astonishment. “Your son — tend to him,” he snapped hastily, and she turned away from him as he began to paw among the items on the back of the horse, looking for the half full skin that held the healing water.
Moments later he found the skin and ripped it off the horse’s back, still panting in exhaustion from his own efforts. He turned and crouched next to Jacob, where Merilla knelt, holding the boy’s hands and praying for miraculous intercession to Kai.
“Amen, Kai. If this doesn’t help him we hope you will,” Kestrel muttered as he began to pour the water on Jacob’s wound, then combed the moisture back into the boy’s already wet hair. He gently placed the skin’s spout against Jacob’s lips and let a tiny trickle flow into his mouth. After a moment the child reflexively swallowed, and Kestrel released a second trickle.
“Do you have dry clothes the boy could wear?” Kestrel asked.
Merilla’s whispered prayers stopped, and she opened he eyes to look at Kestrel. “Yes,” she answered after a moment’s hesitation, “Of course.” She looked at Kestrel from the corner of her eye, then stood and returned to the horse, where her other son was pleading to be carried down.
“No, stop it,” she snapped at the boy sternly as she tried to find the dry clothes for his brother, then returned to Jacob with her findings, and began to make him comfortable in his dry things.
“What do we do now?” she asked. “Oh Kestrel, I should know what to do. I can’t think straight — with Jacob falling and you running on water and his injuries, I’m just so confused,” she sighed deeply.
“Let’s get Marco down, and then tie Jacob up on top of Rosey’s back,” he referred to the horse. “Then we’ll just have to wait and see how quickly he heals,” he tried to sound optimistic.
“Is he going to heal?” she asked, stroking the damp hair back from the nasty-looking wound.
Kestrel poured another small dose of the healing water onto the wound, then tipped a few more drops into the boy’s mouth. “The water helped me recover from the yeti attack,” he answered obliquely. “I think it will help him heal, but I just can’t be positive. You ought to keep praying to Kai,” he advised.
He helped Marco down, then lifted Jacob’s limp body atop the horse, and used a strap across the boy’s waist to keep him stable. He lifted Marco onto his own shoulders, and looked at Merilla. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.
“Kestrel, I saw you running on top of the water, the way they say elves do,” she answered.
“Let’s at least start walking while we talk,” Kestrel suggested, and they both began to climb up away from the ford and followed the trail away from the river.
“It may have looked like I was on the water, but there was a shelf along the river bank, and I used that,” he explained, conscious of how closely he was evading the truth. “Look at me; do I look like an elf to you?” he asked rhetorically.
“Not really,” she agreed. “I’d never say so unless someone suggested it.
“Kestrel,” she looked directly at him as she started to say something more, and he gazed steadily back.
“Merilla, please don’t ask me anything more about this,” he said. “It’s better that we just not say anything else, to each other or anyone else. I will take you safely to Estone, and I will treat you well along the way. Isn’t that enough?” he asked, hopefully. He did not want to experience an erosion of trust with this human woman. He didn’t even think of her as a human any longer — just a person, one who he was responsible for tending and protecting, and who was a good person in a bad situation.
She saw the pleading look in his eyes, and glanced down, then looked back up at him. “Youkal would approve of everything you have done for us since the moment you arrived and killed the yeti. I trust you Kestrel; I won’t say anything further about this until you’re ready to tell me.” She turned and looked forward, then began to increase her stride, and Kestrel knew that the dangerous moment had passed.
They walked on until nightfall, then camped, and checked on Jacob’s condition as the fire died down. He was resting on the ground, unconscious, but apparently no worse than he had been earlier.
Kestrel woke first in the morning, and stooped to check on Jacob in the early sunrise’s red rays. His complexion seemed better and the cut appeared to have visibly healed; Kestrel got more of the healing water and dribbled some on the boy’s scalp, which he gently rubbed into the wound area, then dripped it slowly between the boy’s parted lips, until he heard a rustling behind him and turned to see Merilla sitting up observing the tableau.
Kestrel put the water skin away as Merilla rose to look at the boy as well, then he returned to stoop over her shoulder and look at him. “I think he looks better this morning,” Kestrel commented.
“I do too,” she agreed.
“I think we could just spend the day here, so that he could have a calm day to lie still and heal,” Kestrel suggested.
She turned to look at him, and Kestrel saw some of the trust in her eyes that he had seen before the incident. “Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” she told him.
“And thank you for saving him yesterday. When I saw him floating away down the river, I thought for just a second that I’d never see him again, that I was going to end up losing my whole family,” Merilla added. “I know that no other man could have saved him.”
Her words were meant to be generous, but ended awkwardly, and they both felt it immediately.
“If we’re going to stay here, I’d better do a couple of things,” Kestrel said, rising. He walked back to the horse and took his time unloading the animal of all its cargo, then took the yeti parts from their rancid bag, and set them out to dry in the sunshine. “I’m going to go hunting,” he told Merilla as he held up his bow and quiver soon thereafter, and he left the campsite in search of game.
He took his time in the forest, and after he finally shot a small deer, he gutted it in the woods, then dragged the carcass back to the campsite, where Merilla and Marco were playing. Kestrel re-dosed Jacob with more of the water, noting that his water skin was growing much lighter, then began to butcher the meat. He started a fire, and by midafternoon had several steaks on spits leaning above a bed of coals, roasting aromatically.
“How long do you think our journey will be?” Merilla came over to ask him as he sat and stared at the fire, thinking about Lucretia once again.
“I think it will take seven or eight more days,” he estimated, thinking of the maps and lessons he had studied during his time with Artur in Firheng.
“I shouldn’t say this, I know, after yesterday,” Merilla began, “but your ears look a little different today, I think. Maybe it’s my imagination.”
Kestrel looked at her with a blank stare, as he tried to imagine what might be happening. After several seconds, he finally responded. “Merilla, do you have a mirror packed away that I could use?” he asked, fearing the worst.
Without comment, she walked over to the pile of goods Kestrel had unloaded from the horse, and pulled a small velvet bag out. As she walked towards Kestrel she opened it and pulled out a shiny circle about as large as Kestrel’s palm, which she handed to him. He took the mirror and looked in it as he angled it to show his ears, and then his eyebrows. Without question, both features were returning to his natural state; his elven features were re-emerging, months earlier than Alicia had told him to expect them to. The changes were still subtle, but Kestrel knew what they were heading towards.
He sat back on his haunches, and dropped his head, as he handed the mirror back to Merilla. He had touched the healing water, and it was starting to work on him, he realized. He thought about the water he had used after fighting the yeti, and then the past two days when he had touched the water while applying it to Jacob. The water had worked on him, and had accelerated the healing of the surgical changes Alicia had made — changes that were expected to last for many months were coming undone in a matter of days because of the restorative powers of the water.
And he didn’t know if he was glad or unhappy. He hadn’t wanted the surgery; he had truly come close to harming Alicia in his anger and frustration over the changes she had made. Now her work was about to be undone, and he could return to his normal life as an elven guard. He should be pleased, he knew, by this fortuitous opportunity to retire from the spying business before he had even entered it. Yet he had already spent a great deal of time in his human guise, and grown accustomed to it. In these days with Merilla he had virtually thought of himself as a part of the human race, able to live intimately with this family and be concerned about their welfare, and feel no fears of entering Estone with them. He could be a spy among the humans, and he had already mentally made the transition to thinking appropriately for that mode, he realized.
He felt Merilla’s hand on his back, gently rubbing, trying to comfort him, and tears started to fall from his
