Free Rowan Hood Returns by Nancy Springer

hands Rowan hushed him. “No harm will come to me.”
    â€œAt least let Tykell— ”
    â€œNo.” Rowan ordered the wolf-dog, “Ty, you go too. Go hunting, catch yourself a fat rabbit.”
    Lionel persisted, “Keep him here! How— ”
    â€œI will come to no harm, I tell you! My kinfolk will be with me.”
    Â 
    â€œToads,” Rowan whispered to herself after the others had gone away, “if my kindred will not hurt me, then why am I quaking?”
    Because the personages whom she intended to summon were fey, that was why. They were what the countyfolk called “wyrd”: human in appearance yet not human, ghostly yet not ghosts. Spiritous, yet something more than woodland spirits. Folk called them “the denizens,” for few dared to speak of them by name: the aelfe, timeless and immortal dwellers in the hollow hills of Sherwood Forest.
    Although Rowan would always hold the aelfe in awe—as would anyone with good sense—she had thought she was over her fear of them. Of their otherness.
    Apparently not. Her knees weakening, Rowan sank down to sit on the ground under the rowan tree.
    Even though she could no longer sense the spirits of trees and earth, wind and water, Rowan did not doubt that she could speak with the aelfe. Any clodpole could perceive the denizens when those ancient, powerful beings chose to manifest themselves. Rowan remembered more than one time when strong warriors had run away screaming from a glimpse of their faces—
    Better not to think of that. Better to think, as was true, that the fey blood of the aelfe ran in her own veins. Her mother’s mother had been aelfin, driven out when she had married a mortal. In their child, Rowan’s mother, mortal warmth had melted the silver moonlight essence of the aelfe into a golden glow.
    Mother. Remembering Celandine, a flower of a woman always dressed in green, Rowan felt her shaking stop, felt peace fill her with warmth like a candle flame from within. While mother was alive, Rowan—then named Rosemary—had been unable to learn a woodwife’s simplest spells, but that had made no difference to Celandine. Mother had loved her with all her heart until the day she—
    Until the day the lord’s henchmen had killed her.
    Rb found herself quivering again, this time with rage. Guy Longhead. Jasper of the Sinister Hand. Hurst Orricson and his brother Holt.
    They would pay.
    They would pay. Rowan’s mind was made up. All she wanted of the aelfe was news of her father, so that she could go on her northward quest with peace of mind.
    â€œMy kinsmen,” she demanded of the woodland, “I need to speak with you.”
    All that happened was that the sun sank beneath the horizon, twilight settled on the copse like a gray shroud and a cold wind blew. Shadows and wind might or might not have been a response. Rowan had no way of knowing. She knew nothing anymore except with her mind.
    â€œ My kinsmen, ” she addressed the forest more courteously, “I would like to ask you a question. ”
    Still the chill wind tore at her jerkin. Colder, rougher, harsher.
    Rowan remembered how it had been that first time—and the only time, until now—that she had dared to summon the aelfe. She had felt their response like the wilderness-sized presence of a mother turning, half annoyed, half loving, toward a whining child.
    But now, in this northern copse, she felt nothing of love.
    And of annoyance ... more than mere annoyance.
    She remembered the first time she had caught sight of those wilderness denizens: the night the magic of Lionel’s singing had drawn them to encircle his campfire, faint humanlike figures aglow and afloat between the trees. Perhaps if she called Lionel back here to this copse and asked him to play his harp—
    No.
    No, this was a family matter. Between her and them, her kinsfolk whom she barely knew. Only twice had she ever spoken with them,