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[edit] The Ghosts of Sherwood Forest

Night crept in softly between the branches of the immense trees of the forest, choking the feeble light of the stars as they sought the ground far below. A light breeze ruffled the canopy, as the nocturnal raptors left their nests to hunt under cover of darkness. Through the dense forest walked a lone tracker, his practiced footsteps scarcely disturbing the foliage flanking the meandering game trails that he traveled. With stout yew longbow in hand, he picked his way carefully towards a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest, where the fallen ruins of a small chapel still intruded upon the tranquility of nature at its purest. Hundreds of years prior, the clearing was once the site of a druidic place of power, a grove where the old rituals were still practiced and their intricate ceremonies performed. Under the orders of a certain Christian lord, the grove was cleared and a chapel was erected there, in defiance of the pagans who worshipped under the trees of Sherwood Forest. The lord mocked the beliefs of the druids, using the altar built by their own hands in an audacious effort to undermine their age-old customs in the light of the New Religion. In time, his boldness became his undoing, and his lands were torn from him by the greedy and ambitious son of King Richard the Lion-Hearted.

The bards still tell tales of the avarice of Prince John, and the cruel and heavy-handed tactics of those who served him. Stories also tell of the son of an English landowner, who went on to be the hero for which the Forest of Sherwood is most remembered. Whether these are the ballads of history or the epics of legend is of small importance; songs will be sung to those who wish to hear them, regardless of whether they are steeped in truth or fiction. Yet there is another tale, considerably less known and seldom repeated, which chronicles the lives of the people who suffered under the shadow of Sherwood Forest during one of the seedier moments of history, when justice was merely a distant dream, and law a faded memory. Here, in the watershed of the River Trent, in the outlying villages of the Shire of Nottingham, highwaymen and murderers ran free, unchecked by any laws of men. Here, the druids of old had lost their hold on the forests, surrendering them to the thieves and outlaws of whom the bards speak little. Here, under the ancient boughs of trees that predate the intrusion of man, roamed the spirits of those who have died in futile pursuit of a life found only in the blithe tales of pleasure and hope that mothers tell their children before laying them down to rest. For all of its idyllic beauty, Sherwood Forest is home to more despair than any paupers’ graveyard.

Through this woodland of hopelessness and tragedy, Ethan picked his way purposefully in the direction of the ancient druidic grove. There, he hoped to find a remnant of the devoted Celtic scholars who guarded the forest in the days before the Dark Ages, when magic still had as much power over the changing of the seasons as did the journey of the sun across the sky. Child of humble origins, raised by the forest herself, the hardened tracker had spent most of the first three decades of his life bounding from trade to trade, lending his sword and bow where it had been most needed, but silently yearning for a deeper purpose, dreaming of the sagas that the minstrels will someday sing of his own deeds, much as they sing of the other famous archer from these woods. Soldier, assassin, thief, craftsman; Ethan had been all of these, and much more. Even a brief exposure to the arcane mysteries of sorcery had left little more than an insatiable hunger for magic in his blood. Neither the mysterious incantations of a gypsy healer, nor the enigmatic murmurings of an Oriental wizard, could fill the void within Ethan’s soul.

The moon was high in the night sky by the time Ethan reached the archaic ruins of the chapel, lending an eerie silver sheen to the moss-covered stones littering the clearing. Slowly, reverently, he circled the grove, noting carefully the smooth stone altar that remained, handiwork of the druids from centuries ago. No amount of chiseling or grinding had been able to remove the runes that the original builders carved into the sides of the altar, and Ethan could not help but note the thrumming of power from deep within the earth. Truly, this was a place of absolute purity, unhindered by the interference of mankind and unfettered by the laws of any save Nature herself. Unconsciously, Ethan’s hand tightened on the grip of his bow, which seemed to speak to the trees from whence it was formed. Somewhere in the distance, the mournful howl of a lone wolf penetrated the stillness, but to the tracker, it seemed as if the dead keened their grief into the trees, rattling their branches and setting their leaves aflutter. From some primeval instinct, the hair on the back of Ethan’s neck bristled, and his lip curled up in what might have been a snarl. Tilting his head back, he gazed up into the dense canopy of stars overhead, seeing them as he had countless times in the past; now, however, he seemed to see something else there, beyond the stars. It was as if he were suddenly allowed to witness the elaborate dance of the spirits through the heavens, through the eyes of the Celts who once danced in this very grove. In an instant, the world of the Druids was opened to him, and their intoxicating power coursed through him; around him, the forest shuddered in response. Ethan was suddenly struck with the realization that, after nearly thirty years, his search was finally over. Beyond any shadow of doubt or uncertainty, he knew that at long last, he had come home.