Free Rowan Hood Returns by Nancy Springer Page A

and they had answered her in riddles.
    â€œMy kinsmen?” Rowan requested one more time of the darkening forest. “Would you please bespeak me? I have need of your wisdom.”
    Nothing happened except that twilight darkened and the chill wind still seethed.
    Rowan’s lips narrowed to a thin line. “Well,” she muttered, “it would seem that I need to make a fire.”
    Stiff, she hoisted herself to her feet and began to break the dead branches from the rowan tree.
    A mystic tree, the rowan, growing sometimes like the mistletoe on the shoulders of the oaks. Rowan wood gave protection against lightning. Diviners used branches of rowan to find precious metal. And dried rowan was an ardent wood, good for need-fire.
    Good for the propitiation of spirits.
    When she had broken from the rowan all the deadwood she could find, Ro laid it down and, in the last ghostly light of the day, went looking for oak trees. Need-fire must always be started in the hollow of an oak log.
    Finding oaks a bit farther back toward Sherwood was easy, but finding a thickness of dead oak Rowan could handle was harder. By the time she dragged in a section of a rotting branch, night was falling and so was she: staggering, her aching legs ready to give way under her.
    Sitting down on the damp ground, with her dagger Rowan split the oak branch lengthwise. Laying one of the sections like a trough of pulpwood before her, she whispered, “ By your leave, spirits of fire, ” picked up two dry sticks from the rowan tree and began to rub them against each other.
    Need-fire could not be kindled with embers or from flint and steel. Need-fire had to be made the old, old way. Ro knew what she had to do, but not how much pain it would cost her. Never before in her life had she attempted need-fire.
    Somewhere in the night frogs spoke, fell silent, spoke again. A few stars shone through a veil of cloud. Half dark and dead, like the rowan tree, the moon gave only dim light.
    Rowan could barely see the rowan sticks she rubbed together, but she could feel her arms begin to ache. She set her teeth and rubbed dry deadwood harder, faster, without stopping, until her arms felt half crippled with pain, the way her legs did when she walked. Still she did not stop. She must not, even though tears burned in her eyes. This was the meaning of need-fire. The measure of Ro’s effort and suffering was the measure of her need. She forced herself to keep rubbing the sticks together faster, harder, with no way of knowing how much longer till something besides tears burned. In the darkness she could not see smoke.
    The pain in her arms turned to agony, then passed beyond agony into numbness. As if another part of her had died. But about that time Ro smelled something hot.
    Sudden small flame blazed up from the rowan twigs. Tears ran down Rowan’s face as she let her tortured arms at last be still. Looking at the fire, she saw it through the water in her eyes. Flames like russet waves. Paradox of life, Etty would have said.
    Shakily, barely able to control her movements, Rowan laid the flaming sticks in the pulpy hollow of her oak log.
    From everywhere and from nowhere, as if emanating from earth itself, a bodiless voice spoke: “What do you want of us, daughter of Celandine?”

Eleven
    A voice neither young nor old, neither male nor female. Nor, indeed, human. The aelfe spoke.
    Ro found herself trembling again as she placed more dry sticks on her small fire. She had to force herself to look up from the flames.
    Just at the reaches of the firelight, dim silver human-sized mists swirled up between the trees.
    Rowan swallowed hard, firmed her jaw and made herself scan the—faces, yes, moonglow faces of kings and warriors and matriarchs and maidens, ageless young-old faces so beautiful, Rowan ached with longing to reach out for them, yet so eerie that she could scarcely bear to look upon them.
    Nevertheless, look she did, because once before,