4: Settling In

Tuesday, 2 August:

‘Alex Grant’ turned the knob of the door leading into what would be his room for the next several months, forcing down a sigh. He had not been happy to learn that the D.D. had checked on the application that he would need a dorm room. He’d been all set to rent an apartment in town, preferring his privacy, but, as was pointed out to him, he wasn’t likely to learn much of anything if he wasn’t on campus 24/7. So now he was going to have to put up with a roommate, someone who was no doubt a good ten years younger than himself and clueless about keeping a room clean.

So he was pleasantly surprised to open the door to a pristine room where one bed was already neatly made; the other still had its sheets, blankets and pillows folded neatly on the end. As Alex entered, its occupant looked up from where he was sitting at one of the study desks reading.

"I was wondering if I was going to be rooming alone," the young man said with a ready smile as he stood to greet him. He was tall and lanky with short light-brown hair and hazel eyes and looked to be closer to thirty than twenty. Holding out his hand he introduced himself. "Name’s Lowell, Derek Lowell."

"Grant, Alex Grant. Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. Ran into car trouble just outside Fairbanks and had to cool my heels for a couple of days while they hunted for the part. Damn starter just quit on me. Put a nice little dent in my bank account, let me tell you."

"Sorry to hear it, mate," Derek said sympathetically, then he gave him a winning smile. "But you’re here now and that’s all that matters. So, why don’t you get yourself unpacked and I’ll give you a tour of the facilities since you missed orientation, and then we can head for dinner. The cafeteria isn’t too bad here, better than most places I’ve eaten."

Alex nodded. "It won’t take me long to unpack. I’ll have to take a look at the orientation packet later. I hope I don’t have to catch up too much."

"I doubt it. Classes have only just begun. Here, give me the packet and I’ll check to see which division you’re in."

"Division?" Alex asked even as he handed the manila envelope over to Derek and began wrestling with his carry-all.

"Yeah. The class has been divided into sections and each section takes a certain number of classes together and then after midterm we switch. Some of these classes are definitely strange."

"What do you mean? I confess I really haven’t looked too closely at the material they sent me when I was accepted. I was too busy putting stuff in storage and all."

"I hear you, mate," Derek said. "Ah, you’re in luck. You have the same classes as I so I can easily tell you what we’ve covered so far."

"Great. That should help." Alex shoved the last of his clothes in the dresser and stowed his bags under the bed out of the way. "I’ll put the bed together later. Why don’t you give me that tour and tell me what I missed?"

"Sounds good to me," Derek said, handing the manila envelope back to Alex who placed it on his desk. The two headed out the door. "First stop on our three-penny tour is the gym. It’s well stocked with the latest machines and...."

****

"So where do you hail from?" Derek asked sometime later. They had looked into every nook and cranny of the building — "Except the ladies’ side," Derek had said with a wide grin. "It’s verboten unless you have a pass from your mummy." Alex had laughed at that, warming to the man’s quirky sense of humor — and now they were seated in the cafeteria having dinner. They had gotten there early enough that the students were still filing in and were able to find a place to themselves, at least for now.

"Back east," Alex said. "Recently D.C. but I grew up in New Hampshire. And you?"

"Oakland, at least that’s where my dad is. I’ve spent the last six years on the Kitty Hawk seeing the world."

"Ah, Navy then. I thought you might have been in one of the military branches but I wasn’t sure."

Derek gave a shrug. "Been out for about a year now. Tried to find work but... well, you know how it is and even veterans aren’t getting any breaks lately."

Alex nodded. "So how did you end up here?"

Derek gave him one of his warm smiles. "I was about to ask you the same. You don’t look like the loser type."

Alex frowned. "Is that what you think? That those of us here are all losers, including you?"

Derek shrugged, his smile less certain. "Sorry. Just my stupid mouth again. Dad says it’s amazing I didn’t spend my six years in the brig or being keel-hauled on a regular basis."

Alex snorted the coffee he was drinking, coughing and laughing at the same time. Derek gave him a sheepish smile. When he had recovered himself, he gave Derek a shrewd look. "So just how did you end up here?"

"My dad’s idea, mostly," Derek answered with a shrug as he buttered a roll. "He said it was time for me to do a one-hundred-eighty-degreer."

"Huh?"

Derek laughed."His word for it, meaning that you turn around and do something completely opposite from what you are used to doing as a way of getting a better perspective on your life. Makes sense really when you think about it. After I got out I think it was a couple of months before I stopped ‘sirring’ everyone in sight and trying to get my land legs back. Dad thought doing something like this would help break me out of my naval mindset enough to be able to focus on the rest of my life."

Alex nodded. "Sounds like your dad’s been there and done that."

"You have no idea, mate," Derek replied with much feeling. He paused, frowning slightly. "Funny thing is...."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing really. Just that for weeks before my dad showed me the Elf Academy brochure and suggested I apply I’d been having these weird dreams of going to Alaska and joining the Iditarod race."

"The dog sled race?" Alex said disbelievingly. "Do you even own a dog sled?"

"No, of course not," Derek replied with an embarrassed laugh. "I don’t know one end from the other. No, I’m just saying I kept having these dreams about Alaska and then my dad shows me the brochure. It was totally creepy... or a sign. Not sure which, but anyway, here I am about to become a Christmas elf. So now I’ve told you my sob story, what’s yours?"

Alex shrugged. "Company was downsizing and I didn’t have enough seniority so it was ‘adios amigo’ and I was suddenly among the great unwashed and unemployed."

"That’s tough. So you decided to run away to Alaska instead of looking for work?" Derek gave him a slow smile.

Alex smiled back. "Something like that. Actually, a friend who’s in the travel business told me about the Academy. Said if I applied and went through the program she might consider hiring me as she wants to expand her business to include more out-of-the-way places for her clients and she’ll want to hire people who are familiar with such places."

"Well, there you go. At least you have some prospects once you’re done here. So how do your folks feel about it?"

Alex shrugged. His mother was well aware of what he did for a living since he refused to keep any secrets from her. When he told her about joining the Agency Anne Meriwether’s only comment had been ‘Make sure you take an extra pair of clean underwear wherever you go’ and that had been the end of the discussion. He always made a point of contacting her before and after each mission. When he’d told her he was going to Alaska to hunt up an old friend she had merely told him to remember to pack his long underwear and wished him godspeed.

"My mom’s pretty cool about it," he answered after a moment. "What my dad thinks of it is anyone’s guess since he died before I was even born."

"That’s rough, mate," Derek said. "My parents divorced when I was ten and my dad raised me because my mom wasn’t interested. Haven’t seen her for some time now. I think she moved to New Jersey or maybe it was Ohio, can’t really remember." He gave him a diffident shrug then concentrated on his apple pie.

Alex raised an eyebrow but did not comment. Instead he changed the subject. "So tell me about the classes I’ve missed."

"Well, they sound like fun courses on paper, but let me tell you, we have our work cut out for us. There’s a course on speaking elvish and believe me you’d think it was a real language. We even have a textbook, a primer, the teacher called it. Oh and you wouldn’t have believed what they did at orientation. Dudes dressed up like they were auditioning for Camelot or something. All these flowing robes and such and calling themselves Lord this and Lady that. But I guess they want us to be... um... fully immersed into the whole elf thingy so we really act the part. And we also have to have elvish names."

"Elvish names?" Alex demanded. "What...?"

"They have a list of weird sounding names and we get to choose them or maybe they’ll do a lottery. Not quite sure. Anyway, we’ll all have these elvish names and we have to get used to calling each other by these names. I guess elves don’t have names like Alex and Derek."

"What about Bernard?" Alex asked slyly. "Remember him from The Santa Clause?"

Derek laughed. "Oh yeah, and those ‘Elves with Attitude’. They broke me up."

"Well, I guess I’ll find out tomorrow how it is. Do you know what we’ll be doing tomorrow?"

"If it’s Wednesday, it must be Baking Day," Derek said with a smile. "We spend the morning learning to bake holiday goodies of all sorts. Apparently every elf is also a gourmet cook or at least a deft hand at baking cookies and such. Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but I think I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be a nice break from learning verb tenses in this Sindarin as they’re calling the elvish language."

"Because I was late getting here, I have to meet with one of the admin people tomorrow at nine o’clock," Alex told him. "I was told the meeting wouldn’t take long so hopefully I won’t miss too much of the class tomorrow."

"I’ll save you a spoon to lick," Derek replied with a grin and Alex grinned back.

****

Nine o’clock sharp saw Alex standing outside the office of one Darren Harper. At least, that was the name on the door along with some rather decorative squiggles underneath that looked almost like Hebrew but not quite. He shrugged. He’d noticed as he and Derek had walked the halls the night before that all the doors had the same or similar looking squiggles. He’d asked Derek about them. The former sailor had shrugged as he answered, "They’re supposed to be that Sindarin I told you about."

Thinking that perhaps these people were taking things a bit too far with all this elvish stuff, he knocked on the door and when he heard someone call out to enter he opened to find himself in a rather pedestrian office. At least, if you ignored the tall harp sitting in one corner and what looked like some kind of medieval tapestry on one of the side walls. He eyed the person sitting behind the desk and had to force himself not to gape. He’d half-expected to find someone dressed like a medieval lord from the way Derek had described things the night before, but the man facing him was wearing a button-down shirt and V-neck sweater. That wasn’t what had stopped Alex in his tracks, though. Darren Harper was... beautiful though, he amended to himself, not in a feminine way but rather in the classical sense of masculine beauty celebrated by the ancient Greeks, only more so. He had, of course, studied all the photos the D.D. had given him on these people but the photos fell far short of the reality. There was an aura surrounding Darren Harper that was unnerving to the young agent and it took him a moment to realize it was the same sense of... veiled power that he’d encountered with Ambrose Elwood so many years before.

"Mister Grant?" Darren said, rising to extend his hand in greeting.

Alex had to pull himself together and extend his own hand. He was pleasantly surprised at how firm Harper’s grip was. "Yes. I’m... Ar... um... Alex... Alex Grant," he stuttered, feeling flustered and suddenly shy for some strange reason.

Darren gave him an amused look. "You seem unsure of your name. Are you all right?"

"Yes. Sorry. It’s been that kind of week." Alex gave what he hoped was a diffident enough shrug even as he silently castigated himself for acting like a wet-behind-the-ears recruit instead of a seasoned intelligence officer.

"Understandable," Darren said, gesturing for Alex to sit even as he resumed his own seat. "I trust everything is well with your car?"

"Yes, though my bank account isn’t very happy with me at the moment."

Darren chuckled. "I won’t keep you long, Mr. Grant. I just wanted to welcome you to the Northern Lights Community College’s Elf Academy and to give you your textbooks for the courses you were not able to attend." He gestured to a small pile of books on his desk. Alex glanced at them and nodded.

"I appreciate that, sir. My roommate, Derek Lowell, filled me in a bit on what I’ve missed so far." He paused for a moment, wondering how far he could go in questioning the man about the Academy and one Ryan McKinley, a.k.a. Ambrose Elwood. At the end, though, he decided to play it safe. "I was wondering about all this elvish stuff. Derek showed me the...the primer, I think he called it. Whoever came up with it is a genius. But why are we learning this gibberish? I mean, I certainly won’t be speaking it to the clients, would I?"

If Darren was upset by his question, he did not look it. Instead, he leaned back, giving Alex a shrewd look. Alex was suddenly reminded of the way the D.D. would look at you and tried not to squirm.

"Do you speak any foreign languages, Mr. Grant?"

"Several," he answered readily enough. "The company I worked for is a multinational conglomeration and it was incumbent upon its employees to speak at least one other language besides your native tongue. I was in their document translation department." Which was actually no lie. His fluency in several languages made him a valued member of the Agency’s translation team for certain areas of the world.

"Well, then you will appreciate the... mystique, if you will, of speaking a tongue other than your own, especially when you are with those who do not speak a word of it. You will see when you take the class that we are not expecting you to become experts in Sindarin. We do expect you to have a basic understanding of its structure and to be able to speak a few words in a coherent sentence." He gave him a twinkling smile. "Most of the words you’ll learn are simple greetings and such, just to add some verisimilitude to your persona as an Elf."

Alex nodded.

"Well, you’re missing out on the fun of baking gingerbread men, so I’ll let you go." Darren stood and picked up the pile of textbooks and handed them to Alex who stood to receive them. As he took the books, Darren’s fingers seemed to brush against his, sending an unexpected thrill through his body and he was hard-pressed not to flinch. He found he was unable to look away from the man who stared at him with such intensity and he had the most uncomfortable feeling that Darren Harper could see directly into his soul.

"We’re so very glad you were able to make it, Alex," Darren said softly, breaking whatever spell had fallen between them, for Alex found himself blinking as if waking from a dream. "I do not think you will regret coming here."

It was an odd thing to say and Alex could only nod and utter a barely breathed ‘thank-you’ before he exited the office. He took a deep breath to get himself under control and then forced himself to start walking. If he hurried, he could drop the books off in his room on the way to the cafeteria. He would think about what had just happened between Harper and himself later.