Wild Boy by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

it. She’s so nice, and he’s such a smirking, stinging gadfly of a—”
    “Bah,” Rook growled. He knew Tod was not speaking to him, really, just carrying on some sort of game with Robin Hood. Less than a fortnight the Sheriff’s son had been in the hands of Robin and his merry men, and already the brat was everyone’s pet. A barbed feeling in Rook’s chest gave him strength to tell Tod, “Go home if you don’t like it here.”
    “I will,” Tod said. “My father will come looking for me. My father will find me.”
    “Taking his time, isn’t he?” Robin Hood teased.
    The boy looked Robin straight in the eye. “Likely he’s got important matters to attend to. With the king, belike.”
    “Belike.” Robin’s voice turned gentle, like the touch with which he swabbed Rook’s legs. “But no need to wait for him, lad. As soon as we get you on crutches, we can guide you back to Nottingham.”
    Tod lowered his eyes, silent.
    “Sooth, I could carry you there now on my back,” said Robin, watching Tod.
    Silence. Still staring at the ground, Tod took water from the bucket with one hand and smoothed it onto Rook’s forehead. Rook let him do this.
    “Tod, lad,” said Robin, “tell me the truth.” In his voice were the power and pity that made him Robin Hood. “The day we found you on that great black brute of a warhorse, what were you doing in the forest? Were you running away from your father?”
    Tod took a long breath, swallowed, then straightened and faced Robin. “I suppose so. But I wanted to go back with—with a head hanging from the saddle.”
    He winced as if Robin Hood might hit him, but Robin only nodded. “You wanted to kill an outlaw?”
    “Yes. To please him. To make him proud of me.”
    Don’t laugh at me
, Tod’s face begged.
    But Robin showed no sign of merriment, only puzzlement. “But you’re a fine, sharp dagger of a lad, bright and bold. How is he not proud of you already?”
    “I …” Quite suddenly Tod reached for Runkling and held the little pig on his lap, hugging it. “I don’t know,” he said to the top of Runkling’s bristly head.
    Rook hated the feeling in his chest, as if the thorny muddle there were making him bleed inside. A creature of the wild does not feel such pain. A wolf does not care what happens to others. Yet Rook could not help blurting a question at the Sheriff’s son. “What will happen when you go back?”
    Tod met his eyes without hesitation. “He will beat me for taking the horse. That’s all.” Tod reached for the cloth, and Robin gave it to him. Tod dunked it in the bucket, lifted it out and held it so that cool water dripped into Rook’s clotted, knotted mane of hair. Rook closed his eyes.

Eight

    N o,” Rook said.
    “But Rook, I have to cut some of your hair anyway to drain the wound and bandage it.” In the orange campfire light, under the towering darkness of the hemlock trees, Rowan looked as steely as Rook had ever seen her. “Toads take it, Rook, any dolt knows too much hair saps your strength if you’re sick. I am going to cut it all off.”
    Rook had not told her, yet somehow she knew: He felt as weak as a butterfly. But just the same, he mumbled, “
No
.” Rook had not combed or washed or cut even the forelock of his hair since the day his father—since that day. The day that had made him an outlaw, a wolf’s head, a wild boy of the woods. Confound it, Ettarde had always been wanting to cut his black clotted hair, or comb it or wash it, and he hadn’t given in to her. And now Rowan—he had never thought Rowan would turn against him so. Defiance gave Rook enough strength to sit up, although his head spun with the effort and the stench of his own contagion filled his nostrils and made him nauseous. “A wolf doesn’t …” He blurred the words, and stopped himself from saying more, but Rowan heard.
    “A wolf?” She leaned closer to him, kneeling, her face level with his. “Rook, you are not a wolf. You are a person,