The Guided Journey (Book 6) (4 page)

Dewberry did a midair summersault to celebrate Kestrel’s proposal, as the other two imps clapped their hands gleefully.

“So let’s go fill up these skins as quickly as possible?” Kestrel suggested.  “The sooner we can heal these elves the quicker I can uphold my promise.”

He was swarmed by the small blue companions and instantly transported to the healing spring.

“Should we try to work out a way to travel through time?” Dewberry asked.  “That way we can come back from the future when you will make more promises, and we’ll let you fulfill them in advance.”

“I would splash water on you,” Kestrel growled as he stood in the spring, filling skins with water.  “But then you’d fall asleep and be glad of it.”  He tried to hurry the process of filling the bags quickly, even dropping them two at a time into the spring.

He hurried through the process, then stepped back up onto the shore and strung all the water skins back over his shoulders, as the imps – unhappy about being at the spring but not indulging in it – quickly surrounded him and then lifted him into the nothingness of their means of movement through space.  Kestrel re-emerged in the village he had left only a few minutes before, once again loaded with fresh water from the spring.

“Thank you again friends,” he told the imps where they released him.  “I’ll call for your aid if I need it, but I pray that your work is done for now.  Go home and enjoy your time, and don’t forget that we’ll have a long visit at the healing spring one day soon!”

“Forget such a thing?  Never!” Dewberry squawked, and then the imps disappeared.

Alone as the only healthy person in the village, he went among the last few houses to offer doses of the spring water to all the elves he found.  He came to the last house in the village, a large, stone house on the southern edge of the village, one that was regal, but also forlorn and abandoned looking.

Kestrel searched the house but found no one inside, nor even any evidence that the house had been occupied in recent times.  By the end of his perusal of the structure, the sun was set, and he decided to simply sleep in a front room of the empty home, rather than bother any of the ill elves he had found.  He planned to go about
re-dosing with the spring water in the morning, and to await the arrival of the assistance that he hoped Remy had organized for the village.

He sipped some of the spring water as a precaution against the village’s infection, and ate lightly from the little bit of food that was left in his pack.  He’d stood in the spring water while he’d been filling the water skins, so he knew the sip of the water was superfluous, but he took comfort from the taste and the feel of the water nonetheless; the house felt uncomfortable.  It was physically solid, but there was an indescribable air of something that worried Kestrel, something that made him feel uneasy.

He stayed in the front room, and close to the empty window, the idea of an easy escape giving him some comfort.  There was nothing in the house to be frightened of, he told himself, so he refused to actually leave the house.  He knew he had inspected the house, and found no evidence of anyone else in the house, but as he laid on the floor, his mind drowsy, he imagined he heard drifting snatches of conversations, but the words were in no language he could understand.  And there seemed to be a hateful personality that occupied the structure, one that was searching for something or someone, driven by hate and hostility.

He opened his eyes and sat up, then blinked, for sunrise was occurring.  He had fallen asleep somehow
, despite his unease.  There was no evidence that anyone had troubled him.  There were no tracks in the dust except his own.  The voices he had heard must have been a dream, he decided.

And though he still felt exhausted and tired, as though he hadn’t slept, he decided to get up, to get out of the house where his sleep was so troubled.

Kestrel gathered up his collection of water skins, and walked to the far end of the village, to the first house he had visited when he and Remy had entered.

“Welcome, good lord, come in,” the mother greeted him at the door.  “Come in, please come in.  A visit from you is a blessing, I’d say.”

“You seem much better,” Kestrel answered as he accepted the invitation to enter the home.  “How is your son?”

“He’s sitting up in bed this morning, and he says he wants breakfast!  Who’d have thought that would be big news?” she practically laughed with happiness.  “I’m going to fix a meal for him; would you like some?” she asked.

“Yes, please,” Kestrel didn’t hesitate to answer, as he felt his stomach start to growl at the mention of breakfast.  “I’ll go look at your son first, if you don’t mind,” he offered, then stepped into the other room as the mother went into the kitchen.

“I’m the elf that made you feel better,” Kestrel introduced himself to the boy who was sitting in bed, playing with a piece of glass, reflecting rays of light in different colors into different corners of his ceiling.

“You’re an elf?” the boy asked.

“Mostly,” Kestrel said easily.  “I’m part human too.”  He dismissed the conversation as a boy’s curiosity, no longer a comment that troubled him the way it would have before he had been plucked from obscurity by Kai and sent out on his extraordinary adventures.

“How do you feel?” he asked.  The boy looked much better, but still pale, which was something that might be easily solved just by eating breakfast.  Delightful aromas were beginning to circulate in the air, as the boy’s mother began to cook a meal.

“I feel a lot better,” the boy answered as he stretched and yawned, putting  his arms high over his head.  “How did you get here so early?  Where are you from?  Where did you sleep last night?”

“I’m from Oaktown,” Kestrel answered easily.

“Nothing good comes from Oaktown, that’s what my mother says,” the boy spoke up.

“Shush now  Jereed!” his mother admonished him as she came into the room with three bowls.  “I never said any such thing,” she retorted, though her face was bright red nonetheless.

“It’s hard to know what to expect from someplace that’s far away,” Kestrel made an excuse, as he took a bowl from the woman and handed it to her son, then took another bowl for himself, as the mother sat down on the other side of the bed.

“I slept in a big, empty house on the other side of the village,” Kestrel answered the other question the boy asked.

“The haunted mansion?” Jereed looked at Kestrel.  “Did you see any monsters?”

Kestrel stole a glance at the boy’s mother; she appeared torn – she seemed to want to tell her son there were no monsters, but she also seemed eager to hear Kestrel’s answer.

“I didn’t see any monsters,” Kestrel answered with a smile.  “But I didn’t like being in there after dark either.”

“They say a monster lives there and it killed a whole family a long time ago.  That’s why no one lives there now, even though it’s the biggest house in the village,” Jereed insisted.

“Those are just stories to scare children,” his mother spoke up.  “Now eat your breakfast before it grows cold.”

The bowls had appetizing mixtures of ground acorns, mushrooms, squirrel meat, and crickets, much to Kestrel’s delight, and he exercised his self-restraint prodigiously to prevent himself from gobbling the meal too quickly and running his finger around the bowl’s interior.

“Thank you so much,” he told the woman sincerely when he was finished.  “I’d like to give your son another dose of water, and then I’ll go around to check on the neighbors.  There should be some
friends coming from Oaktown this morning to help folks in the village.  It looked like everyone here was under the illness yesterday.”

“We were, we all were,” the boy’s mother affirmed as Kestrel handed her his bowl and unstopped one of his water skins to give the boy a drink.  “A week ago a handful had it, and by three days ago we all were catching it.

“I’d never have thought Oaktown would care enough about us to send help.  That’s very kind; there must be a new lord of the land,” she speculated.

“I am,” Kestrel concurred.  “I am the Warden of the Marches now, but haven’t ever had time to go around and meet the people of this village.  I’m sorry it took such dire circumstances to cause me to come.”

“My lord!” the woman said, giving a perfunctory curtsy.  “I meant nothing unkind with my words.”

“You said nothing unkind,” Kestrel assured her.  “Now you get well,” he tousled the boy’s hair after giving him a swig of the water from the skin.  “I’ll go visit your neighbors.  Come find me if you need something,” he instructed, then nodded, and left the room.

He made his rounds of the homes, finding most of the elves in the village in much better shape by mid-morning, when a small Oaktown squad of assistants arrived, carrying packs of food, and accompanying three nurses.  Kestrel explained the situation, then sent the men to dig graves for those who had fallen to the plague, while the nurses went about delivering the rest of the healing spring water and checking on the conditions of those they encountered.

Kestrel left them to their work, while he went back to inspect the home that had so unsettled him during the night.  He stood in front of the building, inspecting the stone construction.  It was unusual by elvish standards, but not a totally one-of-a-kind structure.  It looked solid and well-built, despite its apparent abandonment.  With a deep breath, he stepped into the airy interior, and began to walk though each room, inspecting them in full daylight carefully, looking for anything that might explain the sounds he thought he had heard during the night.

His search turned up nothing, and after a pause, he decided to go down into the cellar, where a few rays of indirect light let him see that the cellar walls were also stone, and soundly mortared into place except for one extremely dim corner where the mortar was missing and some stones had fallen outward onto the cellar floor.  There were no openings among the remaining stones to allow anything large to pass through though, nothing as large as an imp even, certainly nothing that Kestrel considered likely to be able to speak in any language.

Not satisfied, but convinced that he would discover no more, Kestrel ran back up the stairs and back out into the sunshine of the afternoon.  He stood in front of the house again and looked at it one last time, then went back into the village and found the nurses and workers from Oaktown.  Together, they decided that though the village was recovering nicely thanks to the work of the water from the healing spring, they would stay for the night and then all return to Oaktown the following day.

At Kestrel’s suggestion they began fixing a large batch of stew in the center of the village, and invited the residents to come share a communal meal as the sun set.  When all the residents were gathered, nearly three score who were strong enough to come out and join the group, Kestrel was introduced by the other Oaktown visitors as the lord of the Oaktown manor and the person who had arranged for the assistance to the village.

“I want to give thanks to the Oaktown elves who came to help their neighbors, but I also want to introduce and thank some other neighbors, the neighbors who brought me here, and who helped deliver this extraordinary spring water that has cured you all and saved so many lives,” Kestrel spoke loudly.  “Please let me introduce my close friends and allies, your neighbors, the imps of the Swampy Morass!”

“Stillwater, Odare, Killcen,” he called softly, and he listened with satisfaction when the crowd of observers burst into shouts as the three blue bodies appeared in midair, then immediately disappeared again amidst the hullabaloo they had stirred.

Kestrel quieted the crowd down.  “They’re shy sometimes, so don’t make a racket,” he told the crowd.

“Will they hurt us?” someone in the crowd asked.

“Hardly,” Kestrel answered.  “They saved your lives by bringing the water here for you.”  He called the names of his friends again, and after an awkward delay, Odare arrived, darting wildly for several seconds.

“Is it safe?  Are you safe?” she asked Kestrel as she observed the crowd, then slowed down and floated to a position of sitting on his shoulder.

“All is safe,” Kestrel assured her.  “I’ve told these people that the imps saved them by delivering the spring water.”

“That’s true enough,” the imp agreed.  “We did so because you asked us to, of course, Kestrel-friend.”

“Everyone, please say thank you to the imps for saving your lives,” Kestrel called out to the crowd, who responded with a round of polite applause.

Pleased with the applause, Odare silently summoned her companions, so that Stillwater and Killcen returned as well, and the applause increased.

“These are my friends,” Kestrel shouted to the crowd, which quieted.  “There should be only friendship between the imps and the elves.  The Swampy Morass is a very big place.  It is big enough for all of us to live around it or in it in peace.  There are fish and birds and plants and game that is plentiful enough for all of us to share.

“Thank you Odare, Stillwater, and Killcen, for your friendship and help,” Kestrel saluted the imps.

“They can sleep in our house tonight after the party!” the boy Jereed piped up loudly, making the crowd laugh.  The imps bowed to show their appreciation, and the food was served.  After an hour of hovering near Kestrel and receiving the greetings from many individual elves, Odare spoke to Kestrel.