Robin Hood and Her Valkyrie
by Tempo

Immortal human woman Robin Hood worries the world has moved on and is cheered up by Marian, her vixen valkyrie.

I wrote this by accident when trying to start the Marian novel. You can listen to this story as an audio short on Culturally F'd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9uuwK-x9q0

~ ~ ~

Robin Hood sat on a bough, tending twigs that would one day be her arrows. Though human, she looked out with a fox's eyes, upon the factory smoke blotting the skyline. Every year, industry devoured more of the sacred groves. The woodland spirits grew thorny, but would never speak of the grudges they nursed. Robin remained, in their view, a human and therefore not to be trusted. She missed even the strange conversations one had with the fae.

She found the branch she'd been tending for years. Carefully braced, it had grown straight and true. Drawing her knife, she sliced it free and began stripping it. Leaves and shoots tumbled a dozen yards to the forest floor. Birds chirped. Breeze danced by. Soon, she had whittled a quite serviceable length of wood. With centuries of practice, her hands dipped into a pouch at her belt and fitted fletching and an arrowhead. Steel, at least, had become easier to find in quality. With the last cord knotted tight, she admired her work. A sense of accomplishment, however fleeting, came with handiwork. She savored the feeling.

A scuff of bark behind her. A voice rang out: "On a branch perches my Robin, gathering sticks for her nest."

The archer flinched, legs tensing around the bough. She cast a look back, but without shock. The wings of a valkyrie flew silent. "Hello, Marian."

Robin allowed her eyes to become those of a human again. The difference between red and green returned to the world. Down the branch, a war-angel's orange pelt gleamed in the sun. Mischief shone on her slender muzzle. Whiskers danced in the wind. Soot-black ears swiveled against the steel wings of her helmet. A shield, shaped to set between her wings, shone on her back. Her tail shifted with absolute ease to balance her atop the tree limb, poking out from an evening-purple, seamless dress. Her body moved with a princess's grace, though her smile was entirely vulpine.

The archer shook her head with a faint smile. Clutching onto nearby branches, she turned to face her lover. "Shouldn't you be gathering souls?"

"My thoughts forever echo your name. A delicate creature such as I must see her lover's face, lest I waste away to a wisp of longing." Twirling on one foot, she placed a demure paw on her lips. "The heroic dead can be shepherded without me. I am but the least and humblest of the valkyrie."

Robin sniffed a laugh. Yes, the world held valkyries stronger and heartier than Marian. None smiled with such cunning, nor looked upon her with love. But even the least of valkyries was still nothing to trifle with. A human imbued with magic proved tempting prey to all sorts of monsters. All sorts of monsters had found Marian quite the jealous lover. Now, though, as progress swallowed the woodlands, such adventures came rarely. The human's mirth faded with a sigh.

"Why such a sad song, dear Robin? Are you ill-treated by life? Do you wish a wolf-valkyrie had taken you for a lover instead?" Her lips spread in an exaggerated snarl, revealing little white fox fangs. "A nobler, rougher being who doesn't speak riddles?"

Robin smiled a little at the conversation they'd had a thousand times. "I'm no wolf. I hunt with tricks."

"A raven of Odin then?" Her massive wings flapped wide, her paws set like talons, even with their blunt claws. "Wings of night and a beak of onyx and a clutch of secrets?"

She shook her head, rusty ponytail falling over her shoulder. "I'm no raven. Death doesn't sustain me."

"Then why do you despair?" The valkyrie leaned in, wings spread for balance, and touched her beloved's cheek.

Robin rolled her eyes. "I'm nothing but a name now. They don't even remember I'm a woman. Or a commoner." A vain habit, certainly, but she couldn't resist the call of tales and plays that bore her name. "They remember only what serves their ends. Everything else is scraped from the parchment and written over."

"Most are forgotten whole." Marian chuckled with the certainty of death. "A hundred years after they die, none remember who they were."

Eyes downcast, Robin toyed with the arrow in her hands. "I sometimes wonder who I am."

Her whiskers twitched as she smiled. "You are a fire that cannot be quenched. Outlaw. Archer. Yeoman hero. Bane of tyrants. My lover."

"I suppose that last one is pretty good." She flicked the new arrow out for examination.

"It is." She took the arrow and peered down the arrow's length. "You are of true renown. Never does your name not ring on the wind somewhere, be it the hope of the peasant oppressed or the curse of the king gone wicked. Few are so named."

The archer kicked her legs into empty air. "What good's a name, when a name's all that's left of you?"

"A valkyrie knows the power in names." Marian breathed a whisper to the arrow. Runes smoldered into its surface: Járn-Rjúfa, Iron-Breacher. An odd name for an arrow. Usually, she granted them simple names like Biter or Piecer. Nodding at her contribution, she handed the arrow back. "The named can be known. The nameless barely exist."

"People would be hard-pressed to know I existed." The archer took it with care. A weapon blessed by a spirit of valor had to be treated with care, especially when the spirit was one's wife. She looked back toward the smoke of industry in the distance. "Whatever I build, the fires of greed tear down."

"My love, my love. I forget how human you remain, even now." She rested her paw on the pommel of what had once been a farmer's hunting knife. Marrying a valkyrie meant giving her an ancestral sword, even if that sword was a farm tool. Meticulously recast and restored by the dwarves, it hung in an intricately-stamped scabbard at her hip. Robin wondered what her father, all these years dead, would think of his most useful knife being the most treasured possession of an angel. "The world wears down. The world breaks. That isn't cause for inaction. We are part of the world too. We repair it. We improve it. All is born anew through our labors."

"A noble ideal, my dear." She cast the valkyrie a tired look. "But I've lived a long time."

"And I longer." Eternity rang in her tone.

"I've seen my own work ruined." Robin shrugged and pulled down her hat against the breeze. "It's disheartening."

"A leaking boat does not prove sailing impossible." A noblewoman's gentle laugh echoed from that toothy muzzle. "We fix the boat. We build a better boat. But we do not abandon the sea."

"Where do I start?" Legs still wrapped around the bough, she brushed the scraps of cord and feather off into the void. "I can't free the peasants with arrows. I could turn every fat factory owner into a pin-cushion and the world wouldn't change."

"Hmm, yes. Where do you start?" The valkyrie dipped to all fours and propelled to her with a gleaming grin. That tail bushed and bounced above her wings. "How fortunate you should ask, my darling…"

Robin locked eyes with her as that cold black nose touched hers. Such enthusiasm from a supernatural creature was never a good sign. "I regret it already."

Amused thunder rumbled in her voice. "And yet you do not cower. Hence why you are mine till Ragnarök and after." She kissed the human's cheek.

Slight warmth lingered on her cheek, but she knew better than to let the vixen ply her with honeyed words. "What are we talking about?"

"Something new has arisen. In the city." Marian smoothed her dress and sat cross-legged on the branch. "They call it the Spring-Heeled Jack."

"Marian, my darling, whom I love more than life, please: tell me that's some newfangled lifting device."

The fox-maiden laughed, then leaned forward with interest, her front paws planted before crossed legs. "A much worthier foe, dear Robin. Staying in this kindly wood will not sharpen your etching in anyone's mind. Kill this beast and the skalds will spin new songs about you, ones to last for ages. Robin Hood, bow-maiden. Robin Hood, hunter of evils. Robin Hood, and the lovely Maid Marian."

"Robin Hood, who got killed." She waved the notch of the arrow at her. "Again."

"I will sew you back together, like a dutiful housewife." Marian leaned in and rubbed her slim muzzle against her cheek.

Recollections stirred in Robin's mind of being mended by a beautiful fox-tailor. Something to avoid. "What is this creature?"

Marian traced a midnight paw along the archer's knee. "The Spring-Heeled Jack is a demon. The first new kind of demon to appear in thousands of years. Flesh of armor and claws of metal. Its mouth a roaring furnace that melts anything to slag. It stalks the night and leaps buildings to slay the poor and vulnerable. The humans bar their doors and hide from the night."

With a groan, Robin closed her eyes. "Why do I feel like this whole conversation wasn't a coincidence?"

"My kind do not deal in whims and coincidences." The vixen brushed a loose lock of rusty hair from her lover's face. "I stole you from death not only out of love. I did so because you better the world."

The human smiled. She twirled the arrow in her fingers. Centuries of practice told her just how it would drift in flight. "At least someone remembers me for who I am. Even if she flatters me."

"Flattery from fondness, dear Robin." She took the archer's hand and lilted the words like a love song. "Together, we will flush it from its hiding-hole and make it our prey. The poor will be freed from its tyranny. Up and down the world-tree Yggdrasil, fresh tales will bloom about your bravery against the beast. We will present its corpse as a trophy to the gods. We must observe the divine protocols."

"Of course." She chuckled. "Since the gods have everything, all they want from us are good manners. And the occasional demon's head."

She clutched those human's hands to her fluffy chest. "Are you not feeling better, sweet Robin?"

"Heh. A little." The archer ran a finger down the bowstring across her breasts. "How'd you know this would cheer me up?"

"Because I am Marian, The Fox, cleverest of the valkyrie. Because I am your lover of swift centuries." Standing, she brushed a paw along the fletching sticking out from her quiver. "Because you only fletch fine arrows so you may let them fly."

Robin Hood stood on a bough, slipping the arrow that had so recently been a twig into her quiver. She placed her hand in the fox-valkyrie's paw, knowing that even falling from this height, her lover's wings would save her.

~ ~ ~

Quick little one-shot story. It also appeared in the Culturally F'd zine, but it's been long enough now since that was printed that I figured I should put it up here. : ) Let me know what you think.

Art:  Slate

Edits: Slate, LiefTheDruid, SillyNeko345, Eljot001, CarlMinez

~ Tempo