Read Online Forbidden Forest by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page B

boarded up these places, weather and time broke down such protection, exposing the shafts to the sky. John knew no one, including himself, who could swim, and to fall into a well was to face all-but-certain death.
    John cocked his head, listening.
    He put a hand on Grimes’s shoulder.
    A splashing, quiet but insistent, rose up out of the dark opening in the field.
    Dawn edged upward out of the east.
    John lay down among the prickly nettles, and when he saw the reflection of the water, far below, he saw something else too.
    The dark water tossed. Someone struggled, clinging to the dark side of the well.
    â€œWho is it?” queried Will’s voice, shuddering and breathless with the watery chill.
    John identified himself, his own name echoing from the well shaft.
    â€œI’m clinging to the moss!” said Will, with something like a chuckle. “I wasn’t looking—” he gasped. He forced the words with a terrified laugh. “I wasn’t watching where I was going!”
    â€œI’ll go find a rope,” said Grimes.
    John stood. “We don’t have time,” he said. “Will is close to drowning.”
    Grimes put out a hand to prevent John from what he was about to do, but John did not hesitate.
    â€œDon’t try it!” cried Will from below.
    The stinging, bristling leaves of the nettles annoyed John’s bare hands where the fringe of vegetation grew over the lip of the well. He lowered himself into the cool darkness, gripping the edge of the opening, where the old stones were loose. Bits crumbled off, raining down into the interior.
    John’s feet dangled down into the cold welling up from the dark. And little by little he found a toehold in the slick moss, and another farther down, his feet seeking fissures in the stone.
    â€œYou’ll never make it down here and back,” said Will, his voice a sob.
    It was too far.
    John knew this now, halfway between the increasingly blue oblong of sky and the quaking water below. His fingers were raw from seeking purchase in the cold-greased stones, and his feet slipped and slipped again as he sought the few sure cracks that could support his weight. If he fell into the water he would drown without any doubt, and he might knock Will from his grip on the mossy side, killing both of them.
    His breath shuddered, and the sound reverberated in the darkness. Will was quiet now, and when John glanced down he saw the dim figure of the woodsman clinging to the side of the well with one hand, sinking, his fingers fighting, trying to win another grip in the moss. And losing the struggle.
    But then John was close enough and was turning, reaching down, one hand gripping a loose root that snaked out of the side of the well, the other reaching down, all the way to the grazing fingertips of the outlaw.
    Almost.
    John reached down farther, and a cold and shivering grip met his.
    Inching upward, the two groped their way toward morning. And at the last, when John could not move his limbs, when his grip on Will was numb, he felt a touch on his hand, a grip on his arm, and Robin Hood was there, helping John and Will into the sunlight.
    â€œDo you risk your life easily, John?” asked Robin Hood with a smile.
    John did not know how to put his response into words.
    â€œFor my friends,” he said at last.
    In the weeks and months that followed, the story was told, and each time the well was deeper and Will closer to death. Wine was shared, and the king’s venison relished, and Robin Hood laughed the loudest as Will did an exaggeration of his own terror, clinging to the mossy side of a hole.
    But more often than not, when one of Robin’s men was late returning from a hunt, John was the one to find him, choosing his fellow searchers. When Robin Hood traveled far from the company of his band, he asked John to keep an ear and an eye on the forest.
    If a heavy step snapped a branch in the dark in Robin’s absence, it became