Also: a quick plug for this one-shot from 2015 that I added a couple chapters to (and intend to add more at some point but...broken wrist)

I saved all your letters

this was supposed to have a bunch more parts, but then I broke my leg and my wrist, and so this is all I got done for Robin Hood day: my theory about why Marian is literate

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As soon as he hears her footsteps, he sighs. Whenever the Sheriff is away on business, they have a houseguest: his little daughter, Marian. Two years younger than him, and endlessly infuriating.

“What are you doing?” she asks, as she does about three thousand times per day.

“Writing,” he says, refusing to look up from his work. At eleven, he feels very worldly and important whenever he has lessons to do — at least for the first ten minutes. Then he gets distracted and runs off to do something else until his father or his tutor swats him back to the desk.

Marian comes up right behind him, staring down over his shoulder. Again: infuriating. “What does it say?”

He traces the line with his stylus. He likes the way the letters sink into the wax; he likes it even better when he’s done for the day and can smooth them away. “Omnia vincit amor,” he reads. 

She frowns at him.

“It’s Latin,” he says.

“Oh. That’s boring.” Frankly, he agrees. Nothing worse than copying lines of poetry in Latin, no matter how grown-up it makes him feel.

Robin knows from long experience that she won’t leave him alone until she has something to mull over, so he takes up his stylus again and writes something else below his required lines.

“What’s that, then?”

He gives her a grin. “It says Marian.” He points at the first letter. “This letter makes the ‘m’ sound. And then ‘aah’ after that, and again at the end — you see?”

“Hmm,” she says, but she looks decidedly more pleased. She reaches across him to trace the shape of the letter M with her finger, then gives him a nudge. “When will I learn to do this?”

A knot forms in his stomach. He thinks it might be shame. “Well,” he says slowly, “I suppose you won’t.”

She frowns at him. “Why not?”

“Because you are a girl.” It sounds awful coming out of his mouth. He knows it’s true, and he’s never even questioned it before this very moment, but now it seems impossible. When has being a girl ever stopped Marian from anything?

“That’s stupid,” she informs him, right on cue. She flounces down next to him on the bench, smoothing her skirts across her knees, and plucks the quill from his hand. “If no one else will teach me, I suppose that you will have to.”

He snatches the pen back. “I can’t, Marian, my tutor will be here in an hour—”

“Then it’s good that I’m a quick learner,” she says with finality, and he can’t argue with that. He hands her the stylus and forms her fingers around it in the way he was shown by his own tutor, years ago.

Marian says, “Here we are. What letter comes first?”