by Wendy Mass
He is looking at me with concern. My expression must mirror the horror I am feeling. A hare is a rabbit? And a rabbit is a bunny! The school has served this same meal at least three times since I’ve been here, and other meats, as well. I’ve been eating ANIMALS? I’ve been eating BUNNIES? I drop the food back down to my plate and start to cry. How could I not have understood this?
He dismisses me for the day. At dinner I am served a thick slice of brown bread and a stew made of cabbage and carrots. I almost cry again out of relief. I eat the stew slowly and savor every bite.
“Ready for your next lesson?” Friar Tuck asks the next morning. I nod, eager to put yesterday behind me. We head to the garden again, but this time we keep going, all the way to a path lined with bushes and flowers. I’ve seen people walking on it, but have no idea where it leads. Now I see it’s just a wide circle around the school and the barn. “We’re going to start with a walking meditation. What we learn from it is at the core of what we work toward at the school.”
I give a thumbs-up and close my eyes, ready to start. He laughs. “You cannot move along the path with your eyes closed. You’ll walk right into a bramble bush.”
Right! I open them and smile sheepishly. In the meditation hour, everyone has their eyes closed. But of course they’re seated on the lawn. Friar Tuck begins to walk, and I quickly follow.
“For the first circle, you will try to focus your attention on every flower, every leaf, every shadow cast onto the ground, for these will look different tomorrow. This exact moment will never come again, and we are lucky enough to witness it.” He waits to see if I’m following, so I give a quick nod.
He continues. “Like an anchor connects a boat to the sea, when we meditate, our breath connects our awareness and our inner thoughts to our body. In a walking meditation, our feet do that for us. As they connect with the ground, they remind us to focus our attention inward. We use this movement of our bodies to remind ourselves that we are here, at this moment.”
He gestures around him with his arms, and waits for me to do the same. I giggle. This isn’t like any class I’ve ever had.
“By learning to switch our awareness from our outer world to our inner world and back again,” he says, ignoring my little interruption, “we learn to gain control over our thoughts. We learn to make better decisions when we can retreat inward to think, without the distractions of the world around us. Then we are also able to step out of our heads, and be at one with the world’s bounty — the people and nature that surrounds us, which we might otherwise take for granted.”
I nod excitedly. I’m bursting to tell him that I’ve been doing the walking meditation since I’ve gotten here, without realizing it. I don’t take any of nature for granted — how could I? It’s all brand-new to me. And the silent retreat has lifted the burdens of saying what I know people want to hear — something my mother and teachers have been grooming me to do since birth. I feel tears sting my eyes and quickly wipe at them.
Friar Tuck puts his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you accompany Kylea into town today for her weekly journey? She’s our best shopper. You could use the break, I think.”
I smile, wanting to appear grateful, although truly I’ve already shopped enough for two lifetimes. Still, when Kylea finds me after lunch and loops her arm through mine, I feel my excitement bubble up. I enjoyed the solitude that being alone with my thoughts had afforded me, but it will be nice to talk for a change.
Kylea doesn’t waste a single moment. As soon as we begin our descent down the steep hillside, a rush of words pours out of her. She asks how I like school, the grounds, the teachers, the books, the food, the clothes, and does she really snore?
I laugh, and my voice sounds unfamiliar to me at first when I answer her questions. Is it really as high-pitched as that? As we approach the village, I begin to tune her out and practice the part of the walking mediation where I focus on what’s around me — the brightly colored leaves, the crunch of the pebbles underfoot, the smells wafting to us from below, the energy of the shoppers in the marketplace. In the distance I can hear a harp and wonder if it’s that man with the odd name, the one whose true love is marrying another.
We’re almost run over by a group of boys and girls weaving in and out of the stalls singing “He robs from the rich, from the rich, from the rich, and he gives to the poor, yes, he gives to the poor. He’s a hero!” They weave and sing, over and over. I stop to watch them, humming along to the catchy tune. I’ve never seen kids sing with such abandon. Things like that just aren’t done in The City. I have to run to catch up to Kylea, who is haggling with a merchant over the price of a bag of beans.
The singing stops abruptly, and when I turn to see why, my mouth drops open. A man with short red hair riding an enormous brown animal comes bounding into the middle of the square. He climbs off the animal’s back and pulls a scroll of some sort from a bag attached to the saddle. Shoppers begin streaming over from the stalls, leaving their purchases unpaid and the merchants scowling after them.
I grab on to Kylea. “What is THAT?”
“The sheriff’s deputy?” she asks, following my shaking finger. “He’s just posting the latest Wanted notice. Turning in an outlaw is an easy way to earn some gold.”
“Not the deputy,” I cry. “The beast!”
She laughs. “The horse?”
“Horses are real? I always though they were a myth!”
She tilts her head at me. “You truly are an odd one.” Oh boy, she doesn’t know the half of it.
The deputy finishes nailing up the paper and the crowd surges forward. Kylea pushes up to the front, but I hang back. I’m unable to take my eyes off the horse, who is now bending its long neck toward the ground to allow the man to climb back on. After being shot at by one outlaw and nearly married off to another, I’m not interested in whatever the poster says. If I spotted him I’d run in the opposite direction anyway.
The deputy digs his heels into the horse’s sides. Dust flies up into the crowd as the animal takes off. I watch until they turn the corner, heading toward a part of the village I haven’t seen before. Then Kylea lets out a loud whistle and announces, “Now that’s one handsome boy! If I found him I might keep him for myself instead of turning him in!”
Two other women giggle. “Me, too!” one says. The other reads out, “‘Wanted dead or alive by the Sheriff of Nottingham for thievery, sword fighting without a license, and general mischief. Goes by the names Robin Hat, Robin Hood, Robin of Locksley, and The Man in Green. Reward: one hundred gold coins.’”
I had been only half listening at first, but now my heart is slamming against my chest. I rush up to Kylea’s side. The pencil sketch doesn’t capture the green of his eyes, but the artist got the sly smile just right, and that silly hat with the feather. There’s no doubt, it’s …
“Robin?” a shocked male voice behind me exclaims. Then he dissolves into laughter and says, “Why am I not surprised?”
I whirl around, having no idea who I’m about to see.
He spots me at the same moment and breaks into a wide grin. “There you are, Marian! You’re a hard girl to find! I have a message for you from your grandmother.”
I’m having trouble processing the sight before me. In the middle of a medieval village, hundreds of light-years from where he’s supposed to be, stands, impossibly, Robin’s cousin, Will.
I gape at him, at an utter loss for words. Kylea finally tears herself away from the Wanted poster. Her eyebrows shoot up when she sees us. She hurries over, looking back and forth between us. I watch as her eyes takes in his pale never-seen-the-sun skin, his green clothes. “Is this boy bothering you, Marian?”
I shake my head slowly, keeping my eyes glued on Will’s. How is he standing here?
But Will must have taken the same charm lessons Robin had. He flashes Kylea a wide grin, and I can’t help notice his teeth are stained a light blue color. He bows slightly. “Will Stutely at your service, pretty lady.”
Kylea actually blushes! “Any friend of Marian’s is a friend of mine,” she replies, sticking out her hand. Will reaches over and kisses the back of it! That’s enough to break me out of my stupor.
I turn to Kylea and hold up one finger. “Be right back.” She watches with a silly grin on her face as I grab Will by the shirt and drag him to the side of the marketplace.
“How?” I demand, figuring one word summed it up. I have to snap my fingers to get him to stop gazing past me at Kylea.
“This place is AMAZING!” he says, his deep brown eyes twinkling. “Trees! Fresh air! Birds! And the smells!” He inhales deeply, then wrinkles his nose. “Well, they’re not all good. But wow! And have you tried those berries in the woods? I can’t get enough of them!”
“I can tell that by your blue teeth. Please tell me what’s going on so I don’t think I’m hallucinating?”
He uses the collar of his shirt as a makeshift toothbrush, then pulls me into an alleyway between a tavern and a shop selling woven mats. “Okay, here goes. So of course the commander lost his mind when he realized Robin had taken the Solar Hammer, but Finley and I assured him the ship would be returned good as new in only a few days. But when the commander called down to the landing field on Earth, they swore that no ships had arrived from Delta Z. They said even if you’d landed in the Dead Zone, radar would have picked you up.” Will pauses and waves his hands around. “I can see why you didn’t want to come back, by the way, this place is —”
“The Solar Hammer crashed into pieces,” I say bluntly.
“Oh.” He lets his hands drop to his sides. “That’s not good.”
“Go on with your story,” I urge.
“Okay. So then Elan tells me and Dad that he memorized the coordinates when he entered them. That kid is something. Did you know he can recite pi to hundreds of —”
“Will!”
“Sorry! So anyway, we couldn’t find a ship to go look for you. Then my father and I got called into the command center. We had a video call from Earth! It was private, on a really high-level security channel, so even the commander had to leave. He was not happy, I can tell you that. Anyway, the call was from an old woman — your grandmother! She found out you hadn’t gone to Earth Beta and said she was sending a ship to bring you home and —”
I hold up my hand. “Stop right there. My grandmother couldn’t have called you. She can’t speak.”
He shrugs. “For someone who can’t speak she sure had a lot to say. There’s a tracker in the headpiece she gave you. It was set to activate when you landed on Earth Beta, and when it never did, she knew something was wrong.”
I shake my head. “My grandmother doesn’t know things. I mean, she’s not all there, like, in the head.”
“She’s all there, all right,” he says. “And then some. She was very bossy! After she got PJ to admit you’d stayed on Delta Z, she called my father. Apparently they know each other, from, like, years ago.”
If my jaw wasn’t already hanging open, it would have fallen open now.
“I know, weird, right?” he says. “So my dad had to tell her that you went off to try to find King Richard and that we hadn’t heard from you since.”
“What — what’d she say to that?” I ask, still finding it impossible to believe she could say anything.
“At first she laughed.”
“She laughed?”
He nods. “She said she should have realized when you scaled a building instead of climbing the stairs on your mission to get the coordinates, and when you kept a copy, that she’d underestimated your bravery and dedication.”
“My grandmother sent me on that mission? And she knew I kept the coordinates?”
“Yes,” he says. “From what she was saying, she’s been working for the resistance for years.”
My grandmother has a job? “The resistance?” I repeat. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a group of people trying to get Prince John out of power.” He puts his hand on my arm and squeezes reassuringly. “For what it’s worth, your grandmother said she’s very proud of you.”
My head fills with flashes from that night — the strolling couple I kept running into, had they been in on it? And I’d run into Grandmother on the street! She seemed as out of it as always. But she wasn’t, was she? She’d been distracting the guard! Why had she pretended all these years?
But I know the answer already. By pretending to not understand anything, no one considered her a threat. Officials would drop their guard around her. She must have heard all sorts of confidential information from Prince John and the other members of the government. Even her own son would have underestimated her! And then another thought — she must have been behind me getting picked for the trip to Earth Beta in the first place! Why couldn’t she just have confided all this in me? Was Ivy in on it? My parents? Is that why my mother was so eager to have me go? But my father is loyal to Prince John. Isn’t he?
Will has to snap his fingers in front of my face to bring my focus back. “You want to hear the rest?”
I blink a few times to clear my head. “Yes, of course, sorry!”
“Okay. So when the airship she sent arrived, instead of using it to send you home, we used it to get me here. To find you and Robin, and King Richard and —”
“But, Will, the coordinates were wrong, since they landed us all the way out here. The people on this planet have no idea about life on other planets. They couldn’t possibly be involved with politics on a planet across the galaxy! They don’t even know what a galaxy is!”
He smiles. “What better place to hide a king than the last place anyone would think to look?”
I blink hard. “Are you serious? You really think he’s here? Where?”
“I have a good idea where he’s being kept,” he replies. “But first we need to find Robin. There’s something really important that outlaw cousin of mine needs to know.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. It finally hits me that the mission my grandmother sent me on? I’m still on it!
It takes another few seconds to register that Will’s gone still, his gaze focused over my right shoulder. I slowly turn around to find Kylea standing a few feet behind me. Her arms are piled high with rolled-up straw mats that are slipping to the ground one by one. She doesn’t seem to notice. I don’t know how long she’s been standing there, but obviously long enough to hear a lot of things she shouldn’t have.
No doubt there’s some sort of punishment for allowing someone from a far less advanced civilization to overhear you talking about airships, space travel, and dead zones on ruined planets. I hold my breath, waiting to see if Kylea is going to faint or scream. I’m pretty sure those are the only two options in this situation.
For a long moment, her eyes flicker between the two of us. Then she lets out a deep breath and says, “So, which one of you is going to introduce me to Robin?”
Will recovers faster than I do. He bursts out laughing. I frown. Kylea drops the rest of her mats and links one arm through mine, just like she did when we first met. “Don’t worry, Marian. I’m not really after Robin. Not when his dashing cousin is here.” She pats Will on the arm. “But I can tell you where to find Sherwood’s newest outlaw. We’ll have to find some fancy clothes to change into first, though.” She eyes Will up and down. “Is wearing all green a thing where you come from?”
“It is!” he says, beaming. “Do you like it?”
I don’t wait for her to answer before saying, “Kylea, why do we need to dress up?”
She squeezes my arm, then links her other one through Will’s. “Because we’re going to a wedding tomorrow!”
“Your teeth look too good,” Much says as he looks me up and down. “How come you got such good teeth?”
He’s right. My teeth stand out too much. Everyone on this planet has crooked, yellow, and/or missing teeth. I can’t very well explain to Much about the excellent health care on Delta Z. They still stick leeches on people h
ere when they’re sick to “suck out the bad blood.”
I dip my finger into the pile of cooled ashes from last night’s fire and smear some on my front teeth. I already rubbed some across my chin and cheeks, exchanged my pointy hat for a plain brown wool cap that goes down low over my eyes, and tied back my hair. Combined with my plain new clothes (also known as Much’s old clothes), my disguise is nearly complete. All I have to do is put a few pebbles in one shoe to change how I walk and no one will recognize me.
Needless to say, it’s been a long week. It started off great. The Merry Men took me in, fed me, gave me a dry place to sleep, and let me show off my archery skills. I left one day to go check on the airship, careful to make sure no one followed me. This was accomplished by telling them I had a very upset stomach and needed to “go off into the woods to spend some time alone.” No one asked any further questions.
The ol’ Solar Hammer 2000 was still there, looking even worse, as the weather had deposited leaves and other debris inside the giant hole. As I started to clean it out, my foot knocked against something hard, and I uncovered one of the swords my parents had left me!
I feel safer having a weapon at my side now. The Merry Men didn’t even ask me where I got it. They’re cool that way. My plan to invite rich people to dine with us only to ask for payment at the end has been working very well. Turns out no one wants to risk facing off with Little John, so they all empty their pockets without too much fuss. It isn’t actually stealing; I mean, we give them a really good meal. Alan-a-Dale even sings for them, and I’ve been known to accurately name people’s playing cards every single time (after secretly forcing their selection, of course!).
Flush with more money than the Merry Men had seen in a month, I took Alan into town a few days ago to get him a new outfit. If we’re going to stop a wedding, he needs to look as good as possible to impress the bride and her family. On the way to the tailor, we passed an overcrowded orphanage with all these kids who didn’t have any toys or warm blankets. It made me think of my parents and how I grew up without them but never wanted for anything. I will likely never get to see Uncle Kent or Will again, and they gave me so much. I’ll never be able to repay them. But I could do something now, for these kids who don’t have anyone looking after them.