Merilla was sitting on a tree stump gazing with empty eyes across the yard as her boys ran about in a mindless game of chase. Kestrel went to his horse to take him out in search of fodder while the sun still lit the forest, as the two little boys came running over to see the animal.
“There’s a pasture down by the brook, that way,” Merilla seemed to anticipate his need as she suddenly stood and pointed, still looking lost.
“I’ll take the boys with me if you’d like some time alone,” he offered gently.
“We’ll all go with you,” she answered, and so the four of them and the horse walked the short distance to where the steed could graze contentedly while Kestrel and Merilla sat on a log and the boys chased after crickets, while Kestrel looked on with mild longing.
“Arlen told me that all the things we saved from the yeti will fetch good money at the market in Estone,” Kestrel spoke at last, after several minutes of silence.
Merilla nodded silently.
“Our plan is to take you and your family back to Estone and sell everything we can. Arlen thinks it will give you a good amount of money you can use to support your family,” he continued.
She turned her head to look at him, still silent.
“So maybe tomorrow we can pack up the things you want to take with you, and then start the trip the day after that. What do you think?” he asked, unnerved by her lack of comment.
“Youkal will be lonely if we leave here. He was the one who wanted to live out here. He built everything. He cleared the trees, made the cabin, put up the shack,” she droned tonelessly. “I don’t think I can just leave him.”
“You can’t stay here,” Kestrel told her gently. “Your cabin is missing a wall, your cow is dead, and I’ll be leaving pretty soon. I don’t want to leave you alone out in the forest.
“Come with me to Estone and we can set you up for a new beginning with your boys. Merilla, you have to see this,” he told her.
She blinked her eyes, as the boys came running up to her to show the crickets they had caught.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. Let’s go back home, and I’ll cook some dinner for us all. After all the work you’ve done today, you deserve a hot meal,” Merilla told him as she stood. They walked silently back to the broken cabin, each boy holding one of her hands as Kestrel led his horse. They ate potatoes and cheese for dinner, then Merilla arranged a place for Kestrel to sleep on the floor in the front of the cabin, while she and her children went to their bed in the back of the structure, and they all fell asleep.
Kestrel dreamed of Merilla that night. She came to him in the middle of the night, her human figure enticing in its voluptuous curves, and he let her seduce him, until she suddenly pulled a knife from her hair and plunged it down into his chest. He awoke from the nightmare with a start, and sat straight up, then looked around the peaceful scene. Merilla and her children were silent, and the crescent moon was straight overhead. Nothing was moving or threatening, and he slowly lowered himself back down into his covers, and waited for his racing heart to return to a calmer beat.
When he fell asleep again he slept soundly and dreamlessly throughout the rest of the evening, and didn’t awaken again until well past dawn.
“Do you feel better?” Merilla asked him when he sat up in the sunshine that streamed in through the open cabin wall. “You looked exhausted last night, as you should after all you did.
“I sent the boys to play down in the meadow so they wouldn’t make noise here and wake you,” she continued. “I was just down there with them and got back a minute ago, to see if you’d like some breakfast.”
“Is it safe to leave them alone like that?” Kestrel asked.
“I told them to stay away from the water, and other than that they’ll be safe,” she spoke assuredly. “When you’ve had a yeti in the region for a few weeks there aren’t any wolves or bears or even lynx left around to bother about.”
Kestrel excused himself to go in the woods for a minute, and when he returned, Merilla had a bowl of oatmeal waiting for him, with some brown sugar on top. “It’s the best I can give you, I’m sorry,” she told him as she handed the bowl to him. “With the cow dead there’s no milk, and the yeti got the sow we kept in the woods, and all her litter too, when he first came down out of the mountains, so there wasn’t going to be any bacon this season any way.”
“Thank you,” Kestrel said, eating the bland food without enthusiasm, wanting to show appreciation for her effort.
She sat and watched him eat, then took the bowl wordlessly when he finished scooping out the last spoonful and handed it back to her.
“What are your thoughts about leaving today?” Kestrel asked. “I’d like to find some way to prepare the yeti goods for transportation. If you want to pick out the things you want to take with you, we’ve got the horse to carry a fair amount of goods.”
She sat silently looking around the cabin. “Kestrel, I’m not going to leave this place,” she said at last, as he sat with her and fidgeted nervously.
He looked at her in astonishment. “I’m not going to leave. Youkal is still fresh in his grave; I can’t just leave him here all alone to watch his dream fall apart. Once we leave, this homestead will crumble away, and it and my boys are the only thing on earth I have to remind me of what a good man he was.”
“He took me from my home in the middle of the night when I was fifteen years old,” she said softly, looking down into her lap. “We fell in love and my parents didn’t approve, so he came and stole me away and we got married the next day.
“Youkal brought me and a cow out here into the wildness and he built all this. We’ve started our family, and this is all we ever wanted. Why would I want to leave him alone now?” she looked up and challenged Kestrel with her stare.
“I don’t know,” he said softly.
“Have you ever lost someone you loved?” Merilla asked him. “It’s so hard to imagine that he’s not going to laugh at my next joke, or pinch me when I’m not expecting, or take one of the boys up in his arms and make then laugh.”
She needed time to accept the tragedy that had befallen her, he understood. He realized he could grant her some time; he was under no strict deadline. “I’ll stay a few days to help around here, if you want me to,” he said. “Maybe in a couple of days Youkal’s spirit will be satisfied, and ready for you to go,” he suggested.
She looked back at him, and nodded her head, although he saw doubt in her eyes. “You’re being a good man to try to help, and I’m being stupid not to leave,” she dabbed at her eyes, and tears started to fall. She raised her apron to her face, sobbing, as Kestrel sat quietly, uncomfortably beside her, unsure of what to do.
A minute later she lowered the apron from her face, her eyes and nose red. “Let’s stay here a couple of days and I’ll give you an answer. Can we?”
“Of course,” Kestrel replied, relieved that she hadn’t refused to consider leaving. He stood up, still feeling uneasy about the woman’s open display of grief, for which he could offer no comfort. “I’ll go tend to my horse,” he said awkwardly. “Is there anything you’d like for me to do today around here?”
“I’ll go get the boys,” she also stood. “I don’t have anything in mind. If I think of something I’ll let you know,” she answered, and they went their separate ways.
Kestrel brushed his horse, then mounted it and rode into the woods. He ate a few crickets, always a favorite snack of elves, to satisfy the hunger that Merilla’s oatmeal had not addressed, then strung his bow and shot a brace of squirrels to take back to the cabin and offer for the next meal. He returned before noon, and found Merilla sitting on a chair in the sunshine, watching the boys play in the yard.
She was delighted to see him return, and took the squirrels enthusiastically; he wondered if she had doubted his return. Kestrel gave the boys turns riding on his horse, going gently around the yard to their unending delight, then he led the horse and the boys down to the pasture so that his mount could graze,
while Merilla had time to herself in the cabin all afternoon.
They ate a delicious pie with squirrel and potato filling that night for dinner, and after the boys went to bed, Merilla came out to talk to Kestrel under the stars in the yard.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I’m here to wait for you,” he answered.
“No, why were you and your friends out here in the wilderness? This is not on any road or any route from one place to another. We never see strangers around here,” she said.
“We were here to check on the yeti,” Kestrel told her. “And we found it.”
“You came looking for the yeti?” she asked in astonishment. “What sane person does such a thing?”
“We were told there was a yeti that had come down from the Water Mountains and was terrorizing settlers in this area. We were told to come check on the reports. It was a test as part of my training. We just happened to come to the right place to find it and fight it right away,” Kestrel explained.
“If hunting a yeti is training, I’d hate to imagine what the full job must be,” Merilla exclaimed. “Who are you? Are you some part of the army?”
“I can’t tell you, Merilla,” he answered, knowing that they had stumbled close to the secrets he had to keep. “And it doesn’t matter now. I’m just Kestrel, and I’m here to take care of you.”
She stood up. “I’ll go to bed now,” she said abruptly. “Good night Kestrel,” she added, then walked into the cabin and turned down the lantern, leaving only the faint starlight to illuminate the yard.
Kestrel crawled into his covers, remorseful for having offended the woman with his secrets, but knowing he had no choice. “Goddess, let her find peace, and let her choose to leave this place,” he prayed to Kai, seeking the human goddess for the first time since the rain storm.
“I will watch over her as one of my own, young one, just as I watch over you,” he perceived a reply from the goddess, and then he fell asleep.
Kestrel awoke soon after sunrise the next morning, and quietly went to check on his horse. A movement on the far side of the yard surprised him, and he turned to see Merilla kneeling on the ground beside her husband’s grave. She saw him and stood, then dusted the grass and dirt off her nightgown, and came stalking across the yard to stand directly in front of him.
“I dreamed that the goddess spoke to me last night, and said that Youkal wants me to go with you,” she said hesitatingly. “I know that it is the right thing to do; I’ve known that since you first said it, I just couldn’t speak it aloud. If you can wait until tomorrow, I’ll pick and pack today, and tell the boys that we’re going to go on a journey. Is that acceptable?” She pulled her nightgown tightly around her, her arms crossed on her chest as her hands clutched the material.
“Tomorrow will be fine for departing. I’ll do anything you want me to do to help you today,” he answered.
She dropped her arms to her sides. “Would you hold me, just this once? I want to feel a man’s arms protect me here one more time.” She looked up at him, and he saw that tears were flowing once again.
He held his arms wide, and felt the curves of her human body press against him as he enveloped her in a hug. He thought of Lucretia, the girl he had wanted to know, who had died in battle against humans, and he thought of Cheryl, whose father had also died in the same battle. He should hate this woman, a member of the race that was attacking his homeland, the race that he was supposed to infiltrate and undermine. Yet after the short time he had spent here with her, he felt only sympathy for her, with her life being torn apart.
“Thank you,” Merilla said, speaking into his chest. “You feel so good right now. I wish it was all a dream. I wish I could look up and see Youkal looking down at me with his crooked grin. Oh Kestrel, how will I ever be able to live again?” she sobbed.
“You’ll live one day at a time, and you’ll live to remember Youkal and to raise your boys every day as best you can, to be as good as their father was,” he replied, not sure where the words came from, but sensing they were right.
She raised her head up to look at him. “I will; I’ll raise the boys to be as good as Youkal was,” she agreed, then pressed herself away from him, and hurried back to the house.
That day she sorted through her belongings, and made a large pile of the items she wanted to take with her, then sorted again and shrank the size of the pile. Kestrel gently told her it was still too much to take, and they argued about the need to carry the yeti remnants, which were growing pungent in their odor, but Kestrel insisted that the yeti had to go with them, and her pile had to grow smaller. That night, after she prepared a simple dinner, the last one she would cook in her ruined cabin, she stood by the final selection of items she would take back to Estone.
“We used to always watch the sun set above that mountain,” she pointed to a tall, singular mountain with a very steep and pointed peak. “Youkal said that it pointed up to heaven, but that we had a little bit of heaven right here,” she told Kestrel with a sigh, but without breaking into melancholy tears. She put her boys to bed, then came back out and sat in the darkening yard with Kestrel.
“Do you believe we’ll make this journey without troubles?” she asked.
“I’m sure we will,” Kestrel assured her. “With the horse to carry things, we’ll only need seven or eight days to reach Estone,” he guessed.
“How were the roads on the way here? Did you have any troubles?” Merilla asked him.
“We came a roundabout way, through the forest mostly, but everything was fine,” Kestrel assured her, worried about being pinned down in facts he didn’t know. “I’m going to go say good night to the horse,” he stood up to end the awkward conversation. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he told her, then walked away.
Chapter 18 – The River Crossing
The next morning they spent several hours loading and rearranging their goods on Kestrel’s horse, and on their own backs, then stood motionlessly in the yard for five minutes as Merilla looked at the remains of her lost life.
“I’m ready,” she said finally, her head down, and they began to trek eastward. They passed no other habitations that day, and camped atop a small hill that night. Kestrel did not think he and Merilla could maintain watch all through the night with just the two of themselves, so he set no watch, and they all awoke refreshed the next morning. At noon they came to a large river, a different location on the same river Kestrel had crossed before, he suspected, with Arlen and Artur. Their trail was atop a bluff, and so they followed the trail along the south bank of the river until early evening.
He shot several squirrels easily, and they roasted the meat on small sticks held above their fire that night. Kestrel unpacked his horse, and set the yeti remains at some distance from the camp that night to protect them all from the unpleasant smell the rotting flesh emitted.
The next day their trail descended down to a wide sweeping turn in the river, an obvious spot to ford through the current. The little boys had taken turns variously walking and running with them, riding on the horse, and riding on Kestrel’s back up to that point in the journey, so Kestrel piled them both atop the horse, Merilla pulled her skirts up high and tied them around her waist, and they began to cross the flowing water.
Despite its width and shallowness, the water travelled in a surprisingly strong current, and Kestrel held Merilla’s hand with one of his, while he led his horse with the other hand, allowing them to forge through the water together, taking small steps to keep their balance, and letting the strength of the horse help lead them across, though Kestrel could see the current was pressing them towards the downstream end of the ford.
There was a sudden muffled cry from atop the horse where the two boys were tussling, and then a splash on the downstream side of the animal. Kestrel maneuvered around the front of his steed, and saw one of Merilla’s boys floating rapidly away, carried by the river’s current out of the ford and around the bend of the stream.
“Kestrel! It’s Jacob! Please get him! Save my baby!” Merilla screamed.
“We’ve got to get the horse to the other side, and then I’ll go after him,” Kestrel answered, urgently pulling Merilla and his horse towards their destination on the far side of the river. He led them into the stony shallows on the far side, watching downstream as the boy rapidly floated around the bend in the river below them.
“Take the horse up onto the beach and wait for me!” he shouted, then he ran up onto the bank of the river and began to race downstream, trying to catch up to Jacob. Once he was out of sight of Merilla he intended to enter the river bed and run across the water, in the elven way, to pounce on the boy and carry him to safety.
Around the bend though, there turned out to be rapids, and as Kestrel caught sight of the small body, he saw it bounce off one rock, then strike another ferociously, and continue to float rapidly down the stream. The elf leaped down to the surface of the stream and began to sprint, running atop the water and jumping across the tops of boulders as he raced to reach Jacob.
He caught up with the boy just before he struck another stone, reaching down into the water and snagging him with a motion that flung the heavy wet body up into the air, and then into Kestrel’s two-armed grasp. Kestrel hugged his load tightly as he continued across the stream and reversed direction, heading back upstream, still atop the foaming waters as he angled towards the far shore.
The river bank on the far side was steeper than he expected, causing him to remain atop the water, sprinting desperately with all his might to maintain his speed so that he would not sink below the surface. Kestrel was one of the least effective water-runners because of his human heritage, and his heavier body structure, but he ignored the growing, burning pain in his thighs and focused on pushing his speed to his utmost limit in order to reach a sandy beach he saw not far ahead.
Three steps away from the beach his speed diminished enough that his feet began to sink, but he only splashed thigh deep before he reached his goal and stopped, head down, gasping for air as he held the baby boy against him. After several seconds he looked at the boy, and grew frightened. The boy’s face was very pale, he was unconscious, and there was blood pouring freely from a serious scalp wound.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 01 - The Healing Spring Page 20