Wild Boy

by Nancy Springer

  “Your turn, mon frère.” Beau offered Rook her dagger.

  He stared at it. Filigree hand guard. Carved hilt. A crystal globe of chalcedony in the pommel. The dagger with which she had killed a wild boar and saved his life.

  And now she was trying to save him again. Let him cut his black tangled mane of hair himself. Save his pride.

  She continued to offer the dagger with patience as unusual, coming from her, as her silence. No one spoke. The only sound Rook heard was Runkling snoring, still being patted by that proud brat—

  Brat? Who was being proud now?

  Rook blinked, then shakily reached for the dagger. He fumbled his fingers onto the filigree handle and lifted the blade to his hair, but his hands wavered so much, he knew he was as likely to cut off an ear as not. He lowered his hand and passed the dagger to Rowan. “You do it,” he mumbled.

  He noticed that she said nothing either to scold him or praise him. Silently he thanked her for her silence as she started to shear away the long tangles. Her touch could not have been more gentle.

  Bracing himself with both hands to stay upright, Rook found it difficult to remind himself that a creature of the wild does not need friends.

  Nine

  Rook awoke to find himself lying at ease in a bed of piled furs, looking up at sunlit treetops—but not hemlock. Feathery fronds of rowan whispered overhead, and from somewhere close by, a murmur of living water answered them. Even before he sat up, Rook knew where he was: the rowan hollow.

  Sitting up was more of a task than it should have been. Rook had to hoist himself with both hands. He felt as feeble as a mouse. Vaguely he remembered the sickening stench as Rowan had opened the wound to clean the poison out, the sickening pain that had made him fall over in a faint—but there was no pain now. He remembered lying half dead with fever—but there was no fever in him now. Breeze on his shorn head felt fresh and cool. He was wearing somebody’s jerkin, and a blanket covered his legs, and he actually felt as if he needed the warmth of them.

  “Hungry?” asked the voice he expected. He turned to find Rowan’s warm, grave gaze on him.

  Rook shook his head. He felt more muddled than hungry. “How am I here?”

  “Lionel carried you. I thought you would do better here.” Sitting in the shelter of the rocks with her wolf-dog by her side, Rowan tilted her head toward the ever-running spring that welled at the heart of the rowan hollow. And yes, Rook knew with a bone-deep instinct, it was Rowan’s spring that had soothed the fever out of him. That and Rowan herself, her touch. Which was almost the same thing. Rowan was at one with this place, the rowan grove.

  “Tod’s all right without me now, I hope,” Rowan added, stroking Tykell.

  To his wonder, Rook found that he hoped so too.

  “Sacre bleu toads,” called a glad voice from the rocks, “mon cher frère, my twin brother, he awakes!”

  Rook sighed and rolled his eyes as Beau thumped down to land on booted feet beside him, with Runkling in her arms.

  “Put him down,” Rook grumbled. “Let him root.”

  “Mais non, he root up the whole forest and plough it into a field for the, what you call it, the turnips!” Beau flashed her most wicked grin. “I take him to Fountain Dale, let him root there. Next year we grow parsnips.”

  From behind Rook, a familiar peevish voice said, “Belle has found her calling.”

  “No call me Belle!” Beau flared. “No ding-dong!”

  Rook looked around to find Lionel towering over him, a whole dead fallow deer on his shoulders. Lionel would kill meat and bring it home, but somebody else had to butcher it; Lionel had a tremendous stomach for eating, but no stomach at all for gutting and skinning.

  “Belle has become a paragon among piggy-sitters,” Lionel told Rook.

  Beau yelled, “So Tykell no eat Runkling!”

  Fear jolted Rook. He shot a look at the wolf-dog, and yes, Tykell was eyeing the young pig hungrily. Rowan’s hand lay on his back to restrain him.

  “You stop it to call me Belle,” Beau ordered Lionel.

  “When you stop it to speak that phony accent,” Lionel mimicked, easing the dead deer from his shoulders to the ground. “My dear little Belle.”

  Belle set Runkling down and drew her dagger, wagged it like a scolding finger at Lionel, then bent to skin the deer. Snorting happily, Runkling trotted to Rook, and he hugged the piglet, all bristles and sharp trotters, in his arms. Something swelled inside his chest, making him feel even wobblier than before. He lay down, Runkling in his arms, blinking up at rowan fronds with hints of bud showing already; in a few weeks the trees would flower heavenly white.

  Rook had never bedded in the rowan grove before. He had kept to himself in his caves in the rocks nearby. In a few days, when he felt better, he assured himself, he would move back to one of his caves, and his hair would grow again, and things would be as they were before.

  Except … it felt like an embrace to have the rowan hollow around him, with its ever-flowing spring and the warm blaze of the campfire and Lionel bringing more wood in, still bickering with Beau, as Rowan materialized like a good spirit beside Rook to study him.

  “Hungry?” she asked again.

  Rook nodded.

  A few days later, even though he felt much stronger, Rook stayed in the rowan hollow with the others. Any time now, he told himself, he would go back to his cave. Be on his own again, except that he’d take Runkling with him. In a day or two.

  He napped a lot, with Runkling snoring by his side. One sunny afternoon he napped so well that he awoke to find that night had already fallen. The campfire burned low and warm, sending aromas of ember-baked bread and roasting partridge into the night. In the fire’s tawny glow sat Robin Hood, visiting with Rowan.

  “What think you?” he was asking as she studied some kind of staff he was showing to her.

  She stood up and tucked its fur-padded Y-shaped end under her arm. “Handsomely done, once you’ve trimmed it.”

  “How? Trimmed it where?”

  “Trimmed it for Tod’s height.”

  “‘Tis the right height.”

  “Then it couldn’t be better.” She swung the crutch by gripping a stub halfway down its shaft. “What most people forget is the handle.” A branch cut to the right length, its end whittled round. Robin Hood had made this crutch for Tod by searching out a young tree with the right natural form, then cutting and shaping it, the way Rook had made a boar spear. But Robin had taken great pains with polishing and smoothing, so much so that Rook pushed Runkling aside and sat up to take a better look.

  “Rook, lad!” Robin turned to him at once. “How are you?”

  A creature of the wild does not care how it feels. But the breeze blew sweet through the rowans. And on the breeze floated music even sweeter, the honey-golden notes of Lionel’s harp. Rook could not help but feel blessed. He gave Robin a quiet look and a nod.

  Runkling awoke with a grunt, scrabbled up and trotted to Robin Hood, his tail twirling. Selecting a stick from the kindling pile, Robin rubbed the tip of it along Runkling’s back. Stiff-legged, with his eyes closed, Runkling stood groaning in porcine ecstasy.

  Robin Hood, scratching a pig? Rook blurted, “You know swine?”

  Robin smiled, his eyes sparkling in the firelight. “I know many swine. The king’s foresters, bounty hunters, Guy of Gisborn, Lord Roderick, the Sheriff of Nottingham …” But then his grin faded. Still looking at the piglet, he said quietly, “Yes, I used to help your father with his swine from time to time. Rook, lad, I am ashamed of myself.”

  The harp music hit a startled sour note, then ceased. “What?” exclaimed voices from the darkness beyond the campfire—Beau, Lionel. Rowan stood stone still, the crutch still under her arm, staring at her father. Rook’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Somewhere in the tree-thick darkness an owl hooted as if it were laughing at the very idea: Robin Hood, ashamed? Unheard of. He had to be joking, or playing one of his tricks.

  But he didn’t
seem to be. He laid his pig-scratching stick aside and turned to face Rook. “I saw you in the forest many times with your father,” he said. “We didn’t want to burden you with knowledge of outlaws and such, lad, but your father and I would talk when you weren’t looking. He was proud of how you helped him and never complained, how you shortened the days for him, always chattering and laughing and singing….”

  “What!” Beau and Lionel exclaimed anew. Rowan laid the crutch on the ground and walked over to sit beside Rook as if she thought he might need her. As if she knew how his stomach had turned to quivering water, remembering those days that seemed to have taken place in a different person’s life.

  Far off in the wilderness night a rabbit screamed, dying in the fangs of a fox, or maybe a wolf. Rook tightened his jaw.

  “You had your hair cut short so it wouldn’t catch in the bushes,” Robin was saying. “You were a fine, strong lad helping your father, running with the shoats, herding them by playing with them. I remember you climbing trees in a warm sheepskin cape and sheepskin leggings, a yellow cap on your head, happy as the day was long.”

  Rook gave only a growl, a warning.

  Robin nodded a kind of acknowledgment. “My men and I were roaming Barnesdale forest, north of here, when it happened,” he said. “We heard about Jack Woodsby when we wandered back this way.” Robin’s eyes winced. “But I never heard what had happened to Jack’s son, the boy he called Runkling. I thought most likely someone from the village had taken him in.”

  “Oh,” Rowan whispered; Rook heard her close to his side. “Oh, I see.”

  Rook began to see, also, why Robin Hood had said he was ashamed, but understanding did not help him. Dark, barbed emotions raked his heart.

  Robin Hood looked him in the eyes and said it. “All this time, I didn’t know you.”

  “But Father, no one could have known.” Rowan leaned toward him. “From what you say, he’d changed so….”

  Robin’s blue-eyed gaze shifted to Rowan, and Rook had never seen those eyes so shadowed, like deep water. “That’s what harrows me the most, how his father’s death changed him. I can scarcely imagine—the pain.”

  Pain? A wild thing feels no pain. Deep in Rook’s chest his growl rumbled louder.

  “Rook.” Robin faced him again. “There’s only one comfort I can offer you, not nearly enough, but here it is. When we heard what had happened to Jack By-the-Woods, my men and I went and found the man trap. We took your father from it. We carried him to a certain grove and buried him there and marked the place with a stone and said the blessing of the Lady over him.”

  Rook felt his growling stop for a moment—along with his breath. He felt his soul turning and turning like an eddying pool, felt himself floating like a maple wing, could have gone lilting in sky like a butterfly or swimming in greenshadow like a trout or flowing wherever the river took him, no bitter blackthorn tangle in his chest, nothing but …

  Nothing. Fearsome nothingness, as if he were a dead, dried cattle-bean pod and would blow away in the wind.

  Robin Hood said, “Anytime you want me to, I will take you and show you the place where your father lies.”

  Somewhere in the wild distance, a wolf howled as if its heart would break. Rook breathed out, stood up and stumbled back from Robin, the campfire, the others. Runkling trotted to him, giving a snouty smile, but Rook wanted no smiles. He clenched his fists, his teeth. A welter of feelings, sharp, dark, barbed, surged back to fill the terrifying emptiness within his chest. Good. Thorns were good, brambles were good. A wild thing needs a thicket in which to lie and lick its wounds.

  Scooping up Runkling with one hand, Rook climbed out of the rowan hollow and strode into the night, heading toward his cold cave. He did not look back.

  No one would follow. They knew better.

  Ten

  Three days later, Rook huddled in his favorite cave, sharing his breakfast with Runkling and telling himself things were back the way he wanted them. No more bandages and blankets and jerkins on him. Bare-shouldered. No more nursemaids. Alone. Breakfast was cold undercooked grayling left over from the day before, when he’d caught it with his bare, cold hands and fixed it himself.

  And then he hadn’t felt very hungry for it. Nor did he this morning. Runkling seemed to savor the fish a good deal more than Rook did.

  Rook heard a soft footstep outside the cave, and knew who it was even before she peered in: Rowan, with her brown braid hanging down as she bent to check on him. “Toads!” she grumbled. “Why are you feeding that pig?”

  Rook shrugged. He knew Runkling found plenty to eat in the forest, especially squirmy things he grubbed up from underground. But he offered Runkling the last of the fish anyway, and the shoat slobbered all over his hand as he gulped it.

  “I’m not hungry,” Rook said.

  “I know, but you have to eat, Rook! You’re as thin and pale as morning mist. Go down to the hollow; we have bread and cheese. Or should I tell Beau to bring you some?”

  He shook his head. These days there was a clotted feeling in his belly all the time, and nothing tasted good.

  Rowan crouched at the entrance of his cave, giving him her steadiest grave-eyed gaze.

  “I’m all right,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “You can’t go on being a wolf, Rook. Too much has happened.”

  Her calm gaze as much as her words frightened him. There was something in her eyes of a peace he couldn’t bear.

  “You’re going to have to come out of your lair,” she said.

  How could she live with such quiet in her heart? Rook growled, and his lips pulled back from his clenched teeth.

  Then he felt Runkling press against his side, stiff and quivering, as a louder growl sounded in answer. At the mouth of the cave crouched Tykell, his yellow eyes on the piglet. The wolf-dog took a creeping, stalking pace toward Runkling.

  “Ty!” Rowan snapped more sharply than Rook had ever heard her speak to anyone who was not her enemy. She nearly shouted. “Tykell, I told you, let Runkling alone!”

  Tykell shrank back, suddenly looking like a puppy caught piddling on the floor. He gave Rowan a hurt look, and then with a flip of his plumy tail he loped away, disappearing into the forest.

  Rowan gazed after him, puffing her lips in exasperation. “Toads take it,” she muttered, “now he’s got his parlous large nose out of joint, I won’t see him for three days. Stinking toads.”

  Runkling ran to her with soft grunts, and she patted him absently, shifting her attention back to Rook. “And you’re just as bad,” she complained. “You won’t eat, you’re going to get sick again, and between you and Tod I’m out of feverfew, yarrow, knitbone, agrimony, everything.” With a decided gesture she stood up. “I’d better go to the meadows and see what I can find.” Walking away, she called back, “Rook, for the love of the Lady, eat something? Please?”

  He didn’t. He lay in his cave, while Runkling snored beside him, and watched the angle of the sunlight move. He didn’t care whether he caught more fish to eat. He couldn’t think of anything he cared about, anything he wanted to do. The sun had passed overhead and slanted toward afternoon before an odd rhythmic sound roused him.

  It was a kind of hitch-thump followed by a scraping sort of footfall, coming up the rocky slope toward his cave.

  Rook sat up, his hands brushing his face from habit, although there was no shaggy mane of hair in his eyes now. He scowled as if something had hurt him, then crawled to the cave’s entrance to look.

  It was Tod, on his crutch, heading up the tor all alone.

  Laboring over the crags, Tod kept his eyes on the uneven ground. But when Rook slipped out of his cave and stood, Tod looked up at him.

  “Hullo,” he said. “They told me I’d find you up here.”

  Runkling trotted out of the cave and ran to Tod, his short tail wagging with excitement as he snorted a greeting. Rook just stared.

  “Beau and Lionel told me,” Tod chattered on. “Rowan’s not the
re. She went to find herbs. I wanted to see her too.” He stood before Rook, leaning on his crutch and panting, but his voice quieted as he mentioned Rowan, and a shadow darkened his bright eyes. “Will you tell her I said thank you? And good-bye?”

  Rook felt his jaw drop.

  Tod said, “I’m going back to Nottingham tomorrow.”

  Rook felt his insides sloshing like a butter churn. Out of the splatter he forced a single word. “Why?”

  Tod stared at him.

  “To be beaten?” Rook grumped.

  Tod looked at the ground, sighed and slumped down to sit. Runkling rubbed against him, and he gathered the piglet into his arms.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” he told Rook.

  Rook crouched to glare at him.

  “My father will come to find me,” Tod said. “I mean, really. He will. Sometime. And … and I don’t want him to hurt …” Tod hesitated, swallowed hard, then said it. “I don’t want him to hurt Robin. Or anyone.”

  Glaring was easy. Trying to think what to say was hard. Rook continued to glare.

  “Robin made me this crutch,” Tod said.

  Rook nodded.

  “He and Little John will carry me to the Nottingham Way,” Tod said. “It’s not far from there. I can walk the rest of the way.” He hugged Runkling, ruffled the pig’s ears, then set him aside and struggled to his feet. He looked straight into Rook’s glowering eyes. “Rook, I came to thank you for not leaving me in that man trap. I know you really wanted to. Thank you for letting me live.”

  A muddy brown flood of feelings made Rook look away. He heard Tod say, “Good-bye,” but he couldn’t reply. He couldn’t lift his glare from the ground. He heard Tod starting to crutch away—

  A whistle as shrill as a hawk’s scream soared over Sherwood Forest.

  Rook leapt to his feet, snatching at his dagger. Tod stood like a startled deer. Maybe he remembered hearing that signal before—for his own sake.

  “Is it—is somebody caught in a man trap?” he gasped, his face fish-belly pale under the freckles.