“What woman?” the innkeeper asked. “My daughter says she didn’t give out any keys.”
“An older lady — she gave me the key when I stopped by this afternoon, and she sent me down to the hot springs to heal in the waters,” Kestrel replied.
“What old lady? And those myths about the spring water healing are just hot air — there’s no truth to them,” the innkeeper said dismissively.
“Anything else, or can I rest now?” Kestrel asked. The innkeeper seemed calmer, and Kestrel was anxious to close the door so he could examine his sleeping sprite.
“What were you carrying?” the innkeeper asked.
“What a messenger does is no concern to you. Good night,” Kestrel abruptly answered, shook his messenger tube in the man’s face, then pushed the door shut, and let out a sigh of relief several seconds later when he heard the man’s footsteps fade down the hall.
He felt himself shivering with excitement, his nerves stretched to their limit by all that was taking place, and he sat down carefully on the bed, next to the small form beneath the cover. He reached cautiously for the edge of the thin blanket and pulled it down, peeling it away and exposing the unconscious sprite to his curious gaze.
Even away from the magical spring, her beauty appeared just as unimpeachable as it had before. Her skin was so smoothly unblemished in its appearance that he felt compelled to touch it, to confirm that the porcelain perfection held the softness of flesh beneath it.
He gently placed his fingertip against her cheek, marveling at how soft the flesh felt beneath his outsized finger, and then suddenly he gasped and pulled his finger back, as if it had been burnt. The sprite’s eyes had opened.
Chapter 9 — Dewberry
The sprite sat up, a wild look in her eyes, starring at Kestrel, then around the room, then back at Kestrel. She gave a shriek, a loud, shrill scream that belied her tiny size, then disappeared from the room, the mattress rebounding ever so slightly as her small form evaporated.
Kestrel sat still in amazement, then let his hand gently trace over the shadow of an impression of the spot where she had laid on the mattress only moments ago.
There were hurried steps thundering out in the hallway, just before more blows hammered on the door. “What in blazes is going on in there? Open the door immediately!” the innkeeper’s voice demanded.
Kestrel no longer worried about the man seeing his captive mystical creature, and opened the door wide with relief, then stepped aside to allow the suspicious hotel operator to step into the tiny room. From his spot by the doorway the man could see all aspects of the room in intimate detail; the narrow bed and the single chair were the only items of furniture, and Kestrel’s small pile of belongings sat in one corner.
The innkeeper expected to find a damsel in distress. He wanted to find such a girl. He needed to find her, so that he could explode in rage and vent his frustrations by thrashing Kestrel soundly. Unfortunately, there was no girl in the room, and no evidence that one had ever been there with Kestrel.
“What was that scream? Was it you?” the man asked Kestrel, wheeling on his heels to face the innocent messenger.
“What scream?” Kestrel asked with a blank face.
“That scream; the scream: we heard it all the way downstairs!” the innkeeper replied in exasperation.
“I wonder if it came from outside, maybe?” Kestrel asked.
“No! It was inside; it was up here,” the man insisted.
“You better go check the other rooms. Do you want me to help you with your search?” Kestrel felt an impulsive need to bait the man.
“I know how to check my own rooms, thank you!” the innkeeper spoke indignantly, knowing that he had lost his expected battle before it had even begun. Seeing no way to gracefully declare victory or even acknowledge defeat, he stepped backwards into the hallway and pulled the door abruptly closed behind him, nearly hitting Kestrel as he slammed in into its frame in the wall.
Kestrel leaned back against the door and smiled a quiet smile of satisfaction, so pleased with the innkeeper’s discomfort that he almost forgot momentarily about the sprite he had lost.
As he stood there, his mind wandering back to amazement at the thought that he had encountered and saved the life of a sprite, he was startled by the sudden return of the sprite, standing on top of his mattress, her eyes blazing and a small, needle-sharp knife in one hand.
She jabbed fiercely at him, making him twist out of the way of her ill-intent.
“What are you doing?” Kestrel cried.
“I’m getting revenge!” the sprite answered savagely, slashing with her knife as Kestrel grabbed the thin pillow off the bed to protect himself from her attack. The knife looked too small to inflict fatal damage unless it struck him just right, but there was clearly much opportunity for painful injury to result from the sprite’s determined efforts.
“You’ve got no reason to seek revenge against me!” the elf protested.
“No reason?!” the sprite’s eyes were practically burning with emotion as she echoed him.
“You raped me!” she spit the words at him.
“What?” Kestrel’s voice rose an octave in shock at the accusation.
The sprite stabbed at him again, her blade penetrating the pillow and cutting into his shirt.
“You heard me! You know what you did! Now I’m going to have an ugly baby, as ugly as you, and it will forever be an outcast for looking so ugly!” she emphasized her last sentence by leaping off the bed, jumping high and coming down at him knife first, so that he dropped his ineffective pillow shield, now shredded, and grabbed her with both hands, holding her at arm’s length as she swung wildly.
“I did not rape you!” he protested in shock as they slid to the floor. He rolled over and above her, holding her down against the floor.
“You did! I know you did. I woke up on your bed with you right over me like you are now, leering at me, and I found my dress was on backwards. You undressed me, used me, then tried to cover it up by putting the dress back on me, but you couldn’t even do that right,” she continued to try to slice him, and he changed his tactic, releasing one hand’s grip on the sprite’s body to grab her knife-wielding hand. He seized the knife and took it from her.
“I undressed you to put you in the healing spring waters after I rescued you from the wolf that was going to feed you to her cubs for dinner!” Kestrel said heatedly. “I undressed you, carried you into the spring water so that you could heal from the wounds the wolf gave you. Then I dressed you and carried you back here because I didn’t want to leave you alone unconscious where the wolf might get you again.”
Kestrel saw confusion on the sprite’s face, and then the fire went out from her eyes. “That’s really what happened?” she asked.
He nodded. “You can release me. I won’t try to harm you,” the small blue being said with a sudden sincerity that Kestrel believed.
Cautiously, Kestrel released the girl and stood up. She lay on the floor looking up at him, propped up on her elbows, then abruptly disappeared again.
Kestrel looked at the empty space beneath him, then looked at the tiny knife in his hand. She was gone again, but he had proof — in a sense — that he had encountered a sprite. He looked down at the cut in his shirt, and looked at the knife in his hand; they were proof to him that he wasn’t just dreaming.
There was another knock on the door. “Is there a woman in there with you?” the innkeeper was upon Kestrel’s threshold once again, though his voice seemed less confrontational than before.
Kestrel opened the door wide once again, giving the innkeeper another look at the room where he stood alone. “Shall I report this harassment to the army officials?” Kestrel asked.
“My daughter swore she heard a woman’s voice arguing,” the despondent innkeeper explained. “But I see there’s no one here but you, obviously. I apologize. Please come down to the dining room and have a meal on the house.” The man was defeated and throwing in the towel on his efforts to catch some improper behavior by Kestrel.
