by Tim Hall
“Let the wildwood be your teacher,” the old man had said, sitting against the cave wall. “Regard the hibernating creatures in their hideaways. They slow their heartbeats to a near standstill, so their body heat plummets and their scent disappears. They vanish.”
With practice, and more practice, Robin found he could achieve this trick, just as the old man said, slowing his breathing and his heartbeat to the barest of tremors. Now he pictured himself as a cold blue shape, still and serene as the trees, while all around him and across him little red bodies scurried, leaving their scent trails.
The patterns began to change and Robin knew a large mammal was approaching. There were warnings. He heard the startled skittering of squirrel pups. His own pulse began to strengthen, but he focused and returned it to a whispered ta-tump.
The big mammal moved closer. It was a hind. Robin could smell her musty scent. She was relaxed, nibbling the heads off flowers. Her heart was a pulsing beacon of heat.
She walked toward Robin’s hunting stand. She stopped, turned.
He drew, took aim, let loose. He shot the animal through the heart and she was dead before she hit the ground.
He clambered down and began skinning and gutting the hind, cutting and sawing, removing the heart and cooking that on a spit while he worked. From willow wands and fern fronds he built a smoking rack and he gradually cured the rest of the meat. With his knife he dug a pit and he used earth and leaves to cover what he couldn’t carry, to return for later. The work had taken him all night and the morning’s warmth was rising amid the trees.
He left some scraps for the scavengers and he headed back toward the cave. As he went he heard the footsteps of the vixen-child, running along behind.
My sister …, the old man had said. She’s the one you need beware … She won’t be much trouble for now. But come late spring, and summer …
Robin hurried on, trying to leave the girl behind, but she kept up easily, singing one of her rhymes, and she was still lurking hours later, as Robin tried to sleep in the cave, her voice skulking through his thoughts with a skittering noise like claws.
Robin had been stalking a snake. He was becoming a good hunter with his bow, but he had lived long enough in the wild to know hunger is never far away. He knew never to turn down a meal.
And here was this adder, searching for a warm place to bask. He tracked it by the sound of its rough skin against rock. He crept closer, stealthy as a weasel, preparing to strike …
He lunged, seized the snake.
It hissed and twisted and bared its fangs. He slid his free hand up its body and held it tight at the tail and just below the head, then he sank his teeth into the rubbery flesh and he ripped strips from the snake until he was sure it was dead. He set about collecting wood and damp leaves, intending to smoke the meat.
He paused, listening to an unexpected noise.
Voices.
And these weren’t the otherworldly voices he had grown used to in this place. And not the crude jeering of soldiers either. These were the voices of children. Shocking to hear the noises of ordinary children. He hadn’t realized how close he had come to the forest edge. Only a few hundred paces away was a village.
The children were taunting each other, daring one another to set foot in Winter Forest. Robin remembered being very young, going to the wildwood edge with his brothers, teasing and testing one another in just the same way.
“That isn’t true,” the boy was saying.
“Yes it is,” the girl said. “She was only five, like me. She slept three nights in Winter Forest, but when she came out she was ancient. Her teeth were falling out and her hair had gone gray and her village was empty because everyone else had died or gone away.”
A sudden thought came to Robin: I’m no longer lost in here. I could rejoin the world of people. It doesn’t have to be just me and a crippled old man in a cave. He could go to that village out there. Someone would take pity on him, wouldn’t they? Somebody would give him a home. I’m not helpless anymore. I wouldn’t have to be a burden.
He imagined freshly baked pies; stories near the fire; singing and laughter. Thinking all this, and listening, he had been moving toward the children. He moved so stealthily now that they hadn’t heard or seen him. He was almost on top of them …
The girl started screaming. The boy was too frightened to make a noise—the boy just ran. Robin listened to them fleeing for the village, and finally he understood what he must have looked like emerging from the undergrowth: cruel crosses where his eyes used to be; hair long and wild; fingernails like talons. Skulking in a half crouch. He still had the snake dangling from one hand. He must have its blood around his mouth.
A true monster of Winter Forest.
Marian’s voice rang in his mind: Sooner or later all the stories come true. All the monsters made flesh.
He listened to the children fleeing, the girl wailing, and he felt his anger rise. The Sheriff did this to me. He cut me off from everyone, forever.
That was when he realized the strange girl from the forest was there. The girl with the fox-red hair. She laughed, and he could hear she was older now: seven or eight years old. Aging with the spring.
“Silly little cross-eyes, doesn’t know a thing. Thinks he can run away. Doesn’t know he could run forever and never escape himself.”
He turned away from her and went deeper into the forest. She followed.
“Those creatures are back, you know. The ones in metal skins. They’ll never leave you alone, not so long as you live.”
He stopped and listened, but he didn’t hear any soldiers. It began to rain.
“Don’t you get tired of being the hunted?” the girl said. “Don’t you want to be the hunter for a change? I can show you how, if you come and play my games.”
“Leave me alone!”
He turned, nocking an arrow to his bow. He drew and let loose. The girl giggled, far to the side of where the arrow struck the soil. Robin ran, all his old rage boiling to the surface, thinking of the Sheriff and Jadder Payne.
Bring me the boy’s eyes.
The girl kept pace. Robin ran faster. And then, through the blood beating in his ears, he heard the soldiers. In his fury he had almost stumbled on top of them. They were below him, in a hollow, arguing and throwing dice; going on with their lives.
And these weren’t just any rangers. One of them Robin had met before. This man was saying: “Shut your mouths and throw the dice. If I take enough money from you ladies, maybe I’ll stop thinking about slitting your throats.”
Once, a lifetime ago, Robin had watched this same soldier circling Marian’s cage, making lolling noises with his tongue.
La, la, la.
Here was the soldier with wasp-orange hair and teardrop scars on his cheeks.
Robin crept to the lip of the hollow. He nocked an arrow, anger throbbing in his ears. He steadied his hand and told himself to wait—to remember what had happened last time he attacked in a frenzy.
One of the rangers was saying: “I mean, so what if it is the last wolf in England? Why does the Sheriff care?”
“Why do you care why he cares?” a second man said. “Maybe he wants a wolf-hide disguise for All Hallow’s Eve. Perhaps he’s seen one too many wolves in his twisted dreams and he wants to wipe them out for good. The why doesn’t matter a stuff. He says, ‘Jump’, we say, ‘How high?’ ”
Slowing his breathing, teasing apart the tones and the textures, Robin begins to picture this scene in detail. The first man who spoke has a high-pitched voice and nervous hands. There is a clicking sound where he fiddles with rosary beads. He smells of the pig urine in his new leather boots.
The man who answered him is larger than the rest—he takes the heaviest gulps from the ale jug they pass between them. He smells of the hazelnut oil he has used to polish the wolf-head emblem on his breastplate.
But it is the third man who Robin can picture clearest of all. He is the smallest, youngest of them, yet appears to be in
charge. He has a habit of scratching at a crush-scar above his left ear.
At this moment the third man is saying: “Throw the damn dice. You’re so busy flapping your mouths your hands don’t get a chance. I swear, Doggeskyll, if you don’t stop fiddling with those beads, I am going to stick them somewhere less easy to reach.”
Edric Krul. The ranger who tormented Marian in her cage.
Robin’s rage surged, and the scene in the hollow became fuzzy, distorted by red noise. He took deep breaths and regained his composure and started again to tease apart the tones. The noises now were the glug of the ale jug, the patter of rain, the clatter of dice on the throwboard. The one called Doggeskyll had stopped clicking the beads and was now sprinkling a liquid on the steel of his dagger. Robin thought this was probably holy water.
After a while, Doggeskyll said: “Well, if you want to know what I hear. I hear it’s not a wolf we’re tracking at all. It’s a mighty white stag that keeps its antlers year round.”
“Then why wouldn’t he say so?” the biggest ranger said. “Why would he have us checking these wolf traps, day after day? Why would he—”
“Shut. Your. Mouths.” As Edric Krul shouted he made a violent movement, sending throwboard and dice flying. “Any more of your babbling and I swear I will slit your throats right here and I’ll go back and say the Wargwolf ate your sorry waste of skin. Am I understood? Take your eyes off me, Gouger. You’re a big man but I’ll gut you like a fish. Get to your feet, both of you. Two more traps to check. God willing I’ll never have to stomach you ladies again.”
Edric Krul’s outburst brought Robin’s anger to boiling point. He could wait no longer.
In one movement he stood, drew, aimed, let loose.
He heard the arrow clatter off metal.
When Edric had stood he had taken his skull-helm from the ground; he was holding it at waist height when the arrow struck exactly that spot. Robin groped for another arrow, but his fingers were shaking with rage and he took too long to notch. By the time he shot again Edric had dived to one side. Two more of Robin’s arrows sucked harmlessly into the soil.
“Up there,” Edric screamed. “Get up that slope!”
Robin ran. Twenty paces away was an oak, its trunk hollowed out by fire. He scuttled inside and held still. He listened to the soldiers go crashing past on both sides.
“Gouger, that way, down to the river,” Edric said. “You, go that way. He can’t have got far.”
Robin had taken his one remaining arrow from its quiver. Could he still do it? No. He told himself not to move—to remember what had happened before when his anger took control. Stay hidden. Give yourself a chance next time.
Eventually, the soldiers drifted back toward their hollow.
“Did you see that thing?” said the one called Doggeskyll. “What in Hades was it? If Edric hadn’t been holding his helm—”
“Not another word,” Edric said. “Get your stuff. Hold your tongue or I swear … Wait, listen. Do you hear that? What is it?”
“It sounds like … singing,” the one called Gouger said. “A girl’s voice. All the way out here. What the devil …?”
Little robin red-breast, sitting in a tree,
“Come down,” said the pussycat, “won’t you play with me?”
The soldiers moved toward the singing; the singing was coming from directly outside Robin’s hiding place. The men came closer, began circling Robin’s tree. The click, click, clack of a crossbow being wound. The swish-swish of another man readying a throwing net.
The singing continued. The men edged nearer. No choice now. Robin ran.
Crossbow bolts made the air hum. One skimmed his arm, gashing the skin.
He slid down a steep bank, and darted along a riverbank and tucked himself out of sight among overhanging roots. He froze.
The men crashed about above him. One of them thrashed his sword like a farmer through wheat—wood pigeons flapping away in alarm.
“Find him!” Edric shouted. “I want him in that net. Filthy vermin. I’ll skin him alive.”
Robin held still. The men moved farther away. He was safe.
But then the singing started again, directly outside his hiding place.
Faster ran the pussycat, while robin chirped and sang,
Says little robin red-breast: “Catch me if you can.”
The men moved toward the sound.
A sword came chopping down through the roots.
Robin darted away and slipped beneath a blackthorn bush and held still. He was bleeding freely from the gash in his arm and from a second wound in his foot. He felt dizzy, and didn’t know how many more times he could run.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Edric said in a singsong voice. “You can’t run forever. I’ve got your blood on my sword. I can take you apart slice by slice, drop by drop, if I have to. Come out, come out, wherever you are …”
The men were very close. Twigs snapping beneath their boots.
Something—or someone—slipped into Robin’s hiding place. The smell was musty, like wet fur, but then she giggled—a girl’s laugh. She rustled back out of the bush and darted away. The singing began again.
“Meow,” said the pussycat, “won’t you come and play?”
“Pleeeeease,” said the pussycat, but Robin flew away.
“This way,” Edric shouted. “After him. Bring him to me alive.”
But this time the singing was nowhere near Robin’s hiding place. The vixen-girl was leading the men astray. Their voices faded into the pattering of the rain. In the distance Edric Krul screeched and swore and thrashed his sword. Robin lay there breathing hard, fear and anger pumping in his veins.
* * *
“Not fair,” the vixen-girl said. “You were too good at that game. Or those stinky men were too dumb. I’ll think of something better next time. Blind man’s bluff …? Hee-hee.”
“What do you want with me?” He lunged and caught the girl by the fox-red hair.
She screamed, and her scream became a snarl and Robin was holding a spitting, hissing vixen cub. Then fur became feathers—a bird of prey snapping at his fingers. In the next instant the kestrel was a snake, slipping from Robin’s grasp to the ground.
From ten paces away the girl screamed again, louder and longer than before.
“You mustn’t do that! You mustn’t. Stinky little cross-eyes! Do that again and I’ll never let you play my games.”
With a rustle in the grass the girl was gone.
All through the spring the girl of the forest followed him, teasing him, taunting him. And all the time she was changing. Whatever it was she wanted, he didn’t know how much longer he could resist.
Now summer’s warmth was wafting through the trees. In his mind’s eye she had become tall and lithe and graceful. Her voice was the singsong of a sunlit stream.
“The season is ripe, it’s time to begin. Shed that pale husk, come claim your new skin.”
“I told you to leave me alone,” Robin said, turning to walk away. “I won’t play your games.”
She was perched on a high boulder. She hopped down and followed on soft feet.
“Games are all finished, time to grow up. Put down your toys, we’ve delayed long enough.”
Robin stopped. She circled him, running fingers across his chest and shoulders. He breathed the perfume of her sun-warmed skin.
“I’ve carried your strength, deep down inside. Come taste it, it’s yours: this power, your bride.”
Robin forced himself to remember that underneath this new shape she was the same: She was the old woman of winter who sat clacking her bones; the young girl of spring who skipped singing amid the bluebells; the stern woman of autumn who laughed to see Robin lost and alone.
She circled him again, pressing her naked warmth against him, nuzzling her mouth at the nape of his neck. Her breath was cherry-leaf and the hint of fresh blood.
“So many clues, leading us here. One final test: the hurdle of fear. No room fo
r doubt; time to proceed. Come. Steal the wolf’s hunger, and feed.”
He raised his hands and pushed her away. “Leave me alone!”
She stood motionless. In his imagining her golden eyes were burning. When she spoke next her voice was as smooth as ever, but barbed. The sound put Robin in mind of an owl: fluff and feathers, but hiding razor claws.
“Beware my impatience; I won’t wait forever. Who’ll hear your song, if I turn to another?”
She was circling him again, running a finger across his face, tracing the line of his jaw. The finger was sharp, and getting sharper. It was a talon. Quick wingbeats and a falcon darting through the trees. Only once she was gone did Robin feel the sting of the cut and the blood running from his chin.
* * *
“We need to fight!” Robin shouted. “I’m tired of being the hunted. They’re all out there, living their lives. The Sheriff. His rangers.”
“You’ve been listening to her,” Cernunnos said. “This will end in disaster.” The old man had not long emerged from the cave. His wounds were healed but his movements were still lumbering, his speech confused.
“You’re stronger than they are, even now,” Robin said. “Why won’t you help me?”
“Because you’re scared!” Cernunnos had bellowed, and the trees had quaked in their roots. “You’re scared of the past. You’re frightened of what you can sense lurking in the future. You’re terrified of my brother. And I should add my strength to all that terror? When the fearful become strong, that is when the world burns. So much I’ve forgotten, but that lesson I have learned, and learned and learned. And now she has offered you a shortcut. Kill one fear and use it against another. And if you succeed? What price? I have lost you to her … I should have left you to die, grubbing after bugs …”
Cernunnos was standing at the highest rim of the glade. Robin’s impression of him wavered—in his mind’s eye he glimpsed snow-white antlers, the setting sun touching the tips.
