by Tim Hall
He stopped and looked away from the river, peering into the darkest reaches of the forest. They were terrifying, those infested depths, but they were also somehow … enticing. Occasionally, when Robin and Marian stood at the top of their tower, Robin would look down and he would feel the disturbing urge to jump. It was as if he had once had wings, and a part of him yearned once more to fly. This feeling was similar. He looked into the boundless wildwood, he felt dizzy and afraid, yet at the same time he desperately wanted to fall into that black abyss, to walk away from the river and keep walking. As if to do so, to lose himself utterly in the wildwood, would come as a great relief. Would feel almost like … coming home.
He stood there, fighting the sensation. Eventually his breathing slowed and he continued following the river. At times it disappeared underground and he followed it by the marshy patches left on the surface. Or it paused to form pools and beaver lakes and he took long detours around their edges.
The mist thickened. Outside the day had been brightening toward noon, but here it was so dark the world might have slipped back into night.
Movement caught his eye. A glimpse of dark hair, flying …
Marian?
There it was again, and footsteps through dry leaves. He left the river and set off in pursuit.
He glanced behind him. What was she running from? He fought the urge to call out, concentrated on keeping her in view. There she was, disappearing now down a slope, visible again on the far side of that willow stand.
The wildwood became more tangled. Robin battled onward. He slipped on mossy logs and he stumbled on rocks and he pushed thorns from his eyes and he ran and kept running.
Suddenly this felt familiar. So many times they had done this in Summerswood: Marian running barefoot, Robin trailing in her wake, the pair of them caked in mud and scratched from scrambling up trees. And the familiar feeling was so warm and good that Robin felt mad with it and wanted to laugh. And now he was able to move quicker because a badger path had opened up before him, cutting through the undergrowth. He checked his footing and he ran and he glanced up and he ran faster.
But he didn’t seem to be gaining on her. It was difficult even to keep her in view—mere flashes of her hair between the bark and the moss.
Except, was that a young woman’s hair, or was it feathers? A kestrel darting through the trees? An owl hissed in the distance and through the mist it sounded like someone rasping for breath. A vixen bounded through the leaves, making a noise exactly like a person pursued …
Robin stopped, all the good and warm feelings draining away.
He looked and he listened.
He admitted he had not been following Marian at all.
He could not hear the river. How far had he come? He turned slowly and retraced his steps. He began to hurry, and then to run, still not seeing the river, panic rising, running faster, thorns slicing his skin.
To his right, from the darkest shadows, he was sure he heard a scream, followed by a laugh. He crouched, his breathing sharp and shallow. He had heard a woman’s laugh, hadn’t he? Or was this more deception—the screech of a jackdaw and the cackle of a jay?
He hurried on, pushing through brambles, slipping and regaining his feet and charging forward, and arriving finally back at the river. He stayed there for a long time, his hands on his knees. He looked once more into those black infested depths.
He continued on his way, the trilling sound of the water merging with the thundering of blood in his ears. A dreadful idea was playing over and over: I thought I was following Marian along that badger path. I wasn’t. What if this entire trail has been an illusion? What if I left the academy for nothing and she isn’t here at all? What if I’m here, in Winter Forest, alone?
He told himself to trust what he had seen—the clues Marian had left and the shackles he had found.
She’s here. She’s close.
He clambered on. Up another steep bank. The skittering of claws as squirrels headed for higher boughs. The alarm call of a jackdaw, guarding its nest. Hisses and cackles on all sides. Eventually the ground flattened out. The river paused to become a small lake.
And that was where he found her.
First he spotted a campfire on the bank, and then a pile of clothing, and then …
Marian had her back to him. She was sliding into the water. Through dead branches and swirls of mist he watched the curve of her back submerge, then her shoulders, her hair fanning out on the surface, her head ducking under. She popped back up, gasping at the cold.
Robin managed to clear his throat.
“Marian …”
She turned, glared, strode out of the water. She didn’t cover herself with her arms; she didn’t blush or show the least concern she was standing there naked. She just shouted.
“Where have you been? How could you leave me here all this time all alone, you always were a slow goat but I never dreamed even you would take this long! You had better have brought the things I asked for or I am going to be really mad …”
Marian was dripping wet, clothed only in mist, and she was still shouting.
“A few simple clues—I couldn’t have made it much easier—I told myself over and over you’d be here any moment because there’s no way you’d leave me in this place all alone, but I kept waiting and waiting, sitting here and listening and thinking the worst and still you didn’t appear. What did I do to deserve you!”
Abruptly she stopped. She gave a violent shiver, glanced down at herself, bit her lower lip. She went to the fire and wrapped herself in a blanket, then came storming back to Robin and threw her arms around him.
“I knew you’d come. Sir Robin of the Hood, my champion from the very first. Come by the fire. Sit. Closer. Just until I dry off. Then we’re leaving. Robin, thank goodness you’re here, I didn’t mean what I said about you being slow—well you are slow that’s true but it’s not your fault, you were born that way—I’m not angry, only I’ve been scared and so lonely, you can’t imagine what it’s been like, the sounds in this place!
“That’s why I went in there to bathe, I had to do something other than just sit and listen, and I was beginning to wonder if you’d come at all, but of course you would, you never let anyone or anything stand in your way stubborn goat, I knew you’d come when I needed you most. And now I’m gabbling like a goose because it’s the strangest feeling being this close to you and the most wonderful feeling too—here we are, properly together without a door between—and you’re exactly as I remember but different at the same time.
“And I suppose one of us has to say something—all you’re doing is staring, the same as you did before. You always were the quiet one—I knew you’d grow up the silent brooding type—and haven’t you grown up, strong and handsome, look at you, a prince in those clothes. And anyway, you’re probably in shock, that’s why you’re not speaking. I don’t suppose you expected to see all that exactly. But honestly don’t you have anything to say? Have you given up speaking this time for good? All you can do is stare.”
She fell quiet and looked away and bit her lip. Robin was getting his breath back, his heartbeat still loud in his ears. Marian had dragged him close to her fire and they sat there, an arm’s length apart, her hair steaming in the heat of the flames. He had a thousand things he wanted to say, but everything he rehearsed in his head sounded childish or stupid or wrong, and all of it building up behind his tongue, the same way it had when he saw her again in that jail cell. So he just went on staring. She swept her hair across one shoulder and turned to face him and stared back. Neither of them blinked. From a long way away an owl screeched. The fire popped and cracked and fizzled. The wind stirred and leaves skittered.
Eventually Marian said: “I need to get dressed. Turn your back like a nobleman. Not that I’ve got anything left to hide, you’ve seen it all now in any case. You should have seen the look on your face!”
She wriggled into underclothes and a kirtle. But before she even finished dressing she reached
for Robin’s backpack and looked inside. And again she started shouting.
“Where are the things I asked for? The rest of the code, didn’t you read it? I wanted peasants’ clothes, and as much money as you could steal. How much is here? Ten shillings? Less? God’s bones, Robin Loxley, if I didn’t love you so much …”
She trailed off, raised a hand, and pinched her lower lip. She looked away. The forest now had become very quiet. Robin listened to the snap-crackle of the fire and he watched the blue-edged flames lick the wood. He could imagine he was back at the citadel, in his dormitory bed, and he was dreaming all this.
Marian pulled on a velvet supertunic; a fur-lined cape. She tied her jade amulet round her neck, then pressed it to her lips. “What’s this on your clothes?” she said. “This is blood. Whose blood is this?”
Robin looked down at the splatter of crimson on his tunic and the sight of it cleared his head and made everything come into focus, sharp as a knife edge.
“It’s a soldier’s blood,” he said. “One of the Sheriff’s men. I’ll tell you about it. But first I need to know what’s going on. Why are they chasing you? Where are we going?”
She looked at him quizzically, her eyebrows knitting. “We’re going to Castile. You know that’s where my mother was from, I must have told you a thousand times. I wrote to her family and it’s all arranged, they’ll take us in. We won’t be safe, exactly—we could run to the ends of the earth and it wouldn’t be far enough—but it will have to do, for now. It was all there, written on the wall. The message wasn’t that hard to decipher. I’m beginning to wonder how you made it this far. Have you at least got a proper knife? Give it to me.”
Before Robin understood what she was doing she had taken his father’s woodsman’s blade and was using it to saw through whole handfuls of her hair, leaving long snakes of it lying on the ground. When she had finished she put the knife back in Robin’s pack.
He stared at her. All he could do was stare. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing her with short hair, but suddenly it seemed this was not his childhood friend but was instead some beautiful stranger he had met out here in the savage wood. He stared at the curve of her neck, the line of her jaw, the gleam of her gray-green eyes, as if seeing it all for the very first time.
“Marian, what’s happening? Why are those soldiers chasing you? And who do they think I am? What do they mean by winter-born?”
She tipped her head. “Where did you hear that?”
“One of the rangers said it. What does it mean?”
“The same as warg-child. Or sylva-spawn. It’s all part of the same thing. He’s got it all wrong, but he thinks—” She fell silent and became perfectly still, steam rising from her hair.
Robin said: “What do you—”
“Ssshhh, quiet. Listen.” She took his hand and gripped it so hard he felt her nails pierce the skin. “I hear them,” she whispered. “They’re coming.” She fixed him with that big dark glare. Her voice became a hiss. “They must have followed you!” Then she was up and running. Robin grabbed his backpack and his bow and his quiver and he scrambled after her. She weaved between trees, clambered over logs and boulders. Robin kept pace. Several times he glanced behind him but he saw nothing except the dark wood, lurking.
“There’s nobody there,” he said.
She kept running. Robin saw they had left the course of the river. They were running blind through the forest. Fear gripped his throat. That sickly feeling spreading from his groin. The feelings of a lost child. “This is stupid! We’ll get lost in here.”
She ran on. All he could do was follow. Up steep slopes and down into stream beds and through blackthorn bushes, battling their way through the undergrowth, brambles and branches fighting back. She stopped and crouched in a gully beneath an overhanging willow. They crouched and breathed hard and they listened.
“There was no one there,” Robin said.
“It was them,” she said, scowling. “I know what men in nailed boots sound like when they’re trying to be quiet. And I know a stupid goat when I see one and so I know how they found me. But we’ve lost them for now. Come on, we need to keep moving.” She hauled herself over a fallen beech trunk.
“We’ll get lost in here,” Robin said.
“No we won’t. We’re heading north. It feels like we’ve come a long way into the forest but we haven’t. We’re following the tree line.”
Robin peered through the mist and he saw she was right: He could see the horizon. The edge of the forest was a few hundred paces away and they were walking parallel. He could have sworn they were heading west—it was so difficult to orient here. They walked and they walked, hacking and fighting their way through the undergrowth, the forest cackling and shrieking at them as they went.
Robin said: “Sir Bors told me he took you captive for your own protection. And for mine. What did he mean?”
Marian said: “When it gets dark we can leave the forest and head across open country. We’ll steal horses and be at the coast by morning. Then we’ll be on our way to Castile. My mother’s family are expecting us. You can continue your training there.” She pushed her way through a thicket of hawthorn, gritting her teeth as it clawed at her skin. “I have to make preparations too,” she said. “And one day, when we’re ready, we’ll come back. And we’ll kill him.”
Robin looked at her. “What do you mean? Kill who?”
“The Sheriff.”
She strode on, not meeting his eyes. At least she was calmer now. She had always been a blaze of energy, but now, of all times, they needed to keep clear heads.
“Start again,” Robin said. “I need you to explain. What’s happening? What does it have to do with the Sheriff?”
She stopped and peered back, narrowing her eyes. They walked on together.
“There’s so much to tell you,” she said. “I forget how little you know. The things I’ve learned. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve uncovered the truth. It was the Sheriff. All of it. He’s shadowed us our whole lives. He’s the reason my father burned the manor, and our tower. My mother’s death wasn’t an accident—the Sheriff caused it. And he killed your parents, and your brothers.”
Robin stopped. There was a moment of absolute silence. Memories flooded through him, red raw, of the time his family disappeared.
They were heartbroken, Mabel Felstone had said. They left to start afresh—to try to forget.
He ran and caught up with Marian. “Why are you saying that? My family could still be alive, somewhere. After they left the village, nobody knows where they went.”
“They’re dead. It was the Sheriff.” She ducked beneath a low branch. Something hissed a warning in the undergrowth. “The Sheriff came to Wodenhurst. He destroyed your family. He did it because of you, because of what the villagers told him. And he didn’t just kill them, he—”
“No, no! Why are you saying this? You don’t know anything about it. That day in Winter Forest, when I was hunting with my father, I fell asleep and he must have heard a noise and so he went to investigate and he couldn’t find his way back to me and that’s how I got lost. My family thought I was gone forever and they were heartbroken, so they—”
“I know what the villagers told you. I know what they wanted you to think. They wanted to believe it themselves, because it was less shameful than the truth. But it was all lies. In the first place, your father didn’t hear a noise. It was no accident—he left you in the forest on purpose.”
Robin stood still and there was another moment where the world stopped, every sound drifting to silence, the mist hanging motionless.
They were already lying to you, before you came here.
He caught up and walked at Marian’s side. “It was an accident,” he said quietly, defiantly. “My father blamed himself and it was more than he could stand so they left to start a new life, nobody knows where. That’s the truth. Sir Bors said there would be people who would lie to me, but I didn’t think it would be you.”
“You don’t have the first idea about the truth,” Marian said. “I understand now what it was like at that academy. They pretended they were training you to be men, but really they wanted to keep you as children. They gave you sticks and told you they were swords. They hid you away from anything sharp or frightening. Time to grow up now, Robin. You’re back in the real world. Open your eyes and admit what you’ve known all along. Your parents and your brothers are dead. Your father left you in the forest on purpose. What’s more …”
She trailed off and glanced into his eyes and twisted her mouth. She walked on. Robin stopped and let her go. He pulled his cloak close and he watched her fading into the mist. He wanted to stand here until she had disappeared. He wanted to go no farther down this dark path.
It’s not too late to turn around, to go your own way, he told himself. Wherever you end up, it has to be better than this.
Marian had become a vague gray shape. She faded farther.
Robin told himself to remain where he was, but even being this far from her caused a painful twisting in his chest. He thought of never seeing her again and the idea was torment. He ran and caught up.
“Here’s something you don’t know,” he said. “You can’t lie to me because I’m holding the full truth here, in my pack. Sir Bors wrote it all down for me. I can read it any time I like.”
“Go on then.”
“I will.”
“Go on then.”
They had ducked beneath a fallen bough and were crawling through a muddy ditch. A jackdaw took flight, croaking its alarm. They stood and looked at each other.
“Go on, read it,” Marian said.
Robin looked away. The sun was just an outline. The trees shifting shadows in the drifting mist.
Marian said: “You won’t read it, because you’re scared of the truth. And you’re scared of what it will mean you have to do.”
