I tried to warn Dad not to make any sort of deal, that it wasn’t worth it, but I was still weak—and too surprised that he could also see and hear Morte.
“It seems the empress no longer needs the sword, so I will give it to you if you call our debt square.” He gestured toward the shoes. “And I get to keep the shoes as insurance.”
“Dad?” I tried to see the con, the angle. The only one I could come up with was him double-crossing me. “You can’t do this.”
“It’s the rogue’s code: rob from the rich; give to the poor. Or sell to the highest bidder.” Robin raised his pant leg. He too had black rings around his ankle. If he owed Morte a debt, that meant he’d died and come back.
“Yes,” Morte answered my thought. “Blanc erased your father’s name from the compendium. But everyone knows that the only two truly unavoidable events in this world are death and paper cuts.”
Robin Hood disagreed. “Not if we have a deal. I give you Excalibur, and you cannot recall me to the underworld, ever.”
“Deal. Keep the sword safe for me in the forest until I ascend. Oh, and I will need this little hero’s body. Is that going to be a problem?”
Dad looked at me, his rakish smile gone, but I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “You do what you have to, to survive.”
Morte chuckled darkly. “We have an accord. I shall finish the preparations.” The monstrous shadow shrank beneath me.
Dad turned to leave, shoes and sword tucked under his arm.
“You can’t do this to your own daughter!” I shouted after him.
“You’re right. There is no way I could ever sacrifice my own flesh and blood.”
I let out the breath I was holding, waiting for him to reveal how he’d tricked the king of the underworld, the elaborate ruse of how he hadn’t double-crossed me.
He shrugged. “But you are not my daughter.”
“I’m not sure when I knew. Or maybe I always knew. But she loved me enough to lock me safe high in a tower. Even if she didn’t give birth to me, Mother knows best.”
—Rapunzel Lets Down Her Hair: Unauthorized Biography
32
Child of the Trees
The room spun. No, the entire world flipped upside down.
I am a child of the trees, though the wind may howl. I cannot break. I will not break. Grimm, do not let me break.
“I know. I was disappointed too.” Dad, er, Robin settled down in a chair, resting his chin on the hilt of the sword. “That whole Maid Marion story I told you.” He held up his thumb and finger a little ways apart. “May have been a teensy tall tale. Marion was just a fling. She liked the fame that came with being associated with an outlaw, but when it came down to it, she wanted no part of the forest. She had me chased out of Richard’s court for borrowing a small trinket, and when I got back to the woods, I found you.” He slapped his knee. “Even then, you had a big mouth. You were tucked so deep inside that ironwood’s trunk, I would have walked right by you if I hadn’t heard your squalling.”
He jumped up, hefting the sword over his head. “Just imagine that though. An infant somehow surviving on her own, in the heart of Camlan, the great tree, sucking on glowing sap.” His face lit up. “Boy, I thought I’d made the score of a lifetime.” When he looked down at me, the grin was gone, replaced by hard set lines. “You were supposed to be magical. So I made up a name for you, and I put all that time and effort into feeding you, training you, telling you stories, expecting that one day that investment was gonna pay off big.” He shook his head. “And you fooled me. Twice. What a waste.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“I’ll spell it out. Sure, you glowed a bit as a baby, but you never developed a talent. There’s nothing special about you. Not one remarkable attribute. I figured that out while you were a kid, bringing me useless pots and thing. So I traded you off to that Emerald witch as a tax payment. I’d written you off, but when you came back to the forest and couldn’t die…” He whistled. “Man, I thought I’d hit the bull’s-eye again. Marked by the empress. Marked by the King of the Underworld. Marked by the Girl of Emerald. You were my ultimate way into the easy life. But look at you now. You couldn’t even hit a target that was right in front of you. You had a place at the Lady of the Lake’s right hand and screwed it all up. Here I thought you were destined for greatness. Turns out you were destined to fail.”
Any fight I had left in me fled.
The hero of the Sherwood Forest tied Excalibur and my boots to his back and perched on the window ledge. “In the end, you were useful twice, so I guess you weren’t a total loss.” Before he jumped out, he looked over his shoulder. “No hard feelings, eh, kiddo?”
Oh, there were feelings. I held them in until he was out of sight. Then I let my emotions seep out of every pore. I mourned the loss of Kato. I mourned the loss of the family I’d thought I had. I mourned the lie of the girl I’d thought I was. Not Rexi Hood, Princess of Thieves. Or Rexi of Emerald, or even Rex the Huntsman. I was nobody.
Something between a laugh and a sob escaped my lips as I realized the truth had been in front of me the whole time. “No wonder the Compendium of Storybook Characters didn’t recognize my name. I don’t have one. Morte was right. Except, instead of being born to be Forgotten, I was forgotten the moment I was born.”
“I’ll certainly remember ye.” Mordred swung in through the open hole in the roof, agilely landing on a rafter, and front-flipped down. “That stuff that I said about you having more bark than bite…” He held up his bloody hand.
“Hex,” I groaned, hiding my face. “Can’t you just let me die? Go after your sword. I don’t have it anymore.”
“I know. I saw.” Mordred bent down next to me. “Giving up, are ye?” He scratched the stubble on his chin and crinkled his brow. “I had you pegged for someone who could take a bit more of a hit than that.”
“Are you counting all the times that you’ve threatened to kill me?”
“Aye. And yet you are still here. And you have two legs.” He poked at them with his toe. “Though a wee on the blackened side. You should get up and use them.”
“What do you know?” I said and rolled over.
“I know that we don’t get to pick the folk that raise us.” He turned my face until I had to meet his ember eyes. “But we do get to pick those we call family.”
I thought of Dorthea and Kato, Hydra and Verte… They were my family.
“Don’t they be needing ye to save the day?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? A pep talk? Your manipulation skills suck.”
His lip curled. “Last part a wee much? I was thinking of going with ‘what doesn’t kill you only maims you a bit.’”