Free Wild Boy by Nancy Springer

first, then farther away. Rook dodged deep, deeper into the forest, running until he could run no farther, then pausing to pant as he looked around for someplace to hide.
    There. A thickly spreading oak with just enough knobbiness on its mighty trunk.
    Rook climbed, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. His brief burst of strength had passed. He hadn’t eaten in too long. He felt weak. Instead of scooting like a squirrel up the oak, the best he could do was crawl up, gripping like a badger. He hadn’t yet reached the concealment of the foliage when he heard men’s voices behind him.
    “I hear one of them!”
    “Where?”
    “Yonder!” They crashed toward Rook.
    Rook heaved himself to the first big branch, still in plain view, still an easy shot for someone’s arrow. Terror shook him worse than ever. Even a wild creature does not want to die. Hoofbeats sounded, brush crashed, and Rook could not help looking over his shoulder as four of Nottingham’s men burst into sight.
    But not one of them glanced up to see him. They all gawked straight past the trunk of his tree, and one of them gave a hoarse yell: “Wolves!” They hauled on their reins, stopping their horses.
    What wolves? Where? Rook had not seen any. But the men-at-arms snatched for their bows to shoot a hasty spate of arrows. Rook heard the swish of brush, a yelp of pain. The men relaxed.
    “That sent them running.”
    “It was wolves you heard, dolt.”
    “Somebody got one.”
    “Leave it. It’s outlaws we’re after. Come on!”
    Without pausing to reclaim their spent arrows, they cantered off.
    Rook clung to his tree, panting with weariness and relief, as they rode away. He heard something whimper, and at first he thought it was him. Then he saw the wolf trying to drag itself to cover. It crawled only a short way before it collapsed on the roots of his tree, head flat on the ground, its ribs heaving, a yellow-feathered arrow jutting waspish between them.
    Rook had never seen a wolf so plainly before, although he had seen the pigs they killed, sometimes right in the pigsty. Since he had become an outlaw, a few times he had seen gray shadows flitting. Mostly he had heard fearsome howls in the night. But this wolf didn’t look fearsome. With its ears flattened in pain, it seemed like a long-legged gray dog lying there.
    He heard a whine, and a smaller, darker wolf trotted to the dying one and bent to lick its face. A mate? Or a half-grown pup, a daughter, a son?
    Brush rattled, branches snapped, and three big red deer bounded past—frightened from their thickets by Nottingham’s men, most likely. The dark wolf did not even give the deer a glance. It stood for a moment with its proud head bowed. Then it curled up close against the other one, licking its eyes and ears.
    Rook bit his lip. He remembered wiping sweat from his father’s face as his father lay in the man trap. He remembered some of the sounds his father had made, dying. And some of the sounds he, Runkling, Jack’s son, had made.
    The wounded wolf shuddered and stopped breathing. The arrow’s yellow tuft of feathers grew still.
    Rook didn’t want to watch anymore. He turned his face upward and climbed. The first wolf had gone silent, but the dark wolf whimpered as if it were weeping.

Twelve

    R ook crawled up the tree and settled himself in a muscular, comfortable crook of bough. Far above the ground, blanketed with foliage, he lay at ease as the tree held him like a mother cradling a baby.
    Or like a father.
    Far below, the dark wolf howled, grieving. Could the dead one be its father?
    Stop it. Think no more of fathers
.
    Looking for something else to rest his mind upon, Rook glanced around him—but then he saw the rowan. Close to where he curled in the tree’s embrace, far above the ground, a rowan seed had taken root on the oak, and now a rowan sapling grew right out of the massive tree’s broad shoulders. White blossoms were beginning to froth on the rowan’s feathery