Swallowing hard, Rowan felt herself smiling, for she found herself looking into her mother’s face. The foremost of the helmed women, Celandine gazed back at Rowan with all the sorrow and love and pride of the world in her fern-green eyes.
Rowan spoke strongly. “Go ahead and slay me, Guy of No Soul. A rowan tree will spring up from the earth upon which my blood falls, and I shall be with my mother again.”
And she felt the razor-sharp edge of the knife bite into her throat. She felt a trickle of blood run down her neck. She sensed more than saw Lionel crouch to leap, too late for her, yet he’d risk his own death—
“But wait,” Guy growled, and his blade paused where it pressed into the skin of her throat. “It is not just you whom I want. I shall have all you outlaws.”
No. No, were friends and comrades to die on her account? Rowan felt her strength turn to water and drain away from her like rain.
As if sensing her despair, Guy of Gisborn raised his triumphant voice. “I shall kill you all, one after another. You, minstrel oaf, if you wish your precious Rowan Hood to live another few moments, throw away your dagger.”
Slowly Lionel did so, his face moon white.
“And you others. Throw them over your shoulders.”
Etty tossed away her weapon, and so did Beau, neither of them quite able to look at Rowan. But she saw with a pang to her heart that Lionel kept his stricken gaze upon her, a lifetime of unsung songs in his eyes.
Guy of Gisborn commanded, “Now take three steps toward me.”
They obeyed.
Gleefully their captor roared, “Now kneel, outlaw vermin—”
Thwok.
And even before Rowan heard that meaty sound of impact, before she heard her enemy gasp and felt him let go of her, before she leapt away and spun around to see him topple on his face, even before she saw the gray-fletched arrow jutting from his black-horsehide back—she knew.
She knew, because once again she could sense in the wilderness a beloved presence.
“Father!” she cried. “Oh, Father,” as Robin Hood ran out of the woods, dropping his longbow to hug her tight against his chest.
Nineteen
Mother! Mother?”
Stepping back from Robin, Rowan explained, “She was just here,” and turned to scan Celandine’s glade. But already the aelfe were melting away like mist, dissolving into air. Within an eyeblink they disappeared.
Shakily Jasper rose to his feet.
“Let me get this ugly thing out of here,” Lionel grumbled, bending to drag Guy of Gisborn’s body into the woods.
Beau and Etty ran to the far end of the clearing to grab Dove’s bridle, one on each side, hanging on as Dove burst into a flurry of bucking and kicking. Giving vent to pent-up emotions the equine way, Rowan surmised, but Tykell wasn’t helping, dashing out of the woods to nip at the poor pony’s heels—
Tykell?
“Ty!” Ro cried.
“Wuff!” At Dove. Ty had not yet finished harassing the pony. And Rowan did not call him again, for Rook stood before her. Rook, whom she had thought was long gone and far from here and maybe even a traitor.
Matter-of-fact as ever, offering her a rag of cloth, he told her, “Your neck is bleeding.”
But Rowan barely heard him. She did not lift a hand to accept the cloth, the same bandage she had torn from the hem of her tunic earlier. She could not move for smiling.
“Rook,” she told him with all her heart, “thank you. Thank you for going back to find Father.”
Flushing red, he ducked his head, turning away from emotion. “Somebody had to have some sense.”
“That was what you intended all along, wasn’t it?”
“Bah. Bind your neck.” He thrust the cloth at her.
Accepting the bandage, Rowan felt her father’s hands still resting on her shoulders. “I was going half insane looking for you,” Robin said gruffly.
Rook said, “I’ve never seen a man stride so far so fast, day and night without stopping.”
“You did the same,” Robin told him.
“I couldn’t keep up. You got here first.”
Robin seemed not to want to talk about it. “Rowan, let me see that cut.”
“It’s nothing. A scratch.” Rowan turned to hug him again, then sat down beside Celandine’s spring to wash her wound.
From under the roots of the great oak, the spring trickled down through flowers and ferns before coming to rest in its stone-lined pool. Wetting her cloth in the stream of water, facing the pool, Rowan saw her own reflected face shining with happiness, radiant like the celandine flowers all around her, blossoms that seemingly shone with their own light in sunset’s afterglow.
The face mirrored in the pool was her own, yet not hers alone. Alive in the water, it looked back at her with her mother’s eyes.
Rowan felt that look cradle her like an embrace. “Father,” she whispered as Robin sat down beside her, “do you see her?”
Apparently not, for he merely took the wet cloth from her hand and started to dab at the blood on her neck.
Rowan blinked, and there was just her own familiar reflection in the pool again. But she knew; she understood. Now she looked into her father’s face, noting that he looked very weary and too thin. “Father,” she told him tenderly, “I was a fool.” Have they slain her truly? the aelfe had asked her once, but she had not comprehended until she had seen the glade. “No one killed Mother. She’s right here. She always will be. Here, and in me. That is why she had to stay. The only way she might die would be by leaving.”
She half expected Robin to give her a worried look and tell her to hush, but he did not. He stilled his hands, studied her face, then nodded. “In her beautiful daughter and in this place,” he murmured, glancing around him at celandine flowers like thousands of rayed suns in a green velvet sky. “A place as beautiful as she was. I have never known a lovelier.”
“There was reason, after all, for me to venture here. Father.” From her ring finger, Rowan slipped off one of the two remaining silver strands of Celandine’s ring, and she held it out to him. “I feel as if Mother wants you to have this. As a token that she has not forgotten you.”
Robin Hood turned to her, his sky-blue eyes wide.
“And I know for a surety that I want you to have it,” Rowan added, “as a token of our love.” In this case, Rowan felt certain she could speak for all of the members of the band, but she added, “Especially mine.”
She felt a tremor in his fingers as he accepted the ring from her. She saw his lips move without speaking. She saw his eyes brighten into blue pools of tears.
“Everything’s all right, Father. We’ll go home now. To Sherwood.” Leaning toward him, Rowan placed her healing hands upon his golden head to ease his weariness and give him peace.
Rowan Hood Returns Page 11
