Disclaimer: Is my name Dominic or Foz? Let me check… no, I thought not. I don't own Robin Hood BBC.
Hello again, and thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed. It really makes my day to see a new review alert – please let me know what you think of this new chapter!
Slowly, Rose became aware. Of what, she didn't know – her senses were still shattered into a jagged and tangled mosaic – but she was conscious of her own existence. Inchmeal, her fractured mind pieced itself together; broken pathways healing and turning meaningless nerve impulses into tangible sensation. The leaves she was lying on were scratchy and the dry earth beneath felt dusty and dirty. Small stones pressed painfully into her skin. And it was as she contemplated the strange abundance and sharpness of sensation that the realisation came: she was naked.
Sitting bolt upright as if electrocuted, Rose scrabbled franticly at her sides for a covering that wasn't there. Her breathing had jumped to the pulmonary answer to a pneumatic drill, but almost as suddenly it slowed down again as Rose stopped her wild and hasty movements and sat unmoving, looking like a Grecian statue turned flesh and blood. Her panic had cut off all coherent thought but now her memory was flooding back in all its nastily incomplete truth. What had happened? She closed her eyes, praying for the dead foliage surrounding her to seamlessly turn to bedsheets but her appeals were ignored and everything remained stubbornly, insolently, horribly real. What on Earth had happened? Had she fainted? Where in Hell's name were her clothes? Perhaps she hadn't been blacking out at all – perhaps someone had attacked her, stolen her clothes…signs which pointed to one dire outcome. Rose blanched. No, she thought grimly, stopping her mind before its tracks led somewhere she didn't want to go. No way.
Standing up shakily, she looked around the forest for the people who were bound to arrive and complete the nightmare, but thankfully (not like she felt particularly like thanking anything at that point) none arrived. The forest looked different, Rose thought in her dark confusion, but she couldn't discern exactly how, like the way the world appeared odd in a way you couldn't put your finger on when viewed through someone else's glasses. It sounded the same, she concluded, beginning to stagger off in the first direction that took her subconscious fancy. Birds, leaves, laughter. She stopped, listening. Laughter. Swinging around, Rose set off at a lurch in the direction of the distant sound, given up on trying to cover herself as there was nothing to do so with and apparently nobody who could see her anyway. Rose felt oddly, impenetrably calm as she followed the merry noises to their source, ignoring the stinging of her unprotected feet. Has she a rational alter-ego, the other Rose would have recognised the signs of shock and denial, but as it was the symptoms went unnoticed. Rose pressed on.
Knowing the laughing group – for it was several revellers she could hear – was near, she slowed down, and hiding behind a shrub to peer over the crest of a slope she saw it: the glittering ribbon of the Trent and on its bank stood a gaggle of women in dresses. Intrigued, Rose looked on in interest. They were washing clothes in the rippling stream – or would have been, had the four of them not been too engaged in splashing one another and shrieking with laughter. Snatching up a handful of claggy river mud, one girl advanced mock-threateningly on her friend, who squealed and ran off into the trees, hotly pursued by her giggling friends. Rose eyed the abandoned piles of clothes, then, gaze periodically flicking to the spot in the forest the girls had disappeared into, made her way stealthily over to the washing and pawed through the still-dry items, feeling like a scavenger. Selecting a rust-coloured dress – there were only dresses, she noticed, with vague unsettlement – that looked as if it would fir her, Rose scarpered with the speed of a frightened squirrel, continuing until she was well away from the stream before stopping to put on the stolen dress.
She did not think of the garment's owner; her disturbingly cool mind had let her guilt drop away as she fled, for the time being, at least. Struggling into the dress – which, oddly, didn't seem to have a zip – Rose grimaced: the thick, coarse fabric felt nasty on her skin. She wished she'd grabbed underwear. Then felt fine that she hadn't: did she really want to be wearing someone else's underwear? Then she remembered she had just woken up naked from a dead faint in the middle of the forest and didn't really know what she felt anymore. Her hands and eyes examined the strange garment, taking in the high ridges of the seams, the simple thick-threaded decorative embroidery twisting along the neckline. "Linen" she remarked, for the material was just that, but her surprise was at its heaviness, its odd roughness.
Beginning to walk away, Rose pulled a face. The fabric felt disgusting, the skirt was awkwardly long, the bodice and shoulders were uncomfortably tight and her still bare feet picked up the prickle of every leaf and stone, of which there was an unsurprising but painful abundance in the wood. Eventually, however, she relapsed into her detached calm to walk and think. She pondered over the women and their washing of dresses. Who on Earth would be playing around by the River Trent in Sherwood Forest in medieval costume on Saturday morning? And the answer leapt from the shadows to the obvious even as she asked herself the question: those classical period re-enactment troupes. What a waste of time, thought Rose irritably, then she lapsed further into morosity. These people had a hobby, and they appeared to be enjoying themselves. What did she do in the evenings, at the weekend? She worked. She ate. She drank wine, listened to her old cassette tapes and new CDs, sang along with her voice reverberating off the studio walls. She drank more wine, she sang progressively worse. Dark drew in. She watched television. She listened to more music. She went to bed empty as that day's bottle of Tesco Own white wine. She woke up to a breakfast of Paracetamol – for the headache – and sometimes Prozac – a safety net for the infrequent bitter urges. The antidepressants came courtesy of the foolish doctor who swallowed her lies about never drinking and 'going through a rough patch' after the death of a non-existant friend as readily as she gulped the pills down each morning. It had taken every skill of acting she possessed to persuade him that it wasn't the memory of 15 months ago. Which it wasn't, she knew, because she had put all that behind her. Case closed.
As she stepped gingerly through a pile of leaves Rose wondered absently whether she should be worried by her ability to lie credibly. She didn't know. She did, however, have some small idea of where she should head: the police station or home, whichever she reached first. Which meant getting out of the forest. And that was another concern itching the inside of her skull – the forest looked… could it look… smaller? But Rose wasn't sure what she meant anyway and shook her head, dislodging the troubled thought. Purpose pushed her onwards as quick as her protesting soles would allow; she would walk in a straight line until she hit the edge of the woods. Being practised at woodland orienteering, the girl knew two things: one that with unregimented bushes and trees and no compasses it was impossible to walk in a straight line through a forest and two, that if she picked the wrong direction she would walk for hours before coming close to the end. Choosing to forget these things, Rose strode forward, looking for all the world like she knew the estate to be just out of sight, beyond the next hill.
Rose stumbled to her knees in the leaves but this time she didn't get up. I should be feeling tarmac, Rose thought, running her hands lightly over the dry umber earth. Where were the noisy cars, their breath hot and horrible? Where were the pedestrians' footsteps, the squeals of brakes, the blares of horns? Where was the road?
She tried going over it again in her stodgy brain. When she'd found a part of the forest that, although it being indescribably wrong in some way, she knew the way to the road from, Rose had almost cried with relief after the tiring hours of determined walking and then aimless wandering. But it was all a nasty nightmare – the places she could almost recognise were scattered sparsely between patches of alien forest; the well-worn trails she followed had vanished, and the things that she knew were there, in that spot – like the road – refused to make an appearance. Rose looked up and down the line that the fairly busy road should be taking; a strip of forest mocked her. In normal circumstances, Rose's thoughts would probably have been frenzied, half-wild with fright, but she had been trudging and stumbling through the woodland for hours and her exhausted mind could manage no more than bewilderment.
Shakily, Rose got to her scratched feet, which along with her parched throat and empty stomach she had grown too tired to pay attention to some time ago. Dazed, she raised her head and looked up to the thankfully constant blue sky broken up by the green leaves dancing over head in the breeze she hadn't noticed start. Without knowing why and hardly knowing she was doing it at all, Rose began to turn slowly on the spot, not taking her widened eyes from the fluttering hordes of pistachio rags. She carried on spinning slowly, gazing upwards until her head felt too heavy to lift anymore and it dropped back down. Even though she was not rotating at any great speed her vision was whirling ferociously fast: it looked to Rose (who still didn't stop turning around and didn't understand why she was doing it anyway) as though the entire world was roaring around her as a central point so rapidly that centrifugal force had pushed all of creation into bands of blurred colour ringing her: green, brown and blue. Eventually she began to slow, as the spinning forest began to decelerate Rose noticed spots that stood out in the haziness, spots that vanished as she turned her back on them and reappeared a second later as patched against the indistinct earthy tones. With each rotation they flashed closer and closer until she could make them out to be people, stillframes of men thrown against the leafy backdrop. Then suddenly one of them was standing right next to her. Startled, Rose stumbled to an unsteady halt, then grinned brightly at him, not quite in possession of all her senses. The man in front of her seemed about to speak, but she got there first.
"Well, you guys certainly are dedicated!"
This appeared to throw him. Face crinkled in confusion, he said,
"I beg your pardon?"
Rose laughed, feeling like her head was full of helium and lemonade bubbles. These men of the medieval re-enactment group even spoke in an old-fashioned way, she thought, eying their costumes with amusement: more of the rough linen and thick stitching like on her dress, but this motley crew had other props like crude leather boots and toolbelts.
"Your costumes, I mean. They're so… detailed."
His face was the picture of bemusement beneath his cloth hat as she stretched out a wavering hand and tugged at the edge of his patterned waistcoat. Her strength in her arm failed her and her hand fell almost instantly away.
"Could you take me to the police, please?"
It came out far quieter than Rose thought it would. The hatted man looked back to his companions as if asking for help, than turned to face her again and cleared his throat nervously. Rose, feeling inexplicably stupid, carried on speaking.
"See, I was here but then I woke up," she leaned in, giggling weakly from the partial dementia of exhaustion and shock, "and someone," her forefinger gave a half-hearted playful waggle and she flashed the poor man a lop-sided, conspiratorial grin, "someone had taken all of my clothes!"
She ended with a small sound between a laugh and a hiccup.
Utterly confused but now a little stern, the man spoke again.
"Miss, are you drunk?"
She pulled back unsteadily, looking affronted, but there was a dizziness spreading through her mind that made it difficult to concentrate.
"Drunk?! Drinking before – before lunchtime –" Grey mist that buzzed like angry hornets was filling her brain and clouding her vision, blotting the man from view. "What do you think… what you think me…" Her voice grew smaller and fainter with every word but Rose couldn't finish the sentence. Blind with dizzying fatigue, she stumbled and pitched forward, crashing into the surprised man before her. He staggered backwards, and the last Rose felt was his hands coming up around her to prevent her from falling before the last of her consciousness trickled away.
So! A hide and a hair and a hat of an outlaw, at last! It's a fairly short chapter in which not much happens and I apologise, but Chapter 4 should be nice and long to make up for it.
If you enjoyed it, if you hated it, if you see something you think needs doing better; if you have a thought, comment or query of any sort please, please, please review. I love reading your opinions - they really do make my day.
Love, Pig.
