I plan to revise as I go along. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to
voice them. I won't take offense as long as they're polite and constructive. Enjoy!
Piper in the Forest
Chapter 1
No one knew why, on a cold October night, Philip
Mark took in a screaming child
who was abandoned at his front door. He was well
known as a cruel and severe man.
His uncharacteristic charity was even a mystery to Philip
himself. Still, when he had
seen the infant, he paused. Perhaps it was the
child's pale green eyes that looked at
him with cool determination. Her eyes said "I will
succeed. I will be heard!" He
scooped her up, took her inside, and thrust her into
the arms of the first servant he
met with; a soft spoken, shy girl named Sarah.
Sarah, understandably, was surprised when her lord
returned home in the middle of
the night and presented her with a baby. She looked
back at him in quiet confusion.
Exhausted, Philip ran his hands over his face and through
his shoulder-length black hair.
What should he say? "I'll not have a child waking
me while I sleep. Keep her quiet
and healthy. Beyond that, I don't care what you
do with her." That was just like Philip;
short and unsentimental. Sarah nodded silently
and took the baby away.
She spent all night rocking the baby and singing
to her. Despite Philip's order, there was
quite a bit of crying that night. By the
next morning, Sarah had chosen a name for the
little girl; Piper. She smiled wearily at Milly
in the kitchen as they prepared breakfast.
"She has a louder set of pipes than any organ bellows
I ever heard. Seems a fittin'
name for the girl." A stout old woman with a commanding
voice, Milly replied simply
"Ye just make certain she doesn't get in the master's
way! Now come help me with the
bread."
**********
Over the next few years, Piper grew into a very
pretty child; and a very willful child.
She went where she wanted, and did what she wanted. She liked her dark red hair wild
and tangled, and she liked her cloths dirty. The
only person who could tell her what to do
was Philip. She wouldn't listen to Sarah or Milly. Not even the occasional beating about
the backside could break her resolve. Unfortunately
for Sarah and Milly, Philip was busy
with his own concerns. When Piper was three, he
was appointed Sheriff of Nottingham.
He took the position after the previous Sheriff died,
leaving Sarah and Milly to try to
control the unmanageable child. So, while Philip
was in town taking care of tax collections
and outlaws, Piper spent her time ignoring the older
women and discovering her world.
When she was four, she discovered the Sheriff's
guards. She had been chasing a frog from
the stream that ran through the grounds of Mark Manor
and then on into Sherwood Forest.
The frog led her over a small rise towards a clearing
that she spent very little time in. It
was just a field, with grass and flowers and flies. Since she didn't find any interest in those
things, she never bothered with playing there.
But on this particular day, as she cleared the rise,
she saw something new in the field.
There, where there had been nothing several weeks ago,
was an unfinished building.
It was a rough made wooden structure; not an impressive
home, but certainly more
inviting than the stables back at the manor. And
although this building was something
new and interesting to Piper, it was not what made her
duck behind some underbrush
and stare on in wonder. A stone's throw from the
unfinished building stood ten men,
all in uniforms of gray and black. They ran drills
in the field, sharpening their skills with
sword and shield, hand-to-hand fighting, and even quarter
staff.
Piper had never been a patient child. She
often grew bored with something after only
a few minutes, and she never maintained interest in something
for over a half an hour.
But on that day, she crouched perfectly still behind
the bushes for nearly two hours,
watching the organized chaos. She was transfixed. The sound of metal on metal sent
tiny shivers down her spine. The fast and complex
movements seemed to her a wonderful
dance. And they were so strong! She looked
on as one by one, they attacked, defended,
avoided, and attacked again. None of these people
were weak, like Sarah and Milly.
They were strong, like the Sheriff. If any of them
told her what to do, she knew she
would listen and obey in an instant. That thought
both scared and excited her.
When they were done training, Piper finally became
aware of just how late it was. The
sun was beginning to set, her legs were cramped, and
her stomach was complaining
from neglect. She stole away quietly, making sure
that no one saw her, and decided
that she would return to this place the next day, and
every day after that.
**********
Piper kept her silent promise to herself. Every day, she went to the field to watch the
guards. On the days that they were training, she
would spend hours watching from one
hiding place or another, imagining herself in their places. On the days that the guards
were not there though, Piper became so upset that she
would return to the manor in
an absolute rage. She would scream and kick and
bite anyone that came near her,
though she would never admit to why she was upset. It was her special secret, and
she would never reveal it to anyone. Sarah and
Milly came to dread these days when
their little charge would have one of her fits. They tried to increase the severity of
their punishments for this behavior, but no matter what
they did, whether it be paddlings,
locking her in her room with no food, or screaming back
at her with matched ferocity,
it never quieted her.
Then, when she was five, something changed. She went to the field and found that her
guards were not there. She filled with the same
rage that she always did, but paused a
moment before returning to the manor to take out her
frustrations on the servants. She
didn't care for the punishments that she received. Why couldn't she just be like the
guards. Why couldn't she be strong and fast. She was fairly certain the not even Milly,
who was a formidable lady, would try to lock one of the
guards in their room.
On that day, Piper made a decision. She didn't
return to her home. She didn't cry
and whine and wail. Instead, she picked up a sturdy
stick off the ground, charged into
the field with a battle cry, and began her own training. She started by hitting anything
she could with the stick. She beat on shrubs and
on the recently completed guard
house where weapons were kept and where, if they chose,
the guards could sleep
during periods of heavy training. Piper even chased
the birds with her new weapon.
To her own disappointment, she didn't catch or kill any
of them.
She returned home that evening contented and relaxed. The exercise had rid her of
her anger and frustration, and filled her with new ideas. She decided that day, that
she would become a guard. She would become strong
and fierce so that no one would
dare paddle her or lock her in her room. When she
became a guard, Piper thought,
maybe the Sheriff would pay more attention to her. Maybe he would be proud of her.
The Sheriff was the closest thing to a father that she
would ever have, and even
though she did not know it at the time, his approval
would become a driving force in
her life.
**********
Things around Mark Manor settled down after that
day. Sarah and Milly were
pleased that Piper's violent tantrums had stopped, though
they were still annoyed
that she refused to do any chores when they asked her
to. Piper, for her part, was
far too busy to be bothered with chores. She now
spent almost all of her free time
either observing the guards or practicing. When
she watched, she paid closer attention
than she ever had before. She observed what each
of the guards did and remembered.
Then, she would go off on her own and practice each move
till she had it perfectly.
At first, she found this work difficult. Sometimes
she would practice a move for hours,
and then go back the next day to discover that she had
done it all wrong. Other times,
she would find her small body incapable of performing
some of the more complicated
tasks that she tried. On those days, she would
howl in frustration and spend the rest of
the day swinging the heaviest branch she could find at
an innocent tree.
Years went by like this. The servants in the
castle gave up all hope of turning Piper
into an obedient servant like themselves. Some
of them worried about her future.
Would Philip continue paying for her care when she was
an adult? She certainly wasn't
going to find work as a servant anywhere else with her
behavior; no man would take
her as a wife; and for all they knew, she had no other
skills to her advantage. Little did
they know that Piper had her own future planned out by
age five.