from his room, and he put them on as well.
“I’ll walk you out,” Giardell told him when Kestrel appeared ready.
It only took a few moments to reach the doorway, where Kestrel discovered he was in the very building that held Silvan’s office, the building where he had first met Alicia just the morning before. He wordlessly took Giardell’s offered hand and shook it, then began to walk alone down the road, his hood pulled up over his head, presenting a forlorn image as he trudged away on his lonely journey.
“He’s such a good boy,” Alicia told Silvan as they watched him from the window of the colonel’s office on the fourth floor. “I hated to do that to him, to go through all those charades; the cold character, the fake assault in the apartment, pretending to be unconscious. In the end, it was the things we didn’t try to set up, the atmosphere set up by the sprites and the spring, that made him trust me.”
“You know how important he is, how important his mission could be,” Silvan told her, draping his arm around her shoulder to comfort her. “And you did such beautiful work on him. He’ll appreciate someday how realistic you made his human visage.”
“I hope so,” his wife responded. “I’ll miss him if he doesn’t give me a chance to be his friend again someday.”
Silvan gave her shoulder a silent squeeze, then they walked away from the window, and Kestrel walked on to his uncertain future.
Chapter 15 — Belinda’s Tale
Kestrel didn’t talk to another elf along the journey to Firheng. He avoided villages, and slept in trees. He ate the supplies he had been given, along with crickets and game he caught along the way, and he stewed in bitterness and regret.
He had lost all sense of identity and hope. He had been raised as an elf, among elves, and only thought of himself as an elf, despite the human heritage he carried and was taunted for. But now, Alicia had erased the physical ties that bound him to elfdom, and set him adrift. He contemplated what to do. He was unescorted, free to do what he wanted, and while he ran along the road he carefully plotted scenarios in which he just disappeared, never arriving at Firheng at all. He could disappear in the forest, and leave all the elves and the humans behind, he realized. He had his bow and arrows; he had the skills he had learned at Firheng. He could easily survive in the wilderness. Or he could take his human identity and just head straight to the human lands, and live among them, not as a spy, but just as a displaced person — someone forced to go where his identity allowed.
But he knew he would do neither, nor would he reverse course and go back to Center Trunk and force Alicia to reverse the operation she had performed on him, though he thought about that too. He thought about Alicia, cold, then warm, then deceitful, and ultimately, unobtainable Alicia, married to the man who had ordered her to seduce him and mutilate him. He cried at night, silent tears of sorrow and longing for Cheryl and Lucretia and Alicia, as he wished the world was a different place.
Finally, on his third night of traveling, as he settled into a nest high in a tree, he called out to Kere, the elven goddess of fortune.
“What can I do for you, grandchild?” the goddess was suddenly present, sitting on the branch above him, faintly visible in the moonlight and the starlight as an elderly woman, the same visage she had used when she had greeted him in the village inn weeks before, back at the beginning of his adventure.
“Can you take me back in time and give me an opportunity to do things differently?” he asked.
I am the goddess of fortune, not chaos,” she replied scornfully. “You should not wish to change any significant thing in your life, elfling Kestrel,” she added. “When you look back on all of this, it will look obvious and necessary and valuable.
“Embrace your opportunities Kestrel,” Kere told him, reaching down to pat the top of his head. “You have things you must do for your people, our people, the elves. And you have things you must do for me. I suspect that your other deities even have expectations of things you will do for them,” she added, alluding to the human gods.
“So go to Firheng, and do everything they tell you, learn everything they teach you, and follow every one of the orders they give you. That will lead you to your fortune, and a future that will satisfy you,” Kere told him. “Be at peace, grandchild,” she added, and then touched his head again, giving him a feeling of contentment, before she disappeared.
With that holy command ringing in his ears, Kestrel doggedly walked through the rain all the following day, his hood up again to both protect and hide his head. He reached the gates of Firheng in the early evening, and walked to the training base, where he entered Cosima’s office and found Belinda at work at her desk.
“I’m here to see Commander Cosima,” he told her, keeping his hood up and extended so that his features were hidden in deep shadows.
Belinda looked up from her desk, and studied the dark opening in the cowl, studying the dim features within closely. “Kestrel? Is that you?” she asked in a quizzical tone.
“Hello Belinda,” he replied, dreading the reaction he expected when she saw his features. “Yes, it’s me. I’m back to finish my training.”
“Well, let me see you!” she urged. “You’re inside out of the rain now; pull your hood down.”
He hesitated. “I’m different now, Belinda,” he warned her.
“Oh, you sound the same, like the same modest young guardsman we met before,” she dismissed his concern.
He raised his hands and pulled the hood back, feeling drops of rainwater become displaced and tumbling downward as he revealed his features. Belinda looked at him intently as the exposure revealed the new, humanized, Kestrel.
She slowly stood as she gazed at him intently, then silently walked around the desk to stand directly beside him, carefully circling from his right side to his left, her eyes only inches from his head as she examined him. “Magnificent!” she breathed at last.
“What an extraordinary job they did on you! your surgeon did the finest work I’ve ever seen; you could walk down any street in any human city, and not draw a second glance, except from the girls who thought you were so handsome,” she told him. “May I?” she asked, raising her hand to touch him.
He nodded in confusion, and her fingertips gently began to trace the contours of his eyebrows and his ears, then she raised up on her tip toes and began to gently kiss his ear lobes.
There was the sound of a door latch, and she drew back, as Commander Cosima came out of his office, looking down at some papers in his hand. “Belinda, could you?” his question stopped, unfinished, as he looked up and saw Kestrel’s human features.
“Is this our returning agent?” he asked rhetorically. “I almost don’t recognize you, yet of course I do.
“Welcome back Kestrel,” he said. “You’ve had a short trip, but clearly a profitable one.
“How extraordinary,” he breathed softly as he walked up beside Belinda and made Kestrel uncomfortable with his close scrutiny. “Who performed the operation?” he asked.
“Alicia, Silvan’s wife,” Kestrel answered, as his two inspectors bent so close that he could clearly hear them both breathing.
“You should give her your most profound thanks,” Cosima told him. “Her work is going to make your life very secure among the humans; no one will ever suspect your loyalties.
“It’s been years since we’ve had anyone so perfect, hasn’t it, Belinda?” he asked.
“Perfect,” she softly agreed. “Yes. It’s been years.”
“Well, go take your old quarters; they’re still available. Report to training tomorrow at the usual time,” Cosima advised Kestrel. “And of course, for your sake, I’d advise you to stay within the base as much as possible. Don’t go out into the city without your hood up or at least a hat — and only after dark.
“We look forward to preparing you,” Casimo told him, then turned to Belinda, to begin to go over the papers he carried from his office, as Kestrel left under Belinda’s watchful gaze.
The next day he nervously returned to his training, but was immediately put at his ease by Arlen’s cheerful greeting. “I didn’t realize I had trained you so well you’d start to look like a human! I must be the best arms trainer