III.7 Too Hot To Handle
And Then They'll Love Me
There is another kind of story trying to take over this one, and it is the saddest one of all. The Grand Epics of Tuck have kept you going through the pain, the Personal Vendettas of Kate have rallied men to your side. The Dark Parables of Vaisey now will rescue Guy of Gisborne from his self-fashioned Hell, and the Ovidian Legends begged by Isabella will condemn her to her own. But there is another story that is twisting them all out of shape, and it is the saddest story of them all, because it ends: "and then they'll love me."
Prince John is someone who understands love even less than Guy of Gisborne, and his story has always ended, "and then they'll love me," desperate and petulant and small. A story worthy of the angel who threw a fit and had himself tossed out of his one and only home. And his story infects the Dark Parables and the Ovidian Legends, although Guy and Isabella have the grace not to say it aloud.
Let us tell these tales which twine around each other to produce two resurrections and one damnation along with the small, desperate story we whisper to ourselves – the one that makes the others possible.
Ophelia grew tired as the sun grew hotter. She stood in a room with two men who demanded constant shifting of her shapes. Each time Laertes looked at her he wanted a different shape, and the Prince of Lies wanted only one, but he demanded it constantly. She stepped outside and lifted her hair up off her neck as her shoulders slid down and she began to settle into that impossible-to-know form that a shape-shifter assumes when she is alone. And you pulled one of your sneak flirts, and she got scared, "God, don't do that." But this story is all about her trying to let her true face show for you and you not seeing it.
Prince John thought he did, and he took the pathetic little story he whispers to himself and set the grander stories in motion. He took Proteus aside and whispered his story into her hair – freaking her out because she couldn't figure out what shape he wanted now. He stoppered the wells throughout Nottingham, but then he will bring the people water from his own personal stores. And then they'll love him. He will outplay Isabella and then she will see that it is he and not Robin Hood who is worthy of her loyalty.
Then to Guy of Gisborne, who did try to warn him. Kill Hood, with pleasure, but, quiet and raw, "Both of them?" Yes, yes, kill your sister and take power, the Prince of Lies hissed in impatience, too furious to even do this properly. But Guy of Gisborne never wanted these things for themselves. They were gifts for others. And then they would love him. He will cut out his own heart and his own soul for Marian or Allen or even Isabella, but the power he wants – the Sheriff's title he begs again and again – is so that he can protect his family.
So that when he sees Proteus go to the clearing and shift into the shape she assumes for you, when he shackles you together in the Forest, he can offer his sister to whom he owes so much a second chance. The chance Marian would never take at his hand.
And Proteus stood there with you, offered to assume any shape you liked. Suddenly couldn't figure out quite which one you wanted, your ears so full of holy man Tuck's mistrust of a creature who can so easily change your shape. Because he believes that the truth will set us free, his fire burns away everything that does not work, he cannot understand the kind of blaze that could make a person melt down their soul and twist it into ten thousand shapes in order to hide the truth. But Isabella knows the power of constant transformations – what it obscures and what it protects and what it gives. Just one transformation among hundreds she does daily and then you will love her.
But the moment when her brother tries one last time to rescue Marian's Replacement is Proteus's masterpiece. As she stood pinned to the spot with both of her chief protectors screaming at her for her ever-shifting shapes, she stood poised for an exquisite moment in three shapes at once. And in the fight that followed, it was impossible to tell whose side she was on.
But she chose you. She left that shape up until you abruptly demanded another, "You made me think we might have a future together," and she stopped dead, and got real, because she was frightened by just how much she wanted that shape. That beautiful shape that could ransom her from Hell, a chance to rest, a man to stand with her at the Crossroads at Midnight as she changed furiously under his hands, holding her as she burned and froze and pierced and dissolved until the Break of a New Dawn. The resurrection of the Legend worthy of Ovid's Metamorphosis. But, because she is a Gisborne, she believes that something so beautiful must be purchased with treachery, with a soul twisted into a hard and cold shape. So she shifts into the Sister of Gisborne who can make demands of her brother, and she uses him to give you the chance to strike and escape.
And she trusted you to see her true form, the shocking fire of her rage at the center of her body, the wild current of Hell's Fiendfyre that melted her into ten thousand different shapes, for the man who condemned her to Hell seventeen years ago. And you eased her hand away from the sword, because damn if that wouldn't scare anyone. And this is not the love story of your life. Only moment ago, you called her name. You are a Legend, but not the kind that can catch Proteus and stand with her at the Crossroads.
When you came to them, you wanted to leave as soon as possible. Because Isabella is not Marian. You tell her, as she tries to get you to stand still with her here, that you and she could go any way that she likes so long as they left. And Ophelia, far away in Elsinore Castle, said to Hamlet, "I was the more deceived."
But she rallied, and changed tactics. She asked what the shape of this Marian was, so that she could assume it. And then you'll love her. But she is the child bride of Hell, she is not equipped to hear the old love song now humming in your ear. I didn't know how very much I'd missed her until I heard her music again. Neither had you, from the look on your face.
And perhaps it was the siren call of Marian's name you summoned before the fight that helped free Guy of Gisborne where you had tied him to the tree, but probably not. Because while to us Isabella is Marian's Replacement, to Guy of Gisborne she is her Original. His desperation to protect a beautiful blue eyed, black haired woman who cannot be made to understand that wealth and power is worth the price of your soul is not about stabbing Marian in the Holy Land. Rather she was about this: a scared thirteen-year-old girl who clung to her brothers hand and begged him to tell her that everything would be all right even as she prepared to leave her only family member who had not been consumed in flames because she caught the eye of one of hell's monsters and was sold to him. In Hell, Ophelia learned to burn. And, in France, Laertes took the money from the sale and rampaged through the world without a care for the torment of his sister in Denmark's Prison.
But this is not just the story of yet another torture Guy of Gisborne endures in Hell. It is the last one, because he has seen, at last, that no one wants the protection he daily sells his soul to provide. They want yours.
So you took Proteus's back way into Hell to save the villagers.
In a smaller, more desperate story, the villagers of Locksley took the water you stole to bring them and were thus refused the love gift Prince John had planned to bring them. So that then they would love him. Kate took her personal stories and Tuck his burning epics and they were flummoxed without the stories you tell, of love and honor and compassion, so they ran to the stream. They took the baby named Robin, a name of strength for these troubled times when even if a robin had landed on his crib the day he was born they might have missed it in the shadows, and other sick to a dry ditch. Hell damned up the spring of life in its rage. Kate was captured, and Tuck fell down in despair. John stabbed the dry ground and Allen and Much swallowed drily against the dust and ashes in their mouths.
Because all the water was in Hell, drowning you and Ophelia as her brother looked on in rage. And in Elsinore Castle, another Ophelia sang the broken snatches of other people's love songs as she tumbled into the rushing waters. But Proteus is not so easy to kill, nor are you. She was merely hardening, the raging fire growing cold at last. Soon she will not be able to change, so she begs you to wrap your arms around her and hold her as she settles into a new shape for the last time. And she chooses what she thinks will suit you best.
But she couldn't know, as she tried to fill the Marian-shaped hole in your heart, that it was not her face you saw, her voice you heard, or her frightened body around which you wrapped your arms in this place of cold death. It was not Isabella Thornton whom he heard offer to live in a little house with him and their four children, somewhere quiet and safe and away from all of this mess. It was Marian who wrapped her arms around you and kept you warm in the dark, cold night of Hell. It was her music that hummed in your ear, and Marian reached through the desperate shifting into her form that Isabella was attempting to touch your heart. And your bright angel showed you the ring, the third ring, through which you could escape Hell at last. The minute you held your bow in your hand again, we all knew that you would be all right – beyond this present scare. Because you told us when you proposed: Marian is your bow. Nothing made it truer than that you missed at first, because coming back to life is hard work. All Marian ever needed to find you was the smallest opening, and she would fly from Heaven to Earth faster than a thought to find the other half of her heart, and Isabella provided that opening.
I didn't know how very much I missed her doing that until this moment. Nor did you. "I can shoot an arrow through that ring." Damn straight. Isabella, the child bride of Hell, scoffed that redemption, that resurrection, could be so easy. "But you're forgetting one thing: I'm Robin Hood." Damn. Straight. I didn't know how very much I'd missed you until this moment.
But Isabella's fire still burned to hot when she was lifted out of the water, the rope burned and broke under her hands. And she was so afraid, but you caught her because at this point it would be rude not to. She fell at your arms sobbing in gratitude for saving her, for finally staying and holding her at the Crossroads in Hell and pulling her through. But then you changed the game on her as she tried to show you what she shape she had chosen in the Dark and Cold. Because she has lived in Hell for most of her life, and she has forgotten how angels reach in to save us. She would not recognize the touch of one if she saw their cold burning light all around her. She did, and she missed it, when the angel hummed an old love song in your ear. Because this is a love story, just not hers.
Or Kate's, who saw you rise again to life before her eyes and began to hope. She knew better, in the end, because she thanked you just as profusely for taking you with her. But then Ophelia turned to Hamlet and begged him to leave all this Denmark nonsense behind and run away with her, and you had no time for that shit. You turned to this broken shape-shifter who fashioned a shape you loved when you saw with her in the dark and cold waters of Hell itself (and then you'll love her), and you told her that this was not the shape you wanted from her. That you were a Legend, but not the kind that could catch Proteus. That this was a love story, just not hers. She stopped dead, and she tried to muster the heat for one last switch, "I'm not her!" It would never be enough. Just before her brother returned, Isabella chose hate. Because after all you did for her, you did not love her. She broke the last protection she had for her soul for you, and then you did not love her.
This is a betrayal deeper than anything Marian ever pulled on Guy, because Guy was never this broken, and Marian never promised Guy a future together except once, under a duress he knew was not sincerity. Proteus thought she was the love story of a Legend like Robin Hood, and instead you abandoned her at the Crossroads to her shifting madness. And somewhere in Denmark, Hamlet abandons Ophelia to Elsinore.
Elsewhere, Guy of Gisborne is given the Keys to Hell. He killed his Dark Father and his broken sister and the man he tried to blame for his murder of Marian, and Hell loses one of its minions. I don't think he realized until the Keys of Nottingham were given to him that he doesn't need them. Or until the lords and ladies stood to toast him that he hates these people. He never wanted these things for himself – they were gifts he wanted to give to others. And then they would love him.
Now there's no one left to set free or even to lock away. Protecting someone he loved was the only thing that ever kept Guy of Gisborne in Hell. Now, armed with the Keys, he simply leaves. Because he has no one left. Because Marian and Allen and Isabella were the only thing that ever stood between Guy of Gisborne and the Light of Day. This is the first of three times he will cut his bonds. The rule of alchemy says that there must be three, as it took three to damn his soul, before he can be redeemed.
So a double fight ensued when Prince John fired him and Isabella settled into her final shape as the Loyal Follower of the Prince of Lies. Guy's freedom was counterpoised by his sister's fall, just as it was seventeen years ago. There was a hilarious moment when you shoved Ophelia into Laertes and everyone shrugged and switched fighting partners because no one can keep track of the free for all in Hell. Kate let herself out in the melee and you and Guy dropped John and Isabella into the water before turning on each other.
You mocked him that after all he suffered and all those he killed to get the Keys to the Gate, he ended up an outlaw like you. And Guy of Gisborne laughed, "Never did you much harm." Damn straight. The last time the Gate of Hell was down he reached up for Marian's hand to pull him out, and she couldn't. He had the power to make the jump by himself all the time. He was always simpler than Proteus. What held him was taken away by the very forces clumsily trying to keep him there. Because they did not understand that Guy of Gisborne came to hell out of fear and desperation at being unable to protect someone who depended on him and that he stayed in hell to save those he loved. That was all that ever stood between Guy of Gisborne and the light of day.
And you, finally back from the dead, could once again give life to those who were dead men in the ditch. You set the water free as Marian had you. The price was Isabella. This story could have ended very differently. Everything is a choice. I wonder if Allen could have saved her – but Ophelia would never looked twice at Rosencrantz, even if he was the one with the best shot at helping her find her way out of Hell. But he more than any of the others deserves this moment when the life flowed back through Locksley over which you once picked England.
The sunlight of your smile, which Tuck and all of your gang shared. Enjoy this moment, because as Little John can tell you, coming back to life is a terrible ordeal, but it is also as beautiful as John Little himself. You found your old story again, "This is what you do," you whispered, finally remembering the old song. "No, we do it well," because you are not alone. The water is back, and so are you.
But there is a cost.
Yours is not the only story now. The Ovidian Legend begged by Isabella is dead, because she realized abruptly that she was in a Revenge Tragedy. The Parables may have saved Guy of Gisborne, but he stands in danger of another one: Christ warned in the Holy Land over which men fight that if a man expels a demon without filling his soul with something else, another would return twice as bad as before. And Prince John grew impatient with his desperate little tales and stepped up his plans.
But this is still a love story. Yours and hers. Because even on opposite sides of life and death, from Heaven into Hell, Marian's heart found yours.