Blades of grass stood like soldiers. A vast and never-ending army glistening in the sunrise. Their shining armour of frost caught the beams of golden light and reflected them back to the sky, creating a winter hue that danced on the low-hanging mist. The cottage stood cleverly hidden in a deep valley, nestled amongst a stretch of ash trees and alongside a fast-moving stream. Rolling hills draped in blankets of snow on either side became high walls, guarding the quiet tranquillity of Ansell’s home. Hidden, tucked away in a pocket of beauty, away from the outside world.
Jude’s hands clutched a warm mug tightly, hovering sweet herbal tea just inches away from his chin. The steam rising out of it was comforting on his numb cheeks, and it swirled around his face until it formed into tiny drops of condensation in the cold air. They rested on the tip of his nose for a while before free-falling to the frost. He stared out across the flat of the valley. The stream he had heard a few nights before wound gently around the rear of the cottage and accelerated away swelling into a river. It cascaded along the valley floor, wrapping around the interlocking spurs and disappearing into the sun on the horizon.
He perched on a beautiful iron bench, with intricate knotwork winding around itself in a never-ending cycle. He had followed the cold metal with his fingers for a while, his intrigue rising as he wondered where the break would be, where the artist had welded the pieces together. He had failed to find it. Perhaps it was one piece of metal, he thought, moulded and manipulated but never broken. Not like the sprawling rose, which climbed a black trellis along the contrasting wall of the white stone cottage beside him. The rose had a beginning, rooted in the ground, and countless ends, countless possibilities. They poked out towards the bright sky, waiting to bloom in the spring.
Where would he be by spring? Was his life locked in like the bench, a set path from beginning to end, with no break and nothing he could do to change it? Or was his life the rose, with sprawling stems climbing off in all directions, each thorn a different challenge, each bloom a different end? He wasn’t sure. Though, when he closed his eyes, breathed the clean air, and heard the rushing water, he could see himself here with Zuri, discussing trivial nonsense like benches and roses.
Pulled from his thoughts, he noticed the figure of a man picking a slow path through the nearest ash trees. He carefully negotiated the wildflowers dotted about the long grass, carrying a hare by the ears, the remnants of a snare trap in his other hand.
Ansell was different – not changed, but different. As though he had two personalities within him, one for the city and one for wherever they were now. Here he was, peaceful and serene. Jude scoffed. It was verging on comical. This brutal and violent man – who had tortured, maimed, and killed so many – was thoughtfully picking his path through the grass in fear of snapping a stem or squashing a spider.
The first day here, Ansell had slept. He woke up on the ghastly high-backed chair in the midmorning and ambled down to the basement, where he remained until the afternoon of day two. Jude had prepared to encounter a bear with a sore head, but when Ansell had surfaced, he had done so with a smile and a pleasant greeting. Around the cottage last night, he’d been quiet but far more amenable than usual. He even asked how Jude was finding the accommodation and whether he needed anything.
Jude had wanted to ask if he could teach him to ride the motorcycle, but felt this might be a step too far. Best give it a few days, he had decided.
This morning, Ansell had taken great care in preparing a hot meal of scrambled eggs, drowned in salt and cracked black pepper. He served it with the herbal tea he was now supping on. It was delicious, so much so that Jude had quite literally licked the bowl. Only after he had finished did a burning question ignite in his mind.
“Wait. How do you have eggs?” he had asked in between slurps of his tea.
“You’ve seen the yard round back and the barn.” It was a statement rather than a question, as there was no way Jude could have missed the long stone building. It was bigger than the cottage. “There's a chicken coop. Oh, if you go round there, watch the dog. She’s not friendly.” He paused in thought, gulped his tea, and then continued, “Actually, don’t go round there. She’s not friendly in the slightest. She’ll probably tear you apart.”
Jude listened, wide-eyed, loaded with several more questions. But Ansell ended the conversation with a scrape of his chair and a sharp exhale after his last mouthful of tea.
“I’m away into the woods, won’t be long. I set a snare last night, so with a bit of luck, the eggs were only a starter.”
Jude’s excitement peaked as he watched Ansell don a thick green parka with a fur-lined hood and trod off through the last of the twilight. The excitement, however, turned swiftly and unexpectedly to sickening guilt.
Now, as he sat on his iron bench in the frosty morning sun, watching Ansell’s figure trudge back, the guilt was tugging at his heart once more. He was happy. Not happy as in soaring above the clouds, but happy as in content. His belly was full. He had warmth, comfort, and increasingly, companionship. He chastised himself as he realised he hadn’t thought about Trevor or Lisa since the night he’d arrived here. He had made a promise to himself, to them, that he would avenge them. Yet here he sat, drinking tea.
Then there was Zuri. He thought of her constantly, though he had no idea where she was and had made no attempt to get back to her and right their argument. That’s not fair. You’re being held prisoner by a murderer. If you could get to her, you would. Yet the pang of guilt itched him once more as he wondered if he had tried hard enough.
The crunch of boots on frost disturbed him from his internal plight, as the silhouette of Ansell approached him through the ever-rising beams of sunlight.
“Hare for lunch.” He dropped the remnants of his snare trap onto the terracotta tiles of the old front porch as he continued. “Fetch the bow. It’s about time we tested those arrows.” Before Jude could reply, Ansell was through the porch and into the kitchen.
Jude took a final sip of tea and dashed the last drop into the snow as he pushed himself up. He stomped his boots outside the porch, clearing them of frost, and collected his bow and newly acquired arrows from under the guest bed. When he returned, Ansell was standing in the front garden. His elbows rested on the picket fence boundary as he stared off towards the cluster of ash trees in the near distance.
“See that nearest tree? With the darker trunk?”
Jude narrowed his eyes. The rising sun was still beaming through the clear sky, causing him to squint.
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Ansell removed his weathered cap and thrust it onto Jude’s head. “Better?”
“Yeah, cheers. I see it now. Why is there a saucepan hanging on it?”
“The tree is about fifty yards away, the same distance you were that night in The Gardens. That pan is Marcus’ head.” He sniffed and brushed frost from his drooping moustache. “You told me you were aiming for his head. Here’s your chance to prove you can do it.”
Jude licked his cold, cracked lips to life and placed the bow against the picket fence alongside the twenty arrows gifted to him by Ansell. They now rested in a leather quiver, which Ansell had produced from the cottage’s basement. He selected an arrow and held it in front of his face, resting it between the three fingers and thumb that remained on his right hand. It was light. He ran his fingers along the shaft and squeezed the fletching feathers. Rubber. These were the same arrows his father taught him with, all those years ago in the back garden of their humble home. He smiled to himself, supremely confident in his abilities as he took the bow back into his hand.
The air was still. Not even a breeze dared swirl through the valley as he notched the arrow and stared down the shaft at Marcus’ shiny metal head. Leaving his arm relaxed, he engaged the lean muscles in his back and shoulder as he drew the arrow. With the bowstring now at full tension, he summoned his focus. As his eyes narrowed on the target, his peripheral vision faded to black, and the cheerful cheeping of a robin hopping about in the frost dulled to nothing.
He exhaled as he released the arrow. It soared across the open ground with a satisfying whip, followed by a piercing clang as it smashed through the pan. A flock of unsuspecting magpies scattered into the sky.
“Not bad,” said Ansell bluntly.
Jude scoffed, “Not bad! Do you know how much skill it takes to be that accurate at fifty yards?”
“Park your pride,” Ansell snapped. “Last time, it was raining, the wind was howling, and you had blood in your eyes.”
Jude opened his mouth to protest, but Ansell cut him off instantly.
“This time, you’re in perfect conditions. No wind, no rain, and you took the best part of a minute to weigh up your arrow and take aim.”
Jude’s anger bubbled. The shot was perfect. The conditions were the conditions. Was he supposed to summon the wind through the valley with a wave of his hand?
“Do it again. Quicker.”
Jude snatched an arrow and, without a second's pause, blasted it through Marcus’ head once more. “Good enough for you?”
“How do you feel?”
“Angry,” snarled Jude.
“So you should. That saucepan gutted your friend like a fish. Betrayed the big man. Spat in his face.”
Thunder erupted in Jude. His hands trembled with rage, his suppressed emotions bubbling and boiling up from his gut, through his chest, and into his eyes. The scar through his forehead began to pulse and burn. Tears formed, though they didn't dare spill out.
In a few hammering heartbeats, he ripped three more arrows across the clearing, each one slamming home into the pan. His father’s sorry face flashed before his eyes, and the bow became flames in his hand. He cast it to the cold earth and turned to Ansell, with fists of rage clenched and quivering.
He lost control. He dove at him, swinging a fist, but with ease, Ansell swayed to the side and rolled him with his shoulder, sending him clattering to the ground. Jude leapt up, eyes blazing. He charged in again only to be sent sprawling back down as Ansell stepped from his path and lightly swept his ankles from under him. The frost stung Jude’s cheek. He pushed himself up onto all fours. As he moved to stand, Ansell leapt in and tossed him like a rag doll across the front garden, landing him on his back in a snowdrift against the picket fence. Ansell appeared over him. His hands snared his wrists, and the weight of the man on top of him locked him to the ground.
“Bastard! Get off me!” Jude spat as Ansell’s powerful leather-gloved hand slapped him across the face.
“Be calm!” ordered Ansell, his voice back to the guttural growls he used in the city.
Jude felt fear hit him hard, his fire doused by the ice in Ansell’s eyes. Then the ice thawed, and the lines etched either side of them smoothed as the snarl dispersed.
“Each arrow was perfect.”
Jude took a long breath and closed his eyes.
“The first was a testament to your ability. Whoever taught you would be proud. The following shots have proved that you can deliver under pressure. But your attack upon me shows you lack control. You must master your emotions to be truly efficient. Be angry, you have every right to be. But be in control. If you don’t have control over your emotions, you’re nothing but their slave.” Ansell released his grip and pulled Jude to his feet, dusting the snow from his coat.
“I’m sorry I lashed out at you,” said Jude, realising he had been taking part in a test.
Ansell grunted and waved him away.
“I’ve been swallowing my grief since that night in The Gardens. Since I lost my parents years ago. I think it just finally spilled out.”
“Get the bow and walk with me,” said Ansell, leading Jude across the clearing towards the saucepan target.
Jude looked at the bow in the frost. He felt ashamed. Why had his memory of his father changed? Why did he see his sullen, pitiful face in his mind's eye when he handled the bow, where he used to see his infectious smile? He snatched it up into his hands and trudged after Ansell.
“My father taught me,” said Jude as he caught up alongside.
Ansell’s eyes remained on the skewered saucepan as he nodded. “I thought that might be the case.”
“The bow was his. When I used to hold it, I’d remember all the happy times when we’d practise together. Now, I just see him cowering and pitiful at the end. The day he chose Croc over me.”
Ansell’s eyes darkened at the word. Croc. Like it offended him deep to the core.
“I used to think that all people were good. That good people are just that – good people. And that making a bad choice or doing a bad thing doesn't make you a bad person. My dad was wonderful. Then one day, for whatever reason, Croc took him. I thought it was the Croc’s fault, and my dad was innocent.”
They arrived at the ash tree and the saucepan head littered with arrows. Ansell allowed Jude to continue as, together, they pulled the arrows free. “After that night, I’m not so sure. Marcus didn’t kill Lisa for Croc or money. He did it because he could. And Brunner, he’s nothing to do with Croc. He’s supposed to be good, a protector, yet he executed Trevor for nothing!”
“Crocheads are weak and gutless,” Ansell snapped. “Good people? Sure, if you like. Maybe once. But weak and gutless all the same.”
These were the same type of words that had sparked his argument with Zuri, that had caused him such pain. But as he stood in the woods under the shadow of the ash trees, he felt as though he finally agreed.
“What made you like this, Ansell?”
“I knew someone like your father once,'' he replied coolly as he placed the final arrow into the quiver hanging at Jude’s side. His eyes teased sorrow as they released Jude from their ever-captivating stare, and with that, he turned and strode off into the trees.