It was too tempting a target to resist. He might lose the arrow in the darkness, but he had made it himself and could make more. But if he hit the bird it would be his first kill. The first day of the bow, the first kill that same day. The other boys would look at him very differently when he walked between the tents with his trophy.

Slowly and silently he put an arrow to the string, bent the bow, sighted along the arrow at the dark shape above. Then let fly.

There was a squawk of pain—then the bird was tumbling down from the branch. It landed in the bough above Harl’s head, hung there, unmoving, caught by the thin branches. He stood on tiptoe and could just reach it with the end of his bow, prodding and pushing until it fell to the ground at his feet. His arrow stuck out from the bird’s body and the creature’s round, sightless eyes looked up at him. Harl stepped back, gasping with fright.

An owl. He had killed an owl.

Why hadn’t he stopped to think? He moaned aloud at the terror within him. He should have known, no other bird would be about in the dark. A forbidden bird and he had killed it. Just the night before old Fraken had unrolled the ball of fur disgorged by an owl, had poked his fingers through the tiny bones inside, had seen the future and the success of the hunting from the manner in which the bones were tangled. And while Fraken had done this he had talked about the owls, the only birds that flew by night, the birds that waited to guide the tharms of dead hunters through the darkness towards the sky.

An owl must never be killed.

And Harl had killed one.

Maybe if he buried it, no one would know. He began to dig wildly at the ground with his hands, then stopped. It was no good. The owl knew, and the other owls would know. They would remember. And one day his own tharm would have no owl for a guide because animals never forgot. Never. There were tears in his eyes when he bent over the dead bird, pulled his arrow free. He bent and looked more closely at it in the gathering darkness.

Armun was sitting by the fire when the boy came running up. He stood waiting for her to notice him, but she was in no hurry to do that and poked a bit at the fire first. She was Kerrick’s woman now and she felt the warm contentment suffuse her once again. Kerrick’s woman. The boys did not dare to laugh at her or point any more and she did not have to cover her face.

“What is it?” she asked, trying to be stern but smiling in spite of herself, too filled with happiness to pretend otherwise.