Armen got a toy bow for Christmas. He never quite got the hang of the bow, so he just let Cindy play with it. Mr. and Mrs. Adroushan soon realized that Cindy would make good use of a proper bow. She spent hours upon hours with that bow, and before long she was a feature at civic events, like the fair.
Soundtrack: R.E.M., King of Birds
After several years, Cindy took to crafting bows and arrows herself. I would sometimes watch her as she listened to the twang of a bowstring. She might adjust it, try it with an arrow, or replace it, depending on what the music of the bowstring told her.
She was always on the hunt for feathers. She wanted real feathers, “for my birds,” she would say.
She tried different arrow materials. “Different stuff for different birds,” I remember her explaining. She tried copper and steel tube, or just about any material she could craft into an arrow.
Then she would take her birds out and fly them, with two quivers, each stocked with arrows no two alike, each with a name. There was one particularly strange bird that caught my attention. It was a steel bird. It had a metallic streamer coiled at its tail that would unravel at speed. I never guessed what the point to that bird might be until much later.
She could let them fly at a stunning frequency. Her motion to the quiver and her perching of the bird seemed a fluid part of her release. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
She didn’t always use a target. I once asked her why. She told me she was more interested in their flight. It was their flight that would see them to the target. If you watch the flight, you don’t need a target. “But a target board serves a practical purpose,” she said.