Rowan Hood Returns

by Nancy Springer

  Now Etty wore one on her finger, Beau one on hers. Lionel and Rook wore their strands suspended on thongs around their necks, under their jerkins, so that the rings nestled over their hearts.

  Tonight Rowan felt like the weakest strand of the band, almost broken. Not that she had ever called herself their leader or thought of herself as anything more than their comrade, despite the way they seemed to turn to her. But now she felt herself far less than ever before. No aelfin power in her anymore. Worse. Weakness. She was a burden to her friends.

  Yet here they remained with her, just as the silver circlet remained intact, embracing her finger. Like a larger embrace, her comrades encircled her. Far more than the strands of the ring bound them all together. And it was this thought that made Rowan’s heart feel warm and full even while the rain pelted down.

  With her right hand, Rowan caressed the two strands of silver, slipping them up to her knuckle and back again, hugging them with her fingertips.

  One of the silver strands remained on Rowan’s hand for herself. And one of them waited for someone yet to receive, someone so far unknown.

  Ten

  By the time birch and willow had come into leaf, two weeks later, Rowan and the others had reached the northern fringes of Sherwood Forest. Rowan rode a booted pony now; Beau had tied pieces of uncured deerskin around Dove’s feet to blur their hoofprints so that Guy of Gisborn, or other enemies, might not easily follow the trail. And the booted pony was brown; Beau had stained Dove with juice boiled from alder twigs.

  Then, only partly joking, Beau had attempted to eat the cooked wood. She was hungry. All of them were. Meat does not fill a body as bread or fruit would, and sometimes there was not even meat, for hunting while on the move is no simple matter, and at times not even a rabbit blundered into bowshot. As for foraging, this was the worst time of year. Sometimes supper was only wild onions or the eggs of nesting songbirds. Even fish was hard to come by, for fishing requires staying in one place for a time, and they had to keep moving on. Luckily, one day Rook had spied a mess of eels swarming up a brook to spawn, and scooped them out of the water with his bare hands. Poached eel for supper had seemed a feast, although Lionel grumbled that an eel was just a snake with fins.

  All of this, they endured for me, Rowan thought as she halted Dove to look at what lay ahead. My friends. Hungry on my account. Because she sought vengeance for her mother’s death. Otherwise they might still be sheltering warm and dry in Robin Hood’s great hollow oak tree.

  So it was with a humble heart that Rowan scanned the open, heathery uplands before her. From the concealment of one of the scattered copses at the northernmost reaches of Sherwood, she could just barely see Barnesdale Forest, a low lavender smudge on the far horizon beyond the heather moors. To get to Barnesdale, they must journey across that rolling upland, gleaming golden in the canted light of a sinking sun, its beauty deceitful. The moors offered no hiding for outlaws; Rowan knew that there would be danger. As surely as night was on the way right now, peril would be on the way tomorrow.

  And then, beyond Barnesdale, they must journey across open pastureland again before they reached Celandine’s Wood. More peril.

  For her own sake, Rowan did not care. But what right did she have to endanger all of them?

  As if guessing her thoughts, Etty said, “We could try crossing by night, I suppose. Follow the stars.”

  “And blunder straight into some peasant’s farmyard,” Rowan said, although her deeper fear was for Dove. What if the pony put a hoof into some unseen rabbit hole, broke her leg?

  Etty nodded with her usual serenity. “Well, we’ve made it this far without starving or being captured.”

  “Or stepping in a man trap,” Lionel added.

  “Or eating the snakes or toads,” Beau put in, “and because our noses are fastened on our faces not upside down, we no drown in the rain either, la?”

  While the others muffled their laughter with their hands, Rowan tried to smile, but could not. Yes, they had come this far alive—but also without seeing or hearing anything of Robin Hood.

  Eyes on the lavender line of forest on the far horizon, Ro said slowly, “I wish I knew where my father was.”

  Etty said, “Wherever he is, likely he’s wishing the same of you.”

  “That’s just it.” Rowan turned in the saddle to face her friend. “He’ll go to the rowan grove, find it abandoned—”

  “Probably he already has,” Etty said.

  “—and he’ll be worried, thinking maybe I’m captured, searching for me—”

  “Probably he already is,” Etty said.

  “But he would never dream I’d go so far ...” Rowan let the thought trail away, but she knew Robin would expect to find her in or around Sherwood Forest.

  As usual, it was Rook who asked the hard question. “Do you want to turn back?”

  And Rowan saw how the question raised hopeful heads all around her. Even Tykell, sitting on his own bushy tail, looked to her for an answer. But she did not answer, for her heart felt hollow and she did not know what to do.

  Looking over her shoulder toward Sherwood’s familiar shelter, she scanned the woodland around her.

  Violets bloomed now, a carpet of velvety blossoms and heart-shaped leaves between the trees. Rowan wondered whether violets were good to eat.

  Or fern fiddleheads. Many of them thrust up between sparse, slender trees. There were no mighty oaks and elms in this grove, only smaller, slimmer maples and poplars and lindens.

  Nearby in the copse grew a rowan.

  This was to be expected, for rowan trees, far smaller than oaks, grew commonly near the edges of oak forest, where sunlight could reach them. But this rowan seemed not to be thriving. On some of its branches, buds promised foliage and flowers and fruit during the season ahead. But many of its limbs jutted dry, gaunt and the color of ashes, lifeless.

  Rowan looked to her own hands, gaunt and pale on Dove’s reins.

  She studied the rowan tree again. Half alive. Half dead.

  The way she felt.

  And feeling that way—incomplete, despairing—had already made her remember that other time, two years ago, when she had felt hollow at heart, desperate because she had needed to know about her father.

  What she had done then was what she should do now.

  But now, as then, the thought made her shake with fear.

  Nevertheless, trembling, she slipped down off of Dove. “Leave me here for the night,” she told Rook, Etty and the others. “Come back for me in the morning.” She handed the pony’s reins to Beau. “Take Dove with you.”

  “What?” On Rook’s face Rowan saw a look she scarcely recognized there: surprise.

  “Leave me here and come back for me in the morning,” Rowan repeated, trying to sound calm and patient even though she was not. Not patient. And far from calm.

  “But why?” Etty begged.

  “So that I can know what to do. So that I can answer you.”

  Beau gawked, for once speechless. Lionel exclaimed, “We can’t just leave you alone!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you can barely walk! And anything, anybody could—”

  With a gesture of her thin hands Rowan hushed him. “No harm will come to me.”

  “At least let Tykell—”

  “No.” Rowan ordered the wolf-dog, “Ty, you go too. Go hunting, catch yourself a fat rabbit.”

  Lionel persisted, “Keep him here! How—”

  “I will come to no harm, I tell you! My kinfolk will be with me.”

  “Toads,” Rowan whispered to herself after the others had gone away, “if my kindred will not hurt me, then why am I quaking?”

  Because the personages whom she intended to summon were fey, that was why. They were what the countyfolk called “wyrd”: human in appearance yet not human, ghostly yet not ghosts. Spiritous, yet something more than woodland spirits. Folk called them “the denizens,” for few dared to speak of them by name: the aelfe, timeless and
immortal dwellers in the hollow hills of Sherwood Forest.

  Although Rowan would always hold the aelfe in awe—as would anyone with good sense—she had thought she was over her fear of them. Of their otherness.

  Apparently not. Her knees weakening, Rowan sank down to sit on the ground under the rowan tree.

  Even though she could no longer sense the spirits of trees and earth, wind and water, Rowan did not doubt that she could speak with the aelfe. Any clodpole could perceive the denizens when those ancient, powerful beings chose to manifest themselves. Rowan remembered more than one time when strong warriors had run away screaming from a glimpse of their faces—

  Better not to think of that. Better to think, as was true, that the fey blood of the aelfe ran in her own veins. Her mother’s mother had been aelfin, driven out when she had married a mortal. In their child, Rowan’s mother, mortal warmth had melted the silver moonlight essence of the aelfe into a golden glow.

  Mother. Remembering Celandine, a flower of a woman always dressed in green, Rowan felt her shaking stop, felt peace fill her with warmth like a candle flame from within. While mother was alive, Rowan—then named Rosemary—had been unable to learn a woodwife’s simplest spells, but that had made no difference to Celandine. Mother had loved her with all her heart until the day she—

  Until the day the lord’s henchmen had killed her.

  Rb found herself quivering again, this time with rage. Guy Longhead. Jasper of the Sinister Hand. Hurst Orricson and his brother Holt.

  They would pay.

  They would pay. Rowan’s mind was made up. All she wanted of the aelfe was news of her father, so that she could go on her northward quest with peace of mind.

  “My kinsmen,” she demanded of the woodland, “I need to speak with you.”

  All that happened was that the sun sank beneath the horizon, twilight settled on the copse like a gray shroud and a cold wind blew. Shadows and wind might or might not have been a response. Rowan had no way of knowing. She knew nothing anymore except with her mind.

  “My kinsmen,” she addressed the forest more courteously, “I would like to ask you a question.”

  Still the chill wind tore at her jerkin. Colder, rougher, harsher.

  Rowan remembered how it had been that first time—and the only time, until now—that she had dared to summon the aelfe. She had felt their response like the wilderness-sized presence of a mother turning, half annoyed, half loving, toward a whining child.

  But now, in this northern copse, she felt nothing of love.

  And of annoyance ... more than mere annoyance.

  She remembered the first time she had caught sight of those wilderness denizens: the night the magic of Lionel’s singing had drawn them to encircle his campfire, faint humanlike figures aglow and afloat between the trees. Perhaps if she called Lionel back here to this copse and asked him to play his harp—

  No.

  No, this was a family matter. Between her and them, her kinsfolk whom she barely knew. Only twice had she ever spoken with them, and they had answered her in riddles.

  “My kinsmen?” Rowan requested one more time of the darkening forest. “Would you please bespeak me? I have need of your wisdom.”

  Nothing happened except that twilight darkened and the chill wind still seethed.

  Rowan’s lips narrowed to a thin line. “Well,” she muttered, “it would seem that I need to make a fire.”

  Stiff, she hoisted herself to her feet and began to break the dead branches from the rowan tree.

  A mystic tree, the rowan, growing sometimes like the mistletoe on the shoulders of the oaks. Rowan wood gave protection against lightning. Diviners used branches of rowan to find precious metal. And dried rowan was an ardent wood, good for need-fire.

  Good for the propitiation of spirits.

  When she had broken from the rowan all the deadwood she could find, Ro laid it down and, in the last ghostly light of the day, went looking for oak trees. Need-fire must always be started in the hollow of an oak log.

  Finding oaks a bit farther back toward Sherwood was easy, but finding a thickness of dead oak Rowan could handle was harder. By the time she dragged in a section of a rotting branch, night was falling and so was she: staggering, her aching legs ready to give way under her.

  Sitting down on the damp ground, with her dagger Rowan split the oak branch lengthwise. Laying one of the sections like a trough of pulpwood before her, she whispered, “By your leave, spirits of fire,” picked up two dry sticks from the rowan tree and began to rub them against each other.

  Need-fire could not be kindled with embers or from flint and steel. Need-fire had to be made the old, old way. Ro knew what she had to do, but not how much pain it would cost her. Never before in her life had she attempted need-fire.

  Somewhere in the night frogs spoke, fell silent, spoke again. A few stars shone through a veil of cloud. Half dark and dead, like the rowan tree, the moon gave only dim light.

  Rowan could barely see the rowan sticks she rubbed together, but she could feel her arms begin to ache. She set her teeth and rubbed dry deadwood harder, faster, without stopping, until her arms felt half crippled with pain, the way her legs did when she walked. Still she did not stop. She must not, even though tears burned in her eyes. This was the meaning of need-fire. The measure of Ro’s effort and suffering was the measure of her need. She forced herself to keep rubbing the sticks together faster, harder, with no way of knowing how much longer till something besides tears burned. In the darkness she could not see smoke.

  The pain in her arms turned to agony, then passed beyond agony into numbness. As if another part of her had died. But about that time Ro smelled something hot.

  Sudden small flame blazed up from the rowan twigs. Tears ran down Rowan’s face as she let her tortured arms at last be still. Looking at the fire, she saw it through the water in her eyes. Flames like russet waves. Paradox of life, Etty would have said.

  Shakily, barely able to control her movements, Rowan laid the flaming sticks in the pulpy hollow of her oak log.

  From everywhere and from nowhere, as if emanating from earth itself, a bodiless voice spoke: “What do you want of us, daughter of Celandine?”

  Eleven

  A voice neither young nor old, neither male nor female. Nor, indeed, human. The aelfe spoke.

  Ro found herself trembling again as she placed more dry sticks on her small fire. She had to force herself to look up from the flames.

  Just at the reaches of the firelight, dim silver human-sized mists swirled up between the trees.

  Rowan swallowed hard, firmed her jaw and made herself scan the—faces, yes, moonglow faces of kings and warriors and matriarchs and maidens, ageless young-old faces so beautiful, Rowan ached with longing to reach out for them, yet so eerie that she could scarcely bear to look upon them.

  Nevertheless, look she did, because once before, on that other occasion when she had summoned the aelfe, they had manifested themselves to her as Robin Hood, spirit of Sherwood Forest.

  But not this time. Father was not here, not even in spirit.

  A stinging feeling in her eyes, perhaps from the smoke of her need-fire, made Rowan look down as the aelfe spoke again. “What do you want, daughter of Celandine?” Cold, impatient, the voice came from none of them and all of them.

  Rowan found herself unable to bespeak what she wanted. Instead, she whispered, “You are angry with me.”

  The voice sounded merely indifferent now. “Was your mother ever angry with you?”

  “Of course. But—you have turned away from me.” Or so she felt, with her face torn by the twiggy fingers of the forest, her body sore from its stony bones.

  “Does the falconer turn away from the falcon?”

  Trust the aelfe to speak in riddles. Rowan tried again. “Every step of my way here, you have opposed me.”

  “As the darkness opposes the light, or as the light opposes the darkness?”

  Rowan clenched her teeth in frustratio
n. There was no getting sense out of—

  “Go back.”

  Ro’s mouth dropped open, and she blinked. Never before had the aelfe spoken to her so plainly, and for that reason she could not understand them. She whispered, “What?”

  “Go back to your rowan grove.” The voice deepened, darkened. “You stray this way for no good reason.”

  Ro stiffened. “But my reason could not be better!” Anger flared in her, hot and sudden, like need-fire. “I have sworn vengeance. And now I know the names of those who slew my mother.”

  “They slew her? How so? Only you can kill her truly.”

  More nonsense. More riddles.

  “Go back to where you belong,” they told her, “Rowan Hood of the Rowan Wood.”

  Rowan hardened her jaw, lifted her head, shook it. “And do what? Sit there and let my comrades care for me?”

  “Use the gifts your mother gave you, daughter of Celandine.”

  They had told her this before, more than once, but she had never fully understood. Even less now. Whatever gifts of aelfin power she had possessed, they were gone. She said, “I cannot go back. There is nothing for me to go back to. I must go forward.”

  “So you think.”

  “So I know. I ask you only this, wise ones: Where is my father?”

  “Where he belongs.

  That could mean anything. “Is he alive? Is he well?”

  “You cannot tell? Use the gifts your mother gave you, little one.”

  Little one? Rowan stared, unable to tell whether that was mockery she heard in the voice, or tenderness, or—

  It mattered not. Before her eyes, the aelfe faded away, leaving her alone with her need-fire and the distant voices of frogs.

  “Onward,” Rowan told the others in the morning—a fine morning, sunny, with breezes whispering a promise of primroses and cowslips to come, on the meadows they would be crossing.

  Etty nodded placidly and handed Ro a slab of cold cooked venison to eat. “We have plenty of meat. A stag walked right into our camp last night. Beau shot it.”