by B. C. Harris
“Yes. Robin Hood is a perfect example.”
Martha sits up straighter in her chair, attempting to look superior.
Michael looks like he’s ready to mock her.
An all-knowing glance from Ms. Kelly helps to keep him silent, at least for the time being.
“What do we know about Robin Hood?” Ms. Kelly asks as she glances around the room.
She waits patiently for a response.
“He shot apples off the top of someone’s head,” Michael blurts out to another round of laughter.
“He lived in Sherwood Forest,” Jamie, an intellectual looking boy, with blonde hair and a small stature, adds in a manner that suggests he knows more about Robin Hood, but is hesitant to share it unless he is asked to do so.
“Tell us more Jamie,” Ms. Kelly says as though she thinks that he has some additional information.
Jamie is a wealth of knowledge, sometimes even better than Google. Jamie, although acknowledged as being very smart, is also polite and considerate of others. He never uses his intelligence to make others feel inferior in the manner that Martha does.
Jamie adjusts the heavy black glasses perched on his angular nose that is a little too big for his face before he starts again.
“Robin Hood stole money from the rich and gave it away to the poor,” Jamie continues. “He was always dressed in green and was an expert with his bow and arrows. He lived with his friends, some of whom were Little John, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marion.”
“Very interesting, Jamie,” Ms. Kelly says with a smile, her customary reward of approval. “What Jamie has told us is one variation of the Robin Hood legend. The first stories of Robin Hood, dating from many hundreds of years ago, tell us that he lived in Barnsdale Forest rather than Sherwood. In the earliest stories he might have stolen money from the rich, but he did not give it back to the poor. Somewhere along the way the story of Robin Hood changed.”
Pausing to ensure that we’re all listening, she continues, “Over hundreds of years, the story kept evolving until Robin Hood became a superhero like Superman or Batman. The tales became so realistic that people began to believe that he really existed.”
“Ms. Kelly,” Jamie interjects politely, “I remember reading something on the internet about Robin Hood which relates to some of the things you were telling us.”
Ms. Kelly takes a step towards Jamie and smiles.
“Jamie, please tell us anything else you know about Robin Hood.”
Jamie looks happy to have the opportunity to share what he knows. The rest of us, accustomed to his insights, listen carefully. I know that I usually learn as much from Jamie as I do from any of my teachers.”
“I believe the article said something about a group of men who lost a fight or war and were outlawed to live in a forest. One of their leaders was named Robynhod,” Jamie says, his voice falling off at the end as though he’s a little embarrassed about knowing so much.
“Yes, that is correct,” Ms. Kelly says. “What else can you tell us?”
Jamie confidently, but humbly starts to speak again as he adjust his glasses, “I believe that this occurred hundreds of years ago in the middle 1200’s. This man with the name of Robynhod fought for a leader named Simon de Montfort at a place called Evesham. After losing the battle, these men were banished to the forests to live.”
“Wonderful, Jamie. Class, based on actual historical facts such as this, the beginnings of the legend of Robin Hood might have started. In later years, there were other men with names similar to Robin Hood who might have been sent to live in the forests because they had broken laws. As these stories were told over and over, the facts changed and the legend grew. In some stories, he was even called the Green Man instead of Robin Hood.”
“Just like Peter Pan,” Michael interjects. “The Green Man.”
Everyone laughs at Michael’s remarks.
“Actually in one of my comic books, there is a story about a green man,” Michael continues, looking at Jasmin to see if he has gained her attention.
Before Michael finishes what he was saying, Martha jumps into the conversation, “Peter Pan is a boy who didn’t want to grow up.”
I wonder if it bothers Martha that Michael sometimes takes the attention away from her. In the same way that Michael craves attention by being funny, Martha seeks it by trying to be smarter than the rest of us. Her problem though is the manner in which she speaks, rather than what she actually says.
Ms. Kelly pauses. She seems to be searching for a question to rekindle the discussion.
She strokes her shoulder-length brown hair with her fingers, a regular habit when she is uncertain which direction to go next.
After what is a longer than normal pause, Ms. Kelly asks, “What are some similarities between Peter Pan and Robin Hood?”
“They both loved adventure,” Jasmin says, proud of her answer. I know that school isn’t Jasmin’s favorite place to be, so whenever she is able to answer a question correctly she jumps right in with it.
“They both lived in forests away from cities,” someone behind me adds.
“They were both sneaky,” Jorge, a boy who has a reputation for being devious, states in a manner that suggests he invented the word.
“Jorge, what do you mean by the word sneaky?” Ms. Kelly asks.
The short, heavy-set boy hesitates and looks at the ceiling, something he tends to do when he’s thinking.
As Martha’s hand leaps high in the air, Jorge finds his answer. “Robin Hood sneaked around in the forest waiting to steal money from people who were traveling by, and Peter Pan would sneak up on Captain Hook and steal things from him.”
“Good answer Jorge,” Ms. Kelly replies, temporarily ignoring Martha’s waving hand. “Are there are any other similarities?”
“Neither of them had a job,” Jamie says. “It seems like they were always having fun, not really accepting any kind of responsibility like other adults.”
“Except that Peter Pan wasn’t an adult,” Martha insists, with her hand still balancing high in the air as though she is a waitress carrying a tray of food in a crowded restaurant.
“He wasn’t?” Ms. Kelly replies in an encouraging sort of way.
“No, he was a kid like the rest of his friends, those lost boys.”
Ms. Kelly pauses again in response to Martha’s comments. As she often did once a discussion was underway, she begins to look around the class for students who haven’t been participating.
I begin to twirl the ends of my hair with my fingers.
I panic, thinking she might ask me the next question. Although I have heard everything that has been said during our discussion, my mind was really somewhere else.
Ms. Kelly’s eyes settle on me. I almost die.
“Emily, what do you think?”
I begin to squirm. I’m sure everyone is staring at me. I feel my face turning red. The only thing I remember hearing is something about lost boys.
“What about lost girls?” I answer as I quickly sit upright in my chair.
There’s a snicker throughout the class. Everyone knows that I haven’t been paying attention.
“What do you mean by lost girls?” Ms. Kelly respectfully asks.
I want to tell her about my dream last night where I became lost in a strange world, but I know everyone would laugh at me.
I freeze.
I’m about to admit that I haven’t been listening when Drew clears his throat. Everyone turns in his direction because it’s rare that he ever says anything in class.
“Ms. Kelly,” Drew says in his cool, distant movie-star kind of voice, “Can I go to the washroom?”
“Yes, Drew,” Ms. Kelly replies.
Drew slowly saunters from the room with everyone watching him. By the time the door closes behind him everyone has forgotten that Ms. Kelly asked me a question. Even Ms. Kelly seems to be content to turn her next question in someone else’s direction.
Drew saved me.
- 5 -
The very second school ended, I rushed home. Although I feel exhausted and want to sleep for awhile, I’m determined to learn more about legends, having contributed nothing to the discussion today in class. Besides, Ms. Kelly said that tomorrow each student would choose a legend to research with a partner. From what I overheard in class today, some people like Jamie and Martha already have their topics.
My mind is set on being prepared for tomorrow’s class, although I can’t stop wondering whether Drew intentionally saved me from being further humiliated in class, or whether I’m reading too much into the timing of his trip to the washroom. Is it possible that Drew really likes me?
As soon as I enter my house, I drop my backpack and head downstairs. Although I normally have a snack after school, today it can wait. Right now, it’s more important for me to find some books on legends.
I gaze at the hundreds of old books and the dozens of still unopened boxes with even more books that litter the basement floor. I contemplate where I should start. I need to find a legend that would be interesting to research for my project. As I look at the piles and piles of books, I’m thankful at times like this that my mother has collected so many books: many from my grandparents and some even from my great-grandparents. I also suspect that some of these books were from my father which makes my visits to the basement library, as I like to call it, even more exciting. I know there are books in the basement that are more than one-hundred years old. The possibility of finding a great mystery always excites me.
I love books much more than computers. Books are alive. Books contain secrets in their faded pages, or in the markings here and there from people who have read them. I love taking one of the older books and carefully turning each page as though I might make a new discovery. As I read a page, I often wonder who else has read this same page. Where did the book come from? Who owned it before it came to me? Where has it lived? To me, it is as though each book has a life of its own.
More than anything, I love to find a book that someone has written in, or maybe highlighted a sentence or two with a marker. Whenever I find such pages, I read them over and over, trying to imagine why someone had written their thoughts on the page or highlighted something. Sometimes I look at such writing, wondering if it might even be from my father. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. I’m convinced that someday I’m going to be with him again. I’m sure that he had a very good reason for disappearing when I was four years old.
My mother recently told me that she was going to purchase some shelves for the basement so the books could be organized. I’m thrilled at the possibility of having the books categorized in a more formal manner.
As I begin to look through a pile of books, there is a sense of adventure that exhilarates me.
I know that there’s a big book on legends or mythology or something like that in a stack of books from a box I opened a week or two ago. Although most of the books scattered around the basement appear to be in a disorganized mess, the reality is that I know where just about any book I have touched is amidst the clutter.
I start to crawl on the carpeted floor. I quickly locate a mound of large books. As I pull each book from the top of the pile, I read the titles: THE HISTORY OF ART, CREATORS, COLLECTORS + CONNOISSEURS; THE DAY THAT CHANGED OUR WORLD; and there it is – the book I am looking for – MYTHOLOGY, AN ILLUSTRATED ANTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT MYTHS.
I love the word ancient. Something inside me tells me that I’m about to embark on a great adventure, although the reality is that I generally feel this way every time I touch one of the older books.
I eagerly open the bulky book. I note that there are 923 pages. Somewhere in this book, I hope there will be a legend that I can research for my school project.
The book is organized by time periods throughout history. I scan the chapter titles, reading some of them aloud: “THE SUN GOD”; “THE WARRIOR KING”; and “APOLLO: GOD OF LIGHT”.
There are hundreds of short chapter titles. Once before on a similar project, I simply closed my eyes and randomly placed my finger on a chapter title in the table of contents in one of my other basement books. On that occasion, the chapter I haphazardly selected became my project topic. Today, I want to try a different approach, although I still haven’t decided what that will be.
I continue to scan the chapter titles: “THE GREAT FLOOD”; “THE BIRTH OF ZEUS”; “THOR, GOD OF THUNDER”; “THE MONKEY KING…”
The Monkey King? That sounds interesting. The story is on page 448.
As I begin to leaf through the pages, the book defaults to its middle point, or at least to a point where someone else had once forced the book to stay open. As I look at the page number, I’m amazed that I’m at the exact page I was looking for. It’s almost as though the book has chosen the story for me. My eyes grow wide as I begin to read.
Although I consider myself to be an excellent reader, I quickly encounter some difficult words such as Xuanzang and Cheng’en that are hard for me to pronounce. As I often did when I encountered such words, especially names, I change them to suit my needs. In this situation, Xuanzang becomes Zang and Cheng’en becomes Cheng. Using this technique, I’m able to maintain a fast pace in tackling any book.
As I continue to skim through the story about the Monkey King, I learn that the tale is about a monkey who went on a journey to bring some holy books back to China. The monkey had superpowers and a magic wand. I think that this would be a good legend to share with my class.
Turning to the next page, I freeze. There’s some writing in faded blue ink in one of the margins. Someone else must have once read this story and has written something about it. Excitement grips me. What if this is a secret message from my father? I never stop believing that somewhere in my house is a clue as to why he mysteriously vanished.
Although the faint writing in the book is not very easy to read, I think it looks like a single word. Even more remarkable is a small washed-out drawing beside the faded word. I note that the drawing looks like a jewel. “An emerald!” I exclaim with great enthusiasm. “It’s the drawing of an emerald.” Does it possibly have something to do with my mother’s emerald? Adrenalin races through my body as though I’m an Olympic competitor at the start of a race.
I touch my neck, but I remember that I’m not wearing the emerald anymore. None-the-less, it’s very exciting to think that the picture in this book might be an image of my mother’s emerald.
The writing is difficult to understand. I try to decipher each of the letters. The cursive writing is scrawled in such a way that it’s hard at first to recognize an actual word. As I continue to study the writing, I’m fairly certain that there are six letters in what appears to be a single word. I can’t stop thinking that maybe it’s a secret message. What could the word possibly have to do with the drawing of the emerald?
Needing something to write on, I leap to another pile of books. After pushing them aside, I find a magnifying glass, a pencil and a small pad of paper that are buried underneath them exactly where I left them a few days ago. The magnifying glass has come in handy on many other occasions as I explored my basement treasures. In addition, I generally kept the pencil and the pad of paper with me to make notes on anything interesting that I found in any of the books.
Using the magnifying glass, I look once again at the illegible word that is written in the book. Even with the magnifying glass, the first and last letters are difficult to read because they are faint, although I think that the second letter is an “h”, the third letter is an “i”, and near the end of the word, it looks like there is a “t” and an “i”, or is it a “t” and an “e”?
I write the letters on my pad of paper leaving a space before the “h”. After the “h” is an “i”. I figure there is one letter missing after the “i”, so I leave one more space before I write down a “t” and then an “i” with an “e” written beside it. I stare at what I have written.
_ h i _ t i/e
No matter how closely I look, I can’t determine the missing letters. I know it’s a going to be difficult to decipher them. The faint letters are almost invisible. As well, the style of cursive writing is exaggerated making it hard to be sure that I have the other letters correct. It’s frustrating for me not to understand what the word says. It seems like whoever wrote the letters had purposely made them difficult to read.
My love for adventure is now moving into high gear. I love to read books about mysteries, especially when I’m able to use my imagination and pretend that I am one of the characters.
I often start a book, identify the problem and then attempt to solve it before continuing to read the remainder of the book. There are times when I think that someday I might be a detective, or maybe even a mystery writer.
I shift back and forth between the page in the book and the piece of paper where I’ve been writing various letter combinations. Although I continue this approach for a long time, I’m unable to discover the word before me.
Realizing that the faint drawing beside the scribbled word is likely an emerald, I wonder if it’s a coincidence that last night my mother’s emerald magically took me to a strange world and then today I find that someone has drawn a picture of an emerald in a book in my basement along with a cryptic handwritten word.
It’s almost as if someone is attempting to connect with me.
If so, who could that possibly be, and what is he or she trying to tell me?
- 6 -
NEW DANGERS
I’m trembling with anticipation. Over the past hour I’ve decided that I’m going to try to return to the odd world I visited last night. My instincts tell me that there is a link between Tamor and the mysterious word and picture that I found in the book in my basement after school today. On the other hand, it might be my active imagination attempting to connect these random events that are no more than a coincidence. Although I don’t have a logical explanation, I’m convinced that someone on Tamor can help me to decipher the illegible word I found in my book.