Cully smiled impatiently, and Jack Jingly dozed, but it startled the magician to see the disappointment in Molly Grue’s restless eyes. Sudden anger made him laugh. He dropped seven spinning balls that had been glowing brighter and brighter as he juggled them (on a good evening, he could make them catch fire), let go all his hated skills, and closed his eyes. “Do as you will,” he whispered to the magic. “Do as you will.”

It sighed through him, beginning somewhere secret‌—‌in his shoulderblade, perhaps, or in the marrow of his shinbone. His heart filled and tautened like a sail, and something moved more surely in his body than he ever had. It spoke with his voice, commanding. Weak with power, he sank to his knees and waited to be Schmendrick again.

I wonder what I did. I did something.

He opened his eyes. Most of the outlaws were chuckling and tapping their temples, glad of the chance to mock him. Captain Cully had risen, anxious to pronounce that part of the entertainment ended. Then Molly Grue cried out in a soft, shaking voice, and all turned to see what she saw. A man came walking into the clearing.

He was dressed in green, but for a brown jerkin and a slanting brown cap with a woodcock’s feather in it. He was very tall, too tall for a living man: the great bow slung over his shoulder looked as long as Jack Jingly, and his arrows would have made spears or staves for Captain Cully. Taking no notice at all of the still, shabby forms by the fire, he strode through the light and vanished, with no sound of breath or footfall.

After him came others, one at a time or two together, some conversing, many laughing, but none making any sound. All carried longbows and all wore green, save one who came clad in scarlet to his toes, and another gowned in a friar’s brown habit, his feet in sandals and his enormous belly contained by a rope belt. One played a lute and sang silently as he walked.

“Alan-a-Dale.” It was raw Willie Gentle. “Look at those changes.” His voice was as naked as a baby bird.

Effortlessly proud, graceful as giraffes (even the tallest among them, a kind-eyed Blunderbore), the bowmen moved across the clearing. Last, hand in hand, came a man and a woman. Their faces were as beautiful as though they had never known fear. The woman’s heavy hair shone with a secret, like a cloud that hides the moon.

“Oh,” said Molly Grue. “Marian.”

“Robin Hood is a myth,” Captain Cully said nervously, “a classic example of the heroic folk figures synthesized out of need. John Henry is another. Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl. Not that it isn’t a remarkable trick, of course.”

It was the seedy dandy Dick Fancy who moved first. All the figures but the last two had passed into the darkness when he rushed after them, calling, hoarsely, “Robin, Robin, Mr. Hood sir, wait for me!” Neither the man nor the woman turned, but every man of Cully’s band‌—‌saving only Jack Jingly and the captain himself‌—‌ran to the clearing’s edge, tripping and trampling one another, kicking the fire so that the clearing churned with shadows. “Robin!” they shouted; and “Marian, Scarlet, Little John‌—‌come back! Come back!” Schmendrick began to laugh, tenderly and helplessly.