“You’ve been the same,” Kestrel said. “You’ll do well in Center Trunk. Be sure to stop in Firheng and tell Casimo what you saw on the trip. He’ll be interested to know what’s happening in the world.”
“I’ll tell him,” Hampus agreed. “You’ll come back to the Eastern Forest soon, won’t you? We’ll be better off having you close by.”
“We’ll see what the gods have planned. I’ll be back as soon as I can; I want to get home to Oaktown and enjoy some peace and quiet there,” Kestrel promised.
The two shook hands and embraced, then Kestrel left the deck and returned to where the other travelers were waiting. “We’ll need to find a ship for ourselves now,” he said, and they returned to the south end of the dock, to follow up on a reported ship bound for Seafare, and found one that intended to sail the next afternoon.
“Let’s go find a place to spend the night,” Kestrel suggested after they offered coins as a deposit for a pair of cabins.
They bypassed the inns closest to the docks, which were habitually used by sailors and seedier clients, and went inside the city to a hotel that had only two rooms available.
“A room for the ladies, and one for the gentlemen,” Raines said, and Kestrel promptly paid for the two rooms, received the keys, and led the troupe upstairs to their rooms. They placed their belongings inside the rooms, then went down to the dining room and ate a quiet dinner, exhausted from the long day’s travels, before they returned to their rooms for the evening, Kestrel and Orren said good night to Raines and Putienne, then closed their door and flopped down in the darkness on their two narrow, thin mattresses.
Kestrel began to doze almost immediately, but rose back to consciousness as he heard a sound, then realized it was his name, being called from the hallway outside his room.
“Kes-trel,” the name sounded again.
Orren snored softly, soundly sleeping, unaware of the voice.
There was a scratching sound at the door handle, and Kestrel stepped over to the door, then cautiously opened it a crack to see who was calling him.
Putienne stood outside, once again wearing the blouse that Raines had initially lent.
“Kes-trel,” she said as she smiled, Kestrel’s elven vision was able to see. Her white teeth gleamed in the dark hallway.
“Putty,” he whispered as he slipped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind him. “What’s wrong, Putty?” he asked.
She slipped her arms around his torso and hugged him tightly. “Kestrel,” she pronounced his name more smoothly, then hummed with contentment.
“It’s good to see you too, my friend,” he told her, putting his own arms around her. “But it’s time to sleep now. Can you go back to your room to sleep? I’ll be right here, and I’ll see you first thing in the morning,” he told her to comfort her.
He moved to press her back towards her own room’s door, but she resisted, and then the door opened.
“Putienne?” Raines whispered loudly as she stepped out into the darkened hall.
“Oh,” she murmured as she bumped into the pair in the hallway. “Did she waken you?” Raines asked Kestrel. “She called your name in the room, and tried to go over to you, but I told her she should just sleep, then I realized she had got out.
“I suppose the two of you have been together almost every night for how long now?” Raines asked. “Most of the nights I saw you, you were right next to each other.”
“I suppose,” she paused, a plan reluctantly in mind. “Which bed are you sleeping in?” she asked.
“The one on the left,” he answered.
“Just for tonight, we can do this,” Raines said. “Orren’s asleep, isn’t he?”
Snoring,” Kestrel grinned. He opened the door and pulled Putty aside, giving Raines a path to her relocated bed. “Good night, and thank you,” he whispered as she passed, and then he pressed Putty into the empty room across the hall, her arms still around him.
“You won this time, but we can’t do this always,” he told her as he sat her down on one of the beds.
“How much else can you say? What do you understand?” he asked as he sat on the other bed, and looked at her in the darkness.
She sat in silence, then said, “Kestrel,” again.
“That’s a start,” he told her, he lay back on the bed. “Time to go to sleep, Putty. Get a good sleep and we’ll have a new adventure tomorrow,” he told her.
He closed his eyes, and heard her mattress creak as she laid back on her own bed.
Kestrel was even more tired than he had been before he lay in his first bed, and he quickly began to lose consciousness as he fell asleep, only to imagine that he heard his name being called.
“Kestrel?” a voice called.
“Putty, go to sleep,” he grunted.
“Kestrel, where are you?” the voice in his mind asked. “Kestrel-friend, please answer.”
He raised his head and shook it. “Stillwater, Stillwater, Stillwater, I am here, in this room,” he spoke out loud, as three imps appeared instantly.
“Kestrel-friend, we are pleased to see you,” Stillwater said.
“Your friend, Hampus, called me, and the urgency of his voice carried through, so that I answered,” the imp said. “The humans on the boat he is riding mean to rob him, and he is fighting them.”
“Can you take me to him?” Kestrel asked, coming instantly alert.
“That’s why there are three of us here,” Mulberry replied. “Who is the pretty little girl?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Kestrel said. “Take me to Hampus now, and we’ll plan to move him elsewhere – my thanks for your concern for him,” he said, as the imps surrounded him, then carried him into the nothingness between dimensions.
Kestrel found himself in a small cabin, next to Hampus, who had his back against a doorway trying to keep it shut as men battered at it from the far side. The air had the tang of saltwater, and the sounds of the ship running through the sea vibrated through the hull. The imps squeezed themselves into a corner near the ceiling.
“Kestrel! Thank Norvell you’re here!” Hampus said in the darkness.
The room filled with a blue light, as Kestrel raised his shield of energy, then maneuvered around in the tight quarters to take Hampus’s place closest to the door.
“Gather up your belongings, the treaty papers and all,” Kestrel said. “We’ll have the imps take you to Firheng,” he said, “after we recover our money from the captain of the ship. Come along, friends,” he motioned to the imps.
Kestrel pulled the door open, and the men in the narrow passageway screamed at the sight of the blue glow, fleeing in a mad scramble that left one man trampled on the floor as the others ran over him. Kestrel and Hampus emerged from the room and followed the men who ran from them, emerging on the deck where they could see stars overhead.
“We want our money back for this passage,” Kestrel spoke to the small crowd that huddled together.
A large wooden block was thrown down at him from the mast overhead. It bounced harmlessly off his shield, and hit the deck.
“You have been dishonorable,” Kestrel told the men who gathered. “Return our money to us so that we can leave, and we will not punish you as you should be treated for your dishonesty.” He left the implicit threat hanging in the air for a moment, heard no response in the darkness, then walked back below deck to the captain’s cabin.
“Look for a chest or something with money in it, and we’ll even this up. I’m tempted to sink the ship, but that seems extreme,” Kestrel said.
“I thought that throwing me overboard was extreme,” Hampus commented.
Kestrel smiled. “That does sound bad,” he agreed, as he opened a chest, and found a large quantity of gold and silver coins inside. “Here, take these,” he poured a large share into Hampus’s hands, then grabbed more for himself.
“Imp friends, will you carry us to Firheng?” Kestrel asked. “Take us to the apartments there.”
The imps gathe
red around the two elves, and transported them one at a time to an empty set of sleeping quarters on an upper floor. “Casimo told us that the number of trainees being sent here was dwindling since Silvan died,” Kestrel remembered aloud. “I suppose you’ll have your choice of any place you want to stay.
“Here,” he poured the coins he held onto the table in the room. “Give these to Casimo, and tell him to spend them on local charity in Firheng, as a gift from the sailors we just left,” he smiled.
“Tell Casimo all that you know, and then be on your way to Center Trunk,” he reminded Hampus. “You shouldn’t have any problems from here,” he grinned.
“Stillwater, will you take me back to my room in the human city, in North Harbor?” he asked, and was promptly carried away once again, exhausted all the more.
When he arrived in the small hotel room, Putty was sitting up on her bed, awake and watchful. Upon Kestrel’s return she threw herself at him, unfortunately squeezing Mulberry, who did not move away from Kestrel quickly enough to avoid being pinned between the two larger bodies.
“Kestrel-vise squeezer!” she reprimanded him. “Who is this?”
“This is our yeti friend, Putienne,” Kestrel introduced. “Her appearance was so frightening to the humans in the cities we visited that we decided the only way to pass through cities was to change her appearance.”
“It is a familiar face,” Stillwater said, remembering his long companionship with Moorin during the journey through the territory south of Uniontown.
“It is,” Kestrel agreed. “I do not know how that came to be,” he said softly. “I did not mean for it to be so,” he said, even more softly.
“She looked very lovely as a yeti, I thought,” Mulberry said. Putienne smiled. “I do not think any change was needed.”
“We are going to sail on a ship to the human city of Seafare, where the imps saved my life last year,” Kestrel went on.
“Did they not do so in every city you visited?” Mulberry asked archly.
“I think that perhaps they did,” Kestrel blushed faintly as he agreed. It was true, he knew; without the help of the imps, he would not have survived his ordeals, let alone succeeded.
“I hope that our journey on the sailing ship will not require assistance such as you just gave to Hampus,” he tried to joke lightly.
“Would you say,” Acanthus began a question, “that the waters of the healing spring will no longer bear ill-will and unpleasant dreams? Should we go back there to check on the water?” he asked.
Kestrel looked at Acanthus in the darkness, and his elven night vision saw the grin on the imp’s face.
“I think that after we get on board the ship, and there is nothing else to do, then by all means we should go prove that the spring waters are safe once again,” he agreed. “Shall we make an appointment for tomorrow night?”
“You have our promise that we will join you,” Stillwater said solemnly. “Farewell, friend Kestrel,” he said, and then the trio of imps were gone.
“Kestrel,” Putty spoke, once the visitors departed, “imps?”
“Yes, Putty,” Kestrel smiled, as he lay back down on the bed more tired than ever. His sleep had been interrupted twice already during the night, and he closed his eyes instantly. “You go to sleep, and we’ll have more adventures tomorrow.”
He heard the mattress rustle, and then he fell asleep, and remained that way until shortly after dawn, when Putty poked his shoulder, an anxious expression on her face.
“Kestrel, Kestrel,” she repeated his name.
“What is it Putienne?” he asked. A portion of him wanted to be aggravated with the girl, but as he looked at the beautiful innocence in her face, he couldn’t be angry with her.
She pointed at the door, then looked down.
“Oh,” he murmured softly. He stood up and opened the door, then watched as the girl passed him and started to run down the hallway.
“Putienne, the bathroom is this way,” he called softly.
“Putty!” he repeated, in a louder tone.
“Kestrel?” he heard the muffled voice of Orren call. “Kestrel, are you out there? Who’s in here?”
As soon as he heard the question, Kestrel knew he needed to intercede, but at the same time he knew he had to chase after the disappearing girl. He froze, unable to pick a direction – whether to explain to Orren, or to redirect Putty – until he heard Raines scream, and he knew that Orren had already pulled the covers back from over the woman. The scream released him from his indecision, and he went running down the hall after Putty, desperate to catch up with her.
She was outside by the time he reached her, the early morning workers already traveling in small numbers through the streets of the city, as Kestrel spotted Putienne’s head visible behind a hedge, and then she stood up, and lightly walked back over to him.
“We’ll have to talk about that,” he muttered to her, as he looked around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them, thankfully, and he yawned as he took the girl by the hand to lead her back up the room.
Raines was standing in the hallway when the two wanderers returned.
“Do you know what he did?” she asked. “He pulled the covers off of me while I was sleeping!” she stormed.
“Keep it quiet out there!” a voice called from one of the adjoining rooms.
“I didn’t know it was her!” Orren said as he appeared in the doorway.
“Sssshhh!” another neighbor hissed from their room.
“Ssshh,” Putty mimicked.
“Everyone stop!” Kestrel spoke loudly, tired and irritated. The hallway grew brighter, and he looked around to see the source of the light, to find which of the other guests in the hotel had brought a lantern out into the hall.
“It’s you, Kestrel,” Orren said as he observed Kestrel’s confusion. “You’re glowing.”
Kestrel raised one hand before his face, and saw that there was a slight glow, a warm yellowish hue, that was evenly cast from his hand.
The others in the hallway were silent. “Glowing Kestrel!” Putty said cheerfully into the silence.
Kestrel closed his eyes, and focused. His energy was engaged, inadvertently brought to life by his emotions – his stress and exhaustion and frustration all had combined to cause the power to begin to seep out. With a simple effort, he made the glow diminish.
“Kestrel, is everything okay?” Raines asked.
“I’m just, tired,” he said quietly. “Let’s all rest a little longer, and then we can head to the docks,” he suggested, and he promptly went back into the room where he had slept originally, slumbered uneasily for another half hour, until he was ready to go.
They all went to the dining room, where they had breakfast, and gave Putienne a rudimentary lesson in using utensils and table manners.
“We’ll teach her to dress and eat, and I’ve heard her start to talk. What else is there to teach her?” Raines asked cheerfully as they finished the meal.
Kestrel leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“Oh,” Raines said in a meek tone.
“I think you’d be better at teaching that than me,” Kestrel said aloud.
“But,” she began to protest, then sighed. “If she’ll let me. She prefers you for most things, obviously,” the young woman said.
“Why don’t you try now, to show her before we leave the hotel?” Kestrel suggested.
Raines gave him a withering look. “Come with me, Putty,” she stood and held her hand out to the girl.
“Go on,” Kestrel urged. “Go with Raines and learn something important. Pay attention, please,” he said.
Putty smiled at him, then obediently followed Raines out of the room, as Kestrel and Orren tried not to look at each other for the several minutes while the two females were gone, for fear of laughing aloud at Raines’s plight.
“We’ll see,” Raines said primly when the two returned. She gave no other report, and the quartet left the hotel to carry their limited belongings
with them to the docks, where they boarded the ship they were destined to ride to Seafare over the course of a five day voyage.
“Kestrel!” Raines said as soon as they were led along the narrow passageway. They were given two cabins, each with two bunks. Putienne had entered one, and immediately held her hand out to Kestrel, inviting him to join her.
“I understand,” Kestrel immediately answered. “I’ll try, but I make no promises,” he told the woman, as Orren looked on silently, keeping his face straight and emotionless.
“Kestrel, no,” Putty said calmly as Kestrel turned to talk to her. “Kestrel here, Putty here,” she announced.
“You didn’t tell me this was going to happen,” Raines moaned.
“Orren’s not so bad; it’s just the circumstances we have,” Kestrel tried to console her.
“Oh, I know. It’s just the principle of the thing,” Raines replied.
“You have to take the top bunk,” she said authoritatively to Orren as she placed her pack of belongings on the lower bunk.
And so they journeyed for the next several days. The seas were choppy, and the passengers remained largely confined to their cabins; at first they focused or surviving seasickness, and then they spend their time focused on Putienne, giving her lessons in language and etiquette and behavior as a human.
The two nights they spent at the healing spring with the sprites were a pleasant relief for all. For some reason he didn’t understand, Kestrel felt an urge to make a set of the pipes the gnomes played for their musical entertainment, and as he visited the healing spring, he cut and hollowed out tubes that he notched and bound together to form a set. They would make a good gift for Merea, he decided, so he made a second set as their journey progressed. And if he were to go further south and see the southern gnomes, they’d perhaps appreciate a set as a gift, he told himself, and so he carved a third set and bound the tubes together, as a way to while-away the time as they sailed.
When they arrived in Seafare late in the afternoon of their last day of travel, they thanked the officers and crew of their ship, then disembarked and stepped onto land again.
The Guided Journey (Book 6) Page 34
