“Why did you wear all that stuff this morning?” he asked.
“I didn’t want men to have the wrong impression of me. I want them to take me serious when I work, so I try not to dress like a pretty maid,” she answered.
“Well, if there are any of them bothering you, let me know before I leave, and I’ll straighten them out for you,” he offered immediately.
“Thank you, Kestrel. That’s very gallant of you,” she said gently, placing her hand atop his on the table, and squeezing it with friendly gratitude.
Kestrel was not used to drinking ale; it was something that he rarely did, and he began to feel woozy as soon as he drank his first mug. Before long it grew difficult for him to easily follow the conversation as Alicia talked to him about Colonel Silvan, and how brilliant the man was.
“I do anything he asks me to, anything!” she said emphatically, as they sat in their fourth tavern of the evening, drinking once again. “He only wants what’s best for elvendom.”
It was the first time Kestrel had thought about Colonel Silvan in hours, the first time he remembered the request that he allow his ears to be butchered.
“I’m afraid he’s asking too much of me,” Kestrel said. “I don’t know if I can do the things he wants me to.”
“You can Kestrel,” Alicia said comfortingly, placing both her hands atop his on the table top. “He wouldn’t ask anything of you that he didn’t believe you could succeed at. And look at all you did today! You single-handedly beat two elves at once, using just a broomstick! You healed me of my wounds, you carried out favors for sprites and imps; you can do so much! You could do great things to help every elf in the kingdom if you listened to Silvan!”
“You think so?” Kestrel asked carefully as another mug of ale arrived at the table. “I’m afraid of what he wants of me.”
“Do you trust me?” Alicia asked suddenly.
“I do,” Kestrel said sincerely, and felt a glow of warmth when she squeezed his hands tightly in appreciation.
“Then trust Silvan. Do what he wants. Let him use you to protect us from these new human tactics,” she urged.
Kestrel closed his eyes, and felt his head spinning. He opened them again, and saw Alicia’s large eyes staring intently at him. “Alright, I’ll do it,” he agreed.
“Good choice!” she replied. “Here drink up your ale,” she nudged the new tankard towards him. “I’ll be right there with you,” she said as he tilted the latest mug of ale upward and threw his head back, letting the bitter brew flow readily down his gullet.
He felt dizzier as he finished the ale, and dropped the mug on the table.
“Here, help me lift him up and carry him out,” he heard Alicia tell someone, and then arms were grabbing him and raising him from the tavern bench.
“You can trust me, Kestrel. I’m the best surgeon Silvan has,” he heard a voice say. He vaguely understood it was Alicia talking to him, and then he knew nothing as he passed out, intoxicated from too much ale.
He slept in a drunken stupor, one filled with nightmares of knives and great pain and voices speaking distantly. But he never awoke completely, intoxicated as he was from the great quantities of ale that Alicia had urged him to drink.
Chapter 14 — A Changed Countenance
When Kestrel awoke he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move his head, which was enveloped in something that seemed to include a dull cloud of pain. He found that not only was there a wrapping around his eyes, but his head was held immobilized by blocks and straps, and his arms, legs, and torso were all strapped down as well.
“Where am I?” he asked aloud. “Is anyone there? Let me free!”
“I’m here Kestrel; relax, my dear,” he heard Alicia’s voice.
“What’s happening?” he asked, confused by a foggy, incomplete collection of memories.
He felt hands gently touch his head, then fingertips barely tapped his face, until there was a change in the weight of the bandages he felt on his face. The light penetrating to his eyes increased as well.
“You’re in my clinic,” Alicia spoke softly and distractedly. Another layer of bandaging lifted from his face, and then the swaths of cloth on top of each eye were lifted away.
He blinked his eyes open, feeling their crusts give way to his efforts, then suddenly he grunted in surprise as drops of water fell onto his eyes. “What are you doing?” he sputtered.
“Close your eyes,” Alicia said, and then a cloth dabbed and wiped at his eyes.
He looked up and clearly saw her, hovering directly over him. “What’s happening?” he asked plaintively.
She looked down at him with an expression of complete concentration, then delicately removed a bandage from his forehead.
“Outstanding!” she whispered. “Let’s look at the real challenge.”
Her hands began to remove bandages from the sides of his head. “Alicia, set me free; tell me what happened. I don’t understand,” Kestrel begged. “Please release me. Untie me.”
“I will, sweetie, I will,” she muttered absently as she focused on his head, her face only inches above his. More bandages came away, and she raised her head, smiling down at him beatifically. “This is extraordinary, Kestrel,” she said, her gaze at last moving to his eyes.
“Here,” she did something that removed the blocks from the sides of his head, then unbuckled a number of straps across his chest, then from his arms. He heard a movement behind him, and a man in a uniform suddenly came into his field of vision, carrying a disk.
Alicia thrust her arms beneath Kestrel’s back and raised him up to a sitting position. “Go get Silvan,” she said to someone, then took the disk from the orderly and held it up in front of Kestrel’s face.
It was a mirror, a highly polished disk of metal.
“Look at how well it worked!” Alicia said, one hand holding the disk as the other hand pointed to the features on his head. “Look at these eyebrows!” her finger stroked the nearly horizontal stripes that now replaced the previous rising arches that had framed his eyes.
“And look at these,” her hand gently grabbed his chin and turned his head slightly to the side, then her fingers drew a lingering trail up to his ear on the side if his head, a small ear with a rounded top, devoid of the whorls and ridges that were the classic ornamentation of elven ears. He had human ears on his head, and human eyebrows. She had made him look completely human.
“Does this hurt?” she asked as her fingers gently traced and probed every crevasse and rise on his ear.
“No,” he mumbled, staring at the mirror in horrified amazement.
“It was that spring water! It made the incisions and changes heal overnight! That was so amazing when you took me to the spring. I almost gave away the plan, when I realized what the water would allow us to do,” she spoke directly to Kestrel.
His legs were still strapped to the table but his hands were free. He looked down and saw a tray of knives beside the mat he lay on.
With his right hand he grabbed the mirror out of Alicia’s hand and smacked it hard against the throat of the orderly who stood beside her. His other hand reached out and grabbed her hair, jerking her violently against him, in front of him, while his right hand darted and snatched up the largest knife on the tray and brought it to rest against her bare throat, pressing tightly against the pale white skin.
“What have you done to me?” he wailed in anguish. “You’ve turned me into a monster! I look just like a human now!
“Oh Alicia, how could you do this to me? I thought I could trust you after all we went through yesterday! I thought you would look out for me, the way I tried to take care of you,” he felt tears of anger and sadness falling freely down his cheeks as he resisted the impulse to press and slice with the blade, to empty her body of life in retribution for the damage she had done to his.
