Rowan Hood Returns (9 page)

Just at the reaches of the firelight, dim silver human-sized mists swirled up between the trees.

Rowan swallowed hard, firmed her jaw and made herself scan the—faces, yes, moonglow faces of kings and warriors and matriarchs and maidens, ageless young-old faces so beautiful, Rowan ached with longing to reach out for them, yet so eerie that she could scarcely bear to look upon them.

Nevertheless, look she did, because once before, on that other occasion when she had summoned the aelfe, they had manifested themselves to her as Robin Hood, spirit of Sherwood Forest.

But not this time. Father was not here, not even in spirit.

A stinging feeling in her eyes, perhaps from the smoke of her need-fire, made Rowan look down as the aelfe spoke again. “What do you want, daughter of Celandine?” Cold, impatient, the voice came from none of them and all of them.

Rowan found herself unable to bespeak what she wanted. Instead, she whispered, “You are angry with me.”

The voice sounded merely indifferent now. “Was your mother ever angry with you?
”

“Of course. But—you have turned away from me.” Or so she felt, with her face torn by the twiggy fingers of the forest, her body sore from its stony bones.

“Does the falconer turn away from the falcon?”

Trust the aelfe to speak in riddles. Rowan tried again. “Every step of my way here, you have opposed me.”

“As the darkness opposes the light, or as the light opposes the darkness?”

Rowan clenched her teeth in frustration. There was no getting sense out of—

“Go back.”

Ro's mouth dropped open, and she blinked. Never before had the aelfe spoken to her so plainly, and for that reason she could not understand them. She whispered, “What?”

“Go back to your rowan grove.” The voice deepened, darkened. “You stray this way for no good reason.”

Ro stiffened. “But my reason could not be better!” Anger flared in her, hot and sudden, like need-fire. “I have sworn vengeance. And now I know the names of those who slew my mother.”

“They slew her? How so? Only you can kill her truly.”

More nonsense. More riddles.

“Go back to where you belong,” they told her, “Rowan Hood of the Rowan Wood.”

Rowan hardened her jaw, lifted her head, shook it. “And do what? Sit there and let my comrades care for me?”

“Use the gifts your mother gave you, daughter of Celandine.”

They had told her this before, more than once, but she had never fully understood. Even less now. Whatever gifts of aelfin power she had possessed, they were gone. She said, “I cannot go back. There is nothing for me to go back to. I must go forward.”

“So you think.”

“So I know. I ask you only this, wise ones: Where is my father?”

“
Where he belongs.

That could mean anything. “Is he alive? Is he well?”

“You cannot tell? Use the gifts your mother gave you, little one.”

Little one? Rowan stared, unable to tell whether that was mockery she heard in the voice, or tenderness, or—

It mattered not. Before her eyes, the aelfe faded away, leaving her alone with her need-fire and the distant voices of frogs.

 

“Onward,” Rowan told the others in the morning—a fine morning, sunny, with breezes whispering a promise of primroses and cowslips to come, on the meadows they would be crossing.

Etty nodded placidly and handed Ro a slab of cold cooked venison to eat. “We have plenty of meat. A stag walked right into our camp last night.
Beau
shot it.”

“Beau
did?” Beau could barely shoot the tree she stood under.

“Sacre bleu,
it surprise me too!” Beau flashed her brilliant grin. “Maybe the denizens send the stag, yes?”

Rowan said, “I doubt it.”

Lionel asked quietly, “You saw them? You spoke with them?”

“Yes.” Still seated by the ashes of her fire, under the struggling rowan tree, Ro gnawed at the food Etty had given her. Her arms, sore from making need-fire, ached so badly, she could barely lift the meat to her mouth. Nevertheless, she tore at it with her teeth. When had she last eaten? As she swallowed, her stomach began to ache almost worse than her arms.

Lionel prompted, “And?”

“And what?”

“The denizens. What did they say to you?”

“The usual. They vouchsafed me riddles.”

“They did not tell you where Robin Hood is?”

“No. But ...” Rowan hesitated only a moment; she knew she owed her friends the truth. “But they did tell me one thing plainly. They told me to go back to the rowan grove.”

No one gasped, but no one spoke either. The silence screamed.

Rowan said, “I will not go back. I cannot. I must go on. But if any of you wish to turn back, you should do so.”

Silence lasted just a moment too long before Lionel grumbled, “Don't talk nonsense, Rowan. How would you get where you're going without us?”

“I told you before, I will crawl if I need to. Go back if you judge that is what you should do.”

“I'm the one who put this maggot into your mind,” said Etty grimly. “I'm coming with you.”

“Of course I'm coming,” Lionel said. “I'm too big for anyone to harm me.” Not true—they all knew he lived in dread of combat, for if he injured his hands, he might not be able to play his harp anymore. No one smiled.

Beau glanced from Rowan to Dove and back again. “I go with you,” she said.

“For Ro's sake or for the pony's?” Etty teased.

“Both!”

“Thank you.” Rowan nodded to them, then turned to the one who had remained silent, who usually remained silent. “Rook?”

He said, “I'm going back.”

He, the one who respected the aelfe the least, and common sense the most? Those words from Rook took Ro's breath away.

Lionel began to bluster. “Rook, how can you—”

“Let him be.” Rowan regained her breath and her voice. “I said if anyone wanted to turn back, they should. Go with my blessing, Rook.”

With both hands, softly, slowly, Rook drew from under his jerkin the thong from which hung his strand of the gimmal ring. The silver circlet swung in the air, glinting, until he cradled it in the palm of one hand.

Was he—did he mean to take it off? Was he leaving the Rowan Hood band? Forever?

Rowan's heart squeezed. Please, Lady, no, this was all her fault. This could not be happening.

Rook looked at Rowan, a long, level gaze. Then he turned to Beau, to Etty, and finally to Lionel. He said, “I swore my loyalty to all of you on this.”

And without another word he placed the silver ring back into his jerkin, over his heart.

Then he turned, and empty-handed—Rook never carried a bow and arrows, or even so much as a quarterstaff—with no weapon but the knife at his belt, he walked away. Southward.

Quickly. Rook moved like hawk shadow in the woods. In a moment he was gone from view.

 

Silently the remaining four prepared to venture northward onto the open moors. Trying not to look like outlaws, Beau and Etty wore the archil tunics over their kirtles. All of them lashed their bows and arrows onto Dove's baggage behind the saddle. As befit a horseback rider, Rowan wore Etty's helm, trying to imagine she looked like a squire even though Etty's cloak covered the rest of her. Once Lionel had set Rowan in the saddle, he helped her arrange the cloak to conceal the outlaw weapons behind her saddle as well. Then, being a minstrel despite having no bright-colored clothing, he took his harp out of its bag and carried it in his hand.

From atop Dove's back Rowan looked at all of them: a wolf-dog who followed her when he cared to, and the friends who followed her because they had so chosen—Etty, Beau, Lionel.

But not Rook.

Ready?
her glance questioned the three who remained. They nodded.

Nudging her heels against Dove's side, Rowan rode out into the open. Lionel strode past her to lead the way. Beau walked beside Rowan on one side, Etty on the other.

None of them looked back.

The sky felt like a great blue eye watching them, Rowan thought, as they traversed the windy brow of the first rise, the next, the third. They passed plovers shrieking and trembling on their nests amid the heather. They passed bony, spotted cows grazing on the new furze while the cowherd, a boy almost as rawboned as the cattle, gawked at them. From distance to distance they passed cottages built of turf and thatch. A man yoking his oxen stared at the travelers as they walked by. A gaunt old woman watched them from a cottage doorway as a dirty child clung to her skirt. A goose girl peered at them from a meadow, and her geese, great gray snake-necked birds, opened their snapping bills to bark like dogs.

Growling, Tykell turned toward the geese.

“Ty,” Rowan commanded. “Let them alone.”

But as if he were deaf, the wolf-dog stalked toward the barking birds; he killed rabbits, he killed squirrels, he killed partridge—why should he not kill a goose?

“Tykell!” Rowan hated to speak to him so sharply, but it was necessary. “Let them alone! Do you hear me?”

Ty stopped where he was, but he would not look at her. Overhead a magpie flew, laughing, a bird of ill luck.

“Onward,” said Rowan wearily.

As the day wore on, they saw many a magpie fly. But they also saw meadowlarks soaring and heard them sing. The spring air blew sweet with the fragrance of wildflowers: cowslips, bluebells, a promise of butter-cups and wild roses to come. And celandine—but no, Rowan thought, celandine would never froth and flow and quiver on the meadows as commonly as cowslip; celandine, like the silver valley lily, was a woodsy flower. And although the very brightest of starflowers, celandine was shy, blooming sparsely in secluded dells.

There was beauty under these open skies, but Rowan found it a shiversome beauty, too naked.

Toward sundown Lionel bartered with a cottage wife, trading venison for hen's eggs and barley cakes. The band of travelers chose a hollow in which to camp, and there they sat and ate the best meal they'd tasted in many a day. But it was as if a ghost sat with them. They did not speak.

At twilight Tykell gave Rowan a look over his thickly furred shoulder as if to ask, “By your leave?” Because he had not come over to her to have his head patted and his ears rubbed, she knew he was annoyed with her. Sighing, she told him, “Go ahead; go hunting.” Geese should be safe in their pens now, chickens in their coops, sheep in their cotes. The wolf-dog slipped away to wander the night.

Still the others sat without saying a word.

Until full dark had fallen. Then a voice spoke. “I hope Rook has something to eat.”

Rowan blinked, realizing it was Beau. She was not used to hearing Beau speak so simply and without foolishness.

“A pox on Rook! The traitor,” Lionel complained so fiercely that Rowan knew he shielded pain with the hard words.

Etty said, “Lionel, please don't be more of a nitwit than necessary. Rook—”

“Is a traitor and a fool.” Yet Lionel began strumming his harp, as if to comfort himself.

Rowan said quietly, “We know Rook is no fool.
”

“Then how can he believe himself to be still loyal to the band?”

They fell silent again, for they did not know the answer to that question. In this too-open place, darkness seemed to press in from all sides, held back only by firelight and the soft notes of Lionel's harp.

 

In the morning, when they awoke, Tykell had not returned.

Rowan had long since learned that she had to trust the wolf-dog to go about his own business as he saw fit, and find her when he wanted to. But this time, Rowan sensed, it might be a long while before she saw Tykell again, if ever. In her heavy heart she knew that the wolf-dog, like Rook, had turned back to Sherwood Forest.

“Surely we will encounter him along the way somewhere,” Lionel said as they made ready to travel.

Rowan answered only, “I hope so.” She did not speak her more true thought: that Lionel had said the same about Robin Hood.

T
oads take everything,“ Rowan said. ”I was just starting to hope we might reach it by nightfall.” She pointed toward Barnesdale Forest, no longer a low lavender blur on the horizon, but now a blue-brown mass not too far ahead.

However, between Rowan's band and Barnesdale Forest ran a river that cut through the moorlands like a knife. A river swift, deep, steep of bank.

Halted on a hillside, they studied the gray water. This was a gray day altogether. Sky the color of Rowan's borrowed cloak cast darker shadows on the hillsides. And in the river ran water a colder gray, the color of steel, but swelling like a warrior's muscles.

“No more than a stone's throw wide, but fit to drown us just the same,” Lionel said. Having once spent some unintentional moments in just such a river, he knew the power of water running wild during the springtime rains.

Etty asked, “Have you crossed this torrent before, Rowan?”

Two years ago, Etty meant, when Rowan had fled through these same lands on her way southward to Sherwood Forest.

“I must have.” Ro frowned, thinking. “But it's hard to remember those days.” Bad days, desperate, starving, grieving days just after her mother's death.

At the thought, her heart burned with the sting of the names branded there.