They said good bye to the others who were going to other places of the forest. Ticka took another way home. Only Fragaria, Rubus and a pale blackeyed reed fairy followed them for some time. The reed fairy was troubled and nervous; she had been forced to flee from her home in the Lô na dûr when the Manulô took over. Now her hopes were on Robin. She was convinced that Robin would solve the problem with the angel stone. Her big dark eyes were imploring. Robin wondered if she had instincts like Greenwood, because they looked to have a lot in common. They walked some bit behind the others and talked. She didn’t exactly like that Greenwood talked so much with someone else besides her. But since she didn’t want to pretend, she clung to the bird watcher, who seemed to love to answer questions.

“I didn’t believe there were any angels,” she said, “but maybe they are as real as you are?”

 “I have never seen any,” answered the bird watcher. “If I can say my point, I believe they are extinct.” He polished his glasses with the shirtsleeve. “Just like the dronten,” he added sadly.

“Dronten?”

“Of course. It is a big dove bird that became extinct in the eighteenth century. It couldn’t fly and lay only one egg at the time. I have always wanted to see a dront ever since I was little. By the way there were three birds of the same spices; dronten, dodon and miniia, if I remember correctly. I dreamt once that I found a dront egg.” He laughed self-consciously.

Robin started to like him very much and suddenly realized she didn’t know what his name was, so she asked him.

“My name is Jacob,” he said. “I had a brother who was named Esau, when I lived among the living. First my father had thought to baptize us to Eufrat and Tigris, but my mother stopped him.”

“How did you come here?” wondered Robin.

“Oh, that was a foolish thing. I had an old car that I went around in. And then one spring day I had a puncture on the monstrosity and when I stood there a man from the farm came in his car. He offered to tow the car home for me and everything. Damn nice. I paid of course. When he fixed the thing, I took my binoculars and went into the forest to see if I could spot a cuckoo. I didn’t, but as I went there a nightingale started to sing far in the wood. I walked toward the song, but the damn bird flew farther and farther into the wood and I couldn’t stop following. It was like magic, if you understand what I mean. I followed it farther and farther, until I didn’t know where I was, and suddenly my foot was caught and I fell to the ground like a sack. I broke my ankle, I think. I couldn’t move from the spot, and in time I became numb where I lay in the moss. When I woke up, I was like outside my body. It might sound strange, but there I stood and looked down on the poor body and felt light and floating. I didn’t even have pain in the foot. So after some time I put one and one together and understood I went further.” He polished his glasses again. “Died, I mean,” he added to the surprised Robin. “Damn, what dirty glasses.” He looked irritated.

Robin threw a gaze over her shoulder and saw that Greenwood still talked to the reed fairy. They were now on the way past the low forest hillside where Jacob thought he spotted the man in the moonlight rock. Nothing was seen, and Robin didn’t want to bring him up, but she saw that the others also looked to the hillside. Everyone quicken their steps.

Arriving at a beautiful meadow, where shimmering brown-pink grass and big raspberry bushes grow, Rubus and Flagaria said their good bye. Robin wished the foreigner reed fairy also would go her own way. She knew she should feel pity for her because she was a fugitive, but she thought she should make a point on Greenwood alone. Robin went up beside them and asked rudely what they were talking about.

“We gossiped about Ticka,” revealed the reed fairy guilty. “We think she is a spy for the thind mãn.”

“You can’t mean that.” She said dismayed.

“Maybe not a spy,” Greenwood said. “But there is something suspicious about her. Oh well, for me they can take her.”

“You are quite mean, aren’t you!” the reed fairy said.

“No, but I say what I think,” stated Greenwood. Then he looked dreamy and continued: “And right now I think of a nice swim in the fen. Do you follow me, Carex little?”

“I think I have not time.” said the reed fairy nervous. “Maybe another time. But perhaps Robin here wants to…”

“No, Robin does not want too.” said Greenwood tantalizing and winked towards Robin. “So it has to be you and me, Carex.”

“Mja,” said Carex. “I shall probably disappear soon. Go home, if you can call it home. But it has been very nice to talk to you.”

“Where do you live now?” Robin asked.

“I have to share an insufficient pool with another elf. But it is a little difficult, because he thinks I am an imposer. And then he loves pondweed and wants to have it growing everywhere. I feel trapped!”

“My fen is deep,” said Greenwood and winked knowingly to Robin again.

“There are silver halls and gardens on the bottom,” confirmed Robin. “And maybe a colonnade.”

But the reed fairy thanked them for the nice company and disappeared among the spruce.

“No one trusts me,” sighed Greenwood.

 

~*~ Part 26 ~*~

“Yes, I do,” insured Robin. She held her fingers crossed behind her back.

“You really mean that?” exclaim Greenwood surprised.

“You have your quirks, but I really like you.” said Robin.

Greenwood looked pleased. “I told you,” he smiles contentedly. “I told you everyone falls in love with me.”

“The thind mãn too?”

“Tss. They can not fall in love. They are too grey inside. They can only obey the all mighty grace and highest glorify King Ags will” he imitates Agel Arágels voice.

“You have meet Agel Arágel, I hear.” said Robin.

“The kings best persuader, yes several times. But he has given up. No-one has ever gotten the best of me, nor has anyone been able to trick me, not with spells nor lies. Last time I offered to give him a little hug.” Greenwood looked sugar sweet.” You should have seen how fast he disappeared! They hate to touch anyone, if it is not to catch and hurt. They do not like me!” he laugh. It was a fantastic laugh, thought Robin; low, ringing and totally free from malicious pleasure.

Galadriel turned around and smiled to them. “I am happy you are friends again,” she said.

“I’m happy too,” said Greenwood. “But I wonder how we would be able to carry that stone, if we find it. It could be very big.”

“That has to be a later question,” Jacob said. “First we have to find it.”

They continue to walk in silence. The sun was very low, and the shadows were long between the trees. The diagonal beams gave a nearly unreal green color to the fern and horsetails that stood flocked around puddles and huddled stones. The light was very beautiful but at the same times a reminder for the coming night. Robin shivered. She put her foot down wrong and slipped among the carex sara[1].

“It's starting to get late,” Jacob said. “Isn’t it best I carry you any way, since that will go faster? We want to avoid Hrávemat and other little rauco[2], which appear when the dark comes.

Robin, who started to feel both cold and tired, agreed to be carried. It felt safe to rest in the bird watcher's arms, even if his wrinkled nose and squinted eyes looked odd at so close a distance. All the three wood beings started walking faster, until they almost flew over the rough ground.

Robin had almost fallen asleep, when she thought of something that made her anxious. “Hey Jacob, if the sun goes down here with you, does that mean it goes down in the real world too?”

“No. We have a different time here.”

“But when I came here the first time, it was night both here and in the real world?”

“That was probably mostly a coincidence,” comforted Jacob her.

“Oh, how scared you where then.” said Greenwood.

“And that she had a reason to,” said Galadriel.

They came to dryer land. The blueberry and loganberry grew profusely between the pines; the sun glittered off the surface of an anthill. Robin was happier the closer they got to the meadow that was not far from the cottage.  At the meadow where Galadriel and she had sat to speak, she almost half-expected Agel Arágel to show up, but everything remained calm. Only the stock dove could be heard in the dark.

“At last, we are here,” said Galadriel a little time later. “Here we most say Good-Bye.” She stroke with her hand over Robin’s cheek.

Jacob let go of her, and Galadriel said: “Now you need to think us away, just like last time.”

“Farwell.” Robin looked mostly at Greenwood, who smiled his mischievous smile and said: “Namarie.” The others joined him voicing their good-bye’s.

This time it was very hard to think the ‘Middle Earth’ away. She tried to imagine all kind of things she liked, from her birthday presents to her candy bag in Maria's grand mothers drawer. In the end, when she thought about her mother, who she actually liked even after what they had said to each other, she finally managed. The three figures got more and more hazy, and Galadriel’s voice more distant, when she asked: “You do come back?”

The last thing Robin heard before she was in the real world was Greenwood’s faint, but fully recognizable voice that said: “Of course you come back, Robin…”

And so was the mild sunshine gone, and she stood in the rain in the deadly world.

 

 ~*~ Part 27~*~

She went up the short stair to the white house porch where she and Maria had played “lost on the ocean” the other years. They had stood beside the ornate railing and looked at the horizon in the hunt for a deserted island. But that was long ago. Now the porch was an ordinary porch with two red pelargonium in pots and a peel of wood bench.

She knocked hard on one of the doors. Creaking and slow steps were heard from inside. It was Maria's grandmother, who walked down the stairs. Robin suddenly felt scared. She thought quickly how she should behave: curtsy and say good day; she had too, but should she call Maria's grandmother ‘you’ or ‘aunt’? She used to call her ‘aunt Hilda’.

“Who is there?” said a suspicious voice from behind the door.

“Robin,” said Robin.

“What do you want?”

“Only to visit,” said Robin with a very small voice.

“Yes, yes. So come in then.” The door opened. Aunt Hilda had a blue checkered dress and a small flower apron on her. Her clothes always looked old and worn, just like her hands and her thin grey hair, which was placed in a bun under a hair net.

“So, she is here anyway,” said the old. Robin wondered why Maria's grandmother always called Robin ‘she’ instead of ‘you’. She addresses no doubt all with ‘he’ or ‘her’.

Robin curtsied deep and said: “Good day.” In the last moment she remembered she had to take off her muddy boots and put them on the porch. Actually, she should have changed to a dress, but she hadn’t dared to go into the cottage, instead she had sneaked through the pastures to the road that led to the white house.

She went in the hall and hung her wet jacket on a hook. The air was warm and it smelled a little musty. The old woman closed the door.

“She does not become cold when she is out and running in the rain?” she asked.

Robin shook her head. Maria's grandmother was very scared to catch a cold. As soon as the weather got a little cold she never went out without her hat, which she tied a scarf around to be on the safe side.

Robin got a little bad conscience when she thought on how many times she and Maria had in secretly laughed at the old woman and would imitate her way to talk. “Creeakiing aare down in the viilligee oo collect the coowss”, they use to say with tremolos voice. “Abdoomeen i’ iin the waay, so yo’ se no’ feet.” And so they laugh tremendously.

Now hadn’t Robin the least to laugh at Aunt Hilda. She felt very small and uncertain.

“I thought she was left in town, I.” continued the old woman. “Ther’ isn’t much she can do in a weather such thi’. Though now it pause a time.” She looked out the window.

“I like the rain,” said Robin and was very aware her jeans was wet right down to the skin.

“Well, well. Then we walk up.” The old started to walk up the stairs, one step at the time. Robin followed.

“She wants juice, I can think,” said the old woman, when she finally had reached the top step. “Go and sit down at the table.” She did a gesture towards the kitchen.

Robin had rather sit in the best room, where all the ornaments were. There stood two nougat-brown horses in porcelain, one stuck-up porcelain lady and a sugar egg that contained a whole garden of paper and sugar. There wasn’t anything special in the kitchen except a funny pot plant, that draw the leaf together if you poked it.  

Robin sat down at the kitchen table and kept silent. She didn’t know how to begin.

“Yes, yes,” said the old. “Tha the juice that draws. Tha the juice that draws. Otherwise she wouldn’t come, you think. She doesn’t want a sweet too. When we were little we went to the store and bought sweet-scrape. Two öre[3] cornet it cost. Yes, tha was it, tha.” She sigh. “But tha tastes, tha was when we got chum-milk fra ma.” She put a glass homemade juice raspberry juice in front of Robin. “Any cakes I haven’t to offer, so she has ta kept with tha sweets.” With another sigh she draws the drawer to the work bench and picked up a bag. It was multicolored fruit sweets; saw Robin; red and yellow with white around. She dared only to take one. Then the bag went down in the drawer again.

“How old is she now tha?” asked the old woman.

“Twelve years old,” said Robin and tasted the juice that was too strong.

“Tha you can’t believe. Though the time go so fast.” Aunt Hilda coughed. “She has no one to play wi’ when Maria is abroad. Wha’ tha shall go to tha Canaries island, tha can I not understand.”

“Maria lived in a hotel and she has got a gold bracelet.” explained Robin.

“Hotel,” snorted Marias grandmother. “Wha’ shall I with tha? When I was young you stayed at home, helped coows, an’ chum butter, an’ help tha harvest, an’ carding comb, an’ brawn, an’ juice.” She flatten the apron. “Yes, yes. Now I just go here an’ do nothing. I managed not to weave now. You want something to do. Nee, tha she not wants to hear. I shall no’ complain. Tha go no want on I.” She sat down opposite Robin. “Do it taste?” she asked.

“It is good,” said Robin and wondered how she could get into angel stones.

“If it tha be sun, so you could go out,” said the old. “What is she doing, when tha is so wet? She can’t play outside when tha it such weather.”

“I look in books and so,” said Robin. And at that moment she knew how to get their talk into angels. Marias grandmother had a big illustrated bible, which Maria and Robin often ask to look in. There was a picture on some men’s that found a head, a pair of hands and a foot on the ground. You could also find a picture that pictured two female bear that was on the way to jump over small children.

“Can I look in your bible?” asked Robin begging.

Maria's grandmother smiled. “Sure she may. Though tha we have to go inta the best room.” she looked closely at Robin. “She is all wet on her trousers. If she shall sit on one of the best chairs we have to put a paper on it.”

“So terrible wet aren’t I,” said Robin.

The old had raise and walked first to the best room on her bent legs. She stopped at the phone table and took a weekly magazine. “Right. Now she can sit down. She isn’t greasy on her fingers?”

“No,” said Robin and sat down carefully on the magazine.

“Then, we can bring the book.” She unlocked the mirror cabinet and took the heavy leather bound bible. “Do she want I read for her?”

“No, I can read self,” said Robin quickly.

“Yes, now she ar’ so old so she can read. How long has she go to school?” The old put the book on the tale in front of her and supervise carefully, when Robin open it. Of a blissful chance it open o a picture, that picture the young Jacob in a close fight with an angel. Jacob didn’t look as the bird watcher at all.

“Do Aunt believe in angels?” she asked.

“Angels? Yes, tha is na good to knew. Well I think tha is guardian angels.”

 

 ~*~ Part 28 ~*~

“What is that for angels?”

“Tha is those tha is with you and save you from bad luck. Yes, I knew their real.” She leaned back and got a dreamy expression in her eyes. “When I was a little girl we always walked barefoot in the wood,” she said. “One day when I went and picked wild strawberries it was like a voice told me: Stay where you are, Hilda. Do not take a step more. So I stayed there and at the same I saw a snake – a real viper tha – crept just infront of me feet. And tha I think even today, tha where a angel that wanted to protect me. Tha believe I.” She looked positive.

Robin tried to see her as a little girl, but she couldn’t. “Those guardian angels do they throw stones?” she asked.

“Stones?” The old looked confused. “That I can’t think.”

“Is there any other angles that throw stones? I mean, does Aunt know if there is a stone that a angel has thrown?” Robin blushed.

Aunt Hilda wrinkled her forehead. Her light blue eyes glimmered. “Do she mean the angel stone?”

Robin's heart beat a extra beat.” So there is an angel stone?” Does Aunt know where it is?”

“Of course I know. When I was little it was told tha if you were sick, you should touch the stone, an’ you got well. Though I don’t think it helped, but tha happen we went there.”

“Yes, but where is it?”

“In the field on the way towards the village. Tha is the big stone in the corn. Earlier it was wood around it, but now we had to use the earth…”

“Is Aunt really sure it is that stone?” Asked Robin. She knew exactly which stone it was, because she and Maria had played ‘shipwrecked on a deserted island’ there.

“Of course. Why do she want to know? Is she sick?” The old looked troubled.

“No. I’m just curious,” said Robin.

“No, no. Tha can be a sickness, tha too. Shall she look more in the book?”

“No, I think I have to go now. Mum said I couldn’t stay too long.” She got a bad conscience because she lied, but it wasn’t a bad lie. She didn’t hurt any with it.

Aunt Hilda closed the bible and put it carefully in the cabinet. “She shall greet mother and father.”

Robin promised to do it. Then she said: “Thanks for the juice and sweet” and “Good bye, Aunt Hilda.” and run down the stair. Robin, Robin you made it! it rejoice in her. Everyone will be so proud over you! Greenwood will admire her and Fragaria will thank you with her impressive voice!

She drew her jacket, pushed the door open and put her feet in the boots. Then she ran all the way through the pastures. It had stopped raining and the sun looked through the clouds. If it got better wouldn’t her parents stay at the countryside? If they could forgive her. Maybe they didn’t want to have her. Then she had to live in Middle Earth, forever. With those thoughts she got little sad. Everything was beautiful among the immortal, but there wasn’t any bed and any room for her and no other food than berries. She suddenly noticed that she was very hungry.

When she came out from the ash group beside the compost, panting after the run, she saw her mother stood beside the gate to the forest. Robin was about to turn, but it was too late. Her mother had already seen her.

“No, but Robin,” she said. “Where have you been? I thought to walk a turn in the wood when there was a pause in the rain. Do you want to come with me?” She sounded eager.

Robin knew she should go direct to the immortal. But her mother seemed to need her company and Robin was happy that she wasn’t that unwanted, when it came to it. A short walk with her mother she could take. By the way she had to eat, or she wouldn’t be able to do anything.

“That I can do,” she said “but then I need a sandwich first.”

“Her mother brighten. “We will go in for awhile, then,” she said. “I spoke with dad and we decided to stay for a few more days, at least. Then we aren’t angry at each other any more?”

“No,” assured Robin.

She went into the house. Her father sat at the kitchen table and read a newspaper. He looked little embarrassed when Robin came in. “Hi,” he said, “are you friends again?”

“Yes,” said Robin and took forward the bread.

“Do you want a banana too?” her mother asked.

“Don’t we have porridge oats, so we can make porridge for her?” said her father. 

 

~*~ Part 29 ~*~

Two sandwiches, one banana and a plate of porridge later Robin felt ready for a forest walk. The weather was still clear. Her mother brought a bowl to collect some berries in, and they walked out into the wood. Her father joined them.

“How nice it is here in the wood anyway,” said her mother when they walked the way to the fen. “When you see the light glimmer among the trees, you can almost believe there are fairies.”

Robin tried hard to not laugh. She wished her mother wouldn’t stamp on any hare foot turf. The looked so clumsy and gawky, her parents, where they slipped among the turfs with their plastic bowls in their hands. She thought about Jacob and Galadriel. It felt as it was awful long time since she meet the immortal, and then it had only went a few hours since she said good bye to them. Maybe Greenwood had found someone else during the time: someone that would dive in the fen with him? The thought didn’t speak to her.

“You have received a postcard from Maria, I saw,” her father said.

“Yes, she lives in a hotel and has a gold bracelet,” said Robin.

“And you are of course envious?” her mother teased.

“No, not at all.” Robin almost got angry.

“Our daughter is satisfied with old hats, Karin,” said her father. “So we have to be pleased.” Her parents laugh.

Robin slowed her steps, so now she was behind them. They continued, and soon were hidden of a few young asps.

She couldn’t stop thinking of Greenwood and the others, who waited for her. Who knew how long time it went in the immortal world when she walked here with her parents? King Ag maybe already had won? Greenwood and Flagaria and the others was maybe persuaded and locked in ‘Greyhunger’? Jacob had maybe gone grey and lost his dreams about dront egg? And the poor weaning reed fairy, then…

When she thought that the sunshine in the forest got softer, the moss greener and the heaven light blue. She looked down, and around one of her feet there was small grey hare foot flowers. She stood still and looked in through the pine trunks.