AUTHOR'S NOTE: Tadah! Here I am again! This novel will follow the movie: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Yay, another novel in the making! woot! Everything that belongs to be is my story of my made up character Evemina and her story that includes other characters. Everything else belongs to the producers of the movie.

With that out of the way....

*party celebration!* \(^°^)/ Yaaayy BOOM! Confetti!

It's great to be back :)

I hope you like this one!

With Love,

CherryBlossomSky

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*I Will Always Return*

~Prologue~

The coldness of the air breathed against her skin as the lone little girl stared out of her bare window. Her emerald green orbs stared at the celestial bodies hanging brilliantly in the dark sky. The silver beams emitted from the grey moon above, revealed the girl's dingy rags for clothes and her black hair that fell just below her pale chin. Her lonely little heart yearned to those clusters of stars for a friend in her outcast life.

Since she worked for the noble family of Dubois, she no longer had to live under the sky beside the old bakery where her parents made their family nest for warmth and scraps of moldy bread. This home she had inhabited for the short years of her life, she slept in a bed of compacted dirt and thick hay. However the bed was almost always moist due to the miserable England rainy weather. Although the child did not mind this life for her parents loved her with all their hearts and worked so hard for little pay.

Most of the time if the pay was exceptionally scarce, her father would lean back onto his past. A past where he once and is again a thief. All his life he had to steal to stay alive and the only difference now is that there is more mouths to feed. Stealing is very much frowned upon and the last resort for most people who are penniless. Depending on the stolen merchandise a hand can get cut off as a warning, few get hanged for stealing from higher rank or from holy grounds, or if the crime was petty like stealing food usually they are brought to the stocks to be humiliated to the public. It is dishonorable to a family's name to steal. However the little girl could not find it in her young heart to despise her parents or countless others for stealing. Times are tough and have been for centuries for the working class.

Hunger gets the better of all and it had for little Evemina. She had gone that far for something to feed that empty malnourished stomach. Her very being quickly scared away the memory. There was something about that memory that stirred a strange feeling in her heart. Like a dark room and the struggle of getting that candle lit. She tried desperately to find the "flint" to strike for a spark to light her memory up. But it was so... foggy and the very thought of the missing piece created a blinding headache. The child placed a hand to her head sadly as she stared at the night sky.

"Deary, it's time for you to lay down." an older voice spoke just behind the small child, whose voice scattered her memories. The emerald eyes glanced back to a elderly woman with long silver hair, so grey that her strands could be mistaken to be moon beams streaming from her pale rounded head. Her eyes were dark blue like the night time sky and in its depths was twinkles of kindness that never failed to shimmer.

"Yes, Granny," her little voice replied with a cute little smile masking the pain in her heart.

In response to the nickname the girl gave her, the woman smiled lovingly to the child, "Good little child you are, Evemina."

The little girl genuinely blushed at the complement before climbing onto her bed. Her small back was pricked by the stuffing of her bed that was thickly packed with hay. At certain positions she could be highly uncomfortable, however Evemina preferred the constant pokes of the hard hay straws than laying in the dirty, moist earth in the cold. Her little hands reached down and grabbed the thin woollen blanket before covering her small little body. Granny smiled at the child before blowing a lone candle out, in the anticipation of resting her own weary bones.

It was not long until Evemina soon heard the soft snores of the old woman. Her eyes stared at the silhouette of Granny, watching every rise and fall of her breaths. The child was not tired from her long day of laundry and cleaning the courtyard. Instead the young child was consumed of thoughts that did not seem to cease any time soon for Evemina to rest.

The child thought of her old home and believed she was much happier to sleep in this bed rather than her nest of hay along the street. Strangely, deep inside her heart a lingering sorrow stayed in the absence of her not sleeping on the ground. It had always made her feel safe. Besides the awful smells of the presence of civilization that ranged from feces to the weird scent of smithing of weapons and sweat, nature smelled amazing to her. Evemina loved the smell of fresh morning dew, of the green grass, and of the clean river that coincided with her old home.

She did miss home.

Most of all, she missed her parents.

However she would rather be working to get money to send some for her parents.

She loved them and found it in herself to be the caretaker of them.

The emerald eyes still stared at the sleeping old maid and a small smile touched her lips. Granny was just another maid for the grand mansion of the Dubois and was the kind protector of the green eyed child. In fact, all of the residents of the noble family and the workers under the roof of the manor were always very kind to the young little girl. From their story-telling of their encounter of Evemina, they were blown way when they found themselves staring into the face of a determined five year old who had asked for a job. It was not uncommon for a young child to be looking for work, but it was rare that a five year old would venture all alone without any weapons to protect herself from another village that was one hundred and fifteen miles away to Knighton asking for work. The kid had guts and Lord Dubois was more than happy to take in such a spirited yet strange child.

Evemina was than nicknamed 'Braveheart' by the Lord Dubois. Brave for her courage to walk along the dangerous roads of rolling hills and moors of England by herself. But also the child showed great kindness and the strength of her heart was one of the rarest they have ever come across in a very long time in these times. Lord Dubois certainly put the strange child to work however he also set Evemina under his wing, accepting her as one of his own. His true children, Peter and Marian, were more than glad to claim little Braveheart as their sister.

The two girls would play with each other whenever they could when Evemina was not working. Although those times were very limited and rare, therefore Marian would wander to her brother to play with her. Peter, from what Evemina heard, had a friend with him. Another Lord's son she presumed from the name 'Robin of Locksley'. From the accounts of Marian's numerous blusters, Peter and this Robin were 'rotten, indecent toads'. Whatever that meant, Evemina came to an agreement that the boys sounded very unpleasant. For hours upon hours, Marian would ramble on and on about how that rotten Robin burnt her hair and made fun of her for having no one to play with and so on. Evemina, being a five year old and Marian being a thirteen years old, the younger child listened with all of her heart to her distressed friend. The child would not know what to say. However she did not what to upset Marian, so Evemina would nod her head along and agree.

The small amount of time that Evemina had been working in the Manor, she could not find the words to describe how welcoming and happy the atmosphere was. Never was she surrounded by luxury that of a noble family. In her heart she wished her parents could have worked with her so Eve would not have to worry about their well-being.

As she laid there, her eyes strayed over to the open, bare window. The stars twinkled under her gaze and the moon hung still in the dark sky. A memory bored into her mind and along with that her mother's gentle voice.

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"Evemina, do you remember that story I told you about how I met your father?"

The child glanced up to meet the caring dark brown gaze of the woman at her side. "I think so. Can you tell me again?"

Crinkles appeared underneath the mother's eyes as her smile reached every corner of her face. "Why of course! Sit down, sit down." the mother ushered as her child obediently sat on the curb of the street, staring up at her mother intently. The woman sat beside her child as she placed her hands delicately on her lap, "It was many years ago in Sherwood Forest, of course I knew it was a strange eerie place, however something drew me there. I was the daughter of a noble that had a fallen out from losing land. I was to go to this very town, by myself, with a few of the servants of my household that cared deeply for my father and I. To be safe, I dressed very plainly like a commoner and rode on a horse alongside my servants. The forest... It was dead silent and it gave me the shivers. It still does." Her gleeful gaze glanced to the hairs standing at end on her pale arm, "Anyway we were in the middle of the forest when we felt we were being watched.

"It was an strange feeling I never came across before. However I continued along the forest path. Every step made my anxiety rise high. The air was thick. I could barely take in a breath. Than all of a sudden, thieves surrounded us in a blink of an eye! A rather large man folded his arms across his chest stood a foot away from me, grinning at the vulnerability of my group and I."

"Then what happened, momma?!" Evemina gasped as she hung on every word.

The mother laughed and patted her daughter on the head, "I examine every man that surrounded my group. All the men hid their weariness and the look in their eyes revealed their hunger. I felt pity for them. Then I locked eyes with the large man for some time before he finally spoke up. He said, 'Lass we will let you continue in out woods if you pay the toll.' I asked something they would never had anticipated, 'How much?' I grabbed my small money purse ready to count. I remember catching them off guard for a few seconds before they composed themselves. Before they could set an amount, I got off my horse and handed over my coin purse with all the spare money I had. I said, 'Here take it all.' My servants scolded me and yelled at me for doing something so reckless. I brush it off and gave the men of the woods a polite smile. I told them, 'You need it more than I.' "

"And that was the one woman I always remembered after that encounter," a man's voice commented. Evemina glanced over to see her father grinning ear to ear with his hands stuffed in his pockets. His emerald green eyes gazed from his child to his wife with a loving, teasing beam. "I searched high and low for your mother after she left. Eventually I almost gave up but then I saw her. She was walking alone along this very street. Then that day on, I never lost sight of her ever again."

Her mother blushed heavily, almost as red as her hair. "Ivan..." the woman scolded as her smile gave away her uppermost happiness of his words.

"Myla." her husband mimicked with a endearing smile of his own. The woman tousled his dark brown hair briskly with her pale fingers.

The child glanced between her two parents, smiling at the obvious happiness between them. It was not that her parent could not work. They had no means to. They were happy with what they have as a family and as lovers. In Evemina's eyes, her father was a Prince and her mother a Princess. They were supposed to find each other and forever they would love another. For her mother once living in luxury did not mutter any complaint about their hay nest on the dirt street.

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Little Evemina smiled at the memory and nestled her pretty little head into her soft pillow before her eyes fluttered closed into a dreamless sleep.

(End of Prologue)

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you are a BBC Robin Hood fan I bet you noticed that I used Knighton as Maid Marian of Prince of Thieves' home. I was thinking about doing the castle itself used by the film crew but that ended up being one hundred and seventy something miles.... that's a lot of miles away from Nottingham and Sherwood so I did research and used Knighton as the home of this Marian too.