"Arianna! What do you think you're doing?" her mother bellowed from the cottage. Arianna turned the bow in her right hand to her left hand about to notch an arrow into the string. Her mother came towards her, snatching the bow and arrow from her hands, and holding it high above her head so hat Arianna couldn't reach it.

"Mother! Please! I was just seeing if I could! Flynn lets me shoot his arrows all the time and he tells me I'm the best in the village! Even better than him!" Arianna pleaded with her mother, jumping to reach for the bow, yet seven year old Arianna was no match with her twenty-two year old mother. Malya grabbed her daughters wrists and got in her face, her brown eyes stern.

"Listen to me Arianna. You are never, ever, allowed to shoot this bow again. Do you understand?" she instructed her daughter sternly. Tears welled Arianna eyes, her bottom lip trembled but her face remained like stone. Yanking her arm away from her mother, the little girl turned and ran, her blackish brown curls trailing behind her. Malya huffed, blowing hair out of her face before walking back towards the village, bow in hand.

"That little girl will be the death of you girl," Old Woman Rachel cackled from her door way. Malya smiled at the sight of the older woman who had saved her life and Arianna's seven years ago, they had been good friends since, she was practically a grandmother to Arianna.

"What am I to do with her? All she wants to do you shoot that bow with Flynn Garroway, and go hunting or patrolling with her father, or catch the rabbits in the woods! She will never become a proper lady if she won't listen to me," Malya smiled sadly at the thought of her daughter being a wild woman for the rest of her life.

"Just because you were raised in a fine and fancy house hold to be a lady doesn't mean your daughter has to be. Look at you now girl, you're living in Tronoly, away from the riches you were raised in because you ran off with a boy at the age of fifteen!" Rachel laughed. Malya rolled her eyes thinking of the night she left with Daniel. They had laid together two months before and she was with child. She couldn't tell her parents, they would either disown her and throw her to the streets or marry her off to a fat old man in the Kings counsel. She couldn't live with any such fate so long as Daniel walked the earth. She was two months pregnant when she left her home with a man six years older than her, a man who was her families stable boy.

They ran from her family and all the people hunting the man who had 'kidnapped' their daughter according to her parents. They ran for seven months. The last months were the worst, Malya was young and her belly seemed more swollen than other women because of it. She was slow moving, tired all the time and in constant pain from the baby being so large. Then one stormy night, the baby was born. Both herself and the child would've died if Rachel hadn't had cut Arianna out of her. There were consequences though. She would never have another child. They had tried, Malya and Daniel had lain together and loved one another countless number of times, but it was to no use. She and Arianna were alive, but another child would never see the light of day, nor would she ever know the joys and trials of pregnancy or the pain and love of the birth of another child.

The thundering of hooves brought Malya back to the present and away from her thoughts. The hidden road leading through the forest and to their village was ridden by four men: Robert Garroway, the blacksmith, Lance Downwing, the baker, William Saddlebridge, the butcher, and her husband Daniel Redwing, the hunter. Malya could see a good sized kill roped to the rear of her husbands mount and each of the men's faces told her that the week they had been hunting had been excellent.