Ember by Gabriel

Chapter 1

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A figure, tall and draped in a ragged, grey-hooded cloak, stood frozen in place like a statue, between the knotted trunks of several trees. Grey eyes watched a young buck tearing at the grass in a clearing metres away. As soon as the buck’s head ducked to sample more of the grass, the man moved as swift as lightning, lifting a bow to eye level, freezing in place once more as a fawn-coloured head came up and big brown eyes surveyed its surroundings, languidly chewing cud as if it had all the time in the world to do so.

The head vanished beneath the underbrush and in a flash an arrow was set to the bow and the string drawn taut against the stranger’s pale cheek. The feathered fletch rested between deft fingers, waiting. His breath was shallow, controlled and what there was of it frosted in the air. A sudden gust of wind picked up, forcing back the hood and revealing pointed ears and a shock of black hair against the creamy pallor of his face. The breeze whispered its way through the canopy, lifting branches and bending the lush ankle-height grass. But the Elf stood as if turned to stone, eyes fixed on the buck, a meal he was determined to have come hell or high water.

Suddenly a haunting screech echoed through the canopy. It was something the Elf couldn’t quite recognise. It had the buck turning and darting away; he cursed under his breath just as the buck paused between a copse of trees, its ears twisting nervously this way and that as if straining to hear. The stranger seized his opportunity and loosed an arrow, then nocked another three but the creature had vanished into the undergrowth before the arrows could find their target.

He lowered his bow, glaring at the last place the buck had stood. He huffed an irritated sigh and stepped out from between the trees striding forward to retrieve his arrows. He was furious with himself more than anything. Muttering under his breath, he plucked three arrows from the ground and one from a tree trunk.

A sudden noise drifted to him on the breeze sighing through the trees. It had him spinning down on one knee, bow nocked expertly in one swift movement. He smiled to himself; he had his brother Tyelko to thank for teaching him everything he knew about archery and the ways of the forest. Without it he would not have survived for as long as he had.

His gaze ran along the length of the shaft to points between the trees metres away. There was nothing, no-one, only silence that followed and the stirring of the leaves in the trees overhead. He must be imagining things.

He relaxed infinitesimally, but kept his gaze centred in the direction of the trees. There was movement to his right and his gaze swivelled, the bow just a millisecond behind. A deer and her fawn came into view and he watched them as the fawn suckled from its mother standing on unsure legs, its tail wiggling. A newborn, he thought. His attention shifted to the mother, who seemed to be nudging at something on the ground and out of view, except for a tiny hint of purple he could just make out through the undergrowth. He lowered his bow. Something that color was out of place among the green of the grass and ferns. He narrowed his gaze, waiting for the mother and her baby to move on, then moved quickly, striding across the clearing with bow and nocked arrow in hand, but the scene that met his gaze halted him in his tracks.