As I passed a Walgreens I saw them. I was so used to looking up in the trees that I scanned the roof without thinking about it. One of the Merry Men lay up there, bow drawn back, ready to shoot anyone who threatened him. My gaze dropped to the parking lot. There, crouched among the parked cars and moving in, was Robin Hood and the rest of his men. He should have looked ridiculous—a guy in a tunic squatting behind a parked car—but somehow with his muscular frame and handsome features, the tunic thing worked.
I rode my bike slowly up to them. “Robin!” I whispered.
He turned and saw me. “Not now, wench, we’re about to liberate some wealth from the gentry.”
I climbed off of my bike and wheeled it over to him. “My name is Tansy, and you can’t hold up this store.” He raised an unimpressed eyebrow in my direction. “I read your Robin Hood book, but I refuse to believe it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m having my doubts about it too.”
“It says I die because a nun poisons me. A nun.” I had forgotten about that, but he glared at me as though I had written it into the book myself. “So avoid nuns from now on. They’re easy enough to spot—long black dresses and wimples. Very few of them sneak up on people.”
He went back to staking out the parking lot. “Women,” he said with disgust. I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to me or nuns.
I lowered my voice. “We need to talk. You see, you don’t need to rob anyone here. We have agencies that take care of the poor, and if you keep holding places up, someone will get hurt.” He didn’t look at me. He waved at some of the men, and they ran forward, still crouching and darting between cars. “Never worry, no harm shall come to me. I am more than a match for the menfolk here.
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My arms will remain unbound and will hold you in their embrace soon enough, just as you wished.”
Several of the men chuckled knowingly at that.
My cheeks burned from embarrassment, but I kept my voice even.
“I’m not worried about you—I don’t want you to injure anybody else.
You’re attacking people who don’t carry weapons.”
“Such foolishness is astounding,” he said. “But a fool and his money are soon parted. Our swords only speed the process.” The first two of Robin Hood’s men had reached the Walgreens’
front entrance. They pressed themselves against either side of the door, looking inside.
“Robin, this isn’t stealing from the rich and giving to the poor; this is just stealing.”
Robin Hood glanced at the building behind us, a Laundromat. On the top of it, a Merry Man lay on his stomach, a bow in his hands. “Ah, but you’re wrong. Everyone here is rich, and my men and I are poor.
It’s fitting we should relieve your village folk of some of their goods.” He motioned to the men nearest him, and then he and the men left their hiding places and sprinted toward the store doors.
They timed their surge wrong, piling up at the entrance, and had to wait for the automatic door to open all the way before they rushed inside.
I leaned my bike against a car and strode after them. When I walked into the store, Robin Hood already had his sword drawn and held it only inches away from a startled store clerk. He was a thin teenage boy who’d gone completely pale. The Merry Men walked along the aisles, dumping things into their sacks. A small group of shoppers were lined up, hands in the air, by the photo counter.
Maybe some stories have more sway than fact. Maybe they carve themselves into our minds and slant the way we see things. Because 77/356
even then, I saw Robin Hood as a hero, as someone who cared about right and wrong. I marched over and tried one more time to make him understand. “You’ve got to stop. This is wrong.” Robin Hood didn’t take his eyes off the clerk. The muscles in his arm flexed. “Hold your tongue, wench. I asked not for your blessing.” He moved his sword tip close to the clerk. “Your jewelry, my good man, hand it over forthwith.”
The teenage boy held his hands up higher. “I don’t have any jewelry,” he croaked.
I took a step closer to Robin Hood, frustration banging around inside of me. “You were supposed to be the good guy, the defender of the common people. But you’re not—you’re terrorizing innocent shoppers.”
“Your beauty notwithstanding,” Robin Hood said, glancing at me for a moment before he turned his attention back to the clerk, “you had best hold your tongue before I’m tempted to hold it on the blade of my sword.”
I let out an incredulous gasp. “You’re threatening me?” Friar Tuck snorted as he dumped a box of Snickers into his bag.