The Starling Vigilante [Watty's 2015 Award Winner]

Chapter 18

Starting to assemble my bow, I bent the mulberry wood into its natural curve and started shaping the bow with my pocketknife, marking the middle of the curve for the handhold and the edges of the wood for the upper and lower limbs. After the DIY shop, I had paid a visit to the university library, where I had found a book on ancient weapons, the bow and arrow being one of them.

Due to the presence of cameras in my dormitory and the other students of the university, I had decided to make the bow in the walk-in-closet, it's size big enough to house a weapons workstation. And it was easy to hide the evidence away from prying eyes.

After many hours of craft, I soon had strung my bow and feathered the end of my arrows. Being a Saturday, I had plenty of time to make my wares without producing something shoddy, the end product doing it's job. Now all I needed to learn how to use it.

'It doesn't look... too hard,' I tried to encourage myself, my skillet barely existent in archery.

I couldn't just get archery classes out of thin air; I hadn't come across any yet and if I took both archery and self defence classes, Merlyn could think I was up to something. He was annoying enough without having something to pick me up on. And remember, this was 2003; multi function smartphones and a vast internet database were still being developed.

I decided I was just going to have to teach myself.

Trying to be careful not to break anything or disturb the cameras with a tell-tale noise, I quietly raised my bow, arrow in place. The two taster lessons I had had once on holiday as a child started to become vivid as I tried to picture the right position and technique to aim my arrow at the box I had chosen as my first target.

Letting go of the tight tension in the string, the arrow missed the box by inches, it's arrowhead bouncing off the door handle of the closet. Sighing in annoyance, I reminded myself it was my first run through, and there was still time to practise.

Repeating the action many times, I found that I wasn't improving. The confined space didn't lend itself well too archery, the many items around the closet altering the arrow's path and limiting my where my arms could go. I needed to be out in the open. But how could I with Merlyn snooping around all the time? If I was going to defend myself I needed the element of surprise to knock Merlyn back a notch.

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As morning dawned, I began to make my way down to the DIY store by Eddie's instruction. Kicking on my Sneakers and heading out of the door, I ran into an enthusiastic-looking Anna, files in hand. I couldn't just dismiss her; she looked like she wanted to tell me something. And even if she hadn't got something to say, it'd just be rude to ignore her like that.

'Oh, hi Anna,' I greeted, stopping in my tracks.

'I - I think I know how we can find more out about the Allen case!' She exclaimed, clearly proud of herself.

'That's great!' I exclaimed back. 'But I can't discuss it now, how about later?' I couldn't just miss my first self defence class and let down Eddie.

'Oh, okay!' Anna answered, not sounding the least disheartened. 'Meet me in my dormitory at four!'

Taking a breath of relief, I hurried down and out of the dormitory block, feeling energised and ready to go. I was looking forward to see Eddie again, his warm smile lighting up the room and making you feeling happy whenever you talked to him. I felt as if I had some sort of... connection with him. Like I would stay friends with him for a long time.

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Closing the DIY store door with the sound of the Christmas bell hung at the top of the door jingling with festive spirit, I entered the cluttered store. It was only the start of December and I was already feeling Christmassy.