Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  HOODED

  by H.J. Mountain (mountainhj@gmail.com)

  Many stories are told about the One in the Hood

  Who stood in the shadows and held for the good

  For all men need legends: but are all legends men?

  Or dreams of the mortal, ever lost to back then?

  But once there were eyes and there was flesh; there were hands and a heart

  There was a soul in a body that breathed from the start

  If time is the arrow that steals all in the end,

  Then life is its flight: once the bow starts to bend

  PART I: THE CLEARING

  1.

  The moments before I am contained. Safe within myself. Each thought held like the flowers collecting in my hand, or the red scarf knotted tight around my neck.

  The morning marks winter’s melt into spring. A hint of chill in the air and a crisp sky scattered with arrow clouds that float over the wide fields and our small party. Guy is sat on Farragut across the meadow. He looks tall, strong, a knight of the realm with his thick fair hair and leather tunic. The chestnut horse trots at the reins, awaiting the call to break into another run.

  Beatrice walks ahead of me on the stony path. Her blonde hair is full with the light. She is singing a ballad about first love. Her bouquet, the same stunning gold as her hair, is already done: she picks her flowers all at once.

  Wolf is closest. A grey mess of fur and oversized paws, he sniffs the grasses for rabbits and trouble to dig up.

  And then I: behind them all, drifting from the path but safe within my thoughts. Compared to Beatrice’s perfect plait, my dark brown hair is a tangled wave that falls a little wild over my scarf and shoulders. I have to brush it from my eyes every time I bend down. The fringe of my long blue dress is already flecked with mud from my digressions from the stones: my efforts to pick this flower and that one – a process of selection that looks random but is not. As I walk, I get a picture in my mind forming. A certain collection of nature’s colours and shapes, of daisies and pansies, or bluebonnets and heather. I don’t always find the flowers to make the vision real. In truth often I don’t: the posy remains unfinished. But it is the search that I love. The mystery of what may come together.

  The mud, I reckon, and the scrubbing I will do later, is a fair price to pay.

  It is a kind of ritual for me. An ordering of time, like the plans I build in my mind. How I will read more of one of the books Lord Anson bought in London: a history of the kings and queens of the land, with its beautiful illustrations and tales of adventure and war and love. I am reading a chapter about the first crusade to the Holy Land. It seemed strange to me that King Richard is fighting this distant war again, but then I read how the King’s great-grandfather served and died there, and it did not seem quite so strange anymore. After that I will knit a scarf for Guy’s birthday in a fortnight. And perhaps – if Lady Ariel has no other chores or tasks for me – I will ride with him. Into the southern fields, away from her watch, we may practice the bow-and-arrow he has finally, reluctantly, begun to teach me.

  Perhaps, I think with a smile, I will even strike the mark this time.

  So the day is set. Sure as the path of the late winter sun that is still low about the world but beginning, slowly and inevitably, to rise through its arc. I am comforted by this thought, and kneel to reach for the bright blue kink of a cornflower when a scream shatters the morning stillness.

  The cry, tiny and shrill, breaks from the forest. Three crows, chased by the rupture, lift from the high trees to make black marks on the sky. Beatrice’s song dies at her lips. I am dimly aware of the flowers dropping from her hold. Mine crumble under a whitened grip.

  Silence thereafter. Only, the air has changed. Its hint of chill thickening out, passing down the hairs of my neck, as though the sun has lost all of its warmth. Wolf rushes to my side, ears perked, but I am barely aware. Compelled to stare at the tall trees of Wormsley Wood. Their gentle sway, theirs tops brushing at the sky like bony fingers. For a moment, in their depths, I see something framed in darkness. A small house: far away in the night. Lit up by the greedy clutch of flames…

  Like strange gates, the vision calls to me. Beckons me, even as it lays a seed of dread in the pit of my stomach. Then, as quick as it came the vision is gone, broken by a sight that is real and immediate, of a small boy tearing out of the greenwood.

  Hitching my dress over the grasses I run towards him. He falls as I near and I kneel down to meet him. Dewy ground seeps through to my knees. The boy’s small slick palms shake as I clutch them. So does the rest of him. Gently I pull him in – thinking him cold. It is not so.

  The boy is hot. Burning up. This terrifies me more than I can admit.

  “What is your name little one?”

  No answer. But his wide eyes reveal a frantic looseness like he is struggling to see me right before his face. Tears run pale lines down his ruddy cheeks. With a start, I discover that I know this child. At least, I have seen him in Wormsley Village, in the marketplace. Brown hair like thatch and huge dark eyes: six or seven years, no older, and always with his sister.

  But today he is alone.

  I fight off a shiver. “Where is your sister?”

  A strangled reply I cannot make out. Not with Wolf panting loudly and Beatrice calling out to me, and the hoof-drum of Farragut and Guy from afar. I press my cheek to the boy’s. Hold him while his pigeon-chest bursts and shrinks. All the while I can smell his tears and sweat. And something else: a bittersweet reek that reminds me of the times I have held a crying babe. Whatever happened in the woods: it scared this boy so badly he emptied his bladder.

  “Shhh…shhh…” his face reddening as the words will not come.

  “Tis all right,” I whisper, though I have to brace myself since I feel anything but right.

  Slowly, like a weight hangs upon his neck, the boy lifts his face. Sees me, in a way, for the first time. “Sa-ra,” he stammers.

  I seize on the name. “Where is she, where is Sara? Can you tell me?”

  The boy frowns so deeply his face briefly becomes much older – old. He raises a hand to the greenwood. But he will not look. His round eyes do not leave mine. As he does it, his sleeve falls. A blackish burn runs up his arm. All along it the skin has cracked and come away. Reddish lava spills from the wound.

  “Who did this?” I say – almost a shriek.

  “Shhh…shhh…” He shudders: the effort draining him. Then a word escapes his lips: “Shadow…”

  My chest spins. I feel dizzy-sick. Like that, the oldness vanishes from the boy’s face. He is young again: a child battling a nightmare. But this is no dream. The burn on his flesh is real. So is the raw taste of fear on my tongue.

  Shadow.

  The boy clutches my hand. He peers at me through his terror. Before I can breathe. Before Guy or Beatrice reach us. My words are spoken. Like they were already formed. Words that have been living inside of me, trapped for so many years, they now rush to break free.

  “I will find her.”

  *

  Guy spins once on Farragut, keeping the great horse in check. “Don’t worry,” he tells us. “I will be back before you know it.”

  “We shall wait for you here!” Beatrice says. Her bright blue eyes glow with insistence. Her right hand grasps mine. “Be quick and be safe, Guy!”

  “Stay with the boy.”

  We both nod. The boy does not speak but he looks up at Guy with a kind of wonder. Hope, too. I feel much the same. Guy will find Sara. Bring her back to us. This wrong day will be righted.

  “Be careful,” I say, worried in spite of my faith. Guy catches my eye and nods.

  “Come Wolf,” he orders, and the hound steps to Farragut’s side. Then they are away to the woods, the dog tracing a
scent. We watch after them. Watch the thick trees envelop them. The boy begins to cry.

  “My god, his arm…” Beatrice says, peering down.

  “I know.” I kneel and ask again his name. Those round black eyes peer out.

  “M-Mutch…”

  “Mutch. My name is Brya of Gisbourne. This is Beatrice.”

  The boy, Mutch, nods twice like these are names he already knows. Perhaps he has seen us as I’ve seen him. Or simply the Gisbourne name is familiar to him as one of the wealthiest families in the county.

  “Where were you and your sister?”

  He chews on his sleeve. “C-c-clearing…”

  I glance at Beatrice. “Which clearing? Can you remember, Mutch?”

  He squints as though swallowing a nettle-thorn. With a solemn breath he points with his good arm toward the greenwood: to a spot west of where Guy rode into the trees.

  “S-Sara…c-cut a b-b-bigoak…b-berry-p-picking…th-th-they…”

  He stops for breath. My throat is tight.

  “They?”

  His eyes swell again. “Sh-sh-shadow…”

  This is too much. He shivers badly and I bring him in close. His tiny ribs quake, somehow both hard and soft under my arms. Holding him I picture a girl in the forest. Sara. Then: Guy riding into the depths. Alone. Riding towards they.

  My decision is made like a heart beat: bodily and instant and beyond my control.

  “You must stay here with the boy, Beatrice.”

  When she understands what I am suggesting, she is beside herself. “No! We said we would wait here! You know it is not safe, Brya!”

  She is right. I do, just as I know the terror in Mutch’s eyes. And if my sixteen years have taught me anything, it is that the greenwood, for all its beauty and bounty, is a place to be wary of. A den of wildness and spirits: of beasts with hunger and low men whose hoods are too deep to show their true faces.

  Yet I cannot sit here and wait when I know I can help. I think I know the clearing he speaks of. So I offer to Beatrice what I also tell myself: “I will find Guy and we will go as far as the clearing. I’ll turn back at the first sight of…”

  “The fight sight of what?” Beatrice’s blonde locks bounce on her shoulders. She is losing all calm. But I am losing precious time.

  “Beatrice, please!”

  “Brya!” She exhales in frustration but begins to relent. Yet Mutch will not release my hand. As he clutches it, my resolve weakens. I have time to doubt: to dwell on the safety of the field against the shadows of the forest.

  Any longer and I will be rooted here, so I squeeze Mutch’s hand and let him go. Force myself up. “Stay with Beatrice,” I say to him. “I will return. I promise.”

  He nods with the undiluted bravery of the very young.

  Beatrice takes my elbow. “You must turn back, Brya! If you see anyone, if anything happens…you must!”

  Because it is Beatrice – who like her mother will have her way – I nod. But it does not feel entirely honest. As I turn, and especially as I run towards it, the sway of the greenwood beckons me again.

  At the treeline I glance over my shoulder. Beatrice is pale and pretty in her white dress. Mutch is small, ragged in his mucky brown garb. They are holding hands. Stood in the daylight. Watching after me.

  All of a sudden they feel very far away.

  **

  The wood closes in. Thick, high oaks and elms shred the blue and white sky. Quiet hangs like gossamer from their limbs. But it is not the same quiet of the fields. A thousand little scratches and rustles betray it. The work of squirrels and birds – harmless things, I tell myself – to match the snap of folded leaves and branches under my shoes.

  But these little sounds. They tell me nobody is ever truly alone in the greenwood. They also tell me to hurry.

  When I next look back over my shoulder the trees have lost their edge. My chest is warm. Tight. The muscles in my arms and legs strain against the fabric of the dress. I am not used to running like this. My eyes seek any sign of the clearing. Or Guy. But there is only the sweep of swollen trees; their gnarled roots clambering like so many knuckles out of the earth.

  I want to call out to him. But that would be foolish. Girlish. I mean to find him, not him me.

  Time begins to play with me. How long have I been running? How far in am I? Coming round a twisted oak, I trip on the hem of my dress. Prickly ground scratches my palms. I cry out and catch my tongue. But when I try to rise, to go on, everything seems to fade out of focus. A weight holds me down. I suddenly feel – I know – I have made a grave mistake. Coming here. Coming back to the forest.

  Branches stretch over me in great long arms. They block out the light. There is only shadow and I find it hard to breathe.

  The sky is changing, Brya.

  From nowhere, faint as a whisper, I hear her voice. I have not heard her in so very long. It calms me.

  But it is the same sky as ever has been, my love.

  The same as ever will be.

  I squeeze my eyes open. I take note of what is nearest me. The flora breaking into bloom, even amid the woodland shade: the drooping mauve of columbines, the yellow burst of cowslips, a great blue sway of forget-me-nots. I breathe them in. I say each of their names, and then again, and once more. Finally, I look up. Tilt my neck. Search for those glimmers of sky. There. Beyond the hard branches and rippling leaves. I find it. The clear of day – and I hold onto it.

  The weight upon me shrinks, until I can push myself up and run again.

  Twenty paces on: an X carved crudely into the bark of a tree. For a moment I imagine Mutch’s sister, Sara, reaching up to whittle this into the wood. I have seen her in the village. A slender, dark-haired girl of twelve or thirteen. Large furtive eyes watchful over her little brother amid the busy stalls of market day. Once, she ran into me in her haste. Knocked my basket to the ground. She began to help me gather in my fruits. Then she looked up. Saw me. Something spooked her. Like that, she was away again. Moving with the swiftness of one who has had to grow up before her time.

  She must get them from round here: the berries and herbs that are traded in the market. Perhaps other forest treasures that would get her a lashing or worse if the King’s Sheriff ever caught her.

  But someone did catch her today, didn’t they?

  My stomach knits. It is more than just the heat-stitch from running. It is an unravelling that the greenwood has stirred, like the voice of my mother, buried in the roots of my chest and heart. My eyes grow wet. Blurry. And so the place comes upon me suddenly, as though another vision. There I stop, half-gasping, as the world takes an open form again.

  The clearing is wide. Overgrown. Long grasses bend and shiver under the breeze. Across the far side burst thickets and brambles: a great tangle of thorns with blackberries and redcurrants. A single flattened path leads across the grasses near to where I stand. It is thin. I wonder if this is Mutch’s trail. Where he ran.

  The only other sign that any person has been here is a wicker basket. Dropped to its side. Spilling out fruits in a nipped scarlet trail.

  Nothing else. No sign of a girl. Nor Guy. I am alone here.

  And yet.

  I step out into the clearing. Beneath my tightly knotted scarf, the flesh of my neck tingles a little. Perhaps it is the silence. Away from the trees it gathers around me again, a presence. Makes me almost miss that wild rustling of the greenwood. I reach down to my calf. Take free the wood-and-flint blade I always carry underneath my dress. It is not much of a weapon. But my hand welcomes it like an old friend.

  A twig snaps under my foot. The sound is amplified. I curse myself. Though I am alone here…

  I see something. Ahead. The long grasses have been pressed down, as though a great weight came upon them, like the one that is beginning to find me once more. As I approach this flattened space, the world seems to slow. There is the tall wavering grass. The hollow brush of the wind on my cheeks. A single leaf casts down from high branches into the brambles.
And beneath my scarf, the tingles in my neck deepen into a cold charge brewing in the blood of my throat.

  “Sara,” I speak, like the voice of a child.

  In the pressed grass there are blackish specks. Blood. Two other things left behind. Awful things, like the blood, and like the blood, they do not belong here. Not in the soft light of a spring morning. But an acrid smell suddenly stings my nostrils. Raw as burning left in an old room. It is the most dreadful scent. I have known it somewhere before.

  Then all at once the brambles are moving. Opening up. My body goes rigid. From out of a mouth in the thorn-bushes comes a crawling, scuttling thing. The man – if it is indeed a man inside the long black cowl – clutters out on all fours. Then he is to his feet. Rising up into a tall rake of a being that comes on toward me.

  I see it all and yet I cannot move. Even as the ground between us vanishes under his loping stride. He seems almost to glide over the grasses.

  His hood is a shadow. A hooked nose protrudes. There are no eyes. His hand, white and hairless, grasps a curved weapon unlike any I have ever seen, its metal a rancid black. White dust surrounds him like an aura. At the last, I glimpse a thing that traps what air is left in my lungs. A creature, scaly and devil-eyed, stares out from the man’s gaping sleeve.

  He is nearly upon me when my body awakens, intensely so. Where exactly this speed springs from I know not but it throws me down. As I drop, so does the man’s arm. His curved blade whistles by my skin. A sliver of air sustains my life.

  I scream: high and raw. It races into the sky. Leaving me behind, flat on the earth, gasping on my back. I scramble at the damp grass that is soaking through me. Loud, guttural sounds emanate from the man’s cowl. It is no mortal tongue.

  Vesilly…

  Vesilly…

  My hand squeezes for the flint-blade. It is not there. I feel faint.

  The man peels around. He hovers over me. White dust hangs before his face. It is the last thing I see before the sky bleeds black.