Johannah sensed, even among the thronging crowd, that two individuals were approaching her. Perhaps it was the measured weight of their particular footfalls as they hit the wooden wharf upon which she stood. Perhaps it was the way the warmth of the sun refracted off their faces as they reset their path to encounter her.

"Hullo, my little one," Allan-A-Dale greeted her, going down onto one knee to bring himself closer to her height. "Wot's that you're singing, there? Summat Daddy brought home with him from the pub?"

"Daddy disappeared two years gone, never been seen since," she told him.

Allan shot a calming look to temper DJaq's tenderhearted reaction. One that was clearly meant to recall to her mind that such hardluck stories (true or otherwise) were the very bread and butter of any such child beggar, and could not be trusted.

"Sorry to hear that, Love," he told the girl, his tone soft, but not overly-sympathetic. "I got a nice shiny coin, here to give you, if you'll tell me how you came by that song," he coaxed. He produced the coin, though she could not see it to appreciate, with all the panache of a performing street mage, reached to wrap her fingers about it, knowing that in her business the weight and imprint of the coin she would know, that it would hold meaning for her, proof that he was not bluffing.

Her tiny fingers, their nail tips worn smooth from her constant use of them, probed the golden coin he held between his two fingers, then momentarily settled, resting on the inside of his bared wrist, connecting them in an oddly intimate gesture.

She leaned into him, and spoke quietly to the air just to the side of his face, "Do you travel with a Turk?"

Allan's eyes snapped open wide at the unexpected question, but his voice revealed none of his surprise. "Matter of fact, I do. I do, indeed."

"My name is Johannah," the little girl declared to the space beyond Allan's shoulder, introducing herself. "May I see you?"

It was clear she meant to be addressing DJaq, who needed no prodding from Allan to step forward and encounter the girl. "Hello," she said. "And why are you expecting me?"

Johannah extended her right hand (her left still resting on Allan's wrist) in an upward fashion, and DJaq assumed the girl wished to touch her face. But when Johannah's hand came into contact with DJaq's chin, the child moved her fingers lower, to the well of DJaq's throat, where she felt the lacing, there, and following it caught the tag Will had made to designate DJaq as one of Robin's gang. At this, Johannah brought her other hand to the task, and using both, seemed to be able to divine the scorched shape of the elliptical bow and arrow.

Allan and DJaq watched on, Allan easily as entranced by another person having such tactile skill, as was DJaq by the suspense of what this all surely meant.

Satisfied with the marking she had discovered on the tag, Johannah's hands shot back to Allan's wrist, unmoved from where she had last met with it. She ignored the coin, using his arms as a path up to his chin, beyond his scruff of beard, over his face and straight for the bridge and bulb of his nose.

Had DJaq not been holding her breath in anticipation of the child again speaking, she would have laughed.

"What is it, Little One?" Allan prompted the girl, his eyes crossed as though having sighted a fly on the tip of his nose. He moved his hand to gently bring hers back down.

"You are Allan, Allan-A-Dale," she said, her smile charming, but unable to light up her vacant eyes. "I have been waiting for you."

Marian knew she had not been left alone for long. Knew that if not for the unfamiliarity of the locale (the impossibility of her knowing anyone in it) it was unlikely she would have been allowed out of the direct sight of the Sheriff and Guy.

As with many parts of their plan, they had not told her where they were going, nor when they might return. She had been left in the carriage, set alongside the docks, chained by both wrists to a bulky new ring the Sheriff had ordered a blacksmith in a village along the Portsmouth road to forge and install the day after they awoke and Allan had been found missing.

The driver, her only supervision, had driven most of the night, and from the echo of his snores she could tell he was serving himself more at the moment by sneaking a rest, than serving his Sheriff in the minding of her.

The skin on her wrists was dangerously close to splitting from the amount of tugging she had been practicing upon her shackles, even through what had once been long sleeves. Unless she could be certain the chains would give, it was useless to injure herself in a way that would surely not see clean, proper tending, and would more likely sour and turn on her.

So she chose to try, with her feet, to unlatch the re-enforced carriage's door. It had not been easy, but she had managed to unbolt it and kick it to where it would stay somewhat open, but no large amount, only enough that she might feel something of the breeze.

As her eyes scoured the carriage interior for the thousandth time for possible un-seen means of escape, her ears began to hear, quite nearby, the sounds of a child singing...about England's green meadows, and sky and flowers, pretty girls come to town on market day.

"Hello!" she called from her seat inside. "Hello! I will pay well for a song! More generously for two!" she cried, in hopes of enticing the singer closer.

"Milady," a small child's face, a tow-headed boy, appeared, half-obscured by the door's meager cracked opening. "What likes thee? Johannah will sing."

"Bring her to me, Boy," Marian used her best voice of noble entitlement to command. "I shall have her stand within the carriage that I may better hear her."

"Aye, Lady," he scattered to do her bidding.

Moments later he returned, another small child, a girl of no more than eight on his arm, her blindness apparent. Her clothes were more tattered than any Marian had seen still being worn in the shire. To make up for their rips and worn-through holes, she had on several equally ragged layers. But her posture was straight and, possibly, even proud. Whatever life she lived, it had not yet worn her down. The boy whispered to tell her of the steps she needed to mount to get into the carriage. "Remember to bob yer curtsy to the lady," he murmured to her in lieu of a farewell.

"Are you good at remembering things, Johannah?" Marian asked her, pleased she did not have to hide her shackles for fear they might frighten the child. "Like the words to your songs? Come closer, and I shall show you a game I know." She found she was able to extend her own hand to catch one of the girl's, beginning their necessarily brief acquaintance by tracing and re-tracing the familiar brand from the wooden lintel of Locksley's greatroom fireplace into the child's open palm. Its cherished shape and unending circle giving Marian the unexpected focus and comfort that clutching Rosary beads might for some.

...TBC...