It was the same dream, always the same dream. Knowing it was a dream – and Robin always seemed to know it, even when he was in it – made it no less terrifying for him. And this time Robin promised himself he would dream his dream right to the bitter end, and remember it. He would force himself to remember it. Somehow he knew that this dream foretold his own death, a death he might still avoid if only he could remember it this time.
The boy in his dream moved through the stricken forest as if in a daze. He was weeping silent tears as he walked. He seemed to be looking for something in particular amongst the debris of the forest. Then he saw it, cried out and ran down the hill. The biggest tree in the forest lay dead, its great branches crushed and twisted and torn. The boy put his arms around its trunk and laid his cheek on it. He clung to it as if he would never let go. The boy was dressed like no one Robin had ever seen before. He wore a hooded green coat trimmed with fur and pale blue trousers now covered in mud. And his hair was white, snow white. He was whispering to the tree, and then he was clambering down into the crater left by the roots. A clod of earth landed at his feet. He bent down and picked something up. He cleaned off the earth and rubbed it on his coat. He turned it over in his hand and then went to sit down on a rock. When the boy rubbed it on his coat a second time he saw clearly that he had found an arrowhead – Robin seemed to know it before the boy did. The arrowhead was a dull silver in the pale morning sun.
Still Robin dreamed on, dreading how his dream might end. He knew what would happen though. The boy found the hunting horn first and then the bow, which was as big as Robin’s father’s. Then he saw the bones. The boy crouched down, digging away the earth with his hands, his eyes wide with fear. Then the boy was reaching out, reaching down towards him. He was taking him by the back of his head and lifting him. Someone was lifting him, his father perhaps. Robin would wake now and stop it, before it went any further. Enough was enough. He did not want to have to go on. Robin tried not to look at the skull. He looked instead at the boy holding the skull, and saw himself, as he always did. He had always thought the boy in the dream was himself; but now he was not quite so sure. He was older than this boy, a lot older, and he did not have white hair. His hair was black, black as charcoal. He had dreamt this far before and no further. This time he would not wake up in spite of his father calling him and shaking him. This time he would finish, finish and remember and exorcise. The boy dropped the skull back into the earth. It rolled into the bottom of the crater, rolling over and over, until it was still at last, gazing up at the sky and then at him. Now, at last, Robin knew. Those empty staring eyes were his eyes. He was the skull, but he was the boy too. He was both. He was the boy sitting on the rock, the arrowhead in his hand, and he was the skull lying in the earth. He would remember everything now, everything so that he could save himself. He promised himself all that before he woke; and at once he forgot every single thing he had dreamed.
Robin’s father was bending over him, shaking him by the shoulder. “Are you awake, Robin?”
“I was dreaming.” Robin sat up, still struggling to remember.
“You can’t eat dreams,” said his father. “Up you get.” And he pulled back the blankets letting the cold air in. This was the time of day Robin most missed his mother, remembered her most clearly. There was no warmth of his cheek on his, no whispered welcome to the new day. The last winter had taken her from them. As the autumn leaves fell in the first frost, the sheriff’s men had paid them a visit, Sir Guy of Gisbourne at their head. They had driven off all their pigs, killed the milk cow before their eyes, taken their winter’s store of corn and burnt down the barn, just for good measure. “Tax collecting,” Sir Guy of Gisbourne had called it, and said if the family did not pay up on time next year then they would be back again. With that, they had ridden off, the forest ringing with their whooping laughter.
The snows had fallen all December shrouding the forest. Hunting was difficult. Those creatures that could, stayed underground. Those that had to come out to feed moved warily. You cannot tread without being heard in the deep silence of snow, both hunter and prey know as much. There were the deer, of course, but take a deer and you were a dead man. “You bring home a deer, and I’m telling you, I won’t touch it,” Robin’s mother had warned them, and she meant it. His mother fed them with what little there was and denied herself. They were the hunters, they had to have food – so she reasoned. By the new year she was so weak she was unable to get out of bed in the mornings, too ill even to know or care any more what her food was. When they brought home a small roe deer, skinned it and cooked it, they hoped it would revive her. But she was too near death by then even to swallow. Robin and his father ate it together after they had buried her.
His father had spoken little about her dying. But, standing over her grave, he had made a promise, a promise that echoed now in Robin’s head as he sat sleepy-headed and pulled on his boots: “From this moment I swear I will hunt nothing but the king’s deer, and I will feed every hungry soul that lives in the forest. That is my vow. Let them catch me if they can.” So for a year now and more, father and son had spent their dawns and dusks hunting through the forest, killing the king’s deer whenever they found them. Always in the dead of night, and always alone, Robin’s father would carry the venison far and wide through the forest, distributing the meat amongst the starving and the poor. Today would be another such day, and Robin savoured the thought of it as he picked up his bow and followed his father out into the cold of the dawn, his breath like smoke in the air.
They never took the same track twice, never moved without listening to the forest. If there were strangers about, it was the birds that told them, their chorus shrill and agitated. It was too early for the birds, but they knew they were safe enough until first light. The sheriff’s men never dared venture into the forest in the dark, even in numbers. Outlaws killed silently. No one ever saw the Outlaws, but everyone knew they were there, or thought they were. They would cut your throat as soon as look at you, or so it was said. Robin thought he had glimpsed them just once, white hair and red eyes behind a shiver of leaves, but he had not stayed to find out to whom they belonged.
Robin’s thoughts were elsewhere now. With his father he always felt safe against anything or anyone, sheriff’s men or Outlaws. He strode ahead of him now, his great bow slung over his shoulder, the bow Robin could scarcely bend despite his sixteen years. He might not be able to bend the great bow and he might still have to run to keep up with his father’s walk, for he was slight in body and short in the leg; but with his own bow he could shoot just as straight as his father, though not as far perhaps. Before he ever tried for his first deer, his father had taught him how to split a wand of willow at fifty paces. “Thumb knuckle to the tip of the nose. A deep breath and hold, but not for too long. Draw a line through the air, arrowhead to target, arch the line for range. Think of the wind. Then will it away.”
His father left the first deer that morning to Robin. The young stag was close enough and down wind, barely thirty paces away, grazing in the morning mists, his antlered head watching, scenting. Robin let loose, and the arrow followed his line in the air straight to its mark. The stag’s legs collapsed under him. He rolled over on his side and lay still. Without thinking, Robin sprinted out of the trees and into the open. He had gone only a few paces when he was grabbed from behind and hurled to the ground. His father lay beside him breathing hard, his eyes blazing. “What’s the matter with you, Robin? Haven’t I told you? Run in the forest and you can be heard for miles. Do you want to bring the sheriff’s men down on us? Do you? And when you’ve killed, what have I always taught you?”
“Watch and wait,” Robin whispered, and his father’s grip slackened.
“You’ll be the death of me yet, Robin Hood,” he said ruffling his hair and then hauling him to his feet. “That was a fine shot. He died on his feet. By tonight, there’ll be a dozen or more people less hungry, and that’s something.”