Jeffrey Quyle - The Healing Spring

“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.

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.