The Unfathomable Wound

The woman, Sarah, gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as if to stifle a scream that had already escaped. Mark, her partner, stiffened beside her, his eyes wide, fixed on the impossible sight before them. A child, no older than six or seven, had collapsed into their arms, his small body wracked with a shudder that seemed to originate from the very core of his being. But it wasn't the boy’s sudden appearance or his ragged breathing that had stolen their breath. It was the arrow.

It jutted from his back, a dark, feathered shaft protruding at an unnatural angle, its fletching a dull, bloody crimson against the roughspun fabric of his tunic. The wood of the shaft was dark, aged, unlike anything they’d ever seen outside of a museum exhibit. And the boy himself… his clothes were a mystery, a coarse, homespun material that spoke of a time long past. His hair was matted, his face streaked with dirt and something else, something that looked like dried blood.

“Oh my God,” Sarah whispered, her voice trembling. She instinctively tightened her grip on the boy, her modern sensibilities recoiling from the crude, brutal reality of the wound. Her mind scrambled, trying to make sense of it, to categorize it, but there was no category for this. It was a scene ripped from a nightmare, from a history book that had somehow come to life.