The Golden Arrow [ONC 2022]

Eight

It took them a day and a half to pick their way through Sherwood Forest.

Normally, Robin would find such a journey tedious and exhausting but each step he took closer to home was rejuvenating. And each moment he spent with the genie was illuminating. Karim seemed to have been everywhere. He regaled Robin with tales of far-off places, lands rich not with coin or jewel but culture and history.

Through it all, he told of the masters he had. Each of the places he'd been were linked to them. A land of snow with an ice carver for a master. A city forgotten by time when he was owned by a tinkerer. A kingdom by the sea where a woman ordered Karim to hide her daughter away in a tower where no one would ever find her.

Foolish as the hope may have been, Robin told himself that he would do his best not to end up as another one of the masters that Karim told stories about. The more Robin learned about Karim's past and those who had owned him, the more he was determined to find a way to set the genie free so that he would never be a slave again.

In return, Karim wanted to know of Robin's life and so he told of how the Merry Men had come to be and the many raids they'd been on since. How they'd become a family of their own making, a group that would put their lives in each other's hands time and time again without fear or hesitation.

Not once as they hiked did Karim return to his lamp. Robin kept the thing hidden away in his satchel but he felt the weight of it like a steady otherworldly presence. As if the magic binding Karim to the lamp was a tether that would only allow him to get so far away from its purview.

As it neared mid-afternoon on their second day of travelling, Robin spotted a marking on a tree. Two crossed arrows carved with a blade into the wood. The sign that the camp was close.

"We're nearly there," he said to Karim, pointing to the mark. Robin paused to drink from a skein of water which he passed to the genie without sparing a thought. As Karim drank, Robin said, "When we get to the camp, we tell no one of what you are. They are good men, honourable, but even good men have their limits. A genie with phenomenal cosmic powers may be a line some of them are willing to cross."

Karim's mouth tightened as he handed the skein back to Robin. A strand of his silky ebony hair fell forward into his eyes. Robin's gaze was pulled to it, locked on that strand until Karim pushed it back into place. "Do you want me to return to the lamp?"

"The choice is yours. If you would feel safer within it, then you're welcome to go. As long as we don't bring attention to what you are, you should be safe enough. I've brought home enough stragglers over the years that it won't come as a surprise to any of them and they likely won't look too closely unless we give them a reason."

For a moment, Karim weighed the options. Then, he squared his shoulders and straightened. "I'll stay. If it becomes dangerous then I can go inside and you can tell your brethren that I've left."

"Okay," Robin said.

And that was that.

It took them another hour of hiking and three more arrow sigils carved into trees before the steady stream of conversation and wild unabandoned laughter reached Robin's ears. A smile twisted his mouth and he sped up, walking faster and faster until he saw it.

Tents strung up, hammocks swinging between trees, a fire burning in the centre of camp on which it seemed a few rabbits were roasting. A few of the Merry Men were tending the fire, another was whittling new arrow shafts, and there – on the edge of the camp was the tallest of the bunch crouched in the dirt with the smallest.