Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  Wolf is panting when we sight a stream. It is too much to resist. A thick white sheen of sweat slips down Farragut’s neck as he bends to drink. I kneel to imbibe the cool waters and find my face reflected. A mess. My dark brown hair is knotted and clumped. My cheeks are pale. The night before lives in bags under my eyes.

  Marian’s balm worked wonders, but the burns down my back have awoken. They prick with heat. I check around me. The wood slopes up. Tall oak trees as far as I can see. There is nobody out here.

  I take a cloth from the saddlebag and untie the scarf and the knot at the back of Marian’s dress, letting it fall to my waist. Wolf glances at me with a quizzical expression before returning to his thirst. I soak the cloth in the stream, dab it upon the wounds. It makes me cringe. The sting and the relief: merging together. As I move down my back, I think of sitting with Marian beside the stream. Is this the same one? If I followed it out, would it lead me back to her?

  I stop as the water makes cold tracks down my spine. There is a stir inside me. I scan ahead the wooded slope. Then, back over my shoulder. Am I being watched? Are there eyes somewhere behind a trunk or in the high branches? I cannot see anyone. But my blood tells me otherwise.

  There. Much higher up the hillside. Someway beyond the stream is a structure – a shack – lent against an oak tree, half-hidden in the roughage.

  I see no movement. No persons. But I tie up my dress quickly and return to the saddle. It may well be deserted – like the lair Guy said the Sheriff’s men found last night. This could even be the same one. Yet I cannot shake the sense of being watched as I ride Farragut across the stream.

  The shack comes into view. It is a sad, decrepit-looking thing, although not as small as I first reckoned. It meets between two trees. Trunks have been wrought together with hard rope. Thatched with branches. But the roof is sinking. Some of the wood looks rotten. I cannot see if there is a door, even a window. It is truly a hovel.

  I try to imagine how anyone could live like this. Then I think of my mother. Of our own home in the greenwood: even more remote than this one and just as humble. But ours was made with greater care and love than this shack. It had a warmth and strength in its smallness – so I remember.

  I tried to return once. Guy came with me. We must have been eleven or twelve years old. We could not find it. Even the burnt remains of what had once stood. Where I had slept, or pretended to sleep, as my mother worked with her bowls of coloured remedies. We found the old tree that overlooked it. It was dying. And where the house had stood, there was only moss, and the faintest shadows left by sunken walls. It was like the earth had swallowed up my home.

  But it was not the earth, I think. Our visitor destroyed it.

  The shack does have a door in fact. I find it as I take a wide arc around the building: a low, closed entrance that is littered with short white sticks. Fowl bones. Outside, too, are the remnants of a fire. I suck in a breath. Someone has been here. Recently.

  I whisper in Farragut’s ear and dismount, hooking his reins to a branch. I take out my flint-blade from under my dress, while Marian’s bow and arrow stay strapped across my back. Wolf hovers. He pads the earth silently. His back arching up as we approach the shack with its sunken roof and scattered bones.

  The wood of the door is soft. Damp. I push. It grinds on the ground. Opens enough that I spy shadows within. A bed. Empty. I shove harder on the door. My hand is ready. Wolf sniffs the air. He hurries to another bone on the floor. For me, the shack smells of old leaves and stink-rot. The floor is plain brown earth. In the middle is a low crooked table. A lonely bottle sits upon it.

  In the corner: more beds. All empty. But there is something underneath one of them: a box of stout wood. I begin towards it. I am almost there when a sound – or a movement – thickens the air at my back. Something falls to the floor.

  Or someone. They have a voice: “You lost?”

  PART III: THE FOX

  9.

  He is hooded. The lower half of his face is masked. In the first sight I take in everything I can. He is near my age, I would guess. But with a hard edge to his pale face and sharp gaze that makes him seem older. His eyes are the maroon-brown of autumn leaves. He holds between us the weapon of the greenwood: a bow with an arrow pressed taut against the string.

  Mine is tied, useless, cross my back.

  Neither one of us yet moves or speaks. The silence is broken only when Wolf sticks a paw forward and issues a long, quivering growl.

  “Your dog seems to think this is his home,” Maroon Eyes says. “Better let him know who the invader is.”

  I find my voice. “Wolf!” The growl does not quite stop but he retreats to my side.

  “Lay down your knife,” my captor says.

  “How do I know you won’t hurt me?”

  “You don’t.” His voice is as steady as his hand on the bow. “But if you keep holding your blade it won’t matter either way.”

  I curse myself for being caught. By an outlaw no less! I wish I could seize again that fierce clarity, the turning that took over in the cavern-room. But I feel cloudy. Off guard. With a sigh, I let the flint-blade drop to the earthen floor.

  He steps closer, his brow folded. “The girl from yesterday…Gisbourne. What the hell are you doing here?”

  I swallow. I have to tread very carefully if I am to find out what he knows. “It is about yesterday. What you took from me.”

  “Your trinkets? They are gone, princess. For a good cause...” He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t have come here. I can’t rightly let you leave.”

  I don’t care for the threat. But I’m in no position to match it. “I am not here about the moneys or the jewellery you thieved.”

  “What then?”

  “In my purse there was a cloth gilded with the face of a black lion. When you took it, I thought I saw…recognition in your face. As though you knew of it.”

  His eyes tighten. “You came all the way into Sherwood Forest to ask about a damn cloth. Are you mad?”

  No, desperate, I think.

  “Well?”

  “Why?”

  A torrent nearly passes my lips: Because it belongs to a man who murdered my mother and who broke me, and he has taken someone, a girl from my village…

  But Maroon Eyes is watching with that hard stare, his arrow keen on my throat. I may not believe – like the Sheriff and Guy do – that these outlaws have anything to do with Sara or the other girls who are missing. But I would not put any faith in him either. Not a bit. I bet he would rob his own kin if it pleased him.

  “Well, princess?”

  “I’m not a princess.”

  “Ai.” His eyes cast down and back up to my ruffled hair. “Not today anyway. You look a little worse for wear there. What happened to your neck?”

  I assume he means the cut. “I scratched myself on a branch.”

  “No. Those dirty marks.”

  Marian’s scarf has fallen loose. I glare at him. The marks throb warmly. “I was born with these. Why?”

  “So you’re not so perfect then,” he laughs. His rudeness leaves me speechless. “Outside. Bring your dog. Leave the little knife.”

  He snatches up the blade after me. Outside the cabin the sky has clouded. It feels a different day from the sunlit river where I sat with Marian. A wave of frustration runs through me. I made a terrible decision coming here alone and not telling anyone of my plans. Why couldn’t I trust anyone with this?

  Maroon Eyes directs me to a ring of stumps surrounding the burnt-out fire. He limps slightly. Drags his left hip and leg as if it were weighed down. Could I try to run? He sits across from me, legs apart, lent forward. Pulls down his half-mask. The sky sheds light on his hooded face. A scar long and thin tracks his jaw from his left ear to his chin. Otherwise his face, like his body, is lean. Handsome in a fierce, rugged way. There is no softness in it. No warmth.

  “Your name is Brya?”

  I did not expect him to remember this. “What is yours?” />
  “Ai, so you can tell Father and have it writ on bounty posters across the land?”

  “And how would that even happen? You weren’t going to let me go.”

  He chuckles. “Perhaps your company changes my mind.”

  As if he understands human-talk, Wolf produces another growl from under his teeth. I ruffle his coarse hair. Maroon Eyes glances at the hound.

  “Besides from your friendly companion, you come here alone?”

  “I did.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “He is not my brother.”

  Maroon Eyes chews on his lower lip. “Whoever he is, I’m sure he wouldn’t like you going into Sherwood on your lonesome.”

  “None of this matters! I told you: I need to know about the lion’s cloth. You have seen it before?”

  He shakes his head. “Never seen that thing in my life, princess.”

  “Then why…”

  But disappointment – no, hopelessness – stifles me. I have come all this way for nothing. Now I must return to Sherwood Castle – if I am allowed to leave at all – no closer to finding where Sara has been taken. I push to my feet. It is the only act I can manage against the sinking sense of failure.

  “Then I am leaving.”

  The bow twitches in Maroon Eyes’ hands. “Sit down. You have yet to give me one good reason why I ought to let you go. You have seen this hide.”

  I continue to stand. “And you have robbed my family. You would keep me hostage now as well?”

  “That’s not a reason, love. And dare I say your family would pay a pretty coin or two for you.”

  “What a good soul you have!” My temper runs away from me. “Is there not more to you than coins and jewels?”

  “Spoken like one who has never been short of either.”

  I suck in a breath. Try to contain myself. “Listen to me. I will speak nothing of this place or of you. If I wanted that, I would have come here with men. Guards. But I came here alone and to learn of that cloth. Since you cannot help me you must let me go.”

  He considers this. Then says, “Or perhaps you were bored. So you came looking for adventure in Sherwood Forest. I’ve known girls like you.”

  “Have you? Well, you do not know me!”

  He grins. “So, you are not looking for romantic adventure?”

  Before I can stop myself, I shout at him: “I am looking for a girl.”

  “Aren’t we all?” he says. But this is not in jest, not really.

  A shadow touches his reddish eyes. For a time he is silent. We both are. Then he lowers the bow and lets it go slack. Reaches into the pocket of his tunic and pulls free the silken red cloth. Lays it on the earth between us.

  At the sight of it again, my belly shrinks a little: the black lion’s gaping mouth, the hellish halo of flames that encase it. Even after all this time, there remains a gloss of golden dust upon the fabric.

  Maroon Eyes points his arrowhead to the lion. “How did you come by this?”

  “Why do you care? You have never seen it before.”

  “I have not.” He shrugs. “I may have heard of it though.”

  My heart slows right down. I sit back on the log. “You did? When?”

  “Who is the girl?”

  I take a leap of trust. “Her name is Sara. She is from our village.”

  His eyes are doubtful. “She is one of your servants?”

  “No. I do not know her well at all. But she was taken from a clearing in the greenwood near my home. I promised her brother I would find her.” My eyes are drawn to the lion’s face. “One of the men who took her, I believe this belonged to him.”

  “That is really why you came here?”

  “Yes.”

  He seems to make a decision. With his free hand he lowers his hood. His cropped dark brown hair is flecked with auburn. It is a strange hue like a heady wine.

  “I heard a story about it, is all. An old fool’s tale.”

  “You must tell me.”

  “Must I?”

  My body tenses at the sound of a voice beyond the slope. Maroon Eyes snatches up the bow and despite the limp, moves swiftly to one of the trees, somehow still keeping one eye on me. For a moment I wonder if this could be the Sheriff and his men. Guy. There is relief in the idea. Yet I am desperate to hear this story.

  Then Maroon Eyes’ shoulders relax. He issues two piercing whistles. Another replies from the hillside. A girl’s voice, too, humming a melody.

  My hand clenches with nerves: more of them coming.

  *

  Four appear over the slope. Each one carries a sack of goods, except for the Green Giant at the front who bears three. When he sees me he drops them in his tracks. He seems even bigger than he did yesterday: tall and round as an oak truck, a bush of black hair on his solid head. His cheeks are shiny from the climb. I cannot tell if the bluntness of his stare is surprise – or something more menacing.

  With the rake of a girl behind him it is easier to tell the tone. She pulls up a scarf to cover her face but her pale green eyes shoot daggers at me from between the brown fringe of hairs over her forehead. Wolf growls at her and she points a slingshot at my face.

  “How did you fare?” Maroon Eyes asks as if nothing at all were amiss.

  “What in hell is she doing here?” the girl says. Her accent is thick, unlike one I have heard.

  “Holster your shot, Pelaw. She’ll not harm you.”

  “Though I might her!” the girl replies. But eventually she does as asked.

  Behind her I am shocked to see a boy as young as twelve, along with a second girl, older and taller, who shares the round face and black curls of the Green Giant. She ceases the melody she had been humming. They flank the Green Giant and the hooded girl and come forward to form a half-ring before me.

  “My name is Brya. And it is true,” I say, “I mean you no ill will. I seek only what you may know about this cloth.”

  I pick up the lion’s head badge. Touching it is odd. The yellowish dust tingles my fingertips, then all the way up my arms to the base of my neck. There, it seems to soak into my blood and leave me, for a long moment, dizzied. I have to squeeze my fingernails into my palms till the woods and the young outlaws come again into focus.

  “There is a girl who is missing.”

  “We don’t know nothing about that!” the one named Pelaw shouts. Her voice trembles as she stabs her finger in my direction. “You’re here cause of them pretty bangles we took off you, admit it!”

  “You are wrong.” I glance at Maroon Eyes. “He says he knows a story of it.”

  “Thank you, princess,” he says dryly.

  For the first time the Green Giant speaks. His voice is like a winter river: slow and deep. “What did you say?”

  Maroon Eyes ignores the question. “How much did you get for it all?”

  The Green Giant shakes his head. “Just some grub.”

  Maroon Eyes glares. “What happened?”

  “They were watchful. We couldn’t find Leigh anywhere.”

  “So you still have the…?”

  The Green Giant glances at me then nods.

  Maroon Eyes curses. He chews on his lower lip. He seems to reach some reluctant conclusion. “Prendergast?”

  “Isn’t he…?”

  “Ai but…”

  They seem to share a language, their sentences never needing completion.

  Now it is Maroon Eyes who shoots a look my way. He and the Green Giant exchange a knowing stare.

  “Could work.”

  “It’ll have to, won’t it?” Maroon Eyes says. The Green Giant reaches into one of the sacks and tosses him a loaf of bread. Maroon Eyes makes a face but takes a bite out of the dough. They head toward the cabin. To the others he calls back, “Watch our princess, will you?”

  The three set around me on the stumps: Pelaw with her slingshot curled like a snake in her lap; the tall, black-haired girl sorting knotted bags of berries on the trunk; the small boy gnawing at som
e dark, unidentified meat. Seeing their food makes my stomach growl. I have not eaten since the banquet and then I barely touched the meal. I must look near as desperate as Wolf, who is hunched forward with a pillar of drool stretching from his muzzle.

  “Hungry?” Pelaw says. I picture a mean grin behind her face-scarf. “They not feed you proper in your castle?”

  “I am well enough.”

  A very unexpected thing happens. The boy reaches into one of the sacks and tosses me a green apple. Both girls look at him.

  “What are you thinking, Slate?” Pelaw says. She reaches over and snatches away his bag.

  The boy, who is fair-haired and very slight, shrugs. “I ain’t going to eat all of this, am I? So why not?” He speaks with a lisp: thowhynot?

  “They haven’t ever given us nothing: that’s why! This is ours.”

  “The only time we have ever met,” I say to Pelaw, “you robbed me.”

  “And I’d do it again!”

  I bite my tongue from firing words back at her and from consuming Slate’s gift, not wishing to get him into more strife. But once they are all eating, Pelaw too, I give in. The bittersweet apple-meat is lovely. I devour it, saving some for Wolf. He gobbles it up, core and all.

  By the time I finish Maroon Eyes is returned. The Green Giant is with him, leading two thin, mottled horses by the reins.

  “I’ll watch her for you,” Pelaw announces.

  “No need,” Maroon Eyes says. “She’s coming with us.”

  I get to my feet. “Where do you mean to take me?”

  “Never you mind that for now.”

  “Tell me!”

  Pelaw lifts her arms in protest. “Why are you taking this rich mare? You know, she’ll turn you in the first chance she gets!”

  Maroon Eyes is already walking towards the other slope. “Cause we aren’t going to kill her, Pelaw. And you lot brought back not a single coin. So we might as well make use of her.”