Jeffrey Quyle - The Healing Spring

“Kestrel! Human-friend! I need you! Jonson is hurt, badly, and I’m afraid he will die! Please come take him to the healing spring!” Dewberry was in the air above them, hovering and darting wildly in the dim light of the candle, and Kestrel could see tears rolling down her cheeks, glistening like blue crystals.

Merilla stifled a shriek, as Kestrel looked up at Dewberry’s heart-wrenching distress, then looked down at Merilla’s expression of disbelief beneath him.

“I have to try to help,” he told Merilla, then looked up. “Dewberry get the help you need to carry me.”

Dewberry disappeared without response, as Kestrel sat up. “I’m sorry, my love.”

“We are truly forbidden to be together, aren’t we?” Merilla asked in an emotionless voice. “The gods do not want us to couple.”

“It seems like it, for now,” Kestrel answered as he pulled his pants back on and stuffed his feet into his boots. He went back out to the front room, where he was surrounded by Dewberry and three other sprites.

“We’re going,” Dewberry shouted, as Kestrel reached for his staff, and felt his fingers clasp the wooden shaft a fraction of a second before he left Merilla’s dark apartment and entered the momentary, disquieting transition of chill and darkness that the sprites’ translocation created, then re-materialized in a dark, cool swamp. There was fetid water up to his knees, spilling over the tops of his boots to fill them inside.

“Where are we? Where’s Jonson?” Kestrel asked. He could see virtually nothing in the blackness.

“Reasion,” Dewberry called, “go home and get a lantern. Jonson’s must have burned out.”

Seconds later, a light appeared, and Kestrel instantly saw a horrific sight; Jonson floated atop the scummy water of the swamp, his legs gone, a dark stain spreading out around him. Next to his body floated a huge, toothy lizard-like monster, twice as long as Kestrel was tall. It was dead, a shaft driven through its skull.

Kestrel picked up Jonson’s body. “Take us to the spring!” he cried out, and multiple small bodies embraced him, then deposited him on the lawn next to the spring, where the warm water of the pool was covered in mists. Kestrel plunged Jonson’s body down into the water, laying him on the sandy shelf that was the usual place he rested the sprites.

“Now, Dewberry, take me to Alicia, the elf-woman who came here with us before! Hurry!” Kestrel called. “We may need her to save him!”

The bodies surrounded Kestrel again, and suddenly they were all in a room, where Alicia slept alone in a narrow bed. The lantern in Reasion’s hand illuminated the scene, as Kestrel knelt next to the bed and shook Alicia’s shoulder. “Alicia! Wake up. We need a doctor,” Kestrel said loudly.

The woman’s eyes sprang open, and she looked at Kestrel without comprehension for only a half second, then sat up and looked around the room at the floating crowd of blue bodies. “Gods above! Kestrel, what are you doing here?” she pulled her sheet up over her torso.

“We need you. Our friend, Jonson, the water imp, he had his legs bit off by a monster creature. He’s at the healing spring now. Please come look at him,” Kestrel said, shaking his head slightly as he tried to remove the untimely comparison his mind was making even now between Alicia’s sleek elven body and Merilla’s soft and shapely human one.

“I need, I need my tools,” Alicia replied, climbing out of bed and hurriedly wrapping a robe around her body. “Let’s go,” she darted out a doorway and down the hall. They were in the very building where she had operated on him, Kestrel realized, and he wondered where Silvan was sleeping.

“Take her first, and take the light,” Kestrel instructed Dewberry, “explain to her what has happened, then come back and get me.”

“Kestrel?” Alicia asked, looking at him as small blue bodies wrapped around her, just before she disappeared.

Kestrel left the room and left the building, then went trotting down the dark, deserted road of the base towards the supply building. There was no one present, and he threw his shoulder against the door, crashing it open. Someone was sure to hear and come investigate, but he hoped to be gone before they found him.

Inside the dark front room Kestrel fumbled with objects on the counter until he felt the lantern that he thought he remembered. “Friend Kestrel?” Dewberry’s voice called him. “Why are you here?”

“Dewberry, I’ve got a lantern. Take it and light it, then bring it back here,” Kestrel instructed.

“I will,” she replied. He couldn’t see her, but he felt the lantern disappear from his hands, and within thirty seconds Dewberry and the other sprites were with her, the lantern providing illumination.

“Good, let’s go get some water skins, so that you can use them for Jonson,” he said, grabbing the lantern and walking into the warehouse in the back of the building. Weapons were to the left, food in the center, clothing on the right. Kestrel guessed that the water skins would be with the clothing, and went down that aisle. He walked its full length and halfway back up the next aisle before he saw the supply of empty skins, piled in a large wooden crate.

There was a sound at the front of the warehouse. “Who’s in here?” a voice called.

Kestrel reached out and grabbed as many as he could, slung them over his shoulder, then grabbed more. “Take me to the spring!” he commanded, as a guard’s lantern light came into view, and the blue bodies carried him away, back to the spring.

Alicia was kneeling in the waters of the spring, next to Jonson, her robe lying abandoned in a white puddle on the ground next to where he stood.

The doctor looked up and saw Kestrel, and he read a sense of comfort in the light that reflected back from her eyes. “Kestrel come here,” she told him.

“No! Wait, I forgot about your ears. Stay there; it’s not important,” she stopped him from advancing. “What do you have?” she asked.

“I brought water skins,” he explained, making a heap on the ground next to her robe. “How is he?”

“He’s alive,” she replied. “And he’s in this water. The immediate danger was loss of blood, but the spring water has sealed off the veins, so he’s not losing any more right now.” She rose and stepped up onto the shore line, then pulled her robe over her shoulders.

“You must have acted quickly. Where were you hunting this monster?” she asked as she stood next to Kestrel shivering slightly in the chill air.

Kestrel pulled her body up against his in a hug that allowed them to warm one another. “I wasn’t with him. I was up in Estone when Dewberry came and got me, and took me to wherever he has attacked. I picked him up and brought him here, then we came to see you. Everything has happened in the last ten minutes or less, I’d guess,” he said, then was silent, as he thought about the fact that ten minutes ago he had been with Merilla.

“What is that fragrance?” Alicia asked, sniffing his shoulder. “It’s delightful.”

Kestrel was glad she couldn’t see his face, as he blushed at the thought of Merilla’s perfume clinging to his body.

“Here, why don’t you get back in the water to warm up, and you can fill the water skins,” he suggested.

She stepped back, then hesitated. “I guess you’ve seen me before; no reason to be shy now, is there?” she spoke more to herself than to him as she dropped her robe and picked up several skins.

“He ought to stay here as long as we can arrange,” Alicia said as she started to fill the water skins and toss them up on the shore. “Given what we’ve seen the water do for you, he should grow his legs back with enough time and enough exposure to the water.”