Read Online Rowan Hood Returns by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page B

her thoughts, Etty said, “We could try crossing by night, I suppose. Follow the stars.”
    â€œAnd blunder straight into some peasant’s farmyard,” Rowan said, although her deeper fear was for Dove. What if the pony put a hoof into some unseen rabbit hole, broke her leg?
    Etty nodded with her usual serenity. “Well, we’ve made it this far without starving or being captured.”
    â€œOr stepping in a man trap,” Lionel added.
    â€œOr eating the snakes or toads,” Beau put in, “and because our noses are fastened on our faces not upside down, we no drown in the rain either, la?”
    While the others muffled their laughter with their hands, Rowan tried to smile, but could not. Yes, they had come this far alive—but also without seeing or hearing anything of Robin Hood.
    Eyes on the lavender line of forest on the far horizon, Ro said slowly, “I wish I knew where my father was.”
    Etty said, “Wherever he is, likely he’s wishing the same of you.”
    â€œThat’s just it.” Rowan turned in the saddle to face her friend. “He’ll go to the rowan grove, find it abandoned—”
    â€œProbably he already has,” Etty said.
    â€œâ€”and he’ll be worried, thinking maybe I’m captured, searching for me—”
    â€œProbably he already is,” Etty said.
    â€œBut he would never dream I’d go so far ...” Rowan let the thought trail away, but she knew Robin would expect to find her in or around Sherwood Forest.
    As usual, it was Rook who asked the hard question. “Do you want to turn back?”
    And Rowan saw how the question raised hopeful heads all around her. Even Tykell, sitting on his own bushy tail, looked to her for an answer. But she did not answer, for her heart felt hollow and she did not know what to do.
    Looking over her shoulder toward Sherwood’s familiar shelter, she scanned the woodland around her.
    Violets bloomed now, a carpet of velvety blossoms and heart-shaped leaves between the trees. Rowan wondered whether violets were good to eat.
    Or fern fiddleheads. Many of them thrust up between sparse, slender trees. There were no mighty oaks and elms in this grove, only smaller, slimmer maples and poplars and lindens.
    Nearby in the copse grew a rowan.
    This was to be expected, for rowan trees, far smaller than oaks, grew commonly near the edges of oak forest, where sunlight could reach them. But this rowan seemed not to be thriving. On some of its branches, buds promised foliage and flowers and fruit during the season ahead. But many of its limbs jutted dry, gaunt and the color of ashes, lifeless.
    Rowan looked to her own hands, gaunt and pale on Dove’s reins.
    She studied the rowan tree again. Half alive. Half dead.
    The way she felt.
    And feeling that way—incomplete, despairing—had already made her remember that other time, two years ago, when she had felt hollow at heart, desperate because she had needed to know about her father.
    What she had done then was what she should do now.
    But now, as then, the thought made her shake with fear.
    Nevertheless, trembling, she slipped down off of Dove. “Leave me here for the night,” she told Rook, Etty and the others. “Come back for me in the morning.” She handed the pony’s reins to Beau. “Take Dove with you.”
    â€œWhat?” On Rook’s face Rowan saw a look she scarcely recognized there: surprise.
    â€œLeave me here and come back for me in the morning,” Rowan repeated, trying to sound calm and patient even though she was not. Not patient. And far from calm.
    â€œBut why?” Etty begged.
    â€œSo that I can know what to do. So that I can answer you. ”
    Beau gawked, for once speechless. Lionel exclaimed, “We can’t just leave you alone!”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause you can barely walk! And anything, anybody could— ”
    With a gesture of her thin