by K. Kibbee
Theodore & the Enchanted Bookstore
The Adventures of Robin Hound
by
K. Kibbee
Theodore and the Enchanted Bookstore: The Adventures of Robin Hound
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real, or if real, are used fictitiously. Unless other intended, any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Incorgnito Publishing Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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FIRST EDITION
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-944589-46-2 (Epub)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To all the dog lovers and those who know how magical they are.
Part One
Sanitarium Sam and the Bewildering Bic
Sam had always been a man of few words . . . not because he struggled with them . . . but because he savored language, and selected each word as carefully as a newborn’s name. Yet, as Theodore’s voice reverberated through the forest, the typically articulate shopkeeper found himself thoroughly befuddled and utterly speechless.
Following the Corgi’s wondrous and shocking feat of speech, several minutes passed with Sam in a slack-jawed stupor and Theodore tilting his head back and forth before a voice disquieted the forest again. This time it was Sam’s.
“Did you—? Did you just talk?”
Theodore blinked a few times and shifted his eyes this way and that, almost simpering. “I suppose I did.”
“But— What— But you— And we— And where—?”
In a flash, Sam was up and pacing the dusty dirt road onto which they’d materialized, little Pigpen poofs tracking his every step. He needled his temple as he went, staring off into nothing with glazed, vacant eyes. “OK—so we were in the bookstore,” he began, “And then there was some kinda hurricane or freak natural disaster. And then, all at once, we were here. Wherever here is.”
The shopkeeper’s eyes cleared as they fell from the horizon and landed on Theodore, who’d been observing his master’s actions from the comfort of a wide tree stump. There was a quaking, uncertain quality to Sam’s voice as he recounted, “And then—you could talk.”
Theodore bobbed his head in agreement. “Yup. And then I could talk.”
Sam shuddered. Then he resumed his stalking and his far-off expression. He’d made it only a couple of strides this time when a noise in the near distance caused him to pause and gaze northward. Theodore replicated the same line of sight and arched a furry brow as clanging and shouting joined the fray of sounds. Then, quite suddenly, the clatter fell off and a motley collection of capped heads began to breach the skyline, just above a slight rise in the hillside to the north. One by one they surfaced, like little mole heads emerging from the ground, until there were nine in total. The heads then fleshed out to reveal full-bodied men beneath them, one quite portly and another as big as a beast, with the remaining seven of average stature. The men approached swiftly and were within shouting distance of Sam and Theodore before Sam had managed to capture even one of his elusive words.
“Aye—who goes there?” called a man from the middle of the group.
Sam became unstuck and ventured towards the rabble. “Hello there! I’m Sam—Sam Moore,” he greeted, suddenly grounded by such an easily answerable question.
The man who’d addressed Sam was nearer now—nearer than his compatriots. He wore a fine, bycocket cap of deep velvety green, with a red feather stuck through its side. He was devilishly handsome and grinning as wide as his face would allow. “Well then, Sam Moore,” he crooned upon approach. “What brings you to Sherwood Forest on this fine, May day?”
Sam’s dumbstruck daze returned in furious fashion as the green-capped man came to a standstill in front of him and was then joined by his menagerie of peculiar cohorts. When the shopkeeper failed to reply, the man glanced at Theodore and, eyes a-twinkle, asked, “What? Dog got your tongue?”
The band of men snickered, particularly the largest one. He kept on long after the others’ laughter had died down, snorting like a St. Bernard that Theodore had once seen jogging beside its
owner on an especially hot August afternoon. The man in the feathered cap seemed to tire of the bestial noise quickly, and stepped closer to Sam, who was still frozen on the spot.
“You have some unique finery here, friend,” the man observed, narrowing in his sparkling blue eyes on Sam’s chest. “Can’t recall that I’ve seen such trinkets fashioned to a garment before. What do you call this?”
Sam peered downward, at his shirt pocket. “This?” he asked, fingering a vinyl sleeve protruding from his flannel. “Oh—this is just a pocket protector. You know—to keep your pens from leaking all over?”
Sam fished a bright red pen from the depths of his pocket and held it out. “See.”
The capped man jerked as if he’d just seen Caesar’s ghost. He dropped his head, arched his shoulders, and narrowed his eyes to slivers—pinning his full attention to the innocuous red pen. “What kind of witchery is this?” he growled as the men flanking his sides drew hands to an assortment of previously sheathed weapons. Theodore tensed on his stump.
A nervous giggle from Sam echoed through the woods and grew more threadbare as it dissipated. “N—. No witchery here. It’s just a pen. A Bic, I think.”
The capped man kept a wary distance and gaped at the pen as though it might be quietly hatching a plan to impale him. Meanwhile, one of his men—a dark-haired fellow with a formidably bushy beard—mused, “Perhaps it’s a wand, Robin?”
“Aye, a wand!” echoed the pudgiest of the nine men. “And here’s the spell book what goes with it!”
Robin spun on his heels to face the round little man, whose muddy eyes and shiny bald head were both glistening in the noonday sun. “What’s that, Friar? A spell book, you say?”
“Indeed!”
The Friar waddled towards an open book that lay just a few short feet from Theodore’s stump. Its pages were flapping in the gentle breeze but, as the Friar approached and absorbed the wind’s gust with his long robe, they fell still. He flipped the book closed, clamped a hand on its spine, and pulled it to his face. His eyes lingered on the cover for a moment or two, and then they began to swell, until Theodore thought they might just pop right out of their sockets. “R-. R-. Robin—,” he stammered, drawing back and towards his feather-capped captain.
Robin made a cavalier glance over his shoulder, seemingly unalarmed by the Friar’s dramatics. Yet, as his blubbering friend neared and thrust the book in his face, Robin grew suddenly and starkly pale. “What is the meaning of this?” he half-shouted at Sam.
Sam’s eyes grew to match the size of the Friar’s. His skin blanched as ghostly as Robin’s. “Meaning of what?” he echoed in sincere confusion.
Robin, who’d accepted the book, now held it out in front of Sam’s face as though it was a dirty diaper, and boomed, “THIS!”
Sam dipped his head, squinted through his slightly askew glasses, and read aloud, “The Tale of Robin Hood.”
“Aye! The Tale of Robin Hood! The tale of ME? Of ME! How came you by such a thing?” Robin hammered. “Are you a man of Nottingham’s? Are you a man . . . not of God?”
Just behind Robin, the Friar let out a curdled gasp, and . . . if such a thing was possible . . . the fellow grew another shade paler with the same breath. Meanwhile, Robin’s lividity had restored his normal hue and infused it with an angry red. His chest ballooned as he bore down on Sam with eyes that could’ve melted magma.
“It’s a book. Just a book,” Sam sputtered in reply. “I— Look— I’m as confused as you are here. I mean . . . I don’t even know how I got here. C’mon . . . Sherwood Forest—really? And so what—you’re Robin Hood, and Friar Tuck? And you there—yeah, you—the big fella,” he continued on, pointing at the Yeti of a man who eclipsed his group of friends, “I suppose you’re Little John?”
The mammoth man gave Sam a dumb smile and said, “Aye. Have we met?”
“Oh, lordy!” Sam clapped an open palm to his forehead and rolled his eyes, yowling, “I’ve gotta be dreaming!” His engorged pupils made a second revolution and, as they settled, they became very clear, as did the voice that followed them. “That’s it,” he decided. “The talking dog, Sherwood Forest—this band of Merry Men. It’s all a dream—just one, big ole’ crazy bookworm’s dream!”
Robin’s men looked on silently as the shopkeeper delighted in his revelation. Sam was beaming and bobbing his head feverishly when a sandy-haired gent next to Little John sneered sideways under the cloak of his hand and told the group, “Well, boys, I think we’ve got ourselves a nutter.”
“Heard that,” Sam snapped.
“Oh, like you heard the talking dog?” the man goaded him. He glanced briefly at Theodore, took an automatic double-take at the Corgi’s wee spectacles, and then shook his head like it was an 8-ball that had just given an impossible answer.
Sam’s face screwed up. He shot eyes at Theodore, who’d remained still enough to pass for a taxidermied statue throughout the heated exchange. “Show ‘em, Theo,” he urged.
Theodore didn’t move. His hair didn’t even bristle.
“C’mon, Theodore—show ‘em! Talk— like you did before.”
The Corgi blinked.
“Please?”
Theodore’s eyes widened and he shared the briefest empathetic brow-scrunch with Sam before lapsing into a long, drawn-out yawn.
The men erupted into laughter, which thinly veiled the names—“Crazed loon,” “Sanitarium Sam,” and “Kook with the book”—that passed between them. They slapped backs and filled the air with their hearty hysterics, every bit the embodiment of their legendary merriment. Robin’s eyes were shining with tears when the group finally quieted. He gathered his senses and then looked upon Sam as one might a child who’s just said something comically innocent.
“I can’t decide if you’re a fool or a liar, Sam Moore,” Hood told the shopkeeper. “But I make it my business not to trifle with either.” He then turned to his men—a few of whom were still choking on residual chuckles—and decided they’d “Best be off, before that nance, Nottingham, could catch wind of a new jester for hire,” and ushered them into the marmalade sunset.
Sam and Theodore looked on in shared silence as the men faded gradually into the beyond, but every time their laughter trickled from the horizon, the little Corgi would tense in his spot, and give Sam a guilty glance. Once the troupe had entirely vanished from sight, a small “Sorry” peeped from Theodore’s stump.
Sam spun to face his beleaguered companion. “Ah hah! I knew it!” he spat, pointing an extended finger at the dog like a cocked gun. “I knew I heard you talk!”
The shopkeeper paused briefly, bunched his brows together, and weakly added, “Well, either that, or I am completely mad, and you’re not talking now, either.”
Theodore slunk from the stump, trailing his back end like a massive caterpillar might. “No—I’m talking,” he promised, “and I was before, too.”
Sam’s face screwed up again. “But why—? Why didn’t you just then . . . when I asked?”
“Did you see those guys? They were looney tunes!” Theo sputtered. “They’d have probably decided I was magic and tried to squeeze golden eggs out of my rear end!”
Sam stifled a chuckle, but his bewildered expression persisted. He still had brambles and dirt clods peppering his hair from the earlier rough landing on the road, and between the mussed hairdo and crimped smile, he did indeed make for a convincing Sanitarium Sam.
“I dunno how I can talk,” Theodore confessed, sensing his friend’s confusion. “Well . . . I guess it’s more that I don’t know why you finally understand me. I was always tryin’ to tell you stuff before. It’s like you weren’t listening—until now.”
Sam stared on, still with the look of an escaped mental patient from a Wanted poster. Theodore was near to him now, and the Corgi’s voice was soft and comely as the little dog went on, “I told ya’ before . . . I think we went inside the book. I dunno how, or why, but once I could see the words . . . read the words . . . it just all came to life.”
“Came to life?”
“Yeah. Robin Hood—the story—Sherwood Forest. I could read it all, see it all—through the glasses, and—.”
Sam jerked on the spot, like he’d just been goosed. “The glasses—those glasses,” he said, pointing at Theodore’s cocked head. “Where did you get those glasses anyway?”
Theodore blinked, and his eyes briefly crossed as he examined the frames. “A funny little man gave ‘em to me,” he told Sam, teetering back and forth on his stubby legs, trying to get a better look at the spectacles saddling his muzzle. “He just showed up, gave ‘em to me, and whoosh, he was gone. Like magic.”
“Like magic?”
“Yup. Magic.”
Sam fell quiet again, clearly noodling. He stroked his chin, as he so often did when in deep thought, and Theodore wondered aloud, “Why do you do that, anyway—rub your chin like that? Are you tryin’ to coax the ideas out? Sometimes my old mum would pet me like that, when she was tryin’ to get me to come out from under the table, or the chair, or wherever I wasn’t supposed to be.”
Sam grinned. “Kinda, I guess.” His hand stopped rubbing and he examined Theodore, squinting pensively. “Your old family—what were they like?”
Theodore’s little head dipped towards the earth and he became very quiet for a spell. Then he looked up and softly said, “Not like you.”
“Is that good, or bad?”
“Good,” Theodore brightly replied, head ticking upward. “Good—like you.”
Sam was immediately beaming, and as his assured expression returned, a bit of the crazy faded away. The transformation was brief, however, for he then resumed an inspection of Theodore’s glasses, mumbling about “magic little men,” and “snarky ole’ Robin Hood.”
Meanwhile, Theodore’s intent eyes flitted around the forest, and beyond. When they returned to Sam, they found him once again pacing the forest floor. After several minutes of tracking his master’s manic bouncing about the grove, Theo grumbled an interjection. “Okay, so I may just be a dog,” he prefaced, “but it seems to me that book got us here. And whether it’s bewitched, or magic, or made out of old Penny Saver ads in some crazy little fella’s hobbit hole—it’s gotta be the thing that gets us out.”
Sam had stopped pacing somewhere around “hobbit hole” and urged his companion on with arched eyebrows.
“Well . . . I mean . . . don’t-chya think?” Theodore asked with a little waffle to his voice.
Sam’s lips worked into a screwy smile. “I ‘spose so. If dogs can talk, why can’t books transport us to the magical lands written in their pages?”
Theodore nodded, suddenly certain again, and his spectacles bounced lightly on his nose. “Where’d that book get to?” he asked, draw
ing his eyes downward.
Sam followed suit and the two began combing the ground. Theodore’s nose quickly led them to a rectangle-shaped outline in the dirt, where the book had previously been. The Corgi made a brief show of his “snooter-sluething,” but then deflated. “It’s gone,” he whimpered. “Robin Hood and his men—they musta took it.”
Sam stared hard at the book’s impression, which was sandwiched squarely between Theodore’s two front paws. His face drooped as his eyes lingered, but as he returned with, “Well then, we’ll just hafta find Robin Hood,” an ominous rustle came from the bushes, and quickly quieted him.
A foreign voice with a peculiar drawl creeped from the brush. “Did somebody say Robin Hound?”
Part Two
Chicken Feathers
Too dumbfounded, or perhaps too frightened to reply, both Sam and Theodore looked on hesitantly as a pair of golden eyes materialized in the same bush that had just addressed them. Its leaves parted to reveal a bulbous nose and a long, wrinkled muzzle that twitched with every sniff. “Did you say you was lookin’ for Robin Hound?” the same thick voice asked.
“Robin Hood, actually,” Theodore rather emphatically replied. He blinked behind his spectacles, never faltering from his intense stare as the beast in the bushes emerged fully, to reveal a brutish bloodhound with jowls that hung nearly to his knees.
“That so?” the monstrous hound dog trailed. “Why you lookin’ for my fella?”
“Your fella?”
The dog plodded a half-dozen steps nearer to Theodore and the impact of his massive paws on the ground sent little tremors through the earth between them. “Oh yeah,” the dog went on, “me n’ Robin Hood is partners. He’s my fella. Heck—he’s my best friend!” A few more plods towards Theodore, and Sam stepped in between the two dogs, abruptly halting the exchange.
“You stay back now!” the shopkeeper barked.
“What? What are you doing, Sam? This dog knows Robin Hood! He could help us!” Theodore sputtered.