~*~ Part 10 ~*~
When Robin woke the next morning she wanted to go out looking for the hare-foot. Though it didn’t seem very dignified to rush out like that and not be able to wait. It would be childish, like eating a whole chocolate bar at once as soon as you received it, or opening the Advent calendar days in advance. Although she did check to see if the tuft still was under her pillow. It was. The sun shone outside the blinds and the princess on it was extra visible, but Robin didn’t care so much about her.
She lay there in her bed and thought about what had come over her to say her name was Robin Hood. She adored the Sherwood hero. She could see Robin jumping lithe as a wildcat from the trees, blowing in his horn and shooting golden arrows through a green haze. He knows every tuft in the enormous Sherwood Forest, and his face bronze colored, laughing and wild when he drew his sword and plundered road travelers.
If she could transform she would want to be Robin Hood. She thought she might not love Robin Hood, but she would want to be like him. To be someone people loved would be great. Somehow it felt right to tell Greenwood and Galadriel she was Robin Hood.
When she had eaten her breakfast, washed herself and brushed her teeth, she offered to go and catch the mail that the mailman put in the box down at the Birch Avenue. The sun had disappeared again; the clouds had gathered together.
Maria had sent her a postcard from Italy. “I have ridden a donkey,” she wrote. “Our hotel is very big and we meet a lot of people. I have got a gold bracelet.”
Robin tried to imagine what she could written on a postcard to Maria; “I have meet a fen elf. He tried to drown me, but Galadriel saved me. She is probably a ghost but that she didn’t want to speak about.”
Anyway it would never occur to her to tell Maria – or anyone else – about the Middle Earth. Think if her mother and father and Maria’s parents and Maria’s uncle, grandfather, sister and brother and their henchman George with his wife and all his small whining children would come and put their feet on the hare-foot. She could imagine what they would do in Middle Earth.
Maria’s father would go looking for elks to shoot, her mother would tell Greenwood to cut his hair, Maria’s brother would ask Galadriel if she wanted to come with him to the city and go to a dance restaurant with him, and Maria’s sister should complain that her high heeled shoes got wet. You could always hope that the Manulô[1] took care of them all. Or that Greenwood drowned them. But Robin didn’t feel like introducing anyone to Greenwood; not Maria and absolutely not Maria’s sister, who was very pretty. Maybe there were gardens and colonnades behind the fen.
Probably she didn’t need to worry, because no one would believe her if she told about the Wood. She almost didn’t believe it herself, she nearly believed that she had dreamt the whole thing– but then it was her own dream that no one had anything to do with; and she would go through it again.
[1] Manulô – Marsh ghost
~*~ Part 11 ~*~
On the way back from the mail box it started to rain just like the day before, and when Robin entered the hall her mother said: “We should probably go home again; it isn’t a good idea to be here when it is raining like this.”
Robin was on the verge of tears. Go home to the city! She didn’t want to believe they were serious about it. It felt like they had just told her she was about to be put in jail. And poor Galadriel, to whom she had given her promise to come back! And Greenwood! She didn’t understand why she wanted to meet Greenwood again; maybe to see if she could dupe him.
She stayed in the hall in her wet clothes and tried not to weep. “I don’t want to go home!” she shouted. “Every time when I think something is fun, you want to do something else! What will you do in the city? Is it better there, perhaps?” She went to the kitchen without taking her boots off. The tears ran down her cheeks, but they probably looked like rain. Her mother didn’t seem to notice them.
“You can’t do anything when it is raining,” said her mother sourly. “Sitting and reading English one can do it just as well at home. And it is so tight here in the cottage, we’re right on top on each other.”
“Does dad think so too?”
“Yes,” her mother’s face was a little swollen. Robin thought she looked ugly.
“So you want to go home at once?” Robin wished she could hold her voice steady, but it sounded pitiful and whiny.
“When it’s mainly dry? You can’t work in the garden or pick berries in this weather like this,” her mother looked stubborn.
Robin felt that she hated her mother at the moment, really hated her, so she wanted to hurt her. Not drown her, but make her small and without power; stomp on her.
“You said that we would stay for a week!” she shouted. “All you think about is work and work, but I have only a summer leave!” She went silent and they stared at each other. Her mother’s face looked even more swollen than ever.
“Do you know something?” said Robin. “You are so damn ugly, so…” she stopped speaking as she thought of what to say. She was like ice inside. “You are so bloody disgusting so you have to be lucky that someone wanted you. And that is dad too.”
“Keep quiet.” It was her father’s voice. He was standing in the doorway and looked bigger than usual. “Even if you are angry you can’t say whatever you want.”
“Are you so sure that we wanted you?” said her mother with a tense and weird voice. She had a strange look on her face. “You are not the nicest child someone could wish for.”
Robin understood she had said something hideous to her mum, but her mother had said something even more gruesome to her. Never, never had any of her parents said anything horrible like that to Robin. She knew there were children that were so called unwanted. But those she saw as faint, poor and lost. They were more at home in old nasty fairy tales than in reality. She had always thought about herself, her mother and father as a happy family. Now she wondered if they always hated her. It was totally silent in the room.
~*~ Part 12 ~*~
Then her mother said: “I’m sorry, Robin. I didn’t mean it.”
Her father stood silent in the doorway, watching them both.
“Please Robin, forgive me,” asked her mother. “Can’t we forget this? Come here so I can give you a hug, and then we’ll forget this.”
Robin didn’t say anything. Her mother looked pitiful and small; worthy of contempt. Robin had the advantage.
“What were you fighting about?” her father asked.
“Robin doesn’t want to go home.”
“But can’t we stay for a little longer,” her father smiled at her. Then her mother got angry again. “It’s not only you that decides how long we stay here!” she said. “You might not understand how it feels for me. But I can take the train home if only someone drives me to the station.”
“Don’t be silly,” said her father.
In both her parent's voices there was a chill that frightened Robin. They probably they not only thought badly about her, but they didn’t like each other either. Sure they had been pissed at each other before, but never like this. What if they started to hate each other in reality? What if they were never again a happy family?
“Robin,” her mother said again, “can’t you give mum a hug? Do you want to go out and pick wild strawberries together?”
Then Robin went out. She passed the currant bushes, garden, bullace and the compost. The rain was heavier, but she thought she needed to be washed because she felt dirty.
She opened the garden gate and started walking to the pines. The forest smelled fresh, and the tall grass was bent and glimmering from the rain. She wondered if she would ever dare to walk home again. Maybe her parents would never let her in again.
Soon Robin saw the little meadow where she first met Greenwood. She closed her hand around the hair tuft she had in her pocket and hoped she would find the hare’s foot.
~*~ Part 13 ~*~
It wasn’t difficult since it was very clear where she had fallen the last time. A tiny tuft of grey, woolly hare’s foot grew exactly there, and she thought it was evil to stomp on it. But that couldn’t be helped. She took the hair tuft from her pocket, held it in front of her, stepped carefully on it, closed her eyes and thought about Greenwood and Galadriel.
It suddenly stopped raining and the air was warmer. When she opened her eyes she saw that the ground was dry, and a mild sunshine lay over the high grass. She moved her gaze to the heaven and saw a big, hazy sun, which you could look right into. Galadriel wasn’t there, but the tuft was white and shimmering again. Robin sat down on a stone and took her jacket off. She hoped that the jacket and her trousers would dry fast in the sunshine. If she stayed here she had to get more clothes; but how? And what do immortals eat?
When she was comfortable, she heard a song in the distance. The voice was very clear and sad, making Robin shivered. The shiver wasn’t uncomfortable and neither was the song. It just sounded very melancholy and slow.
“How
I would rest and dream,
fall to sleep,
never drift, forgotten by everyone,
forgot, weeping.
How
I would shut my eyes and forget!
Shadow and delusion I would remain
Judged by all and never forgiven.
I
know a turf
Where the life will ebb
Where clove and Elanor can’t grow
There the little one rest
In shelter of the mound; in peace.
The
shadow dwell
And the wind whines
And the cloud roll
But alas!
The little one do not wake
The little one in the earth in peace.
Alas, I would be with him
The little one in peace.”
Robin got up and walked in the direction of the song. She parted two bushes and saw Galadriel coming, surrounded in mist. The sun turned her hair into light gold, and she seemed to fly through the high grass. White high meadowsweet grew every where around her. Robin held her breath and didn’t dare speak to Galadriel, who unseeing went by her. Then she thought she could console her, so she followed her and said her name.
Galadriel turned around and smiled warmly to Robin. “You came back!” she said.
“I did promise,” said Robin
“Promises are easily broken,” Galadriel whispered
“I came because I wanted to hear your story. But why are you so sad? Is it the Manulô[1] that has created anything?”
“No, my little child, do not mention them. I mourn that I never get to rest. Though, with such a tale I would not torment you. You wanted me to tell you my story, let us… let us sit down somewhere.”
They found two stones and sat down then turned towards each other. Galadriel fingered her medallion she wore around her neck.
“You might have guessed that I once lived for some time in your world. Then I lived in the cottage,” she started. “It was a very long time ago, way back in time. I had met a man; I became enchanted and fell in love with. It was so strong that I passed the barrier between the worlds.”
It looked like Galadriel was on the verge of falling back into her memories. “The man was a soldier in the King’s army.” She continued.
Robin tried to remember what she knew about the history and guessed the King must have been Karl XII.
Again Galadriel went deep into her thoughts. She looked troubled, but after sitting silent for a while she continued, “It is not bragging if I say he was dazzling and a nice man, and I loved him. But the day came when he was needed in the war. I still remember how it felt the moment he left the cottage and me. I stood and saw his footsteps in the mud and didn’t know if I had seen him for the last time,” she got quiet for awhile.
“And the years went by. I tried to become a maid at the farm. I toiled from early morning until late at night. He didn’t come home even when the war was over. I walked there yearning and yearning, the longer he was away, the more I wanted to go back to Valinor. At the time I had forgotten how I got to your world and what sacrifice there had been made to not disturb the balance.” She paused again.
Robin sat silently, waiting for her to continue and tell more about the differences.
“Since I didn’t see any way back and it seemed my man would not come back, I began to have forbidden thoughts. In that time it wasn’t respectable for women to travel alone, if I had been able. Due to a promise that had been made for me to live in your world, I couldn’t travel any further either. So in one way I was trapped in the cottage and its surroundings. I had some yearning I did not understand, and then one day another man came who also had been alone for a long time.” Galadriel swallow and let her head down.
“So you two became friends?” said Robin. “Did you get married?”
“That was impossible. How would that look? I was already married. And he didn’t want to be married, either. He didn’t want to tie himself down, he said. Because he knew how the females were that he was acquainted with, he said.”
“I think he seems rotten,” said Robin distinctly.
Galadriel looked up. “Rotten? What does that mean?”
“Mean/nasty,” said Robin. “Evil, as you say.”
“Yes, maybe he was. But he was a handsome man.”
“That I would care about,” said Robin.
“I know I handled it badly. It was a shame, what I did. And he went and disappeared as a hare you feed at your door. I never knew if he would turn up again. But there he stood, smelling of the wilderness and fire. He stayed for a few days and then he was gone. I often take walks and think about him a lot. I think I might have fallen in love with him too.”
“How could you do that after what he did?” asked Robin.
Galadriel gave her a searching look. “Don’t you understand that?” she said. “But you are perhaps too young. You have probably never loved someone.”
“Sure I have. But he is nice. I believe that at least.”
Galadriel didn’t listen. She had lowered her eyes again. “Then I got into an accident,” she said. “It was inescapable that I would fall from grace.”
“What do you mean? Fell from grace?”
Galadriel’s cheeks flushed with color. Robin thought it looked like the delicate roses that grow along one of the walls at the cottage. “I shouldn’t talk about this with you. You are too young for it.”
“You have promised to tell me,” reminded Robin her irritably.
“Yes,” said Galadriel. “I meant that I got with child.”
“Because you had sex with each other,” Robin filled in. “Of course I understood that you had done it.”
Galadriel gave her a surprised look. “Alas we went to bed together,” she said and the ‘roses’ were visible again. Then she didn’t say anything more.
The birds were singing in the meadow, and Robin eagerly waited for what she would tell her next.
[1] Manulô – marshy ghost
~*~ Part 14 ~*~
Galadriel had hid her face in her hands and started weeping. Robin didn’t know what to do.
“Please, Galadriel, don’t cry,” she prayed. “You do not need to tell. I’m sorry that I continually ask.”
“No, no,” said Galadriel. “I will not stay silent about it.”
Robin slowly raised her hand and stroked Galadriel's hair. It was soft and felt very real.
Galadriel wiped the tears away and continued: “The first months it was not visible, but then one day, when I was about to take a receptacle from a shelf, the housewife looked strong at me and said: ‘I think Lisa got round around her middle.’ She sounded really mean in the voice.”
“Why did she call you Lisa?”
“That was my name then. I had to take that when I passed into your world. Galadriel is my true elven name. I changed it back when I come back as I wanted to forget the time I was away.”
Both went silent and pondering in their own thoughts. Robin did understand the way to have another name as she so often called herself something else.
She came to think of Greenwood. Hadn’t Galadriel and himself called him with a different one. ‘What was it?’ After a moment she remembered it, Calla Palustris.
Robin couldn’t refrain from asking about him. “Galadriel, you and Greenwood called him Calla Palustris and didn’t you say it was one of his names, does he have more?”
“Oh, little one, I might have mentioned that, though I don’t know if I’m the right one to tell you…” She looked far into the wood. “As I said he is part Edhellô[1] and his other part is of an elven race too. His father is the King of Mirkwood and comes from what is called Silvan elves, which means ‘wooded’ or as they also are called east-elves. Greenwood got his names of both his parents, and because of that he is going under several names.”
“Do you mean he has more than one?”
“Yes, he has. Calla Palustris is from his mother and his father actually named him Legolas, which means ‘green leaf’. When he is in his shape of Edhellô he prefers to call himself Greenwood or even Missne. Please, do not mention I told you.” The last bit she sounded uncertain, as if she wondered if she had done the right thing.
“I won’t,” Robin tried to melt the information and it had woken up some more questions. “Why did he choose to call himself Greenwood?”
“As you know the forest here is Greenwood. He simply took that, as it also is in the meaning of his Silvan name. When he is in the periods of his second self he often wants to believe he owns the forest.”
“What does his father say about it?”
“Thranduil is easily weakened when it is about his son, as he was of Rharaniel, Calla’s mother. They can both wrap him around their little fingers, so he can’t do anything about it.”
“He also said that he often is mistaken as a man if you are a she and a woman if you are a he? How can that be possible?”
Now Galadriel smiled. “That is one of the mysteries of an Edhellô. They are neuter.”
“What?” In a short amount of time Robin had heard so much she could barely understand everything and didn’t know what Galadriel was telling her.
“You can say he has no sex and then he can snare anyone, which makes him a lot easier to drown people. You do tend to trust or fall for one of the other sex easier.”
“Ooh.” Robin wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare.
She didn’t know if it was of her understanding some of Greenwood she thought she could feel a cold tremor go over her back. Robin looked around her and Galadriel wondering if she was only imagining it. The atmosphere in the meadow was suddenly one of unease.
Her unspoken question reached Galadriel.
“It is a Thind Mân[2],” said the woman. “You feel when they are close. We stay here. We do not need to fear it, as long we do not say ‘yes’ to anything it says. Best not say anything.”
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