Work Text:
There was once a girl who fell in love.
Well, isn’t that how all stories are supposed to start?
˜
Her people chatter often, she knows:
Oh, that poor girl, carried off to the woods.
Oh, that mad girl, traipsing about in the forest.
(In Robert of Locksley.)
Far more commonly, though, it’s:
Tsk, daughter of a destitute house,
Imagining she’s worthy of Locksley.
(Of Sherwood Forest.)
She’s a prize, a gleaming trophy for the hero,
The smiling statue to stand by his side,
A footnote in history.
(Her name often misspelled.)
The attributes she’s permitted to carry?
Beauty, perhaps kindness, but always vapidity;
Too trusting, too fragile, too meek.
(Too much a girl.)
˜̃
Well, whatever’s wrong with kindness?
It’s always an afterthought,
Coupled with doe eyes and long hair,
Brushed aside in favour of command.
But there is strength in quiet devotion.
She knows this; others don’t.
Leave the glory to the roaring lions:
There are softer animals in her forest.
And she belongs to it; of it; with it.
The tales forget to mention how
Sherwood’s bark never bit her –
The forest kept her safe.
That’s not to say she did not suffer –
The Sheriff, the Prince, her home lost,
Her people slaughtered;
All this, along with gruff men and cold soil, too.
(And Robin; Robin is dear, but grieving,
Prone to brooding and sullen snatches of temper.)
So she convinces the archer
To give her a longbow, bought with sweet kisses
And a promise of caution;
She practices shooting among Sherwood’s foliage.
The borrowed arm guard doesn’t fit her,
And the bow is tougher than she’s used to,
And some days she screams and flings it away,
Startling the pheasants from the bushes.
(Robin notices, and gently adjusts her stance.
He teaches her how to whittle lighter arrows.)
Then, one day, she hits any target she wants:
She relishes the singing of her muscles,
The whistle of her arrows,
And she laughs.
(When she guides her weapon to pin
Robin’s tunic to a tree, he does, too.)
˜̃
He catches her endeavouring to hit a moving target;
‘Up,’ she says, nodding to the apple in his fist,
And he obliges, tossing it high,
Straight into the canopy of leaves.
She spins, takes an arrow, and shoots in one breath:
The apple falls with her arrow through the centre.
Marian twists it out deftly, and offers him the fruit;
Robin admires the hole before taking a bite.
(She grins when she considers the Eden implications.)
˜̃
So she gives lessons to the children of the forest,
Patient enough for their sighs and stomping feet.
She helps them find the right feathers for their fletching;
Teaches the girls to wear sturdy shoes, and to tie back their hair.
She whispers her student’s triumphs to Robin,
Her nose burrowed in the hollow of his throat
As they count the stars together one night,
And he catches her hand, kissing her knuckles.
(The calluses on their fingers are starting to match.)
˜̃
There are a hundred ways she fights:
With arrows, yes; but with whispers and careful plans,
Sewing (eavesdropping) with suspicious nobility.
Marian, heart of Robin’s cause but head of her own,
Once wandered her earth as a child,
And grew in time with her land.
Now, she feels her bones echo like those of a bird,
And there’s a joy that pulses through her veins;
A beat that sings of home, home, home.
(And she knows the hills of Nottingham better
Than the outlaw or his merry men,
And delights in reminding Robin whenever she can.)
And, yes, she falls in love –
No matter the version of the story,
Every tale paints her as a swooning damsel.
But before she fell for a brash and clever bandit,
She was in love with the sighing silver trees,
With the forest air that unlocked her lungs, her ears, her heart.