by K. Kibbee
Sam offered a cautionary “Shhhh” at a low register and glanced towards the campfire, where Robin and his men, now fully soused, were too busy singing and clanking mugs of ale to notice the bumbling dog’s entrance.
Robin Hound deflated in an instant, like he’d been caught chewing shoes or piddling on the rug. He sunk without sinking, howled without making a peep. Even his wrinkles seemed to somehow grow longer—heavier. He made up the remainder of the distance to the cage at a slow plod. “I’s come to rescue ya’,” he offered once he was near enough for his whisper to be heard.
“That’s awesome!” was Theodore’s initial response, but then he muddled on for a second or two before adding, “But, what about you and Robin Hood? You know—your . . . what was it . . . fiercesome friendship? Can’t you just ask him to free us?”
Now, Theodore was sure of it—Robin Hound’s wrinkles were growing longer—sagging like hot wax. The dog looked positively miserable as he blubbered, “Well, uhh . . . that may have been a bit of a . . . uhh . . . tall tale I told you’s. I, uhh—.”
“No worries,” Theodore brightly cut in, “I kinda figured . . . well . . . anyway—you’re here now, and that’s what matters.”
The wrinkles stopped melting and Robin’s head shot up. “Yup, I shore am—and I’m gonna rescue ya’s—just like ole’ Robin Hood’d rescue his Merry Men. Gonna get you out and get you all tucked up with a nice camp, nice fire, nice rabbit—only the best o’ the best!”
“He gonna get us out?” popped out from overhead as Sam studied the bantering twosome and then locked eyes with Theodore. The Corgi nodded, though with notable trepidation, and Sam mirrored his expression.
No sooner had Robin Hound seemingly redeemed himself than he began pawing noisily at Sam and Theodore’s enclosure. Noisily enough, in fact, that he drew the attention of one of the revelers from the campfire, whose head ticked ominously in their direction. “Oye—what you on about over there?” the man wailed through a cloud of fireflies.
The bloodhound leapt into the underbrush and was a quivering ball of leaf-covered cowardice before you could say ‘Boo.’ The man, contrarily, marched towards Sam and Theodore with his inflated chest leading every step. As he neared them, Theodore noted that he was more boy than man, and clearly not dulled by the same spirits that now haunted his older compatriots. “You best keep your yaps shut,” the young fellow cautioned, mustering the manliest expression his doughy face could manage. He cocked a chin towards the campfire and told them, “We’ve been known to roast us some noisy prisoners.”
At this point, the man-boy may or may not have smirked. He then paused for reply, but when none was offered, he cast up the forced glower of a child who’d been instructed to show his meanest, gruffest, most intimidating face. Then he stomped back to the welcoming warmth of the men and their bonfire.
Robin Hound peeked from the bushes only a second or two later. “Coast clear?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s clear,” Theodore whispered back. “But be quiet this time!”
“Quiet? I’m always quiet. Why . . . some calls me ‘the Stealth of Sherwood.’”
Theodore’s eyes nearly rolled right out of their sockets. “Sure they do.”
Robin muttered something inaudible yet undoubtedly condescending under his breath and slogged himself over to Sam and Theodore’s cage, where he proceeded to examine the lock that imprisoned them. “Ya might’n be nicer to someone who’s rescuin’ you,” he quietly growled whilst nudging the lock with his wide nose, seemingly under the expectation that it would simply fall off.
Sam quirked an eyebrow and crouched down to address Theodore. “He knows he needs a key, right?”
Robin Hound immediately ceased his nosework and raised his eyes to Sam. “You gots a key?” the dog dumbly inquired.
“Well, no—we don’t,” Theodore answered back as patiently as he could manage. “If we had one, we’d have been outta here ages ago.”
Robin Hound returned a slow, deliberate blink, but no reply, and Theodore was first to fill in the silence. “What about that beardy fella, Sam—that fella who locked us in? Didn’t he have a key?”
Sam shot eyes towards the campfire, quickly narrowing in on the chap with the fur of hair wrapped around his chin like a wiry winter scarf. “Ya’ know—I think maybe he did.”
A swift whip of his head and Theodore too had sights on their frizzy-faced jailer. The Corgi squinted through his spectacular spectacles, conducting a thorough head-to-toe appraisal. “On his belt loop?”
“Yes! His belt loop!”
Robin Hound made a feeble attempt to copy his two friends, but succeeded only in synching his eyes so tightly that they shut altogether. “I don’t sees it,” he confessed.
“Oh, you will,” Theodore assured him. “You just need to get close enough.”
Part Six
Cowardly Dogs & Flying Tree Frogs
It took a mess of reassurance, a little shaming, and even a bit of bribery (who knew bloodhounds fancied pocket protectors?) before Robin Hound finally consented to brave the minefield of Merry Men and retrieve the key to Sam and Theodore’s cage. Of course, by this time the men were little more than a snoring pile of lazyouts, but that did little to diminish Robin’s fear. Backlit by the breaking sunrise, the hound’s knees knocked in time as he made his way across the campsite towards the bearded key-holder, who was three sheets to the wind and lying with his head in Little John’s lap. John was snoring louder than the lot of the men combined, and each exhale he gave sent waves through his sleeping companion’s chin scruff. Robin Hound paused as John’s snores became impossibly louder, and shot a trepidatious glance back at Theodore.
“S’okay,” Theo quietly urged,” motioning for the cowardly hound to continue.
Robin’s head swiveled back towards the campfire, but not before he gave Theodore a look like he’d been asked to dive head first into an open grave. He then arched to tiptoes (which Sam quietly decided was “a most unsettling sight”), and made up the last few feet between himself and the slumbering key keeper. Once he was within swiping distance, he hunkered down low, as though he was about to be swatted with a rolled-up newspaper, and eased his nose towards a shiny rung of keys hanging from the bearded man’s belt. Even from the cage, Theodore could see that the bloodhound’s entire body had begun to tremble.
Sam squatted down so that he was eye-level with Theodore. Both captives pressed their faces eagerly against the cage bars. “Yeesh—plug a quarter in him and he could pass for one of those vibrating massage chairs down at the mall,” the shopkeeper quietly teased.
Theodore stifled a chuckle and asked, “Think he’ll get it?”
Sam gulped. “Hard to say.”
Oblivious to their banter, Robin Hound was singularly fixated on the keyring that was jangling enticingly with every heaving snore that shook Little John’s lap. He moved his snout a millimeter closer; another millimeter, half a millimeter. He could nearly touch it. Only a hair’s breadth separated Robin from his prize—until trouble arrived on the wings of a walnut-sized beetle as black as the Devil’s heart and twice as nasty. It swooped from the sky, all but dive-bombing the bug-a-phobic bloodhound and sending him into a frenzy of howls. In an instant, the Merry Men jolted awake, and in their semi-inebriated stupor, began fumbling madly for their weapons. Flummoxed and tipsy as they were, Robin Hound was able to make it clear across the campsite and deep into the bush before nary an arrow was slung. As he bulleted past Sam and Theodore, he offered only wide, panic-stricken eyes and a strong gust of wind that sent dust rushing into their cage.
“Wh—. What was that?” was shouted in chorus throughout the campsite, but no one man seemed any more equipped to answer than another. Eventually it was the blowhard man-boy who’d chastised Sam and Theodore on the night prior who spoke up.
“I think . . . ‘twas a dog. I caught sight of his hind end, I did. Looked like that ole’ hound dog.”
Robin Hood strai
ghtened his slightly askew cap, grimaced, and then spoke in a voice as slow and thick as molasses. “Not him again. Ratty ole’ beast—always trailin’ after me in that silly ole’ cap. I know Nottingham’s the one sending him ‘round. Havin’ a go at me with that get-up. Thinks he’s clever, he does.”
“He ain’t nothin’ compared to you, Robin,” the boy swooned.
Another of the men glowered through heavy lids and told the young boy, “Aw, quit your gushin’, lad. Save it for your ma, and those lovely maidens you’re always on about,” which sent waves of laughter cascading through the camp, and turned the boy deep crimson. Even Sam giggled a little, which elicited a glare from his four-legged companion.
“We’re sunk now,” Theodore grumbled as Sam’s grin wilted. “No help, no key, no book.”
The Corgi fixed eyes on the book, which was now splayed open from the gust sent along by Robin Hound’s abrupt passing. His eyes lingered there briefly and then brightened to rival Sam’s collection of ugly Christmas sweaters.
“That’s it! The Robin Hood book! The book can get us out of here—out of the cage, out of Sherwood—out of everything! We didn’t even need the key. It was here all the time!”
Sam stared through the cage bars and screwed his face up into a pitiful knot. “But we still can’t reach it.”
“Maybe we don’t need to,” Theodore mused, scuttling towards the edge of the cage nearest to the book. He poked his long nose through the bars, in turn cinching his spectacles up tight to the bridge of his nose. “If . . . I . . . could just—,” came out one choppy syllable at a time as the determined little dog pressed into the bars and squinted with of all his might.
Sam moved in close, so that Theodore’s fine hairs were tickling the edge of his pant leg. He too pressed his face into the cage bars and peered out at the prized book. Just as he began to wonder aloud, “What are you—? Are you trying to—?” Theodore’s voice boomed, loud and true as he read . . .
“So passed the gentle springtime away in budding beauty; its silver showers and sunshine, its green meadows and its flowers. So, likewise, passed the summer with its yellow sunlight, its quivering
heat and deep, bosky foliage, its long twilights and its mellow nights, through which the frogs croaked and fairy folk were said to be out on the hillsides . . .”
The ground began to tremble, and the cage along with it. The air around them stirred, like a waking beast, and a low, haunting howl filtered in—seemingly from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The book’s pages flipped to and fro—clapping against one another as though their words were fighting to escape. Theodore hooted, “It’s working!” and Sam had no sooner joined him in rejoicing than the Merry Men took note of the small hurricane mounting on the fringes of their campsite, and rose to investigate. A half-dozen of them approached as the breeze began to pitch and swirl with sticks and leaves and one particularly skinny tree frog.
“It’s the end of days!” the Friar wailed, clapping a hand over his heart. He’d no more finished his doomsday proclamation than the old fool turned white as a ghost and then fainted right there on the spot. A couple of the men came to his aid, while the others slowed to a cautious crawl.
Meanwhile, the wind had grown vicious, and even the fat tree frogs weren’t safe. A wild-eyed toad whipped by Sam and Theodore’s cage as the storm rattled their bars and tore the roof clean from their prison. Theodore had no sooner suggested that they escape through the opening when he and Sam were suctioned into the book’s great vacuum, hoisted into the sky, and then swallowed into its pages.
* * *
Theodore came to on a polka-dot bean bag that smelled faintly of his pee. He blinked his eyes twice, and panned the familiar bookstore, which was bathed in the warm glow of breaking sunrise. A few open books appeared to flutter their pages in welcome, and Theodore felt certain that one of the stuffed unicorns guarding the Fantasy section bowed its head at him.
“Sam! We made it! We’re back!” stuck like bubblegum in Theo’s throat as he rolled off the bean bag and lit out in search of his master. He began to canvas the store while attempting a second call out to Sam, but this one just came up as a burp.
Sam, his hair mussed and glasses askew, lay just around the corner on a Persian rug that one of the kids from the reading group had affectionately nicknamed, “The Magic Carpet,” following an intensely interactive reading of Aladdin. The shopkeeper stirred at Theodore’s approach and his smile spread like sweet strawberry jam. “We made it back!” he rejoiced, sweeping the store with delighted eyes.
Sam echoed a second, even more zestful “We made it back!” and then rose, scooped Theo into his arms, and began twirling around and around until they were both a little ill. He’d no more come to a dizzy stop than a loud clatter erupted from the storeroom.
All eyes shot to the back of the store. Both Sam and Theo froze—although Theo was left swinging like a limp ragdoll in the shopkeeper’s arms for a moment or two until gravity was done with him. Then there was stillness. And quiet. Eerie quiet.
A painful minute passed. Then two. Then both Theo and Sam jolted as a thrump and a chigga-chigga trickled from the shadows and a dark figure slithered in, eclipsing the doorway to the storeroom.
A low, uncertain growl trickled from the darkness and the hairs on Theodore’s neck went rigid as Robin Hood’s imposing frame emerged out of the shadows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K. (Kristine) Kibbee is a Pacific Northwest writer with an affection for all things literary. Kristine’s passion for creative writing began in her early youth and led her to the doors of Washington State University, where she studied in the Professional Writing program. Kristine followed her scholarly pursuit of writing by publishing works in The Vancougar, The Salal Review Literary Review, Just Frenchies magazine, and S/Tick Literary Review. She is presently a regular columnist for Terrier Group magazine.
Kristine’s novella, The Mischievous Misadventures of Dewey the Daring, was her first and only self-published release, and is still currently available on Amazon.com. Her middle-grade fantasy novel, Whole in the Clouds, was released in November 2014 with Zharmae Publishing, with a subsequent, expanded edition published in October of 2017 by Incorgnito Publishing Press. The first installment in her YA fantasy series, Forests of the Fae--Devlin’s Door, was released in early 2016 with Incorgnito Publishing Press. Book two in the Forests of the Fae series (The Raven Queen) followed in February of 2017, also with Incorgnito Publishing Press.
Kristine’s newest series, Theodore and the Enchanted Bookstore was launched with book one, Tale of the Spectacular Spectacles, under the Corgi Bits imprint of Incorgnito Publishing Press, in October of 2017. The highly-anticipated book two in the series, The Tale of Robin Hound, is scheduled for release in February of 2018.
Kristine regularly engages on a variety of social media platforms and can be followed:
On Twitter @K_Kibbee
On Facebook @ facebook.com/KKibbeewrites
ADDITIONAL BOOKS FROM K. KIBBEE
Devlin’s Door – The first in the Forests of the Fae trilogy, depicts the perilous journey of a young girl who stumbles upon a ghost town filled with dilapidated Victorian homes, hidden deep within a forest in rural Washington state. As she unearths the tragic secret behind the mass disappearance of the town’s inhabitants nearly a century ago, our young heroine finds herself becoming a part of the town’s tapestry.
Available on Amazon and B&N
K. Kibbee’s middle grade fantasy that explores a young girl’s challenges with bullying and self-image and her escape to the clouds and the world of her true heritage.
An unhappy orphan, Cora Catlin is a misfit at best, an outcast at worst. She feels out of place in her life, as if everything is backwards and part of her is missing. But her long, tormented hours in hum-drum Harborville take a decidedly upward turn when she encounters an elfin stranger who takes her to a mystical world that awaits her atop the clouds.
A
vailable on Amazon and B&N
Book two of Forests of the Fae. Though she’s closed Devlin’s Door behind her, it would seem that something sinister has followed Anne from the other side. Her the girl . . . something not of this world. Ravens surround her, people mindlessly do her bidding, and wickedness drips from her lips. It’s only a matter of time before Anne uncovers her secret and with it, her vengeance.
Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the Forests of the Fae, the real Grace struggles to retain her humanity and escape the revolting Faerie body that imprisons her. Though worlds apart, both girls must race against time if they hope to unravel the mysteries of the Fae folk and unmask The Raven Queen.
Available on Amazon and B&N
Credits
This book is a work of art produced by Incorgnito Publishing Press; Corgi Bits Imprint
Jennifer Collins
Editor
J. H. Winter
Illustrator
Star Foos
Designer
Janice Bini
Chief Reader
Michael Conant
Publisher
Daria Lacy
Graphic Production
April 2017
Incorgnito Publishing Press
