Chapter Eight

“Cousin, I have just heard the news. How do you fare?”

A hand dropped onto Curlew’s shoulder while he sat with his head lowered into his hands, locked in a fog of despair. He had spent the day tramping to the nearby villages and meeting with his sisters, advising them of what had come to pass. Neither of them had taken it well. Petrel had clung to him, and Dove had wept in his arms.

All the while, his heart had journeyed with Falcon and Lark, into Sherwood. He longed to see his mother so badly he ached. But when he looked up now into Heron’s face, he found himself somewhat comforted.

“By the Green Man’s horns, I am glad you are back,” he said. “Who told you the news?”

Heron made a wry face and seated himself at Curlew’s side. “Who did not tell, would be a better question. I was swarmed as soon as I stepped into the village.” He lowered his pack and bow from his shoulder. “Not but I knew something was amiss—there is an imbalance. It haunted me the whole time I was gone.”

“You had no glimpse of your parents in the forest?”

“Nay, but I went nowhere near the hermitage. My business was nothing I wished to have observed.”

“They have gone to try and bring Ma out of this sleep, or whatever it is that holds her.”

“Peace then, Curlew. If anyone can, they can.”

“I know that.” Curlew believed it to his very soul. “But what if she cannot be brought?”

Heron smiled quietly. “If they cannot call her with the power of Sherwood, surely your father’s love can. It is at least as strong.”

True enough. Curlew had never seen a love to rival his parents’, not even that of Lark and Falcon, who were bonded on an inestimable level. His parents quite plainly lived for one another.

“What will happen if she never comes out of it?” he asked of Heron, and the night. “What, to him?”

Heron looked thoughtful. He poured a draught of ale from the flagon that stood at Curlew’s knee and placed it in his hand. “Drink that.”

“I do not want it.”

“Drink, Cousin. Your father is a strong man—none stronger.”

True also, and yet… “He is strong because of her.”

Heron’s golden gaze grew serious. “We are all strong because of each other, especially here in Sherwood. The magic will save her, lad. And if it does not—”

“Aye?”

“Your father will either go on without her or lie down and follow her wherever she has gone.”

“I cannot bear it.”

Heron let those words hang in the dark air for several moments before he said, “But you will have to bear it, lad. ’Tis what we were meant for—born for—is it not? To take their places when the time comes.”

“But it is too soon. We are not ready. We have not even found the third guardian.”

“Then have faith in Sherwood, Lew. Your mother will not surrender her place just yet.”

Aye, comforting words—or they would be, did Curlew not know the history of past guardians so well. Many had held the power of Sherwood over the years, and for all, change had come too soon.

The first triad had been made up of his great-grandfather, Robin Hood, who had held the power shared with his wife, Marian, and the living sentience of Sherwood itself. That circle, though, had been uneven, and when Robin fell, cut down by the Normans, both Marian and the circle had broken. Unwilling to surrender Sherwood’s magic to their overlords, another three had stepped up—the healer Lil, the village headman Geofrey, and the mystic Alric. Upon their deaths, the circle had wavered perilously again, only to be taken up by Robin and Marian’s daughter, Wren, along with the sons of those who had worked so hard to keep Robin’s legend alive—Sparrow Little, son of Little John, and Martin Scarlet, son of Will Scarlet the renegade soldier.

And when Martin died, when Wren and Sparrow, together, disappeared into the mystical depths of Sherwood, Curlew’s mother and Heron’s parents had stepped in.

And held strong until now.

“We can do nothing without the third of our number.” Curlew spoke the words aloud and yearned with them. He turned his gaze on his cousin. “Tell me your pilgrimage to Sherwood was successful.”

Heron met his gaze with one that glowed. “It was successful.”

Curlew’s heart rose. “You know who she is? Where she is?” A woman in one of the nearby villages, perhaps, who had somehow escaped their attention all this while.

Heron leaned forward and his tawny hair slid over his shoulders. “Not that, Lew. You forget I knew not the urgency of the need, when I left. Yet,” he drew a breath and finished, his words full of wonder, “I lay with the Lady, Lew. She came to me on my third night out, while I lay sleepless and aching. She gave herself to me even as a flesh-and-blood woman might, as a lover might.”

Curlew stared. Always had he known the thread of mystical belief ran deep through Heron’s being. But this made a powerful magic indeed, the sort that might have been experienced by Robin Hood himself. A rush of wonder, like an echo of Heron’s own but touched with envy, arose in his heart. He could sense Heron’s jubilance, catch its reverberations. If anyone deserved such an honor, aye, it was this man. But why could such an experience never find him, Curlew? Aye, he was the ordinary one, the one who must walk the path of hard work and struggle. Sherwood, it seemed, had chosen Heron for great things.

“I am glad for you,” he said softly, and he was. Heron deserved this honor. He walked half the time clothed in magic. Why should this come as a surprise? He asked, because he felt he could ask his cousin anything, “What was it like?”

A smile came to Heron’s face, unlike any other Curlew had seen. Half bliss and half devotion, it seemed to elevate Heron’s very spirit. “Far more than I had anticipated, though I believe I waited for it all my life long. She formed out of the very air, Lew; I felt her arise from the elements of Sherwood itself. She came into my arms and loved me. It was—ah, but words fail.” Heron lifted his hands in a speaking gesture.

Curlew’s mouth went dry. “How did she look?” As lads, they had speculated over it—how beautiful might be the spirit of all womanhood?

But now Heron smiled and shook his head. “I do not know; I could not see her. She came to me in darkness. There was naught but sensation. I could feel everything about her—her skin, and the softness of her hair that wrapped around us as we—” He stopped abruptly and an incredible look invaded his eyes. “Forgive me, Lew. I cannot speak of that even to you.”

Curlew struggled with his feelings, which seemed predominately jealousy and longing. “What said she to you?”

“All manner of things. She whispered to me—and through me—all the while, Lew, of how blessed we are to carry Sherwood’s magic, how favored we are with both her and her Lord. She told me I took his place on this night—that I was him, whilst I lay with her.”

“Said she aught of the missing guardian?” Curlew’s voice sounded hoarse, and Heron gave him a sympathetic look, as if he could feel Curlew’s desire.

“Aye. She comes, and soon. She comes to Sherwood.”

Curlew’s heart leaped and began to beat madly in his chest. “Who is she?”

Sorrowfully, Heron shook his head. “You must understand, the Lady communicates not so much in actual words as in knowing. And I was somewhat otherwise occupied at the time. Her favor is strong.”

“Did she let you know to which of us she comes?” Heron had experienced this wonder—should Curlew not, then, possess the real woman?

“Nay, only that she comes here to Sherwood. That was emphasized. Also”—Heron frowned—“that her coming is in some manner a returning. I did not completely comprehend that part of it.”

“Ah. Someone who lived here before, perhaps, was born here and then moved away, and was raised elsewhere. ’Twould explain why we have been unable to find her. For it seems these last years we have gleaned for every possible candidate and found only disappointment.”

“So we have. I know not, Lew. Only that she will come in the fullness of time.”

“The time is now.” Curlew thought again of his mother lying senseless. Should she slip away from them, how long could the magic of Sherwood endure without a new threesome of guardians?

Yet he could sense something new about Heron, brought from his encounter in the forest, a quickening, a certainty.

“You are changed,” he said, soft as the night.

Heron gave him a smile. “Who could lie with her and not be changed? She has left part of herself inside me.”

“So. You are to be our priest—the one of us who bonds with Sherwood itself.” Curlew should, indeed, be glad. How could he be jealous of his closest friend, dearer to him than a brother? But Heron, it seemed, had been given so much: intelligence, a kind of male beauty that invariably turned female heads, and ease with Sherwood’s magic that far surpassed Curlew’s own. He could even shoot an arrow—not, perhaps, so well as Curlew, but then, few could.

“Do not despair, Lew,” Heron said, as if he could hear Curlew’s thoughts, which, in part, perhaps he could. “She told me that we move toward a prize of inestimable worth. And she sent me a message especially for you.”

“For me?”

Again, Heron smiled. “Aye, she bade me tell you to go to the heart of Sherwood even as I have done, and there she will come also with you, the holy Lord’s Lady.”

Curlew’s brows flew up. “Lie with me, you mean? With both of us? But ’tis unheard of, that.”

Heron shook his head. “What is the value of wondering? Sherwood makes the rules and then loves to break them. I do not believe there is a precedent for this. For our case is unique, is it not? There has never before been a triad like ours—two parts without the third. All I know is she bade you come.” A hint of mischief invaded Heron’s eyes. “And then, come. Prepare yourself—she is a wild ride.”

Heat seemed to rush through Curlew’s blood until he sat enflamed.

But he raised his gaze to Heron’s face. “You do not mind if I have her also?”

Heron’s smile deepened. “How can I mind? This is not, Lew, like lying with a mortal woman. The sensations are all physical, aye, but she is spirit. As such, there is enough of her for both of us. As I have learned, there is no lack in the spiritual world. She—like her Lord—is everywhere and within everyone, in the stag that runs, the child who cries, and the smallest flower that lifts its head from the soil. She is life. She is the fundamental magic of Sherwood.”

He paused, and the night moved around them; the trees stirred overhead. In the far distance an owl called, plaintive and echoing.

For several long moments Heron waited, and then he fixed Curlew with a golden stare. “And so, will you go?”

Curlew’s heart still beat high and hard in his chest. He might tell himself he went for his mother’s sake, or that of the guardianship, or even the future of Sherwood itself. He knew all three would be a lie.

He drew a hard breath and answered, “I will.”