Red-haired archer with banner design

She wants to shoot at the Midsummer butts against Tam Fenwick's cousin, who has won three years running and talks about it as if it were weather. I told her a bow is only as honest as the man who strung it, and she told me she strung it herself. The knot at the nock is one her grandmother taught her, a looping thing that doesn't slip even when the string is wet. Fenwick laughed at that. I did not laugh. I have seen that knot hold through a week of rain.

The sign over the butts reads what it always reads, carved by somebody's grandfather: Fate loves the fearless. Oona asked me on the walk down whether that meant fate would take her side if she didn't flinch, or whether fate just liked to watch people flinch. I said I had never known fate to take sides, only to show up. She said that was the most useful thing I had ever told her, and then she went quiet all the way to the field.

She put the first arrow through the gold at the far end and the second through the first. Tam's cousin did not look at anybody after that. Oona picked a petal off her sleeve, tucked it into the quiver, and asked if I would write to you about it. So consider this your letter, and my congratulations on the post in Harrow Vale. Come home for the harvest.