“What are you going to do?” Kestrel opened his eyes and asked as he felt the straps tightened across his legs and his chest.
“I’m going to have to reset your arm. It’s going to hurt — a lot,” the doctor said. “These straps will keep you from flailing around.”
Another strap went across his forehead, and then one held his good right arm in place beside his body. The doctor and nurse were proceeding with rapid, practiced efficiency.
“Here. Bite down on this when he starts,” the nurse said, and placed a toughened piece of leather between his teeth.
Kestrel was dazed by the alcohol and by the rapidity with which the two men were working around him, treating him as a commodity to be processed in an efficient manner. They tightened the last strap, so that only his left arm was free.
The doctor laid hold of the injured arm with a gentleness that was a dramatic change from the previous handling Kestrel had encountered, and slowly raised it into the air. Kestrel looked up at it with his blurry vision and saw for the first time that a frame of some kind had been attached to the ceiling overhead. A strap from the frame hung loose, and the doctor looped it around his patient’s wrist. He looked down at Kestrel. “We’re going to start in a moment; do you want one more shot of the whiskey?”
Kestrel shook his head no, and suddenly felt a stomach-churning wave of pain engulf him as the doctor tightened the strap and yanked hard on his arm. Kestrel felt the bone-ends grate against one another, and he distantly heard the nurse urging him to bite down on the leather bit. There was a sound, an inhuman moan that was rolling out of his own throat, he realized, as the pain continued. Then there was another sudden jolt in his arm, and the pain began to subside.
Kestrel blinked away the tears in his eyes and looked up at his arm overhead. The doctor was bandaging a pair of splints to his forearm, he realized.
“You’ve been a brave fellow,” the nurse said consolingly. “It’s all done already, just like that.” The nurse’s hand fumbled at Kestrel’s mouth for a moment, then removed the bit and threw it aside.
The doctor continued to wrap bandages. “That was very smooth. We seldom get a setting as perfect as that! You shouldn’t have any problems once the bones knit back together; there’ll just be a bump, but nothing that will affect your use of the arm. It may even be stronger in a few days after it grows together!” He finished his bandaging, as the nurse began to remove the straps across Kestrel’s body, and then they lowered the arm, and placed it in a sling, which they strapped against his chest.
“Here you go. Head home, and sleep on your back the next few nights,” the doctor said, as the nurse left the room to return to his desk out front. “With that human blood you may not heal as quickly as a normal elf — it may take you an extra week or more to finish. Chew on this to relieve your pain in the morning,” he added as he handed Kestrel a small bag of herbs.
“You may have a headache from the whiskey,” he told Kestrel. “Don’t get used to drinking that if you can avoid it. You’ll be much better off.” He placed a hand beneath Kestrel’s right arm. “Are you ready to go, or would you like to collect your wits here?”
“I’ll go now,” Kestrel mumbled indistinctly, still disoriented by the whole experience. He stood on wobbly legs, then tottered out the door. “Thanks, doc,” he turned to say, then wandered down the hall and out of the office, back into the clear, crisp air under the dark sky.
Chapter 4 — Report to the Commander
Kestrel walked cautiously through the dark streets, trying to maintain his balance as he kept placing one foot in front of the other, his focus diminished by both the pain and the whiskey. There were other people on the street, and he studiously avoid bumping into them, as all of them navigated effortlessly, their elven ability to see in the dark enabling them to go about their way at night, one of the many reasons the humans seldom made serious efforts to militarily invade the forest homes of the elves.
Kestrel arrived at his home after only a short walk. It was his town home, an apartment with two rooms on the undesirable ground floor of a building in town. Elves preferred elevated locations — homes on upper floors were highly preferable, and when Kestrel returned to what he thought of as his real home, he would go to the grove of hickory trees not far from the red stag woods, where he had a small shelter constructed in the upper branches of a large tree, as was typical of most elves.
Once inside his featureless town apartment he removed his shoes and unbuckled his belt, then laid down on his mattress, lying in the uncomfortable and unusual position of face upward, and quickly fell into a light sleep, but seldom slept well during the night; he often began to roll onto his side, only to experience intense pain that abruptly brought him back to a state of consciousness. The cycle repeated itself uncomfortably several times throughout the night as he sought to revert to his natural sleeping position, and by the time dawn’s first light began to noticeably brighten the bedroom’s interior, he was exhausted from the poor sleep.
Kestrel groggily sat up, his eyes more closed than open, and tried to motivate himself to get out of bed. Once he swung his feet to land on the floor, he managed to stand up, and thereafter he awkwardly cleaned himself up, ate a stale slice of bread for breakfast, then ambled back through Elmheng’s rustic provincial streets to the commander’s office. Elmheng was the administrative center of the elves’ dominion in the western portion of the Eastern Forest that abutted Hydrotaz and the Water Mountains to the north, a lightly populated region, where little excitement typically shook the daily order.
An invasion by the men of Hydrotaz was a strange bolt of surprising excitement however, and even though he had been excluded from it, Kestrel was as eager to learn about the situation at that battle as he was to report on his own activity the day before.
At the front door of the commander’s building he reported to an orderly, who sent him to wait in a lobby with a few other members of the forest guard. One was called into Mastrin’s office, then several minutes later another was, while additional junior members of the guard came and sat down as well, each waiting for their turn to talk to the commanding officer. Kestrel was the third person to enter the office from the lobby.
Inside he found Mastrin and a junior officer who seemed to be present mainly to take notes. “Well now Kestrel, looks like the doc put some serious time in to fix you up,” Mastrin said as Kestrel stood at attention before him, until the commander released him.
“Tell me what brought you back from the western boundary yesterday,” Mastrin advised him.
“I was on station in the late morning, when I noticed a large amount of dark smoke coming from a spot in the forest not far from where I sat,” Kestrel explained.
“There were no clouds in the sky or any lightening or any reasonable cause of such a fire,” he added, anticipating the question about to be asked, as the aide’s pen scribbled notes on a piece of paper.
“How is the battle going down south?” he interrupted himself suddenly, no longer able to bottle up his curiosity.
“There wasn’t really much of a battle,” Mastrin answered conversationally, much to Kestrel’s relief; he had feared he would be told to stick to his own story. “The humans started early in the morning with a lot of noise and an advance along a wide front. They caught our attention obviously. But they moved slowly and cautiously, didn’t penetrate deeply, only cut down a tree or two, then slowly moved around like they were shifting positions, before they withdrew by late morning.
“It makes me think it was just a feint to distract us from something else, which is why I’m interested in hearing your story. Please proceed,” the commander said as his aide sat patiently.
“The smoke was thick, and I judged it to be a pretty bad fire. I felt that it needed to be put out right away, immediately,” he emphasized, “before it started burning up a big chunk of woodland, so I started to pray,” he hesitated for just a second, knowing that he was about to remind everyone of his mixed ancestry, “
to the human goddess Kai, and asked for her help to douse the flames.”
He took a deep breath, as the pen continued to scratch for a few more minutes, then paused. Kestrel knew that there was a general suspicion that he could pray to the human deities, but no one knew that he could ask for and receive such direct interdiction — he hadn’t known it himself. It was almost as if he had the power of a human priest, and he knew that more suspicions were going to be raised against him than praises would be sung for what he had just achieved on behalf of the elves.
“And soon after that, a big rain storm came. I had climbed down out of my tree and was running through the woods towards the fire to check on it when the skies just opened up and dumped water like a river was falling,” he noticed that both Mastrin and the aide were looking at him, and the pen was frozen in immobility.
“Just like that, the goddess answered your prayer?” Mastrin asked.
“Yes sir,” Kestrel answered.
“Did you make any sacrifice or promise?” his commander pressed him.
“No sir; maybe yes sir,” Kestrel answered, recollecting the goddess’s promise to collect payment from him in the future.
“Which is it? What did you give her?” the aide blurted out, drawing a sharp look from Mastrin. The junior officer looked down and began to take notes suddenly.
“I didn’t promise anything, but the goddess said I would owe her,” Kestrel explained.
“Not the conversation I expected, and certainly worthy of some theological discussion by the wise ones, I’m sure, but probably this isn’t relevant to the military matters at hand,” Mastrin said. He paused, and seemed to be judging Kestrel as he silently looked at his young guardsman. “This probably doesn’t need to be in the record; strike it and keep the notes clean,” he directed the aide. There was a flurry of scratching on the aide’s pad.
“So go on with your story about the fire,” the commander redirected his attention to Kestrel.
“I slipped in the mud as I was running, and landed on my arm, but I got up and continued to the edge of the fire scene. By then the rain was ending, and the fire seemed to be out.
“It was contained to a couple of hundred acres, but the forest is intact on all sides of it,” Kestrel finished. “I decided I should return and report, but all the flooding made me have to detour, so I was late getting back last night, sir,” he concluded his report and stood at attention as the pen continued to scratch for another few seconds.
“It seems to me that there may be some connection between this fire and the invasion. Was that your thought too?” Mastrin asked.
“I wondered sir; there didn’t seem to be any natural explanation for the start of the fire, and then from what you said about the action in the south, there really wasn’t any good reason for it,” Kestrel replied. “And I apologize for leaving the forest unprotected. I can resume my spot immediately if you want me to.”
“Not with that wing,” the commander told him. “Nothing to apologize for; I think you did right. I’ve already redistributed the guards to patrol the forest, so you can plan to stay here a day or two to heal up. Did the doctor tell you how long you’d need?”
“He said that my human blood might make me heal slowly; it may take a fortnight,” Kestrel said, dragging his nasty heritage out into the conversation again.
“I suppose it might; he’d know better than I would,” Mastrin agreed; he knew about Kestrel’s human heritage, and felt a slight uneasiness about it, but he knew that Kestrel had been a reliable and effective member of his guard unit, especially in the case of the fire, and he knew that the boy seemed to have a healthy friendship with his daughter, one that Mastrin was willing to tolerate and observe for the time being.
“Tell you what — you go on over to let Cheryl see you to know you’re alive and taken care of, and that I’m not a human brute who has slaughtered you, then just be available the next few days. We should get a report back this afternoon from the patrol out looking at your fire spot, so you may want to hear their report later today,” Mastrin spoke in a casual manner that Kestrel suspected hid some machinations.
“We’ll write up a report after we hear the patrol’s information,” the commander told his aide. “Go along Kestrel, you’re dismissed,” he motioned towards a door, and the young elf left the room hurriedly, relieved at the lack of any reprimand or punishment. And then he forgot about all that and began to look forward to seeing Cheryl.
Chapter 5 — Cheryl’s House
His timing was going to be perfect, Kestrel concluded as he walked through town to the commander’s home. It was late morning; by the time he sat down and saw Cheryl, it would be almost lunch time, and her mother, always a perfect hostess, would invite him to join them for a meal, so he would get more time with Cheryl at the table.
He soon arrived at the high-positioned porch, the height that reflected the elves’ desire to be up off the ground — in the trees, or in something that could approximate a tree’s height if at all possible — and knocked on the door.
Footsteps sounded inside, and Cheryl’s younger sister Crozanna answered the door. Her eyes widened at the sight of the sling that cradled his arm. “Were you hurt in the battle yesterday?” she asked earnestly.
“No,” Kestrel said with a sigh, “I fell in the mud.”
Crozanna giggled. “Would you like to see Cheryl?” she asked mischievously.
“If she has time,” Kestrel tried to answer politely.
“Let’s go see. Come on in,” the young sister spoke, throwing the door wide open, and ushering Kestrel into the house. He’d been a visitor on numerous occasions before, enough that Crozanna felt comfortable casually providing entry to him. She led him right, along a hall, towards a parlor he had shared with Cheryl many time before on visits.
When he rounded the corner, he saw Cheryl sitting in her usual easy chair, looking placid and beautiful as ever, then his vision encompassed the rest of the room, and he saw Malsten, the son of the dry goods store owner, sitting on the opposite chair where he had expected to sit.
“Kestrel’s here to see you Cheryl,” Crozanna chirped brightly, apparently enjoying the opportunity to be an agent of chaos by bringing two suitors together to visit with her sister at the same time.
Malsten scowled deeply as Cheryl popped up from her chair, a look of concern and pleasure on her face. “Oh Kestrel, it’s so good to see you,” she spoke warmly. “Are you going to be okay? What did the doctor say? How were you injured?”
“He fell in the mud,” Crozanna volunteered brightly.
Malsten let out a muffled laugh. “You can go now Crozanna,” Cheryl directed, with a hint of steel in her meaningful glance.
“Please come in and sit down,” Cheryl told Kestrel, who remained standing in the doorway, wishing there was a way to escape from the uncomfortable scene. “Tell us what happened,” she added, as her fingers gently brushed his hand when he passed her to take the proffered seat.
He smiled a warm smile to her, touched by the kind gesture
“What happened yesterday Kestrel?” Cheryl asked again.
“There was a big fire in the forest, but the rains came along and put it out,” the elf guard replied. He was not going to make any mention of the human deities involved, not in front of Malsten.
“Those rains must have been something; we had flooding so bad the water got up into a couple of dozen homes. My dad was selling every mop and bucket he had, plus a whole bunch of other stuff to folks who have to clean up their homes,” Malsten announced, proud of the business success his family had enjoyed as a result of the misfortune of others.
“How is your arm? What did the doctor say?” Cheryl pretended not to hear Malsten.
“It’s broken. He reset the bones last night. Everything should be fine in just a few days,” Kestrel answered. “I reported the fire to your father this morning. He said there’s a patrol looking at the fire location this morning, so there may be more news about it this afternoon,” he t
old the girl, even though he knew the topic would be of little interest to her. He wanted to talk to her about the human goddess, about Kai, and the direct communication he had with the omnipotent being; he wanted to hear her thoughts, but Malsten’s presence stifled any such conversation.
Just then Cheryl’s mother appeared in the doorway. “Well, hello Kestrel,” she said in a kindly voice. “We’re just about to have lunch. Let me add a plate for you,” she told him.
“No, I can’t stay. I just wanted to stop by to let Cheryl know my arm will be fine. I need to go,” he said as he stood, unwilling to spend time sharing Cheryl’s company with another suitor. “I thought I’d go see if I could help any of the flood victims clean up their homes,” he shot a deadly glance at Malsten as he spoke, but the merchant seemed oblivious to any sense of shame.
“Well, that’s a very nice idea! Don’t strain your arm now. You need to heal,” Cheryl’s mom sounded just like a mom as she counseled him. “Malsten, let me walk you to the meal table, and Cheryl you can see Kestrel to the door,” she directed, giving Kestrel the satisfaction of seeing Malsten shoot a deadly glance back at him.
Cheryl and he walked silently to the door, and stepped out onto the porch. “Mother’s right, you need to be careful with that arm,” Cheryl instructed him as she shut the door behind him. She stood very close, and her hand reached out shyly to hold his. “Malsten just arrived a few minutes before you did,” she apologized. “I didn’t know you were going to come over this morning.”
“It’s not a problem. I just wanted to see you,” he fibbed, “so I got what I wanted. I’ll be around town for a few days while I heal, so I’ll see you soon. I want to talk,” he told her earnestly, squeezing her hand, then releasing it. “Go enjoy your lunch, and maybe Malsten will sell you something for a discount,” he kidded.
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