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I sighed heavily and bowed my head. I felt wronged. Okay, fine. He isn’t the magical shaman I hoped he’d be. Less of a druid, more of a witty hermit. Got it.
I wasn’t sure why I’d been clutching to this so desperately. Perhaps because he was right, and I had hoped the man was more powerful and mystical than he actually was. I had latched onto this fantastical version of him and didn’t want to let it go now.
Wulfric was flesh-and-blood man. A peculiar one, no doubt, but no more wizardly than the Merry Men behind me.
“Now then,” he said, stepping closer in his strange bowlegged gait. “Why have you come and disturbed my peace, Lady Robin?”
I tossed aside my fantastical thoughts. That was a different Robin. I can’t afford to be an idealist. I don’t talk to skulls or believe in she-wolves and sirens and mages any longer. I’m a real woman trapped in a real, dire point in time.
“It has to do with what we just talked about, actually,” I said. “Herbs, powders, and potions . . .”
WULFRIC ALLOWED US to make camp for the evening so we could rest our horses and weary legs. We’d been traveling all day, to multiple areas of Sherwood Forest, and were exhausted.
At first, my three mates resisted the idea. Except they couldn’t voice their ghostly skepticism—not after Wulfric had shot down everything I’d thrown at him—or else they’d risk looking like scared children to the rest of the Merry Men.
So we rested. And I spoke with Wulfric at length.
When I asked why he had decided to come back and stay here, since he typically lived further north, he said he liked that the “dark spirits of these ruins” kept other men at bay. Hunters, scouts, and soldiers didn’t bother him here.
Around the small fire he’d set inside the walls of the ruin, I snapped my fingers. “I knew it! So the dark spirits do exist.”
He sighed, leaning back and propping his elbows on the ground. “I appreciate your vigor toward the subject of supernatural affairs, Lady Robin. I call them spirits. Others might call them memories. There are men and women twice as adept in the mystical arts as I, who seem to straddle our plane and the next. Some might call them witches. I am simply an old man who speaks riddles.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Wulfric.”
He chuckled. “And tell me, girl, how did you find me here? Did you conjure the apparitions of a past life to lead you to my cursed location?”
I chuckled and shook my head. “After our first conversation at the creek . . . I put it together swiftly enough,” I said, echoing his words from earlier.
He gave me a sly smile. “That’s what I thought. Clever lass.”
“Not half as clever as you, sir.”
He sat up, rubbing his hands at the fire. It was a chilly night despite the sunny afternoon. His fur coat rustled in the breeze. “Come back to me in a week’s time and I will have identified the bags of powder you left me. I’ll admit I’m excited to have a task. It is most peculiar.”
I bowed my head. “Thank you. You have my gratitude, and I’m in your debt.”
He stuck up two fingers. “Twice, if I remember correctly.”
I rolled my eyes as he laughed. “Aye, sir. Twice it is.”
When I stared into his face, hidden within the shadows on the other side of the fire, his eyes brightened. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” he said excitedly, “someone else rode by here less than a fortnight ago, looking for you.”
“For me? Are you sure?” It couldn’t have been anyone good. The only people I knew looking for me were Sir Guy of Gisborne and Sheriff George of Nottingham. Neither one of them were men I wanted to see anytime soon.
“Of course I’m sure. Here. Have you a map of the forest? I can point you to their location.”
Before I could ask who he was talking about, he shooed me away, urging me to get off my ass. I hurried to one of the carriages, where Friar Tuck was reading Scripture to Much the Miller’s Son.
I wrinkled my nose when I popped my head in. “Don’t fill the boy’s head with too much nonsense, Tuck.”
He raised a brow. “Like Wulfric the soothsayer is doing to you?”
“I’d rather be a pagan than a Christian at this particular juncture in time.”
Tuck pursed his lips and looked over to Much, whose big eyes were reeling between us. “And this is why I call her a little heathen, Much.”
The miller’s son nodded gravely. “Sounds about right.”
