The Guided Journey (Book 6)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “My lord, I’ve never seen so much money at one time!” Orren exclaimed. “I cannot accept this; I haven’t earned it.

  “You should take it, to start your new life,” he told Raines.

  “I don’t have any more claim to it than you,” she told the former miner. “But I will share it with you.

  “I will go to Seafare with you, my lord,” she told Kestrel. “The farther I go from my old life to start a new one the better. I can work as a seamstress and own my own shop with this amount of money,” she smiled at the thought of starting a new life of independence.

  “I’ll go to Seafare too,” Orren decided. “I’m sure there’ll be something I can do to make a living, with such a generous stake to begin.”

  “You could work in any blacksmith’s shop, with your strength,” Raines assured him. “There will be endless possibilities for you.”

  “I will talk to the prince and ask him to recommend you to anyone he thinks would be good,” Kestrel promised, and so they all agreed to make the journey to Seafare together.

  The next morning, they stood in the courtyard of Ripken’s manor, ready to depart. Raines and Orren were on horses, while Kestrel, Putty, and Hampus were on foot. Aurelia, Ripken, Tewks, and Lucretia were gathered to see them off.

  “Kestrel, you make life interesting. It seems that more happens in one week with you than happens during the rest of the year!” Lucretia told him. “I’ll forever be asking future boyfriends what they have planned to make a date interesting, and comparing them to you!” she laughed.

  “We’ll miss you,” Aurelia told Kestrel. “And I hope that when we have our exchange of ambassadors with the Eastern Forest, we’ll have the opportunity to see you visit us on more peaceful terms,” she told him.

  “We’ll make a point to come to the Eastern Forest to visit someday, and see your home,” Ripken pledged. “Though only Tewks is likely to cause the kinds of adventures you’ve shown us!” he made the boy grin.

  And with that they were off, the yeti in the party drawing stares and screams, but no further attacks from the newly-informed patrols in the city, who let them pass unmolested. They left the city and ran through the forested countryside throughout the day.

  “Elves travel at this speed all the time?” Orren asked in astonishment.

  “When we can,” Kestrel affirmed. It felt good to run; the journey through the mountains had been over such difficult terrain that the only time they had run had been atop the rivers, in short stretches.

  They slowed from time to time to let Putty catch her breath, as the yeti found the elves and the horses to be tough competition to keep up with, even though her appearance regularly cleared the road of oncoming traffic, creating a clear path for the travelers to follow. They reached a village as night fell.

  “You two get rooms at the inn for the night,” Kestrel told the two humans, “and order enough food to feed all of us, then bring it to the woods outside of town. The three of us will meet you there and eat, then we’ll spend the night in the trees.”

  The next day the group entered the city of North Harbor shortly after lunch, where they encountered the same attention and hostility they had faced in every other city that Putty had entered, and Kestrel again raised his blue dome to protect them from attack.

  “Something has to change!” Kestrel said in exasperation. They stood in the afternoon sunlight, in a street on the outskirts of the city, the crowd around them loud as it expressed its fear and outrage at the sight of the yeti walking through the city.

  “Kestrel, you were scared when you saw a yeti in the wilderness, and you knew how to fight one,” Hampus reminded him. “You can understand what these people feel when they see one in front of their homes.”

  “Then we won’t let them see one,” Kestrel replied irritably. He looked at the dome, focusing his attention on it, then waved his hand over his head as he altered the energy he used for the dome, and it changed from a transparent blue configuration to a translucent blue one – allowing light but not images to pass through. The crowd beyond it was momentarily silent, then gave a collective gasp, then began to shout all the more loudly.

  “Putty,” Kestrel said reflectively, “what are we going to do?”

  “Should you return her to the wilderness?” Hampus asked.

  “She’s not old enough,” Kestrel answered defensively, though that was not his main concern. He found that he was simply too fond of the creature to be parted from her. “I just wish those people could see her for what she is, a young girl who needs to grow up before she goes out on her own.”

  “Can’t you just make her into a girl?” Raines asked. “We heard about how you made those patrol men into statues; can’t you do something like that for her?”

  “How could I possibly?” Kestrel let his question of protest hang unfinished, as he felt Raines’s suggestion resonate within him.

  He had made the patrol into statues, but hadn’t really understood what he was doing at the time. Then Kere had shown him the means of applying his energy in a way that had made it possible to reverse the change, and he had comprehended the principle of aligning his energy and his focus and the matter he was addressing in a way that produced the desired change.

  And he thought of Lake, the prince of the southern elves, the Tyndall Span, who had possessed the ability to change his own appearance. It was possible to do, and he thought he might know how.

  “It might work,” he said out loud.

  “Really?” Hampus asked in astonishment.

  “Do you have something she can wear?” he asked Raines. “Any clothes?”

  “Nothing that will fit a girl that big,” Raines replied immediately, “as I would think you could tell by looking at me,” she added in a tone of reprimand.

  “She won’t be that large,” Kestrel said absentmindedly, focusing all of his attention on the yeti.

  He heard Raines begin to look in the small pack of belongings she carried, as he walked over to Putty and put his hands on either side of her face, making the two of them focus on one another.

  “Putty, I’m going to change the way you look,” he said. “I think you look lovely just the way you are, but the other elves and humans out there,” he motioned around them with one hand, “they are scared because they don’t know what a sweet girl you are. It’s causing us problems, you know, like all those arrows they shoot at you,” he explained to his companion. He wasn’t sure how much she understood his words, but wanted to tell her as much as he could.

  “You will feel the change, and it may not be pleasant for a few moments,” Kestrel warned her. “But you’ll still be the same sweet girl. You’ll still be my friend, and I’ll be able to go more places with you by my side,” he assured her.

  “Will you trust me to do this?” he asked.

  “Rress,” Putienne spoke with the clearest articulation Kestrel had heard her utter.

  He smiled, and patted her cheek.

  “Hold my hands,” he told her, as the others within the dome looked on in fascination.

  Kestrel removed his hands from Putty’s cheeks, and lowered them, as the yeti placed her paws atop them. Kestrel looked up into her eyes, a dark brown color that he had never noticed before, and he wondered what her expectations were for her new appearance. Her age, her coloring, her hair, her build – all the features that would define her, the looks by which most folks would judge her: they were all going to be decided in the next few moments.

  He closed his eyes, and focused on the touch of her fingers against his, noting how soft the warm flesh felt. It was a perfect metaphor for the yeti, he thought; while the back of her hand was hairy and rough to the appearance, the palm was so much gentler and suppler.

  Kestrel looked inside himself, into the place where he remembered his powers were located, and he began to pluck out the strands he would use to effectuate the change in Putienne’s appearance. The power began to rise, to emerge from its resting place, and as it arrived into his control
, he began to manipulate it, to interweave the strands so that they interacted with each other, and began to develop new potential prospective outcomes, and then he let the energy flow through his hands into Putty’s.

  The task was both easy and difficult. The difficulty lay in the fact that he already was using his power to maintain the protective shield around them; using his energy in both endeavors was complex and wearing. But using the energy for Putienne’s alteration was a relatively simple job, as his preparation of the energy beforehand, treating it as Kere had shown him, so that it would alter the flesh before him, was relatively simple.

  He heard a gasp from Raines, but still he kept his eyes closed, letting the energy and Putty and himself subtly interact with one another. Her hands against his began to change, growing more slender, and even softer, though they trembled in reaction to the transformation that was overtaking her. The angle of her arms lowered, as she shrank in height, and Kestrel heard Orren mutter something in a soft and respectful tone.

  The energy began to resist flowing out of his hands, and the resistance rapidly increased, telling him that there was no further need for it. Kestrel cut off the flow, gently tapping the well within himself to cease the use, as he realized that Putienne’s transformation was complete.

  “Oh Kestrel, she’s beautiful!” Raines said.

  “She is exquisite,” Hampus murmured. “The best of both races.”

  Kestrel was afraid to open his eyes. The feeling of using his power to alter Putty’s appearance had been tranquil and wonderful; without even knowing what the power had done, he had felt fulfillment and satisfaction. But Hampus’s comments about both races was puzzling, something he hadn’t expected.

  He opened his eyes and stared ahead, his hands still holding Putty’s, and his feet moving to take a step back, to put them at arm’s length so that he could view the new exterior that Putty now resided in.

  “Oh my,” he said instantly, his eyes studying the flawless face across from him, then roving down and up. He stared at Putty’s new face once again, his eyes large as he recognized the young face across from him. Kestrel saw the perfect features, and then he honed in on the bright brown eyes – the yeti-colored eyes that had not changed color, not altered to mimic the original beauty now recreated as a younger version of the most beautiful woman Kestrel had ever known.

  It was Moorin. Or rather it was Putty as an adolescent version of Moorin, a teenage girl, part elven, part human, blossoming into an extraordinary beauty… and a reminder of the woman who had rejected his love.

  Chapter 32 – Putienne’s Transformation

  “Oh Putienne, you are beautiful,” Kestrel sighed.

  “Hmmm,” the girl replied.

  “Kestrel, she is astounding,” Raines told him, as she walked up and held out a blouse.

  “Put your arms up,” Kestrel demonstrated to Putty what he wanted her to do, then took the blouse that Raines held ready and pulled it down over the transformed yeti’s head.

  Putty began to struggle as Kestrel jerked the blouse down over her head, and let the hem of the material drop to the girl’s thighs. He took one of Putty’s arms and gently pulled her hand through the cuff.

  “Thank you,” he absently said to Raines, as Putty grew calm, her eyes trustingly locked on his. He pulled her other hand through the second sleeve cuff, then stepped back.

  She looked adorable, vulnerable with her bare, thin legs that stuck out beneath the bottom of the shirt.

  A loud noise suddenly distracted him, as a rain of thuds struck the exterior of his protective dome, and all the facts of their situation came rushing back into his consciousness, as though he had awoken suddenly from a vivid dream. He looked around at the faces of his companions. They all were looking at him with expressions of awe.

  “We’ll see if the good people of North Harbor are ready to be hospitable,” Kestrel said. With that, he focused on the shield, and turned the dome to its original transparent blue, allowing them to once again view the outside world.

  The crowd around the dome had been replaced by a crowd of uniformed guardsmen, and they all became silent at the sudden change in the appearance of the dome, and the sudden revelation of the people within. The silence lasted only a second and a half, before the guardsmen all began to cry out.

  “Where’s the monster?” Kestrel heard a half dozen voices ask at once.

  “There is no monster among us,” Kestrel spoke aloud. He identified the apparent ranking officer, and walked to the edge of the dome.

  “There is no monster here. We simply want to go to the harbor to book passage away from here,” he said.

  “Are you the magician who has created this apparatus?” the tall officer asked.

  “I did, to protect us from attack,” Kestrel replied.

  “Where is the monster traveling with you?” the human asked in his strong accent.

  “We have no monster. We’re simply travelers from Kirevee, returning from the celebration of the royal wedding,” Kestrel insisted.

  “You have no monster?” the officer repeated, as he craned his neck and searched the others behind Kestrel once again, vainly seeking some sight of something threatening under the dome.

  “Why were we told there was a monster?” the officer refused to accept the evidence of his own eyes.

  “Go find the witnesses who said we have a monster,” Kestrel’s patience began to run short. “We wish to go on, not start a battle.” He was tempted to call the imps, and to simply travel by their exotic means, instead of sailing aboard ships in the more conventional style.

  “No,” the officer said in exasperation, “I can see there’s no monster. And I can see that you’re a mighty magician who would not allow any danger to harm others.

  “And my shift is almost up, so if you cause no trouble in the next hour I won’t have anything to worry about,” he added. “Will it be a fair deal for the patrol to withdraw, and you to go on your way to the harbor?”

  “That sounds very reasonable to me,” Kestrel agreed. “Pull your men back, we’ll be on our way, and there’s no harm to anyone,” he affirmed.

  The leader of the patrols nodded curtly, then walked away, and spoke to several other patrol men, who began circling the dome, speaking to others, and the large crowd of uniformed men quickly dispersed, leaving Kestrel and his companions virtually alone in the street. Kestrel looked around, up and down the road, up at the rooftops overhead, and nowhere did he see evidence of an ambush waiting to happen.

  “That wasted a lot of time, but I think we’re ready to go to the harbor,” he told the others. He waved his arm as he recalled his energy, and the dome disappeared. The five of them stood still for seconds, waiting to see if there was any attack, then slowly started moving forward, under the scrutiny of the eyes that watched from windows nearby.

  They turned a corner, and then another, and soon they were among the usual traffic of the city, people who no longer surrounded a yeti frightening to those who saw them.

  “Stop Kestrel,” Raines said suddenly. “My lord,” she quickly added, as he whipped his head around to see what problem had arisen.

  “It’s a shop,” Raines told him, as she pointed at an open door and a large window. “With clothes, for girls, like Putienne,” she explained.

  Kestrel looked at the girl, who held his hand as she trustingly walked alongside him through the city streets. She still only wore the blouse that Raines had donated.

  “Here,” Kestrel reached into his pack and pulled out a clutch of small gold coins. “Go in and buy clothes for her, and for yourself. You deserve a wardrobe to start your new life in,” he was suddenly inspired to say.

  “You’re too kind,” Raines told him, giving a slight curtsey. “And you’re right. I’ll buy one dress for myself so that I’ll look presentable, but I’ve got the gold you gave me to start life anew; I’ll pay for my own, and we’ll give the girl some nice and some practical things,” she said.

  “Come with me, Putty,�
�� she held out her hand. Putty looked up at Kestrel, who smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll wait right here for you,” he said reassuringly, which was enough to make the newly humanized yeti enter the shop with Raines.

  The three men stood together outside the shop. “Let’s go get something to eat while we wait,” Hampus suggested, pointing to a tavern across the road, so the men crossed and sat at a table on the edge of the road, eating bowls of stew as they waited for the females to return.

  Half an hour later, as the afternoon began to wind down, the woman and the girl came out of the store. Raines carried a wrapped bundle, as she wore the same clothes she had traveled in, while Putty wore a new yellow blouse and blue pants, along with simple sandals, while she walked awkwardly, and stopped twice to adjust the material on her legs as they crossed the narrow street.

  “Please tell her how lovely she looks,” Raines told Kestrel as soon as the pair rejoined the men.

  “She does. You do look wonderful, and so colorful,” Kestrel told the girl before him.

  “Thank you,” he told Raines, grateful that she had helped Putty with her clothing, a field in which Kestrel knew next to nothing. “We should go down to the docks and find which ships can take us to our destinations.”

  A series of questions to a variety of people around the docks took them to the north end of the docks, and then the south end, and finally to the center portion, where they found a ship due to leave on the tide at midnight, bound for Estone, willing to take an elf onboard as a passenger.

  “He doesn’t speak the human language,” Kestrel explained to an officer. “You’ll have to let him know when meals are served, or other services are offered.”

  “We’ll take good care of him,” the officer said. “It’s an easy trip to Estone this time of year.”

  Hampus handed over the fare at the signal of approval from Kestrel. “It’s hard to believe we’re ending our journey together,” he smiled.

  “It was much more of an adventure than I thought it would be,” Kestrel replied. “You’ve been a good companion.”