Rowan Hood Returns (5 page)

“Hold still,” Lionel complained. “What are you trying to do, pull my shoulders entirely out of their sockets?”

Etty's voice floated to Rowan. “We're going here to meet Beau, Ro. So that she could hide Dove entirely, do you see? Very clever—”

But Rowan barely heard, struggling wildly against Lionel's grip. “Put me down!”

“But, my dear Rowan—” Lionel sounded not peevish at all, only puzzled. And upset.

The big, stupid oaf. Rowan flared at him, “What if my father is here?” At the bottom of this hollow, in a clearing created by its own great expanse of branches, stood Robin Hood's giant oak tree. His favorite hideout. If he had happened to choose to spend this night here ... “I don't want him to see me like this! Put me down!”

Oddly silent now, Lionel stopped and set her on her feet. Feeling a bit light-headed—perhaps because she hadn't eaten today, Rowan told herself—she stood blinking for a moment. But she saw the troubled looks Etty and Rook and Lionel exchanged.

Rook, straightforward as usual, spoke. “Wouldn't you know if Robin were here?”

“I—” Rowan shook her head, turned away. “Just let me alone,” she mumbled, stumbling downhill toward the clearing.

Please,
Rowan begged the spirits of the forest,
let my father be here.

She should have been able to sense the oak lord as she passed an oak, the elm lady as she passed an elm, the sprites of ferns and wildflowers, and everywhere the ancient, ageless woodland dwellers, the aelfe.

But Rowan sensed no presences and no answer to her plea as she blundered down the slope between horn-beams and hazel bushes.

She could not even sense the presence of the prince of outlaws, he who was at one with this oak dell as Rowan had been at one with the rowan grove.

And indeed, when Rowan hobbled to the edge of the clearing, she found only fading, canted sundown light there. And Tykell, panting a black-lipped grin at her. And Beau, helm and archil tunic and all, perched on a low branch of the great oak, smiling at her.

Rowan couldn't smile.

V
oilà! Voulez-vous,
the Dove nest in the tree.“ Chattering her Frankish nonsense, gesturing, Beau led Rowan and the others inside the hollow oak. Sure enough, Rowan saw, the girl had hidden the pony inside Robin's tree; nowhere else in Sherwood Forest could Dove's white form have been so completely concealed. ”The big
bête
Lionel, he take up more room than Dove,” Beau teased, ”but somehow we all fit in.”

The minute she pushed through the concealing brush and limped inside the opening at the back of the oak, Rowan folded to a seat on the loamy ground, leaning against the corklike innards of the great tree. With her head tilted back, she closed her eyes.

“Rowan?” Etty's voice.

Rowan opened her eyes. Yes, they had all fit into the tree—Etty, Lionel, Rook, Beau, Tykell and Dove—and with the exception of the pony, they were all looking at her. Even in the dim twilight inside the oak she could feel their questioning stares.

“Ro, what is the matter with you?” Etty asked.

Rowan felt a noose of misery choke her throat again. She turned her face away from the question.

“Bah.” The growl came from Rook. “Food first. Talk later. Here.” Reaching into his jerkin, he pulled out a packet and tossed it to Lionel. He flung one to Beau, also, and one to Etty, but he leaned over to place Rowan's in her hands. Then he pulled out one more for himself, settled back on his haunches and tore it open.

“But—but—” Undoing the rag of muslin that enfolded his portion, Lionel nearly babbled with excitement. “But this is cheese! Heavenly yellow cheese and barley bread and—by my beard, dried apples!”

“You don't have a beard,” Etty said. “Dried pears, I think.”

“Apples, pears, I care not,
where
did it come from?”

“While my uncle's men were bullying Rowan, Rook robbed their horses' saddlebags, of course.” Etty stated this as if she had expected nothing less. “Thank you, Rook.”

He actually replied. “You're welcome.”

Cheese, bread and fruit were a treat for any outlaw; the usual fare in Sherwood Forest was meat, meat and more meat. Nibbling at the good food, Rowan felt sick with hunger, yet had to force herself to chew and swallow. After eating less than half her portion, Rowan sighed, pushed the rest away and leaned back.

“Don't you want that?” Lionel asked.

There was a ripple of laughter, and even Rowan almost smiled, feeling a bit better now that she'd eaten. Trust Lionel to beg for food. “Toads have laid their eggs in it,” she told him.

“Ew!” But then, rather doubtfully Lionel inquired, “May I have it anyway?”

Etty picked up a bit of wood and tossed it at Lionel's head.

“Ow!” he complained, although the chip had hit him with all the force of a feather.

“For the love of mercy, Lionel, hush.” In the near-darkness within the hollow oak, Rowan could feel Etty studying her. “Rowan,” the outlaw princess demanded—softly, but with authority to command—“what's wrong?”

Silence. Listening for the forest to help her answer, Rowan heard the distant nightfall song of a thrush, but she could not hear the breathing of the oak within which she sat, or feel its embrace.

She felt only the patience of her friends waiting for an answer. Which was all she could give them.

Although feeling not quite as numb and heavy as the night before, Rowan still had to struggle to speak. Slowly she told them, “I think—I think I'm not Rowan anymore.”

Silence cried out for a moment before Rook asked in his matter-of-fact way, “If not Rowan, then who are you?”

“I think—I'm just Rosemary.”

Again silence screamed. Again it was Rook who spoke. “Why?”

“I don't—I can't hear the stones breathing anymore. This oak”—Rowan touched the ridgy inner wood against which she leaned—“it's just an oak, it doesn't welcome me. I felt no spirit in any tree I encountered today, or in running water, or in ferns, flowers, air, sky, anything.”

Silence, in which Rowan felt their stares. In the hush of dusk, a nightingale added its song to that of the thrush.

“At the rowan grove, I can't converse with the spring.” Rowan leaned toward the others, laboring to explain, her words faltering much as her feet had been stumbling all day. ”The rowans said good-bye to me, and since then, they haven't spoken to me at all.”

Rook asked, “When was this?”

“Yesterday.”

Etty pressed her lips together into a line like a knife blade. “I knew it,” she said, bleak and stark. “I brought it on you somehow. I shouldn't have—”

“Mischance is no one's fault.” Beau, usually the loquacious one, had been silent for so long that everyone turned toward the sound of her voice as she quoted, “‘Welcome the stormwind of the soul, for it sweeps all clean and prepares it for a new day's sunrise.' Marcus Aurelius.”

Etty's eyes widened. “I don't remember that in Marcus Aurelius.”

“So, maybe it was Cicero.
Peu importe;
no matter. We need a fire.”

“We need music.” Lionel reached for the bag in which he kept his harp.

Both Lionel and Beau were trying to offer the same thing: comfort.

Rook, however, bespoke the hard thing that Ro had not yet mentioned. “You can't tell where Robin is.”

Ro's eyes filled with tears, but she sobbed only once before she checked herself.

She did not need to answer. That small sound had answered for her.

Without a word, Beau struck her steel dagger blade with a shard of flint she carried for that purpose. She struck again, with a chuffing sound, and again, making sparks fly in a bright shower to sprinkle a handful of pulpy tinder. She did not stop until tiny flames sprouted from the dry, powdery wood.

Rowan could see the others now, or at least their faces hovering in the firelight like four tawny oval moons.

Eyes on the flames, Etty murmured, “Well thought, Beau. It's safe enough, a campfire in here, if we don't let it get too big.”

“Like me, perhaps?” Lionel inquired.

No one answered the joke.

Rook said, “Rowan.”

Not just Rowan looked to him; they all did. When Rook spoke at all, he spoke like an arrow to the mark, always.

Rook said, “What you have lost is nothing any of us need to survive. Beau cannot see spirits. I cannot converse with trees. Ettarde cannot find hidden water. Lionel cannot tell where his father is.”

Rowan thought about that for a moment, then mumbled, “I see.”

“See what?” Etty asked. “I don't.”

“That I'm being a crybaby. It is no loss for me to be like the rest of you.”

“But it is loss! You are part aelfin—”

“Bah.” Rook's gruff voice took over again. “Speak no more of spirits. What use are spirits when she can't even walk?”

Somehow the weakness in her legs seemed to Rowan of less importance than the hollow in her heart. Yet Rook was right. An outlaw could live without seeing the faces of the aelfe in the mists that rose between the oak trees, but no outlaw could live without walking.

“My legs are much worse today,” Rowan admitted. Somehow she was able to speak more easily now. “I don't know why.”

“You're all but crippled,” Rook said.

No one else spoke, but Rowan knew well enough what they were thinking: that a tall man striding a straight line through the forest would take two weeks or more to reach Celandine's Wood from here. Longer, if he needed to hunt and forage food to eat. A full cycle of the moon. That was how long it had taken Rowan to make the journey from Celandine's Wood to Sherwood Forest. Two years ago, when she still had strong legs.

Softly Lionel strummed his harp, its honey-golden notes melting into the bitter night, sweetening it. Etty laid sticks on the fire. Blossoming no bigger than a damask rose, it sent a dusting of pale yellow light onto the faces all around it. Sober faces.

Lionel said, “You can still go to Celandine's Wood. I'll carry you.”

“No. That's ridiculous.”

“It is not. I—”

“La, do not like fools argue,” Beau broke in, Frankish accent rampant. “The little Dove, she will carry Rowan.”

“Toads,” Rowan murmured. She hated riding horses. The only times she had tried, she had fallen off and fallen off. Still—

Etty said, “But Dove is too white. Riding her is like riding a target.”

“So? I dye her.” Beau grinned. “With the lichens, aubergine, yes?”

A purple pony? Lionel threw back his big head and laughed. Etty laughed. Even Rowan had to smile.

Beau elaborated, “Or yellow, with the wild onions. I put her in the big, big pot and boil her—”

Rook said, “Put soot on the horse.”

“Mon foi,
that is too simple.”

It
was
simple. Rowan sat up straighter, thinking. Yes, she could ride the pony if she had to. And Beau would go wherever Dove went, and Lionel had already made it plain that he planned to accompany Rowan.

Rowan looked to another old friend. “Etty, what will you do?” she asked.

“Walk alongside, of course.”

“With your uncle's men after you?”

“They won't look for me to the north. Why would I run back toward my uncle's domain?”

Rook said, “They're looking for her at the grove.”

Rowan's eyes widened.

“At first light, up they came through Fountain Dale.”

“They found the
grove?”

Rook nodded.

Odd, Rowan thought, that her heart should ache, when she did not mean to go back to the rowan grove anyway.

Rook said, “They got close before Lionel saw them coming.” No wonder, Ro thought, as the clodpole had been asleep when she had left. But she hadn't the heart to rebuke him, and apparently no one else did either. Rook was saying, “We got out with what we could snatch up and carry, nothing more.”

Dully Rowan considered what had been left behind—blankets, cooking gear, supplies. But what matter, when even the grove and the spring did not seem to matter anymore? After a minute she said slowly, “So none of us would be safe there anyway. It was meant to be. We'll go north to—”

Etty interrupted, her usually placid voice fierce. “To do what, Rowan?”

Lionel's hand slipped and struck a discordant note. Quickly he stilled his harp.

Silence. For a moment Rowan could not answer. But then she said, “Guy Longhead. Jasper of the Sinister Hand. Hurst Orricson and his brother Holt.” The names flamed in her mind and in her voice.

“What do you plan to do to them, Rowan? What can you do to them?”

“I don't know. But I'm going.”

“I'll go with you anywhere, Ro. But I will not help you murder—”

“Vengeance is not murder!” Rowan curled her fists. “Mine is the blood right under—”

“Under the code of knights, so that they may never lack an enemy with whom to fight for the sake of so-called honor—”

“No! I am saying, mine is the right under the common law.”

“The same law that has made us outlaws?”

Beau whispered, “I will not do killing in cold blood.” In the firelight her dark eyes looked huge, like shadowed moons.

Lionel appealed, “Surely it will not come to that.”

“I have known what it is to crave vengeance,” said Rook, his tone toneless, neutral. “So have you, Princess Ettarde.”