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trying to get his wretched Tod back.
    Although so far nothing of the sort had happened. Which was odd.
    “Rook, where did you go?” Rowan was saying with no trace of anger in her voice, only … some other emotion. Blinking, Rook tried to focus on her face, but it swam before his eyes like an oval moon in green twilight, and her mouth seemed to waver in her face as she spoke. “I thought maybe you’d been captured, maybe even killed. I was frightened. Why didn’t you tell me—”
    Hemlocks seemed to be lifting, drifting, swaying, and Rook’s head felt afloat between their branches, and he blurted words he had never before spoken aloud. “A wolf roams where he will.”
    Rowan’s grave eyes widened, filling his watery world. She asked him softly, “Is that what you are, Rook? A wolf?”
    Even her lack of anger reproached him. He wanted to say something, explain, but his mind felt like a dead fish bobbing in a black river. He stood there.
    Rowan peered at him. “Are you all right?”
    Sounding as if it spoke from very far away, a strange voice said, “Rowan, he saved my life. He fought a wild boar to save me.”
    Oh. It was Beau, serious for once.
    Another faraway voice, Tod’s, chattered, “He could have left me in the man trap. I didn’t care then if he stank. Actually he didn’t stink as bad that day.”
    “His head’s wounded,” Beau said. “He won’t let me look at it.”
    Rook heard Rowan gasp, and he heard her say, “Contagion! No wonder it smells. It’s festering….”
    He heard that much, but he couldn’t see anything except darkness. He felt Runkling’s tether slip from his hand, and he felt someone strong, maybe Lionel or Robin Hood, catch him as he fell.
    Rook awoke to find himself lying on a soft bed of somebody’s mantle spread over—over a thick layer of fallen hemlock needles, probably, forhe looked up at hemlocks. And at someone bending over him—it was that wretch Tod, of all people. Sitting by Rook’s side with his broken leg stretched out at an awkward angle, the Sheriff’s son nodded at Rook and said, “Rowan had to go find some kind of herb or something for you, to doctor your stinky skull. I’m supposed to get the fever down. Like so.” His hand reached into a leather bucket, then came up holding a sopping wet rag with which he mopped Rook’s face.
    Rook stiffened, wanting to tell the brat to stop, wanting to curse him, wanting to hit him, but it was all he could do just to turn his face away. Tod kept right on sloshing water at the side of Rook’s head, his neck, his shoulder and chest. Rook sighed and found that he had no strength for anger; he lay limp. The water’s cool touch felt good, cleared his head. Able to think a little, he whispered, “Where’s Runkling?”
    “Runkling?”
    “My … pig …”
    “What, that suckling pork you brought us?” spoke another, deeper voice with a wink of laughter in it. Robin Hood crouched beside Tod, took the wet rag and started applying it to parts of Rook that Tod couldn’t reach. “‘Twas the tenderest, most succulent roast I’ve ever tasted, lad, but barely enough for a bite apiece. Next time—”
    “Bah. Don’t listen to the lying scoundrel.” But Tod’s tone was as cheerful as Robin’s. “Runkling, come here, pig.” Tod swiveled to reach behind him, heaving something up in both hands. It squealed and kicked at the air with small pointed trotters. Tod held Runkling up so that Rook could see him, then set him back down on the ground. “Robin’s been feeding him milk and bread,” he said.
    “To fatten him,” Robin Hood explained with gravest drollery. “Even Tykell doesn’t want to eat such a little bit of a runt. He looked at that so-called pig and—”
    “Tykell
did
want to eat it,” Tod put in. “But Rowan told him to let it be. And he listened to her. Even this proud oaf”—he flapped a hand toward Robin Hood—”listens to Rowan. Did you know that he’s Rowan’s
father
? I can’t believe