I am at home - a different home from the one I live in now - with my children. They are all adults, even as they are now, and although I know all five are there, my interaction is only with three of them. The home is a large house, very old, dark, drafty, and impossible to keep clean. I feel frustrated and trapped.
My oldest daughter, Ida, comes to me and tells me that she has invited a couple of her friends for a sleepover. Before I could say anything, she goes off and soon my youngest son crosses my path. He has a large jar with many different leaves and branches in it. He tells me that his dad bought him this exotic cricket, and indeed I see a small black insect crawling around in the bottle. Vaguely I recall that these bugs are now all the rage and fad with young people.
I go upstairs to the bedrooms and see something large and black scurry by my feet. And another one. It slows down only long enough for me to see that it's like the bug in my son's jar, but much larger, about two inches long, with a hard exo-skeleton. The two are joined by three more, and now I am near panicking, as I watch them scuttle to all different parts of the house. And yet, deep inside me, I know that they are harmless - indeed, under certain circumstances, they can be quite helpful. But at the moment, all I can think of is that these large bugs are loose in my home and will probably go on to multiply into many more.
After a moment I pass my oldest daughter's room. She is sweeping it out, putting it in order. Her younger sister is helping her. She tells me that she's preparing for her friends. "You remembr, Ma", she says, "Emily and her friend are supposed to come over." I am still distracted and tell her that I remember and then warn her about the bugs that are now loose. She stops sweeping for a moment and says, "And I'll bet they're hard to kill because they have such a hard shell". I nod. She says she's not worried, that they won't "bug" her. She laughs at her own pun and goes on sweeping. Her sister doesn't say anything, but I see her chuckling as she makes the bed. As I walk away, I can only marvel at how uncharacteristic this is of them.
I see the bugs out of the corner of my eye as I go outside, determined not to let them bother me. The yard is very large, and I feel like the house behind me has somehow changed into another dwelling. Across the yard, I see another building, like a large shed, and I make my way there. It is now almost sunset, and the yard is bathed in rich golden sun. There's a pond to my left, and a river that runs from it. I continue to walk towards the shed with some new purpose within me.
Inside it's more like a large barn/workshop. There are many tools hanging both on the walls and from the wooden rafters and in the centre of the big open room is a man standing by the forge. He is middle aged and large, muscular, as would befit a blacksmith. His hair is thick and white and his face is sculpted. This is a surprise to me, since I expected to see someone with hanging jawls and florid complection. I don't have time to think about it, because he greets me by name and tells me that the arrows are ready. He leads me to a small table and shows me about a dozen deep emerald-green arrows fletched with silver and silver tips. He asks me if my aim has improved and I just shurg, having visions of my last SCA archery session, where I shattered about three arrows in the rafters of the shooting range. He knows what I'm thinking and chuckles.
"But my clout shooting is good," I say, trying to redeem myself somewhat. He chuckles.
He collects one arrow, a small target and a beautifully made bow and hands them to me. He tells me that we will practice by the pond, and expects me to shoot the arrow cleanly to the other side. As we walk out of the workshop I knock over a small white box and am surprised to see that there are living animals in it. Looking more closely, I see that it's a mouse trap, and while some of the mice were alive, most of them were dead. At the bottom of the box was another smaller box full of poison.
I drop it quickly and it breaks open, spilling them all onto the cold cement floor. The man looks annoyed, but tells me to leave it, that it will be cleaned up soon. The shooting is more important. We continue walking through the building and now I begin to worry about my archery skills. I remember how my arm was bruised so badly by the string, I remember how I couldn't hit the target to save my life.
The man is now setting up the small target, made all that much smaller by being across the pond, while I test out the tension on the bow. One shot - that's all I have - one shot with one arrow, to hit that target. I take a deep breath and nock the arrow into the bow, marvelling how smoothly it slides into place...
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