The whistle blows. Arrows rasp from quivers, woosh, and thunk. Daryl's not used to shooting a bow in line with other people. The sound distracts him, and his first two shots with the compound bow land in the black. By the third, though, he's made it to the blue, and by the fourth to the red. By the fifth shot, he's grown accustomed to the rhythmic rasp and whooshing, and his last two arrows end in the yellow.

The arrows are recovered, scores from round one are tallied, and the archers are sent to carry their quivers back to the sixty-yard line. Daryl avoids looking at Carol watching him from the railing as the games master reads off the current places. With only 42 points, he's in fifth, behind Cassandra, Liam, Avocado (Daryl's not going to be able to pronounce that name), and Dianne, who takes the lead with a perfect 60. The faux Indian is smirking at him, but Dianne is concentrating on positioning herself.

[*]

Khalid leans against the rail beside Carol. "Your Hilltop boyfriend's not doing so well."

Carol's not sure if Khalid is being sarcastic about the boyfriend statement, so she doesn't correct him. "He'll do better this next round, and he'll kill with the crossbow. In fact, I'm pretty sure he'll take the gold."

"Oh, I doubt that very much. You know how good the Kingdom's archers are. He might beat a few of the teenagers. But there's no way on earth he'll beat Dianne or Avonaco. I mean, Avonaco's Cheyenne."

"Is the though?" Carol asks.

Khalid shrugs. "Well, he's a great archer anyway."

"I think you'll be surprised to see how Daryl performs. He'll take the gold," Carol insists.

"He won't even take the silver."

"You're wrong."

"Care to make a wager on it? Bet me one of your apples for a return of Daryl's cigarettes. If he wins either the silver or the gold, you win the bet."

Carol watches the last archer fall in line and Daryl rustle the arrows in his standing quiver, the muscles of his arms glistening in the evening sun. "I want that appletini, though. If Daryl takes the silver or gold, you give me the apple schnapps and the vodka, and Daryl's cigarettes. I'll bet three apples."

"Four apples."

"Fine. I'm not losing my apples anyway."

Rostia now drapes an arm over the front rail of the bleachers. Behind her, a person she's blocking grumbles and shifts to the side. "What's going on down here?" she asks.

"I've bet Carol that Daryl won't take the silver or gold. I'm winning four apples, so I can serve you breakfast in bed in the morning."

"Don't be too confident," Rosita warns him.

Khalid's face falls. "My apologies."

"I mean about Daryl not placing highly. I've already decided I'm sleeping with you tonight."

A dimpled grin breaks out over Khalid's face.

[*]

Fortunately, because Daryl has adjusted to the sound of others shooting, he shoots the next round better than the first. In fact, the sound becomes like a kind of music to him, starting slowly, mounting, and ending with a drum roll:

Rasp-rasp-rasp-rasp-rasp
Woosh-whoosh-rasp-rasp
Woosh-woosh-rasp-rasp
Rasp-woosh-rasp-woosh
Woosh-thunk-woosh-thunk
Woosh-thunk-whoosh-thunk
Woosh-thunk-thunk
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk!

When the judges recover and score the arrows, he has five in the yellow and one in the red, while the first through fourth place holders all score worse than they did in the first round. He moves up to third place, with a total of 100 to Avocado's 104 and Dianne's 110. Liam and Cassandra round out the top five.

But then the archers are made to move back to the eighty-yard line, which means the longbow is next. Daryl hasn't shot a longbow since he was maybe ten years old, and that was a toy one.

As he's handed his borrowed bow, and he takes his place behind the line, he hears Carol shout, "Go, Daryl!" and he can feel his cheeks flush a bright red.

Avocado leans forward in line to look over his wife at Daryl. He smirks. "Sounds like you've got your own cheering section. Too bad you're going to disappoint her when I leave you in the dust this round."

Daryl grits his teeth together, settles into a comfortable stance, readies his borrowed longbow, and anxiously waits for the whistle.

[*]

Dianne is clearly an instinctive shooter when it comes to the longbow. She draws and shoots in a single motion, without holding at full draw. Daryl, however, holds. He's aiming, even without sights. But on the release, the string snaps his arm and causes him to curse, and the arrow does worse than land in the white.

It lands in the turf.

When he draws his second arrow, Dianne is already on her fourth and Avocado is on his third. The string doesn't scathe the flesh of Daryl's arm this time, and the arrow at least makes into the white. His third and fourth arrows hit the blue, which gives him a boost of confidence, but then he somehow manages to snap himself again with the string and his arrow goes back into the black again. Everyone is done shooting except him. "Fifteen seconds!" the game master calls, and Daryl, racing out the clock, rasps an arrow from the quiver, loads, and shoots in one fluid motion without bothering to aim. It goes straight into the red – an inch away from the yellow bull's eye. "Well hell," he mutters.

"That's what happens when you don't think too much," Dianne tells him. "I'm sure you don't when you're shooting crossbow. So don't do it with longbow, either. Just feel the shot."

He nods. Then he calls over Dianne to Liam. "Hey, kid! Maybe I'll borrow that glove after all."

[*]

Carol watches the archers move back all the way to the end zone, Daryl sliding a brown leather archery glove over his arm as he walks. The master of the games reads off the places. Daryl has fallen all the way down to sixth place, with a total score of only 126, way behind Dianne's new total of 170. Avocado is in second with 154, and after him falls Liam, then Cassandra, and finally a teenage girl named Elizabeth. That's the girl Carol hopes Henry will eventually fall for, instead of that annoying Rachel from Oceanside, but Elizabeth, at seventeen, is much too old for him. When Henry's eighteen and she's twenty-one, however….

"Those apples sure are sure going to taste good," Khalid says.

"He'll recover," Carol insists. "You'll see."

"He's in sixth place. He's twenty-eight points behind the silver."

"You'll see."

[*]

At this point, Daryl is losing to a teenager, Enid's twenty-year-old boyfriend, a fake Indian, and the woman who married that fake Indian. It's humiliating.

Cassandra's green eyes caress his arms. "Those really are nice arms."

"Too bad they're useless," Avocado says.

"Oh, don't be jealous, honey bear. Just because I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the menu."

"The menu's just for show," Avocado tells her. "You'll feast on a real meal tonight." He winks at his wife, and she laughs.

Reluctantly, as Daryl tries to get a more comfortable grip on the longbow in his hand, he glances toward the stands. Carol's too far away to see clearly now, but she's still there, at the rail. She hasn't slunk back to the bleachers in humiliation yet.

He swallows and returns his attention to the targets. He tries to make the field and people around him disappear, and his mind engulfs only the bow and the target. He takes Dianne's advice this time, and he tries to feel the shot.

He doesn't pause long to aim, and with his borrowed glove, he doesn't have to worry about the possible sting of the string. Once again, his score goes up at the farther distance, while everyone else does worse than they did at the closer range.

[*]

The games master reads the scores as the field runners return the arrows to the quivers that have been moved to the thirty-yard line again.

Dianne is in first place, with 226, followed by Avonaco, then Liam, then Cassandra, and finally Daryl with 174.

"See, he moved up a place," Carol says.

"One place," Khalid tells her through a half laugh. "And there are only two rounds left."

"But they're the crossbow rounds."

[*]

Daryl hands over his borrowed longbow to the game assistant and welcomes the old, familiar crossbow into his grasp. The weapon feels like an extension of his own limb. The targets aren't even moving. This is the first time in years he'll be shooting his crossbow at a non-moving target. Nothing could be simpler.

Every one of his shots goes straight into the yellow, which brings his total to 234. Dianne, uncomfortable with the weight and feel of a crossbow, does poorly, scoring no bullseyes, and ending this fifth round of the competition with a total of 264. Cassandra and Liam – clearly not as comfortable with the crossbow either - drop behind Daryl, but Avocado remains ahead of him with 240.

[*]

Khalid's mouth has fallen slightly open.

"I told you not to be too confident," Rosita tells him. "He's in third place now."

"Well, maybe hell get the bronze," Khalid concedes.

"I sure am looking forward to my appletini," Carol says.

"Sixty yards!" the master of the games announces, and the archers pick up their quivers and move.

[*]

Daryl loads his first arrow, which, for crossbow, they're permitted to do before the whistle blows. He glances into the stands, from which Carol gives him the thumbs up. He nods back, feeling less embarrassed now that he's in his element. Judith, who is standing on the bleachers in the first row, raises her hands above her own head, claps them, and shouts, "My Daryl! My Daryl! My Daryl!" Olivia's mother ushers her down from her precarious position and makes her sit again.

Daryl smiles and returns his attention to the target.

"Got any tips for me?" Dianne asks as they wait on the line.

"Afraid of losin'?" Daryl scoffs.

"I gave you some advice with the longbow, and it helped."

She's right. She did. And the competition aside, Daryl has a lot of respect for Dianne's natural skill. "Ya gotta brace it more," he says. "'Til ya get more use to it. Pull it in to yer shoulder more."

"Thanks."

The shrill tweet of the whistle fills the stadium.

Daryl doesn't score a perfect 60 this time. He gets one arrow in the red instead of the yellow. But that brings his grand total to 292. He glances at the other targets, and though it's not possible to tell from this distance, it looks like they're all in the black and blue, with only the occasional red.

The game master announces Avocado's score as a 46, which drops him below Daryl. "Guess ya leaned a little too far, there, Leanin' Bear," Daryl scoffs.

Avocado glares at him and takes a step forward, but Cassandra puts a hand on his wrist and says, "Don't go there, honey bear."

[*]

Khalid sighs, slips his hand into his jacket pocket, and hands Carol first the cigarettes and then the booze. "Well, at least I was right about him not getting the gold."

"They haven't reported all the scores yet," Carol says.

"He might have gotten the gold," Rosita agrees.

"Against Dianne?" Khalid asks. "Not a chance."

Dianne's score is still in question. The games master has called over a second scoring judge to examine her target and make an on-the-line call between the black and the blue. The judges confer, heads bent, and then the game master walks away from the targets, stops halfway between them and the archers, and announces in his booming voice, "Twenty-eight!" Carol quickly does the math in her head and is a step ahead of the games master when he declares, "That brings Dianne's total to 292. It's a tie!"

Carol looks at Khalid and grins. "He got the gold."

"It's a tie," Khalid says. "He shares the gold."

"Shoot off!" Judith screams at the top of her lungs. She's standing on the bleacher seat again. "Shoot off!"

"Shoot off!" the crowd echoes in agreement. "Shoot off!" they chant as they stomp against the floor of the bleachers, and the aluminum clangs and rattles. "Shoot off! Shoot off! Shoot off!"

[*]

"The audience is calling for a shoot off," the games master says to Daryl and Dianne, and the crowd goes gradually silent as it watches what's going on down in the field. "We have enough medals that you can share the gold. You could each leave this field with your own gold medal and split the bushel of apples. But if you want to duke it out, we'll hold another six rounds with just you two competing."

Dianne adjusts her archer's glove and looks at Daryl. "What do you say?"

Daryl's fairly sure, now that he's accustomed to the sounds of competition and has a little better sense of the longbow, he'll beat Dianne and take the gold for himself. And then she would have the silver and he'd have the pleasure of knocking Avocado down to the bronze. But over Dianne's shoulder he spies Liam digging at the turf with the toe of his boot, his head bent down in dejection.

If Daryl and Dianne share the gold, that means Avocado gets the silver and Liam gets the bronze. And the young man probably very much wants a medal to take back to his girlfriend Enid, who awaits him in the stands, and to show off to his father Roland, who has already won two himself. But if Daryl knocks down Dianne to the silver, and Avocado to the bronze, Liam wins nothing.

Daryl looks away from Liam and meets Dianne's eyes. "Be honored to share the gold with ya."

Dianne holds his eyes, and he thinks she might not accept the tie, that she wants to prove herself the better archer. But then she raises her hand, holds it out to him, and says, "Likewise."

The two archers shake, and when they unclasp hands, the games master seizes their wrists – one with each hand, and raises Daryl's right and Dianne's left arm into the air in triumph.

The disappointed crowd, thirsty for a shoot off, boos.