The figure recovers, steering around with her arrow nocked, the material of which Wonder cannot identify. Plausibly, that means the wild shadows Wonder’s own archery.
The sound of a hiss skates into her ears. A javelin of movement cuts into the forest.
From a spot behind Wonder, an arrow strikes past her cheek and toward the stranger.
The arrow stabs its mark, impaling the trunk between the attacker’s thighs. Even in the dappled light, Wonder can tell the shot has unhinged the female’s jaw.
Wonder squints to make out the new arrow’s component. But it’s too far, too narrow, and again, too dark. On the other hand, she has a hunch.
The stranger unleashes a gruff sound, as though her dignity and honor have been called into question. The linen texture of it causes Wonder’s flesh to prickle with renewed familiarity.
The twang of the female’s bowstring gives Wonder a single warning. Her eyes lift and meet the incoming point of a flying tip. It slices toward her while she’s immobilized, with a beech at her rear. In that second, she visualizes herself surging backward, the impact of the blow thrusting her into the pillar, which is solid enough to crack her spine.
The arrow is too swift. She moves to dive sideways, for all the good it will do.
A growl of exasperation reaches her ears, a kinetic flash accompanying the aggravated sound. Someone’s silhouette whisks into her line of sight, a male whose body careens in front of her. One second before the arrow hits Wonder, the masculine frame blocks it, jerking into her and taking the brunt.
Both of them slam into the tree. A guttural noise pumps from the figure’s throat, quelled behind his bunched mouth. He hunches into her for a moment, his hands braced above her head, his palms flat against the trunk. The projectile had slammed in between his shoulder blades, tensing them as if those bones just met the lash of a whip.
A leather sweater rubs against her bodice, the material carrying the scent of old books. His golden waves bow, processing the hit. Then his face raises, his inconvenienced irises pinning Wonder to the bark.
Rancor and bafflement wrinkle his features. Malice glares like she’d been the one to target him, like she’d forced him to shield her.
They stare at each other. The tenacious vibration of a bow breaks the spell.
A leer stretches across his face. He rotates, his bow loosing an arrow that fractures the one flying toward them.
The stranger charges. With a half-cackle, half-sneer, Malice leaps like a gazelle and meets the opponent halfway. Wonder breaks from her paralysis to join.
The elder is mightier, her years eclipsing theirs. Yet her disjointed motions suggest that she’s stumped by this show of aggression within a peaceful land—and by Wonder’s aptitude, as if she’s intimately acquainted with the female’s tactics.
She and Malice move fluidly, bending and whirling as if practiced for a thousand years. They’re a sphere of motion, orbiting one another. When he blocks, she strikes, and vice versa.
Their harmony stupefies Wonder. They’ve never trained together, yet he shifts seamlessly around her while wielding his longbow like liquid, somersaulting and shooting another arrow, which the assailant evades. He’s also on the verge of laughter, as though he’s been invited to play in a sand box that he plans to demolish afterward.
So caught up in the moment, Wonder and Malice swerve in unison. They halt, their weapons inadvertently pointed toward one another. He blasts her with a furious smile, at which she rolls her eyes.
They swoop in opposite directions. Seizing an arrow between his fingers, he lashes it at the stranger’s abdomen, narrowly missing but gaining an edge. Wonder takes the opportunity to cuff the figure from behind, sending her to the ground.
The elder folds into herself and goes still. But thankfully, she’s alive, her lungs inflating with oxygen.
Wonder and Malice jog backward. Her joints shriek, her chest gallops, and each gasp feels like the serrated edge of a saw.
Malice hacks out blood and beams like he’s just had an orgasm.
“Miss me, Wildflower?” he asks.
“You ridiculous son of a bitch. You think this is funny?” she snaps, struggling to keep her voice down. “The elder will suffer bruising and remember this attack.”
“Then let’s make things permanent.”
“Are you serious?”
The demon god spreads his arms and seethes, “No, I’m fucking joking.”
Her nostrils flare. “Stay away from her.”
It’s the wrong request. Sneering, Malice whips out a hickory arrow. In seconds, he has it pointed at the female’s prone body.
“Stop!” Wonder dives in front of the projectile, catching it midflight, her fingers grasping the arrow’s length, then tumbling across the ground and recovering on bended knee. Disgusted, she hurls the weapon to the ground, where it flashes back into Malice’s quiver.
Another shot through the forest, which she thwarts with her quartz arrow, splinters Malice’s strike in half. On his third attempt, she rolls across the ground once more, landing in front of the stranger and cutting off another blow with her archery.
Frustrated, Malice targets Wonder’s womb. She returns the favor, zeroing in on his heart.
Panting, they glower at one another. Their arrows may not be capable of killing, but he’s close enough to do lethal damage. With the right precision and severity, he can puncture the elder’s skull or twist her neck.
He can slay her. He’d tried to slay her, and they’ve been here for less than an hour.
“Move,” Malice fumes. “Or I’ll help you.”
“Disarm,” Wonder commands. “Or I’ll make you.”
“Haven’t you heard? You shouldn’t tell a rage god what to do. It’ll put him in a vengeful mood.”
“I thought you were smarter than that.”
Malice’s arm tenses as her implication sinks in. An instinctive act of violence will prove his temper is stronger than his foresight. If there’s anything he coddles more than his short fuse, it’s his shrewdness.
But lacking any recourse, he maintains a steady aim.
Wonder does as well, thinking, wheezing, thinking, wheezing…inhaling. “Wait. I know what to do.”
“So do I,” he baits.
“You want to be sloppy or strategic?”
With a curse, he lowers his weapon while she disengages to hunt through grass, toadstools, and blossoms. Relief floods her at the sight of a purple lace flower that she plucks from the soil. Kneeling beside the deity, Wonder slips the petals into the female’s mouth.
Tilting the goddess’s head changes the angle of Wonder’s view. And that changes everything.
She reels back. Oh, no. Blast, no, no, no.
Yes, she knows this goddess. Wonder has spent fifty years training with her.
Her Guide looks the same, with those dimples and that sage-colored hair.
Harmony
That’s what the female had named herself after passing her role on to her charge. Harmony used to be the Goddess of Wonder, and now she’s the Guide of Wonder.
A swell forms on the goddess’s temple, but otherwise, there are no lacerations or abrasions marring her countenance. Nevertheless, Wonder’s face drops into her palms. She permits herself a moment, then recuperates just as Harmony would have instructed her to.
Up close, Wonder squints and finally notes the ivory archery harnessed to the female. If only Wonder had recognized it earlier, or if only the goddess had perceived Wonder’s quartz arrows. How had either of them neglected this?