“Who are you?” he countered.

She hesitated. “My name is Robin,” she answered. “Robin Hood. What’s your name?”

He wrinkled his eyebrows again. “I do not tell strangers my name.”

She was about to say ‘don’t then’, but stopped herself, as it was unnecessary to provoke him more. There was a question she couldn’t avoid asking: “Are you a ‘ghost’?"

“What did you say?” Now he was amused again. “If you were not so stupid I would be mad that you can not recognize a wood elf when you see one. Are you a ‘ghost’?”

“Of course not. I’m a human.”

“Yes, of course you are. You are a scared little human girl,” he smiled.

“And you are a cocky little elf boy,” she said trying. She always got extra refractory when she was uncertain.

“Boy?” he said. “No, I am older than that. And I am not he or her.”

“Is that possible?” she couldn’t hold herself from laughing. “I think you are a he.”

“That is because you are a she” he said. “Women usually think I am a man. Men usual think I am a woman. It is for the best.”

“How come?”

“That way everyone can fall in love with me, and that is how it shall be. But I thought you, who are a child, would see me as I am.”

“I’m not a child.” She drew her hat further down over her ears. Now she felt could feel that her clothes were wet. “By the way, I need to head back to the house.”

“House?”

“Yes, the cottage. I need to go to bed and sleep.”

“Sleep?” he looked very surprised. “Are you a sleeper? But you do not look wise.”

“I had an A in Swedish, English and drawing, even if I’m bad in math” she said angrily.

He looked even more surprised. “A? I do not understand. But that you are not a sleeper I can see with my big toe. You tell fibs.”

“I don’t understand either,” she said. “What is a sleeper?”

He gave her a hopeless glance. “It is the sleeper that sleeps. When he sleeps he dreams, and when he wakes up he knows the answer to the question you asked before he fell asleep. How long he sleeps depends on how difficult the question is. Fifty years ago we asked him how we would fight the Manulô[1], and he has not yet woken up.” His eyes were worried.

Robin wanted to ask what he meant with ‘we’ and what manulô were, but didn’t dare. She was curious, but soon she would need to head home so her parents didn’t get worried. Peculiarly it hadn’t gotten much darker.

“Why doesn’t it get dark?” she asked and realized she had asked something again.

“In Greenwood it never gets very dark,” he said. “Do you want to follow me and see how I live?” he smiled. The smile was quick as a glimmer on the surface on water.

Robin looked into the woods. She knew it was big, and that she might never find her way out if she got lost. She wondered how long you could live on roots. Could you eat forest growth? What did a wood elf eat?

“Ah, Robin,” he said. “Sure you will come with me.”

The name had a magic sound in her ears. She got little braver. Robin Hood didn’t get lost in the forest.

“I follow you if you tell me your name.” she said.

“You can call me Greenwood.”

“Then it is your forest!”

“You might say that. And now that I have told you my name, you have no choice but to come. Be silent, if you can, and creep carefully so the grey spirits do not hear us. Come.”

 

 

~*~ Part 4 ~*~

He started walking toward the trees. She had believed he would walk the road, but there was probably nothing dangerous as long she was close to him.

Deeper in the wood the spruce was wider and dark. You could see the moss and high grass everywhere. Large stone blocks lay close to each other like they were speaking to each other. Maybe they lived their own slow life and spoke so slowly that their voices were like a muffled wind. Between them the moonlight glimmered in deep water holes. Robin didn’t dare to say anything though Greenwood walked too fast and her trousers were drenched.

Suddenl,y he stopped and came very close to her. “Now we need to take a circuitous route,” he said. “We are close to Lô na dûr[1].”

They crawled in between two spruces and followed a path which was crossed by elk hoof prints. Robin was afraid of the elk but didn’t say anything. After some time the trees became fewer and they stepped into a glade, which Robin thought she recognized. In front of her lay the deep fen that she thought her mother and she had accidentally found when they were out picking mushrooms, but never found again. She remembered it had looked bewitched. In the blue and silver light that was all over the place it was almost terrible beautiful, like it was hard to breathe. A light fog was lying over the water. The trees looked as if they were there to watch over this place, like the heart of the woods was here. It felt like it was here and nowhere else she had longed for. The fact that she was lost didn’t matter.

“We have reached our target, Robin,” said Greenwood.

Robin was silent and just looked over the water. She wanted to sink down in the wet grass and just sleep in the blue glade. Greenwood watched her, and if she had looked at him she would have seen an odd glimmer in his eyes. Greenwood’s eyes had changed to dark blue, and now he looked steady on her.

“No-oo, you are not wise,” he said. “Then you would have not come into the woods.” His voice was quiet as the wind through autumn grass. “You never know what things are out in the night, for during the night things change. The night has many creatures and not all are nice.”

“You talk about the Manulô.”

“I am talking about the Manulô and Thind mân[2] and the man in the moon with his gown and those that are ages, and the creatures with many shapes, I mean the Tôgneitha[3] and the Madrhaw[4], those that make your heart feel like ice, Hrávemat[5]. But most I mean Calla Palustris.”

Even if she didn’t understand half of the things he told her, Robin shuddered and thought he had grown beside her. He didn’t look like a boy any more; he looked ancient, like the oldest trees.

“Who are Calla Palustris?” she whispered.

“Don’t you know that little human? Calla Palustris isn’t big and does not look dangerous, but is the most dangerous of them all.”

“What does he look like?” asked Robin.

“Similar to me. Yes, similar to me. Exactly like me.”