Rowan Hood Returns (13 page)

Last time, he had done so. This time, however, he became stubborn. “In a minute! Once we're safe amid the trees.”

“That's
debatable,” came Etty's weary voice from behind. “Safety. Anywhere.”

“Just the same.” Lionel ducked to pass under the low boughs of a rowan at the edge of the woods.

“Put me
down,”
Rowan told him from between clenched teeth.

“In a
minute,
my dear little girl.”

Rowan's temper snapped almost audibly, like a twig. With a wordless cat-snarl she flailed, squirmed, reared in Lionel's arms, pounded her small fists against his chest.

She truly wanted to hurt him, but she could not, blast it. She was just too weak, and he was just too much bigger.

But she did succeed in slowing his steps and making him grumble, “Ungrateful wench, hold
still
until the others get here.” Halting under the first tall tree, an elm, Lionel swung around to look for Beau, Etty, Dove.

“Let me
go,
I tell you!” Rowan struggled wildly, clawing at Lionel's neck.

“Stop it!” Annoyed, he tightened his grip on her.

From somewhere close at hand in the forest shadows, a man's fierce voice shouted, “Unhand her, lout! Or I will kill you!”

R
owan landed on her hind end in the forest loam as, utterly startled, Lionel dropped her. Looking up from her sudden seat on the ground, she saw him whip out his dagger, crouching and turning, peering this way and that in search of the unknown enemy.

Struggling to her feet, Rowan snatched for her own dagger, the only weapon she wore because, toads take it, all the bows and arrows and swords remained packed and hidden on Dove. The plan had been to leave the things out of sight until mantled in the safety of Celandine's Wood.

Safety?

Beau and Etty stood just within the shelter of the trees, frozen, staring. Dagger in hand, Rowan staggered two steps toward Dove, toward her bow and arrows, but then she stiffened and stared as well.

At something pale and uncanny.

Out of the shadows of elm, ash and maple sprang a scrawny, bony, nearly naked man—capering. Like a child playing horsie, he galloped on his own two bare feet toward Lionel, flailing at the air with a broadsword that looked as if it had been used to chop firewood. Pulling on imaginary reins, he drew his horse of air to a halt with his left—hand? No, just the stump of his wrist. Perhaps he imagined a hand there, as he seemed to be imagining reins and steed.

His was the unlined face of a young man, yet hair as white as bone sprouted wildly from his head, white hair tangled in elf-knots as thick as a fist, long enough to brush his shoulders. Over a crooked nose that had more than once been broken, his bushy white eyebrows joined so that a single scowling line, chalky against his weathered skin, crossed his forehead. He wore only rags wrapped around his middle.

Woodwouse. Wild man.

Flourishing his battered sword and glowering up at Lionel, facing the much larger youth without any sign of fear—indeed, within arm's reach—the one-handed man ordered, “Go. The woodwife sleeps in her woods, and I stand guard. No one comes here. Get you hence.”

Lionel sheathed his dagger, lifting both hands in a gesture of peace. But he seemed at a loss for words. “I, um,” he said, “we, um, we—”

“Go, I tell you!” The wild man crouched as if to strike, his voice louder, more threatening. “No one shall trouble Celandine ever again. Get out!”

Lionel took a step back.

Rowan took a step forward and called, “Jasper.”

The wild man's sword wavered, and his eyes turned to her, widening. Then they narrowed and he shook his head. “You are not my wife,” he said.

“But you
are
Jasper of the Sinister Hand.”

“No more!” It was fey, almost wyrd, the smoothness of this wild man's face, and there was something wrong, fixed and glittering about the look in his eyes. Fiercely, gaily he brandished his left arm with its stump of wrist. “No more bad hand. I cut it off.”

Rowan felt both her breath and her heart stop for a moment. In that moment she heard Beau and Etty gasp.

“He's lost his mind,” Beau murmured.

Yes, Rowan knew, it was true. The man was crazed. Jasper of the Sinister Hand ran mad.

“Left hand,” Etty breathed, standing close behind Rowan. “That's the one he cut off. He is—was—left-handed, that's all.
Dexter
means right,
sinister
means left.”

At the same time Jasper declared, “It must never lift sword or torch again. Never.”

Rowan knew, but did not care, that the man was mad. It mattered only who he was. Her breath and voice returned in a blaze. “You set fire to the cottage thatch!”

“Four of us did. One at each corner.” Again the man looked at her, and this time his face paled, and he staggered, ashen. His heavy sword dropped from his limp hand to the forest loam. He whispered, “You—you are the daughter of Celandine.”

“Yes.” The word far sharper than the fallen sword. To Rowan's knowledge the man had never seen her before, yet it surprised her not at all that he recognized her. Their meeting felt fated.

“But how does he know her?” Etty cried. “No one in the village—”

Jasper addressed Rowan as if the question had come from her. “Your angry spirit has haunted the grove since the coltsfoot bloomed. Day and night, your vengeful face floating like a shadowed oval moon before my eyes.”

“Lady have mercy.” Etty's voice had dropped to a whisper.

Lionel murmured, “So that's what happened to her.”

Ignoring both of them, Rowan gave Jasper of the Sinister Hand a curt nod. Turning her head slightly, to those behind her she said, “Somebody get me my bow.”

Etty answered in a hard voice, “Get it yourself.”

Without fear Rowan turned her back on Jasper to look at Ettarde. The princess met her commanding stare defiantly, without flinching. Rowan looked at Beau, who hunched her shoulders and turned her head away but did not move from the place where she stood.

Lionel remained at guard, towering over the strange wild man, standing between him and the others but laying no hand upon him.

Lips pressed together, Rowan limped past Etty and Beau to Dove—the pony stood browsing on the shoots of young blackthorn. Hanging on to Dove's mane to support herself, Rowan fumbled one-handed at the fastenings that bound the pack. There were many. The task of untying them took time. Somewhere in the branches overhead a wryneck bird sounded its hissing cry, again and again. Minutes passed, yet no one moved or spoke.

At last Rowan found her bow and arrows. She strung the bow, took a single elf-bolt from the sheaf and limped back toward Jasper of the—Jasper of the woods, now. Woodwouse. Hair white with suffering, coiled with insanity. He stood waiting for her.

Lionel broke the silence, his voice hoarse. “Rowan, no. Don't.”

“I must. I took a vow—”

“But you can't just kill a man ...”

“You
can't,” Rowan retorted, for Lionel had refused to hate his murderous father. At the time, she remembered, she had admired his uncanny gentleness. But now she felt nothing but annoyance at his interference. That, and a cold wind blowing in the hollow of her empty heart. And sharp, stubborn anger like a spear point at her back to drive her onward.

The wild man, Jasper, faced her with a wide-eyed, childlike gaze. “You are going to kill me?”

“Mine is the blood right. You killed my mother.”

He blinked, then as if he had not understood, he asked again, “You are going to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” His eyes glittered, happy. “I am a bad hand. Cut me off.”

“No,” Lionel begged.

“Yes,” said the woodwouse. “I cannot sleep; I hear voices in the moonlight. I cannot eat; I see blood on the grass in the sunshine. I am glad to die, if it is quick. Daughter of Celandine, how will you do it?”

The answer: a single arrow to the heart. But Rowan found that she could not answer. She could not speak. Some invisible, inexorable fist had taken hold of her throat. Scarcely ten paces away from Jasper she stopped, nocked her arrow, leaned into the arc of her bow and pulled the string back to her ear, taking aim at his naked chest.

This was her moment.

This was her vengeance.

This was her right. The blood right.

And they all knew it. No one moved to stop her.

He—the villain—Jasper could have run away. In her pain, Rowan moved slowly. Almost she offered him a chance to run. But he faced her with his mad mouth open in a smile, his eyes wide open and fixed upon her, sparkling like gemstones. “Quick,” he repeated.

No one else spoke. Beau, Etty and Lionel stood mute as stones. Why did they only stare in horror? Why did they not speak?
No, Rowan, don't!
they should have been begging. Why would they not help her defy them?

Every muscle and nerve stretched and taut, Rowan trembled with strain. She found her eyes blurring, burning; she wanted to close them and had to force herself to keep them open. Daughter of Celandine, the villain called her? She did not deserve to be so titled, did not deserve to be called Rowan Hood, daughter of Robin, either. She hated herself, her own weakness.

Clenching her teeth, Rowan let the arrow fly.

T
he bolt sprang from the bow.

Singing an arrow's swift zinging song of death.

But that elf-bolt seemingly trailed a harp string of gold to tear open Rowan's heart. It was not the arrow's song, but Lionel's, that she heard in her mind:

The instant that bolt flew, while her eyes still met her victim's, all the goodness that had ever been Rowan Hood rushed back into her. With her whole body, spirit and soul she remembered what it really meant to be the daughter of Celandine, and she would have given her life to have that arrow back in her hand. She remembered what it really meant to be the daughter of Robin Hood, and the horror of what she had done knifed through her with the worst pain she had ever known.

Dropping her bow, she screamed, “No!”

But the arrow struck.

Jasper fell.

“No!” Sobbing aloud, Rowan ran to him and plunged to her knees beside him, weeping so hard she could barely see, could not tell whether he was alive or dead. Blindly her hands felt at his bare, ribby chest, encountering blood, encountering the shaft of her arrow. Pressing there to stop the bleeding, she choked out between sobs, “Is he—is he dead?”

Without waiting for anyone to speak, she knew: No, he was not dead. Not yet. Under her hands she could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, could feel the muffled rhythm of his heartbeat.

She had to save him.

But how? She had no aelfin powers anymore, and not even any of the helps such as an ordinary nurse might use, no healing herbs, no—

Water. It was water she needed most. The magical, healing sweetwater of Celandine's spring.

There was no time to be wasted crying. Dashing the tears from her eyes with her fists, Rowan leapt to her feet. “Lionel!” she cried to that large personage close at hand. “Bring him, follow me. Hurry!” She ran.

Like a deer she ran into the woodland where she had spent her childhood. She knew every turning, every tussock, every tree, yet all seemed eerie, strange for being so unchanged. And small. Linden, oak, elm, hazel, and then seemingly after no time at all, she burst into the clearing where the cottage had once stood.

Celandine's glade.

There the grass grew velvety thick and green, as it always had. Greensward covered the hummocky ground where the cottage had stood. That, and something more: lilting long-stemmed yellow flowers clustered everywhere, glowing almost as bright as the sunlight, the golden westering light of late day.

But there was no time to look at flowers. Whirling, Rowan saw that, yes, the others had followed her, with Lionel in the lead, the injured man in his arms.

“Does he yet breathe?” Rowan demanded.

“Yes, indeed.” An odd sort of kink choked Lionel's voice.

“Lay him down gently on the grass. Cover him, keep him warm. And somebody bring me water from the spring.” Rowan pointed the direction toward where the sweetwater flowed at the far end of Celandine's glade.

“Hurry.” She drew her dagger, snatched up the hem of the long tunic she wore and slashed into it in order to use the cloth for bandaging.

But as she tore the first strip of cloth, she realized: Lionel had not laid the hurt man down on the grass. No one had gone for blankets or water. They were all just standing there.

Rowan glanced up to look at Etty, Lionel and Beau. Three in a row, watching her with an expression on their faces that seemed utterly unfitting.

“What are you smiling at?” Rowan yelled.

Etty said, “We're glad to have you back.” Tears shone in her eyes—tears of happiness?

“What?” Had they all gone mad? Rowan stamped her foot. “I shot that man. He could die. I need water to wash his wound. Go get—”

“Rowan, take a breath.” The quirk in Lionel's voice, as if he might either laugh or cry, made her listen to him. “Sir Jasper is all right.” Lionel set the white-haired woodwouse down on the ground as Rowan had ordered, but instead of sprawling there in a faint as Rowan expected, the man sat up, alert and silent, looking at her.