uncertain, its foundations crumbling at the sight of his eyes.
He leaned forward abruptly, as if seized by a sudden thought. “Do you remember, for a time you and he had set up an archery range at the edge of the wheat field north of the house? I used to go to that window in my office and look out whenever I heard a shriek of triumph. It was always you doing the yelling.”
Marian leaned back in her chair a little, lulled by the warmth of the fire, and of the memories, and of the fact that there was still one man who didn’t mind that she was too loud and too tall and too strong. “It’s more fun if you yell,” she explained. “It makes the victory feel all the more real.”
“You were always a good shot.” Her father’s elbows rested on his knees, his head turned a fraction so he could watch the fire. “But something happened around the time you were . . . oh, thirteen, maybe? I looked out the window and there you were, standing in your underclothes, a shift and nothing else—and before I could so much as rise from my chair in alarm, you loosed an arrow that flew so straight and true, it pierced my heart as surely as it did its target. The way you looked—in a ragged shift, hair every which way, but full of more grace and ease and poise where you stood than the most accomplished lady who ever lived . . .”
Marian wanted to smile, for though her father was kind and caring, he’d never praised her in words that struck her soul so, that warmed her so deeply. But something was changing, the fondness in her father’s voice giving way to something else, something she could not name but recognized nonetheless, the way a man recognizes the aggression in the eyes of a feral dog, the way a woman recognizes the sound of her child’s voice in a sea of others.
“I could have watched you at your archery for hours,” said her father, his gaze upon the fire so distant he might have been a blind man recalling a time when he could see. “I did, over all these years. The way you have at it, artistry and simplicity together, the way you make it a part of you . . .”
He started to raise his head, to look at her, but she caught only a flash of his eyes on hers. Agonized. Grief-stricken. Then he broke, his head dropping into one of his hands, his voice splintering into tiny, spindly shards of itself. “I would recognize the way you shoot anywhere.”
And Marian’s world broke apart.
When her father raised his head, he looked at her this time without fear of losing control of himself, for he’d left that behind. Tears pooled below his eyes and left shining tracks in the firelight down his cheeks. “Oh, Marian,” he breathed. “What have you done?”
She said nothing, her hands clenching tight at her belly, tangled in the fabric of her kirtle, as though her fingers wished they could carve out the offense in her, the part that had led her to this, and offer it up to him like a sacrifice to appease an angry god.
Marian was crying too, but it was her father’s tears that frightened her so, frightened her in a way nothing had ever done before. They turned her inside out, they stripped away the years, they left her a little girl trying desperately to seem unafraid of the dark so that her father would think her brave. “Father—oh, Father—what can I do? Tell me what I can do.”
His lips creased and trembled. “Tell me it’s not true.” His hand moved, as if he wanted to reach for her, but fell halfway, the strength draining from him the longer he looked at her, haggard face full of appeal. “Please.”
Marian struggled for a breath, and when she blinked, her eyes swam. “Ask me for something else. Anything else.”
Her father’s face crumpled again, and he buried his face in his hands and gasped the words, “Oh, Marian.” He said them over and over, passing his hands over his face.
In the hearth, the fresh log was fresh no more, and the surge of heat that had left Marian so warm and contented faded. It left her colder than before. She hadn’t noticed she’d been cold, until she’d stirred the fire. Now she shivered.