Shot Through the Heart

He shot the taxidermist straight through the ribs. The golden arrow flew effortlessly from Archer’s grasp, embedding itself in the chest of the man nearby. Archer does not know the man’s name. He does not need to.

Archer has watched the man sulking for days on the cobbled streets of Willowbrook, with the slow gait of a wandering creature. The taxidermist’s two defining features are his occupation and his missing limb—his left arm severed just below the elbow. His face is perpetually solemn. He often stops at local flower stalls, plucking petals from carnations, and whispering tragic maladies into their remains, before dropping them into the gutter. Archer does not know who, but someone broke this man’s heart. The sight is, Archer thinks, tragically pathetic. It is like watching himself from a distance.

As if the deities themselves had arranged the moment for Archer’s melancholy, the healer appears through his peripheral vision. She is cloaked in linen garments and scented with rosemary. She lingers by the taxidermist as though orbiting him. Archer does not need to shoot her to force her into love. She is already halfway gone. Her soul leans toward him like a sunflower reaches for light.

Still, the man’s love needs to be bound to hers.

Archer lifts his bow. The string hums beneath his touch like the whisper of a harp. He releases the golden arrow, which pierces the healer’s ribs.

Within three heartbeats, the love-struck pair lock eyes.

The taxidermist’s eyes waver over her figure. “Hello there,” he voices awkwardly, heavy with disbelief. “I’m Orion.”

The healer smiles, showing the gap between her front teeth. “I’m Zia.”

“The brightness of your eyes shame the stars, love.”

Archer knows that it is his cue to leave. He has seen this scene unfold more times than he can count—the first glance, the trembling hands, and the beginning of something that will either bloom or rot. His part is done.

Archer turns away and walks into the forest until the sound of their laughter fades into the wind. The woods embrace him. A dove flies above him. His boots crush pine needles on the ground as he feels the ghost of rain in the air. At the forest’s heart stands a tree, gray and ridged, so withered and tall it seems to touch the heavens.

Archer drops his satchel beside the tree, his golden bow and arrows spill like sunlight across the ground. He leans against the bark, head tilted back toward the hollow sky. The branches above are bare, their leaves long gone, like the veins of a dying hand.

He is so tired.

He is tired of watching mortals fall into each other’s arms while he remains untouched, unseen, and unloved. Archer’s heart is elated for the mortals he binds to love, but dejected from his own sorrow. He is tired of weaving the golden thread of romance, only to be strangled by the thread itself. The deities told him his curse was a gift of protection. That he was chosen to be a servant for love, but every kiss he has created only deepens his loneliness. One of the kinder deities once said to him, “The most dangerous thing is to love.”

Archer is no longer sure he believes her, especially as he hears giggling in the distance. It is two boys running hand in hand through the forest. Their laughter breaks the silence like a songbird’s trill at dawn. They tumble over each other, breathless and radiant, their joy unthinking and whole.

They remind him of the first lovers his arrows ever bound together, four centuries ago, Alexander and Hephaestion. The boys also remind him of who he once was. A mortal boy who dreamed of love and belonging, before the deities stole that dream and reshaped him into something desolate. He misses who he used to be, who he could have been, and he is sick of repressing it. The sorrow builds like a tide inside him. The envy is unbearable. Archer has to end his misery.

Archer travels for days without sleep or sustenance, as he watches the sun and moon gradually trade places above him. His only possessions are his golden bow, his arrows, and a bota bag. What minimal water remains inside of the bag sloshes sluggishly. Its seams are crusted with dust.

When Archer reaches the temple of the deities, the structure rises from the mountainside like an amalgam of marble and gold. Vines stretch across the edifice’s pillars, bursting with night-blooming flowers that open only under moonlight. The air is thick with incense and silence.

Inside, at the temple’s heart, stands an altar carved from polished stone, layered with offerings, such as wilted roses, coins tarnished from years of touch, and little notes folded with trembling hope. The sentiments are all from mortals who once dared to beg the deities for mercy.

Archer offers nothing. He kneels on scraped knees and closes his eyes. The cold stone presses against his skin. As he waits in anticipation, he mentally recalls the last time he was here.

Four hundred years ago, the deities dragged him to this very temple. They told him his heart was too pure and soft for a world so cruel. They prophesied that a witch would steal his love and twist it into darkness, unless they intervened. So the deities cursed him by making him immortal and binding him to serve love. They called it protection. Archer calls it manipulation.

“Open your eyes, Archer.”

He obeys. A dozen figures surround him, shimmering forms half-seen, half-felt. His eyes circle them. He recognizes a few—Mara, Eris, Fauna, Darius, and the leader of the deities, Lada. Mara speaks first.

“What brings you here, Archer?” she asks, her eyes sharp as blades.

“I’m here to plead.”

Eris sneers, a cruel expression on her face. “Plead what?”

“My curse,” he begs tenaciously. “Take it away. Make me mortal again. Let me love. Have I not served long enough?”

The deities laugh. The sound is like cracking glass.

“Love is not meant for you, boy,” Lada’s high-pitched voice interrupts the laughter, her tone glacial. “We spared you from the misery of it. You should be grateful.”

Archer grips his blonde curls, his knuckles whitening. “Grateful? For what? To watch others live what I have been denied? To bleed out eternally because you all thought you were protecting me?” His voice trembles, as though he feels new holes pierce his heart. “Haven’t I done enough? I’ve kindled thousands of loves. I’ve suffered thousands of heartbreaks that aren’t even mine. Just give me one woman, just one, to hold, to die with.”

“Even if we grant that,” Lada proclaims, “You’re immortal. Would you subject yourself to love someone you could not keep?”

Archer lowers his gaze, defeated

“Love is not for you,” Mara enunciates, her voice adenoidal. “You are merely an instrument, not a participant.”

Then, the vision fades.

Archer gasps for air. The temple is empty again. The deities are gone. The silence is merciless.

Archer has witnessed his arrows bring peace, war, unity, ruin, and love that have both healed and destroyed thousands of lives. Centuries pass, and he is cursed to watch his arrows stitch together lives he will never touch. Once, he believed, this meant his curse had given him purpose. Now, he is not sure. Is his love truly a gift, or a form of torment?

He does not know, but he is done hurting people.

If the deities deny him both love and death, then he will take matters into his own hands. No immortal is truly invincible.

He scours the earth for toxins—hemlock, nightshade, serpent’s venom, and divine nectar tainted with rot. When the moon rises high, he drinks it all. His veins light up gold, a result of his curse, for an instant, and then the glow fades. The poison burns through him harmlessly. It had no effect.

He screams to the heavens, a sound that cracks the air. Neither love nor death will have him, but Archer is patient.

At dawn, he walks back to the forest. He stops at the withered tree. The bark feels colder than before.

He whispers to the sky, “If I cannot be loved, then I will unmake love itself.”

He lifts his bow, strings the final arrow, and aims it at his own heart.

A single tear slips from his eye, tracing the curve of his cheek. He loosens the arrow. It pierces clean through him.

Instead of filling him with the love and warmth he has long craved, the power within him collapses, folding in on itself like a dying star. Across the world, lovers pause mid-embrace. Hearts falter. The threads he has woven for centuries unravel, their ends dissolving into nothing. All the King's horses and all the King’s men could not put Archer’s heart together again.

The deities cry out, but even they cannot undo it.

Archer falls, along with the love he made. His blood faintly shimmers like molten gold. His breath catches once, twice, then stills. A small smile rests on his lips, both serene and unburdened.

Love left him bereft and reeling, but at last, death has welcomed him.

Though many loves perished with him, the world seems quieter. For the first time since the dawn of his curse, Archer is at peace.

He has escaped his prophecy.