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The mistake, Jack admitted as he ran along the forest path, the rangers pounding close behind, was separating from Much and Dickon and Jimsie. Together, they could have fought off the rangers and guards.
He didn’t want to kill them. Robin had stressed no lethal force. Guards and rangers might mysteriously vanish, never seen again, but their blood wouldn’t be on the outlaws’ hands.
With how close the rangers were, he doubted he would get a shot off before they were on him, certainly not one that aimed for a non-killing shot.
“Stop! Stop!” a ranger shouted.
Jack ignored him and ran on.
His bad luck to veer to the left while his mates ran to the right. The four guards had split off to follow them while the three rangers kept to his heels. Their odds were better, three against four. Alone, his odds were one against three.
His bad luck that guards had hidden in the merchant’s wagon, ready to spring their trap when the outlaws demanded that the merchant stand and deliver.
Jack veered onto a narrower trail, one tracked out by animals. That forced the rangers to chase him in a line. He heard them stumbling as they ran too close on each other’s heels.
He needed to get well ahead of them. His bad luck that he’d chosen a linen shirt this morning, before Much enlisted him for the planned robbery. He hadn’t thought anything about wearing clothes that blended into the forest cover.
His longbow tangled in a bush. He slowed to jerk it free. When the branches released his bow, he nearly overbalanced. He dared a glance at the rangers. He’d lost the few yards he’d gained.
More bad luck.
He should have expected it. The last year had found him abandoned by so-called friends, evicted from his home, rejected by the woman who’d sworn to love him. In the space of a month he had to leave Nottingham. The other outcasts in Sherwood Forest welcomed him and invited him into their adventures, the best of which was the Abbey robbery at Candlemas.
That, though, had been another close call.
Along with the rangers a fortnight ago, who nearly caught him and Dickon as they packed home the meat of a freshly-killed buck.
Third time, he realized. Did I push my luck too far?
At least the guards hadn’t had dogs. Once out of sight, he couldn’t be tracked.
He veered onto another path. He didn’t dare double-back. He followed the trail as it wound beneath great oaks, the old growth of deep into Sherwood. He hadn’t seen any trail markings on the last path, and this one looked very unfamiliar.
The land climbed steeply. Jack’s legs burned as he forced himself up the trail. Here was his chance to get ahead.
He gained the crest and paused. The rangers weren’t even halfway up the hill. Blackthorn grew thickly on the descending slope. The white flowers competed with the tiny green leaves just unfurling. Butterflies fluttered about, avoiding the spiky thorns as they sought nectar.
Those white flowers could hide his white linen shirt.
The trail didn’t turn downward, deer and little animals turning away from the mass of blackthorn hedges with their pointed defenses.
That might keep the rangers off his trail as well.
Jack winced at the thought of thorns, then he started down the hill. He glanced back and spied the first ranger. Hurrying his pace, he sought a break between the blackthorn bushes. Birds that had nested in the protection of the hedges darted out and sped to the protection of the trees towering overhead.
Shouts. “Stop, you! Stand where you are!”
“Dammit all, he’s getting away.” The rangers argued.
Jack ignored them. He slid a foot on old leaves and loose dirt. The longbow pressed into flowers. Butterflies lifted, and bees, swirling up, hunted who had disturbed them. He used the bow’s bracing on thickly massed stems to regain his balance then headed on.
Then an arrow flew past his shoulder.
Jack sidestepped into a bush. Pointy thorns pricked through his linen shirt. He jerked free and hurried.
Another arrow flew into the blackthorn to his right.
A third whistled past his head. Jack ducked, lost his footing, and crashed downward.
The blackthorns wielded their defense, piercing his skin painfully. He slid and rolled several feet. Old leaves stuck to him, loose dirt clung.
He fetched up under a massive hedge.
He still held his longbow, but his weight had broken the lower limb. He lay on his quiver of arrows. Without looking, he knew he’d lost some of the arrows.
“Where is he? D’ya see him?”
Jack stilled.
Something trickled along his cheek. He hoped it was blood and not a bee.
“Nyah. Can’t see anything.”
He heard shifting leaves. The sound was above him, faint, far. Would the rangers leave the hilltop?
“You hit him with that arrow?”
“Think so. He fell. Go down and look.”
“I’m not going into those blackthorns. You shot the arrow, Vince. You go look.”
They argued. Jack stayed still.
“He went down fast. You must have hit him.”
“I aim true,” the ranger bragged.
“He could be lying there, bleeding.”
“Or dead.”
“If he’s dead, what are we supposed to do?”
The three argued longer.
He lay still, ignoring the prickling pain, the trickling on his face that had to be blood. Birds had returned to their nests. Bees droned, hunting more nectar from the flowers.
Eventually, the rangers decided that the arrow had flown true and Jack was dead. None would venture into the massed blackthorns to see. They walked away, still arguing.
He waited long after he couldn’t hear them then slowly crept from under the thickly rooted blackthorn that had stopped his downward roll. Movement disturbed the birds and insects. Butt on the ground, he dropped his head into his hands and waited, listening.
The rangers didn’t return.
He used his sleeve to wipe the blood on his face. A long streak joined the other pinpricks of red dotting his linen shirt. He studied the longbow on the ground before him. The broken limb couldn’t be repaired. It was the one thing that he’d brought into Robin’s camp from his old life. Losing it was like losing every bit of his past.
The arrows were also broken. His hip ached where he had crashed down onto the quiver. He left them lying and crawled under the next blackthorn, heading downhill, toward the sound of trickling water.
He reached the stream before he could stand up. It trickled between the blackthorn-covered hill and the next one, not as steep, covered with ferns and old-growth oaks, a few of the towering giants lost in a windstorm and rotting under greeny growth of moss and mushrooms.
The stream had to join up with others, becoming the swiftly running creek winding out of Sherwood. Following the course of water should lead him back to known trails. Jack washed his face, drank his fill. His stomach wanted food, but missing one meal wouldn’t starve him.
Dusk descended before he discovered any known trail. The wind gusted through the trees overhead, tossing weak wood and clumps of new leaves. The glimpses of sky showed tattered clouds packing in. He needed cover from any spring storm. Jack limped back to exposed boulders above the stream. He wedged himself under a narrow overhang and stared at the forest until all light disappeared.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
He roused, blinking at the darkness. A silvery light flickered, casting a magical gleam over the greening forest. The storm clouds had passed on, allowing the full moon to offer her light to the forest creatures.
Sore muscles complaining, Jack shifted to a squat. The ground was wet from rain, and the fresh scent of dirt warmed for spring growth stung his nostrils.
He crouched under the ledge, teetering on the balls of his feet as he inhaled the crisp, clean air. He wondered if he should try to sleep longer. Enough leaves had grown to obscure the stars. He couldn’t judge the night’s passage.
A high-pitched song pierced the air, like an altar boy singing a part above the choir. Bracing a hand on the ledge, Jack leaned forward.
The silvery light increased. The song was louder. Then he saw movement, movement that became people walking along the stream.
Only—they were not people. Their bodies were straight, their limbs long and slender, but the first had a fox face. A lady walked behind the fox, pale breasts gleaming in the moonlight, but she had bark for skin and silver-green leaves for hair.
Faeries. Holy Mother of God, he breathed.
He dared not move. Only his eyes cast side to side, watching the procession along the silver-trickling water.
At Robin’s camp he’d met the occasional Faerie. Fenric, who often joined a hunt. Lord Cerne, who visited with the herbalist Melly. Jack stayed cautious and quiet around them, careful of his manners. Fae were mercurial, mischievous. Even the ones who called themselves friends could turn dangerous.
These eldritch strange ones, they could be malevolent.
The parade continued. A tusked male snorted, his boar’s head heavy above his naked man’s torso. A loincloth concealed his genitals. A man with the antlers of a stag led a doe-faced lady. They, too, were barely clothed, their torsos bare while matching kilts sagged on their hips. They stepped daintily on cloven deer hooves.
Next came a pretty lady with long ears and twitching nose like a hare. A male with a hound’s face and drooping ears reminded Jack of the masks the outlaws had worn at Candlemas, when they stole back the rent money from the new abbot.
At the Abbey, Jack had worn a Green Man mask, leather pieced and tooled to look like oak leaves.
Walking with the strange creatures were Faeries like the ones he knew, their features not too far from human even though their angled eyes and cheekbones, the narrow faces and pointed chins clearly named them Faer folk.
Another lord with antlers passed. Another hart and hind, white-featured. A fox. Then a wolf. A badger pair, black eyes beady, a silver pelt covering their chests.
More masked Faeries passed, walking arm in arm with unchanged ones.
Last in the procession was a Green Man. He looked very like the mask Jack had worn. This Faer laughed with the ladies walking beside him. He drank wine from a glittering goblet that looked like silver ice.
And he saw Jack crouched under the ledge.
The Green Man stopped. “Ho, all who celebrate this night! We are watched.” His voice rumbled like thunder.
The procession stopped.
Burning ice covered Jack.
Four Faer males appeared beside him, the two badgers and two more who walked on deer hooves. He cast his gaze downward. When they touched him, he shuddered. He dared not resist.
They drew him, unprotesting, from under the ledge and prodded him to the Green Man, towering tall among slighter Faeries.
“You watch us.”
That sounded like an accusation. Jack focused on the moon-dark ground. “Not intentionally. I woke. You were passing.”
“Kneel.”
He didn’t need the slender hands pressing on his shoulders to drop to both knees.
“We celebrate the fullness of the Moon before she wanes. Your spying desecrates our ceremony.”
“My bad luck,” he said hoarsely, “waking when I did, seeking shelter in this place. I can only plead ignorance.”
Several Fae scoffed. He heard grunts and growls, snarls and hoots, and felt the bite of hands on his shoulders and arms.
“You are deep in our bright forest, Human. Rarely does your kind venture so far into our Sherwood. Humans should keep to the fringes.”
“Forgive my ignorance, my lord. I was pursued.”
“Pursued? Who dares hunt a human so deep into Sherwood?”
He risked an upward glance. “Other human hunters. Rangers, taking orders from the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
The Faer folk murmured and stirred at his words. The Green Man barked a laugh. “Bah! We care not for this Sheriff of Nottingham. Are you like unto this sheriff? Do you cut our trees? Do you haul them from the forest?”
“My lord, no. We use the windfall branches and fallen trees, aye, but we do not cut the trees.”
The round-eared hedgehog whispered to the Green Man.
The towering Faerie loomed over Jack. “You take the bounty from the forest and give naught in return. Acorns and berries.”
He had no rebuttal of that.
An eldritch lord pawed the ground and bent his antlers close to Jack’s face. He couldn’t understand what the Faerie said, but those words increased the anger around him, the growls and snarls, hisses and snorts intensifying. Jack drew in his arms, trying to make himself smaller.
The Green Man tapped his head. “You hunt our hares and conies, our harts and hinds, our boars and their young snufflings.”
Jack cringed. He had to parse a fine distinction here. “No, my lord, no. You cannot accuse me of that. I have never hunted boar.”
“You have eaten it,” a Faerie cried.
He didn’t look around. He stared up at the Green Man. “Should I offend my host by refusing the meat he provides?”
“Guilty!” someone cried, and the word was taken up by several ... but not by all. Acorns and twigs, pinecones and pebbles peppered him. He flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.
When the scattering of small weapons stopped, he opened his eyes and stared up at the Green Man. Oak leaves covered the Faerie’s forehead, cheeks, and chin. A single long leaf formed his nose. Only his eyes and mouth had human shape.
“Why are you in our bright forest?”
He swallowed, but his mouth and throat were dry. His throat closed in. “I live here,” he croaked, sounding like a raven. “In the camp with Robin Hood.”
The Faeries fell quiet.
The Green Man smiled. “Hooded Robin is friend to our duchess. Are you our friend?”
Jack knew better than to claim what he couldn’t prove. “My lord, I am not your enemy.”
The towering Faerie clapped his hands. The sound reverberated in his bones, like a thunderclap, sudden and devastating. “A test,” he proclaimed, “a test for truth,” and he clapped his hands twice more.
Things blurred around Jack. He fell ... but he didn’t land. He blinked, and bright sunshine glowed around him.
He stayed on his knees and carefully looked around.
The Faeries had vanished. He was no longer at the streambed. The ledge where he had sheltered had disappeared.
Leaves and twigs still covered him, and acorns and pebbles littered the ground around him.
But that strange procession, it had to be a dream. Faeries with the faces of animals, fox and boar, hound and hare, hart and hind. He’d had a nightmare, too strange to be real.
Maybe, in the night he had walked while sleeping. Maybe he had stumbled away from the streambed, half awake, half asleep, caught by the strangeness of the dream.
When no one appeared, Jack stood and brushed off. His clothes were stained from yesterday’s flight and tumble. Pindrops of blood had dried brown on his linen shirt. His mouth was dry and sour, as if he’d slept open-mouthed. His stomach was a cavern demanding food.
Jack didn’t recognize this trail. He was still lost.
His bow and quiver were on the ground beside him. Still broken. He picked them up.
Then he looked behind and ahead. With a shrug, he started walking.
He quickly came upon a path that looked familiar. Was this the one that passed the pool where Tuck’s Faerie was? He had thought that path died to nothing. A wider path, known to all, trekked nearby. He knew his way from there.
He walked, his mouth dryer than before, his stomach complaining. The sun remained bright, casting off the chill of nighttime. It warmed his head and shoulders.
He reached the wider path. It looked familiar. Across the new trail, hidden from casual eyes, was the vine-twist that the outlaws left to guide their way. He turned onto it and lengthened his stride. Camp should be an hour, maybe two hours away.
Then he heard weeping.
And men arguing.
Jack stopped.
The sounds were before him, around the bend of the trail. The undergrowth was thicker here, massed bushes covered with vines. The vines had climbed small trees, died over winter, then leafed and grew more, creating walls alongside the trail. He couldn’t see who stood around the bend. The wall of massed vines prevented an easy and silent push into the forest to creep forward from that unexpected direction.
He almost turned back. From here, he knew other paths to Robin’s camp.
The continued weeping decided him.
The arguing men weren’t moving, their voices still raised, neither coming closer or going farther.
He crept forward until he could peer through a tangled hedge.
Three rangers stood on the path ... and he had a broken bow and broken arrows for defense. They stood together, debating the path back to Nottingham.
It was the three men who had tracked him yesterday.
A weeping woman knelt at their feet. She was a Faerie from his nightmare, the one with the long rabbit ears. She held her bound hands to her face, hiding the small pink nose and cleft lip.
The rangers ignored her strangeness, as if they didn’t see her rabbit face and ears.
One reached down, grabbed her upper arm, and hauled her to her feet. Then he pushed her, heading her toward Jack. He pushed her forward, pushing so hard she stumbled.
“Thief!” another said. “Where did you hide the coins?”
She wept louder.
“Tell it to the sheriff!” He pushed her again.
She fell and sprawled on the ground. The ranger kicked her.
With only outrage as a defense, Jack came around the wall of tangled hedge and planted himself in the center of the path. “Don’t touch her. Leave her alone.”
“Hey! Look, it’s him! The one we hunted yesterday!”
“Thieves stick together.”
“This old crone your woman?” All three laughed at that sally.
“Let her go,” Jack demanded. His bravado quivered. He had nothing but desperation on his side. “Take me instead.”
“You got no terms for parley.”
“We’ll take you both, wolfshead.”
“You’ll have to catch me,” he dared. “You didn’t manage it yesterday. What makes you think you can manage it today? Let this woman go, and I will turn myself in.”
“He’s touched in the head.”
Aye, Jack agreed with the ranger on that. He had no guarantee Robin and the others would get him out of gaol before the sheriff took a hand or his eyes or his life. They’d broken Will Stuteley out of London gaol before his hanging, but Will was Robin’s friend from childhood. Jack just hung on the fringe with Dickon and Coop and Jimsie.
But he couldn’t let them take this Faerie into Nottingham. What would they do to her when the glamour lifted from their eyes and they discovered what she was?
The rangers argued what to do. The Fae looked straight at Jack. He couldn’t believe they didn’t truly see her.
Then one of the men bent and jerked loose the rope binding her wrists. “You there,” he shouted at Jack, “kneel down. Put your hands behind your head.”
He knelt. He dropped the broken longbow and quiver on the ground and linked his fingers behind his head.
The ranger pushed the woman away. “Get on with you.”
She stood still.
“Run,” Jack encouraged her.
Her silver eyes opened very wide. Then she ran.
They treated him roughly, binding his hands behind his back, punching his belly, buffeting his ears until his head rang. They dropped a rough rope around his neck and led him like an animal.
Ideas darted through his mind, but he couldn’t see a way to escape. Nor could he see a way to get word to the outlaws.
The rangers pushed him, prodded him, towed him with the rope. Once they tripped him. The rope tightened on his neck, and they didn’t loosen it when they hauled him to his feet.
A deer leaped across, mere yards ahead of them. It ran swiftly into cover and disappeared.
The rangers shouted with surprise.
Another deer jumped a hedge onto the path. The hart stood athwart the path, its antlered head lifted high. The rack spread six feet across, as if it had never lost its weighty crown after the rut.
A ranger fumbled with his crossbow.
The hart jumped, clearing the hedge on the trail’s other side, vanishing into the forest.
Jack shook his head. Did I dream?
A hound bayed.
The rangers prodded him to walk faster.
Then boars grunted in the underbrush.
And the towering Green Man stepped onto the path.
Jack blinked, shook his head. Am I hallucinating? For the rangers continued walking, continued arguing about which tavern had the best ale, as if the Faerie didn’t block the path.
The Green Man flung up a blocking hand, and the lead ranger walked into it. He stopped—then seemed to freeze. The other two rangers froze in mid-stride.
Jack knew then that he hadn’t hallucinated, he hadn’t dreamed.
The Faerie eased the rope around his neck then lifted it over his head. It turned to silver then melted into water.
The cord binding his hands also melted away.
The Rabbit Faerie appeared. Twitching her nose at Jack, she tugged at the Green Man’s tunic then whispered to him.
Hart and Hind appeared. And the tree Faerie. And the tusked boar male.
The rangers remained frozen, all except their eyes, rolling in their sockets.
“Jack Greenleaf,” the Green Man thundered, “you passed the test. You are no enemy to Faeries.”
The hart held out a bow and a full quiver.
He accepted the bow and quiver with hands not quite steady. He dared not look too closely, yet they appeared to be his old weapons.
“Your path to Robin Hood lies that way.” The Green Man’s silver eyes turned to the left side. A path opened through what had been tangling vines. “Good fortune follow your steps, Jack Greenleaf.”
“My thanks,” he croaked. “What of those men?”
“Never you fear that they will follow you. Nor will they remember you. To Nottingham they will go. Moon-mad will they be called.”
Then the Green Man stepped back. Tangling vines and branches closed around him. He hadn’t noticed when the other Faeries had left, taking the rangers with them.
Jack was alone on the forest path
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
He sprang awake.
Bright sunshine glowed around him.
Leaves and twigs, acorns and pebbles were strewn around him.
Jack was on a trail, one that he recognized.
He had dreamed strangeness. Surely that was a dream. Please, Mother of God, let that be a dream.
Although he remembered taking a longbow from the Hart, he didn’t see it beside him. It wasn’t anywhere on the path.
Yet words in a rumbling voice seemed too vivid for a dream: Good fortune follow your steps, Jack Greenleaf.
That would be a change for his life.
He rubbed his eyes then climbed to his feet. Hungry and thirsty, he followed the trail. He reached Robin’s camp long before he expected to do so.
Much clapped his back. “Jack! You finally appear! We expected you yesterday morning. Where have you been?”
“Yesterday?”
“Did the rangers follow you a long way? The ones after us gave up when dusk fell. We had to sleep rough in the forest. Straggled in yesterday morning. Couldn’t you shake the rangers off your heels?”
“Yesterday morning?” He scratched his chin. His scruffy beard was more than a single day’s growth. “You mean, we tried to rob that merchant two days ago? Not yesterday?”
Much chuckled. “Did you find a good forest wine? How long did you sleep, Jack? You’ve lost a whole day.”
“I must have—. I met—. I had strange dreams.”
“Don’t worry. You’re here now. Ellen has got a pottage bubbling. Go beg a bowl from her. Oh, and we found your bow and quiver.”
“My bow and quiver? I thought they were lost.”
“Tod boy, bring them here, will you? We found them on the trail. Dickon nearly broke his toe. He was scuffling along—.”
Jack didn’t listen to Much’s story. Tod had run back with a longbow and worn leather quiver.
They were his. He would recognize them anywhere. Yet they were undamaged. He still had the sore spot on his hip where he had fallen and broken the arrows. He knew they’d broken.
He ran his hand the length of the bow, yet no crack marred it. The only difference he spotted was a carving, new and strange. A knotwork braid ran the length of the bow. Animals were caught within the knotwork. A fox’s face peered through oak leaves.The antlers of a deer worked into a flowering vine. The twisting braid captured a pair of slender cranes.
At six places, three above the grip, three below, the knotwork was broken by words he had no hope of reading. He didn’t recognize the shapes of letters.
The arrows in the quiver were no longer broken. They were also Faerie-touched. Silver tipped the bobkin points. Neat feathers of black and silver fletched the arrows.
Stunned, he rubbed the fox’s face carved near the bow’s handgrip. The past two nights and day hadn’t been a nightmare.
The Green Man’s blessing echoed: Good fortune follow your steps, Jack Greenleaf.
And so it came to be.