AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Our convoy traveled west, deeper into Sherwood Forest. Back into familiar haunts, where the Merry Men used to move along the circuit of well-hidden hideouts to call home base . . . until the whereabouts of our hideaways were mapped by Maid Marian, that treacherous bitch, and handed out to Guy of Gisborne, my father, and even Uncle Gregory.
She had put everything in jeopardy. Now she was gone. Vanished after we let her get away that fateful night in Loxley.
My father hadn’t escaped, however, and he was the worst culprit of all, far as I was concerned.
We’re always moving, I thought. The bandit’s life was a nomadic one—practically part of the code we lived by. I was still growing accustomed to the social mores of the vagabond lifestyle.
Luckily, I enjoyed traveling. I hadn’t done enough of it as a youngling. My father always made sure to keep me close to the estate, as much as he could, so I wouldn’t be tempted by a transient life. Mama, too, regaled me with horrifyingly specific stories of she-wolves and sirens and other creatures of the woods that would nab me if I strayed too far from home.
Of course, as I grew older, more rebellious, and a bit more reckless, I escaped to Sherwood Forest anyway. Damn their threats and their myths, which only bolstered my rebellious spirit.
I was realizing, now, that perhaps I had been training to become a wandering outlaw even before I knew what my future held. Deep down, the fates had already aligned to show me my path.
When my brother Robert “died” in the Crusades, it tipped the scales for the final time. Admittedly, I went a bit mad during those horrible months. I sought the refuge of Sherwood Forest—my Realm of Solitude—more frequently. I took the beatings from Father offhandedly, and the chastising from my sick mother rolled off my back like mud off a pig’s hide.
One day, I found a bleached-bone human skull in the woods. On one hand, it spurned my disobedience further. On the other, it confirmed at least some of my parents’ warnings—the death, the monsters, the threat of the forest.
My warped mind merged the skull with my dead brother. I started speaking to the skull as if it was my brother. When he started talking back, I knew I was in trouble.
That skull became a conduit for my trauma.
Then I smashed it over squire Peter Fisher’s face when he tried to rape me, and broke off a chunk of it in his eye.
I shivered on my steed, recalling that tense, dire moment. I had done well keeping it blocked out of my memory, but now it sprang to the surface. Perhaps it was our location—the familiar landmarks I recognized as we moseyed through Sherwood Forest—that forced these thoughts of the past back to the forefront.
Little John killed the squire for me. When I couldn’t do it—still too green to become a cold-hearted killer—it was John who gutted the man without any qualms. He told me no man had the right to harm me, and so Peter needed to be punished. Because if no one punished the squire, then he would live his life thinking he could do whatever he wanted. He would harm more girls, and Little John couldn’t let that happen. It made sense, now. At the time, his actions frightened me.
It wasn’t until my father that I finally donned the crown of cold-hearted killer. He was my first victim, and hopefully my last—just as I was his first victim, and I made certain that I was his last.
I had killed Sir Thomas for the same reasons Little John spoke of, as well as poisoning my mother. No man has the right to hurt me. No man is allowed to hurt me and get away with it unscathed. Father learned that. Peter Fisher learned that. Benoit and Owen learned that, most recently. Once I find out who is keeping Little John—if he’s still breathing—then they will learn that, too.
“Robin?”
I blink and turned to my right, to regard Friar Tuck.
“We’re here, lass,” he said, nudging his chin forward.
I narrowed my vision on the witch’s cabin. It looked largely unchanged, yet with noticeable differences. Gone were the divots in the dirt from pulled bodies; the streak-marks of blood on those old ruined walls. The leaves had changed color, the oak jutting inside the ruined “cabin” looked fuller and more imposing, but the place was mostly the same.
I noticed my mates were hesitant to dismount.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Superstition,” Tuck said, sighing. “It’s unwise to return to the home of a slaughter.”
I chewed my lip, feeling guilty. “Shit. I didn’t know. I’m sorry—”
“It’s just a silly belief,” Will scoffed, looping his leg off his saddle to land on the ground. He pulled his horse by the bit, toward the walls.
The company at our backs—over a dozen Merry Men and three carriages between them—didn’t hold the same haunted superstition my mates did. They approached the crumbling structure like it was any other building, rather than a living, breathing embodiment of the horror that had transpired here.
It dawned on me why that was: Hardly any of these men had been present during that slaughter. They had joined our cause after the attack, when many of our comrades had been killed and we’d needed to replenish our ranks.
I suppressed a shudder.
“What is it we’re looking for, anyway?” Alan-a-Dale asked, slowly dismounting to skitter behind Will. “Songs have been written about places less cursed than this one.” His gaze went heavenward, up the edifice of the crumbling walls and to the branches that curved through the apertures.
“I’m assuming it’s me.”
