Outlaw (10 page)
Authors: Michael Morpurgo
But the bones would not leave me alone. Night after night I lay there and could think of nothing else. Something was unfinished, not right. The bones would not let me sleep. On just one such sleepless night when Gran had gone up to bed and the house was quiet, I got up and spread my treasures out on my duvet in the moonlight. That was when I thought of it. I was the grave-robber. My treasures had to go back. Then the bones would let me sleep.
It was a starry night, crisp and cold. I pulled my coat on over my dressing-gown, stepped barefoot
into my Wellingtons and fetched the shovel. The stream runs louder at night. It was all I heard as I ran through the woods, back to where my tree lay, its bark covered in frost. I dug deep and buried them all together, the stick, the horn and the arrowhead. I covered them in and left them quickly, before I could change my mind. I stopped, because I heard something that was not the stream. The trees seemed to be whispering in the wind. But there were no trees, and there was no wind.
“Son of Marion,” came the whisper again, “son of Robin. God bless. God bless.” And then I remembered my dream, every bit of it, and I have never forgotten it.
I have never forgotten the place either, but I might have, had I not planted the acorn. It was an acorn from my tree, from Robin’s tree. I cleared a space over his grave, as Much the miller’s son had
done before me. I nurtured the green shoot into a young oak sapling. I let no seed grow nearby. I let no tree take its light.
Five years on, and it’s twice my height already. Five hundred years on, and it’ll be the most magnificent tree in the whole forest, just as it always was. Robin will like that. I know he will.
A young girl faces an impossible task, to save her beloved France from tyrants. To free her country, Joan will lose everyone she has ever loved …
OUT NOW
MICHAEL MORPURGO OBE is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for children. He has written over 100 books and won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Whitbread Award. His recent bestselling novels include
Shadow, An Elephant in the Garden
and
Born to Run.
Michael’s stories have been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, and he was Children’s Laureate from 2003 to 2005, a role which took him all over the country to inspire children with the joy of reading stories.
Sparrow – the story of Joan of Arc
Little Manfred
Shadow
An Elephant in the Garden
Running Wild
Kaspar
Born to Run
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
Farm Boy
The Butterfly Lion
First published in 1996 as
Robin of Sherwood
in Great Britain in paperback by
Pavilion Books, London House, Great Eastern Wharf, London SW11 4NQ
Published in 2001 by Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hodder Headline
Limited, 338 Euston Road, London, NW1 3BH
This edition published as
Outlaw – the story of Robin Hood
by
HarperCollins
Children’s Books
in 2012
HarperCollins
Children’s Books
is a division of HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
The HarperCollins website address is:
www.harpercollins.co.uk
SOURCE ISBN 978-0-00-746592-7
EPub Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN 978-0-00-746594-1
Michael Morpurgo asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
OUTLAW
. Copyright © Michael Morpurgo 1996. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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