❝ Who we are and who we need to be to survive are very different things. ❞ — Bellamy Blake, The 100

The unmistakable red flash among the dense leaves was hard to miss. I smirked, raising my bow, steading my grip on the arrow as I pointed it at the creature, whose flashing forehead was now in full view.

Oh, I got you this time, bastard.

With one eye closed and the other squinted, I pulled the string. The leaves shuffled. I shut my eyes before I could see the arrow hit its target. My left foot trembled and I almost lost my balance.

"'That the best you got?"

I opened my eyes and turned my head. Meredith was making her way toward me, holding over one shoulder a slimy fish, which was still flapping around under her grip. The sun had reddened the whole bridge of her nose and upper forehead.

"You know, I keep asking myself why I'm still wasting my time with you," she said.

She took her wand out and pointed it at the tree. I looked back to see my arrow had landed on its trunk. Five inches above, on a branch, the webbed feet of the creature were trembling, the same way mine were when I tried to shoot it.

Meredith uttered a spell that levitated the arrow from its position on the trunk before plunging it right through the leaves. A sharp, monkey-like cry echoed through the woods, and the body of the creature tumbled like a rag doll to the ground, scaring away a flock of crows.

Meredith walked past me, the half-dead fish still flapping its tail over her shoulder. I gulped. How did she have the heart to do it?

She knelt down to examine the creature she had shot. I approached her. The long-limbed animal that resembled both a frog and a monkey lay unmoving on the grass, its webbed feet no longer trembling. Meredith's arrow stuck right in the pustule in the middle of its forehead. The pustule no longer flashing red.

"Clabbert," I said. I had read about them, but never seen one in real life. Up close, it looked smaller than I'd imagined. "Wizards used to keep them in their gardens to keep No-Majs away."

"Oh yeah?" Meredith flipped the creature on its back. Pulled out the arrow from its forehead and tossed it at me. "Maybe if you spent half as much time learning how to shoot them as you do reading about them like a fucking nerd, your aim would suck a bit less."

I put the arrow in the quiver and slung the strap over my shoulder. "You know ma hates it when you swear, Mer."

She rolled her eyes. "Ma also hates it when you can't do basic things hunters do, but I don't see you trying to change that."

"I am trying." I dropped my shoulders and lowered my gaze. "Killing is hard."

"Gets easier the more you practice, Teds."

She stood up, adjusting the restless fish on her other shoulder. Her blonde ponytail was messy and stained with the blood of the fish.

"What d'you got there?" I asked.

"Brown Trout," she said with a proud smile. We started walking toward the house, the gentle afternoon breeze playing with our hair. "They're super rare to come across. Not that you'd know, of course."

"Hey, I caught a fish once."

"Which you let slip out of your hands and into the river again."

"I didn't want it to die in my hands," I said defensively.

Meredith blew out a dramatic sigh and shook her head.

"You don't have a fighter's spirit at all," she said for probably the hundredth time.

Yeah, and neither did Sophia, but nobody was bugging her about learning hunting, archery, angling and hand-to-hand combat against her will.

I decided it was smarter not to argue, so I said nothing.

We reached the house and I dropped my bow and quiver of arrows by the well in the garden. Meredith dropped her fishing rod as well, careful not to loosen her grip on the trout.

"Dad, guess what I caught today!" she yelled out as she stepped into the house.

She tossed her backpack on the ground and ran into the kitchen like a happy child. It was always odd like this with Meredith: she spent every morning killing wilderness and trying to train me to be less of a wuss, and then she'd come home and very enthusiastically show dad how bloody she'd gotten her hands that day, so that he could give her a pat on the back.

Meredith worshipped dad. He was a very skilled hunter, and since she wanted to be like him so badly, it was no wonder she had grown to be one, too. They were trying to raise me the same way, but much to their discontent, I put shame to their name with how much I sucked. You'd think growing up in the woods would make outdoor skills be in your blood, but nope. Not in my case, much to my family's misfortune.

Meredith sliced the trout in symmetrical parts and cooked it. Her hands were clean and gentle and swift as she prepared the fish—those same hands that, just an hour earlier, had caught it and held it tightly over her shoulder so that it wouldn't slip under her grip. Like that fish slipped from my grip, the one and only time I caught one.

How did she have the heart to do it?

We ate the trout in silence, watching the sun melt over the horizon from the kitchen window. The fish was delicious, and I wondered if it would've tasted just as good had mom cooked it. Probably not. Mom was no match to Meredith when it came to cooking.

I'd later blame her finger-licking fish dishes for making me lose interest entirely on meat. Well, that, and the trauma of seeing all the dead deer and geese her and dad would bring home and then slaughter in our guest bathroom. But I'd never admit that last part to them out loud.

An hour later, after giving myself a good, warm shower to scrub off the dirt of the day, I walked into Meredith's room. She shook her head when she saw me at the door.

"Of course this is the part you want to see." She had also showered, her hair now neatly combed. "Come in."

You'd imagine someone like Meredith to have posters of punk-rock bands all over her walls, a gigantic bow above her bedstead, and picture frames everywhere of her and dad holding dead animals while smiling at the camera. Well, she did have pictures of her and dad. And me, mom, Sophia, and her boyfriend, Sam. None of them hunting pictures. None of them featuring any dead animals.

The walls of her room were a soft pink. I loved her ceiling most, which was bewitched to look like a starry sky, with the constellations swirling in a whirl of light mist. And most importantly, she had cages upon cages of pets. Wounded animals she had rescued and Healed. Not the types of animals she'd hunt. Canaries, pigeons, cats, squirrels and rabbits. Some magical beasts too. A Diricawl, three fairies and a Fwooper—for which she had to go through the hassle of getting a license, which she waited three months to get her hands on.

She Healed them on her desk, and her drawers were full of various herbs and potions I'd helped her prepare or collect. I may not be of much use with a fishing rod or a bow and an arrow, but nobody could beat me when it came to potioneering.

"I rescued this one yesterday," Meredith said. In front of her, on the desk, lay an overgrown ferret that had one eye missing. "A fucking gnome ripped his eye out."

"Jarvey," I said.

Meredith nodded, reaching in one of the drawers for a tube of Dittany pomade.

"Can't talk," she said. "Better for me, I guess. Mom hates how loud these things can get."

I watched her apply a dab of pomade gently to the Jarvey's under eye area. Its whiskers twitched. I observed her face silently as she worked. She had dad's blue eyes, and the look they held as she tended to the wounded animal was identical to the look his held when he bandaged my arm the first time I fell off a tree and nearly broke it. I looked at her hands—those same hands that had killed, now curing.

The question crossed my mind for the third time that day. This time, I said it aloud.

"How do you have the heart to do it, Mer?" I asked. "Both kill and then rescue animals."

She let out a soft laugh and looked at me for a moment. My sister Meredith, the huntress and the Healer.

"Sometimes, Teds, you gotta learn to draw the line between what you have to do and what you want to do," she said. "The same way you must learn the difference between who you are and who you need to be to survive."