7: History Lessons

Alex still felt unsettled even after dinner that night and decided he wasn’t in the mood for a movie. So he left Derek happily watching Jim Carey playing being God and went outside, hoping a walk would help calm him. The sky was dark with clouds that threatened rain or even snow in spite of the fact that it was still early August. He huddled into his fleece-lined coat and made his way along the walk that wended its way through the campus. He really hadn’t seen all that much of the rest of the college and took some time to scope it out, mentally cataloguing where all the other buildings were, where the various entrances into the campus were located and other little details that might be of use to him. It was an automatic thing for him, a part of the situational awareness that kept an agent alive.

He came upon a small forested area bordering the campus at one end and without analyzing his feelings allowed himself to be drawn into it, breathing the heavy scent of resin. Almost at once he felt all the tension within him seeping away, leaving him feeling lightheaded for a moment. Muscles he didn’t even know were tight began to relax and he found himself being able to take in deep breaths. Standing under a towering pine, he leaned against its trunk, closing his eyes and feeling the roughness of the bark under his palms.

How long he stood there, letting the quiet of the woods calm him, he did not know or care, but eventually he came back to himself, gave the tree a pat and moved away, deciding he’d had enough of nature for a while and went back towards the Academy, figuring he would visit the small reading room and see if there was a book to read until he was ready for bed.

He never knew that another had been in the woods silently keeping watch.

****

The weekend was spent in leisure except for working on the Sindarin assignment Winters had given them. Alex and Derek spent part of Saturday morning quizzing each other on the mutations and going over the simple greetings and introductions which had been part of the lesson as well.

"My govan...." Alex started to say, making the word rhyme with ‘fan’.

"No," Derek corrected, "it’s ‘vahn’, like in Ralph Vaughan Williams."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

Derek gave him a disbelieving look. "Ralph Vaughan Williams," he repeated, pronouncing the first name as ‘rafe’. "English dude wrote classical music. ‘The Lark Ascending’, ‘Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis’, ‘Sifonia antarctica’. Hello!"

Alex grinned at the affronted look on his friend’s face. "Sorry. I’m more into Country Rock myself."

Derek gave a disdainful sniff. "Figures. Your education is sadly lacking, boy."

"Whatever. So, ‘my govahnnen, melin neen’."

"Meluhn," Derek corrected. "Sort of like the end sound in ‘honey’ only shorter."

"Boy, you’re really into this, aren’t you?" Alex said with a snort. "As if any of our clients are going to know the difference."

Derek just shrugged. "I just think we should be as authentic as possible and that means getting the pronunciation down correctly."

"Fine. Let me try it again," Alex replied with a sigh, ignoring the smirk on Derek’s face as he applied himself more diligently to speaking correctly a language that didn’t exist.

****

After lunch, Alex and Derek joined several of the other students from the Academy for a game of touch football. When it started to rain, some of the students decided they had had enough but others, including Alex and Derek, stayed on, so by the time they were done playing, everyone was caked in mud but no one seemed to mind. Hot showers followed and when they went to dinner, many of them sat together. Alex and Derek joined them and the rest of the evening was spent in congenial company. As he sat there listening to the conversation around him, Alex felt something within him open up, some emotion that he wasn’t sure he could put a name to, something that made him feel warm and... accepted.

Yes, that was the word. Accepted. He was accepted by these others as one of them. They knew nothing about Artemus Gordon Meriwether, spy — excuse me, intelligence officer — someone who’d infiltrated any number of terrorist cells over the years or had spent hours pouring over the intelligence gathered by other agents to determine possible threats to the security of the nation and the world. They only knew of Alex Grant, one-time employee of a multinational company, now studying to be a Christmas elf, just as they were. These people’s lives were uncomplicated and straightforward compared to his own. Most of them were a good decade younger than he, though a number, like Derek, were older. Yet, their lives were not darkened by secrets, secrets that could bring a nation down, secrets that could bring the world to the brink of war and beyond.

For the first time in his career as an intelligence officer, Alex actually envied those who did not live in the shadowy world of espionage. He felt a sudden revulsion within him which he ruthlessly pushed away. He had a mission to see through whether he liked it or not and that was all that mattered. Yet, listening to the laughter and gentle teasing and lighthearted conversation going on around him, he couldn’t help feeling regret that he had never had that kind of life. He’d joined the Agency right out of college and knew nothing else. Now, though....

Giving himself a mental shake, he pushed aside his dark musings and allowed himself to be drawn back into the light and laughter of these young men and women, agreeing to join them in going into town to check out one or two of the bars. For the next several hours, Artemus Gordon Meriwether ceased to exist and it was only Alex Grant who enjoyed the beer and the games of pool. It was only Alex Grant who stumbled back to the college with the others, singing loudly and off-key, then shushing each other and giggling like teenagers before playing a very drunken game of tag among the trees and buildings of the campus. And it was only Alex Grant who fell into bed, full of alcoholic bliss, his sleep deep and dreamless.

****

Sunday was spent recovering from the night before. Alex was disinclined to do much of anything save drink lots of coffee. He went over the Sindarin mutations with Derek one more time and then spent the rest of the morning quietly reading. By mid-afternoon, though, he was feeling restless and decided to walk into town. Derek had gone off with some of the other students earlier, leaving him to himself. He had no particular destination in mind, merely a wish to stretch his legs and get some fresh air. Wiseman was just large enough that he had not seen all of it, nor did he expect to.

He vaguely wondered where the other agents the D.D. said she would send were and how they might contact him, for all he had were a set of email addresses and the understanding that they were to be used only as a last resort, otherwise he would be contacted by at least one of the agents in place at some point. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of other agents mucking about in his territory. This was his assignment, after all, and he was quite capable of performing it without the aid of others. He realized, though, that Maddy was just being cautious. Ambrose Elwood dead was just a sadly missed agent; Ambrose Elwood alive was a rogue and therefore considered dangerous until proven otherwise. One did not take any chances with a rogue agent... or a potential one.

Meandering through the streets of Wiseman and not paying particular attention to where he was going, Alex stopped in surprise when he found himself before an imposing residence on the outskirts of the town. It wasn’t quite a mansion, but it came pretty close. He stood for a few moments admiring the house and the gardens surrounding it, then slipped behind a nearby tree fronting the street when the door opened and he saw Elwood stepping out with a young woman whom he only recognized from a photo but whose name was unknown to him.

He watched as the two stood at the door in deep conversation and then they were embracing and Elwood began kissing her with an intimacy that told Alex that these two were lovers. He raised an eyebrow at the implication of that little fact as he watched the couple separate and Elwood headed towards the street. Alex had just enough time to move further away from the house to prevent the man from seeing him and then watched as he turned right and headed into town. The woman went back inside the house.

He allowed Elwood to get some distance ahead of him before following. He was curious as to where his former mentor was going. He was even more curious about the house and its inhabitants, wondering how an ex-spy could live in such a place. Or maybe he didn’t. Perhaps the house belonged to the woman. He reached the corner and turned to see Elwood a good two blocks away, apparently heading downtown. There was little traffic on a Sunday afternoon and only one lone teenager skateboarding towards him. As the boy neared him Alex waved and smiled. The boy slowed down, giving him a wary look.

"Excuse me," Alex said, adopting a British accent. He’d learned early on that most Americans were rather impressed by people with British accents and were more likely to respond favorably towards them. "I’m new in town and I think I’ve gotten turned around. If I continue on will I get to the town center?"

"Yes, just go down to Kodiak and hang a left," the teenager answered and started to skate past Alex.

"I was admiring this house here," Alex said, pointing to the mansion. "Can you tell me who lives there?"

The boy shrugged. "That’s Edhellond."

"Excuse me, eth-what?"

"Edhellond," the boy corrected. "Where the Elves live." With that he pushed himself off and was rolling down the street before Alex had time to muster a reply.

"Elves?" Alex couldn’t help repeating in disbelief, staring after the boy who was now a good distance away, wishing he could run after him and get him to explain. He snorted in derision at that image and turned to see if Elwood was still in sight.

No such luck and he wasn’t about to try to find him. He shrugged and turned back towards the college, giving the mansion a final look-over.

"Elves," he muttered in disbelief. "Give me a break."

****

On Monday, Alex endured the Sindarin class, dutifully filling out the table that Winters had created as a quiz on how well they had memorized the soft mutations. He prided himself on his retentive skills, always vital in the field when one wasn’t in the position of being able to write anything down. Then they spent the rest of the time practicing greetings and introductions on each other. Some were better than others and there was a lot of embarrassed giggling. Winters was patience personified as he gently corrected pronunciations. The class ended with them working on present tense verbs, writing out simple sentences based on the vocabulary that they knew.

Alex was reminded of his own experiences in school learning French and Latin and as he worked on the exercise he caught himself humming softly and stopped in dismay, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. He happened to catch Winters’ eyes and saw the man smile, his eyes full of amusement and ducked his head, concentrating on the workbook before him. He never hummed like that unless he was working on a translation problem. It was a little quirk of his, a sign of his contentment, for he loved languages and loved to play with them. He had once considered going on to graduate school and studying linguistics, but fate had taken him down another, darker road.

He scowled at that thought, then pushed it away, concentrating on the exercise. When the class was over he gave a sigh of relief and without a backward glance, left the classroom as quickly as he could. Derek caught up with him at the lounge where coffee, tea, soda and light snacks could be had while students waited for the next class to begin. His friend gave him a concerned look as they stood in line to give their order to the attendant.

"You okay, mate?" he asked. "You look a bit... flustered."

"Flustered?" Alex couldn’t help repeating with a laugh. "Where did you come up with that word? I’m fine. I was just.... well...."

Derek waved a hand in dismissal. "No problem, Alex. It’s not my business, but if you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen."

"And I appreciate it," Alex said sincerely. "There’s nothing to talk about. It was just a memory of something a long time ago. Not important. I was just taken by surprise by it, is all."

Derek nodded. "It happens. Well, one more class and then we do archery. I’m looking forward to that. Always wanted to play Robin Hood but I was usually pegged as the Sheriff." He gave Alex a wry look. Alex laughed as he stepped forward to give his order.

****

"Elf History," Alex muttered as he and Derek entered the classroom and took their seats. "What exactly are we learning here, anyway?"

"Didn’t you read the assignment I told you about?" Derek asked.

Alex shrugged. In truth, he hadn’t bothered, or rather, he had started to but couldn’t get past the first page with its talk of Valar and Maiar singing creation into existence. That was a bit too weird and what were Valar and Maiar when they were at home, anyway? He had decided to wait to see how the class went before getting too involved. He was here in pretense and wasn’t about to get sucked into all this elf nonsense. He planned to stay just long enough to find out what Elwood was up to, report his findings to the D.D. and then leave for the next assignment or maybe take a few days off to visit his mom for Christmas. He tried to remember the last time he’d spent Christmas with her but couldn’t. Last year he’d been somewhere in the boonies of Minnesota tracking down a group of yahoos looking to bring down the government. As he recalled, Christmas had been spent in a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere, celebrating the day with a cheap bottle of scotch and day-old pizza.

Grimacing slightly at that particular memory, he realized with a start that he’d been rubbing his shoulder where he’d been shot during that particular mission two days after Christmas. Derek must have noticed for he leaned over and whispered, "You okay, Alex. You look a bit white."

"No. I’m fine, thanks. Its an old injury from a car accident. Sometimes there’s still a twinge of pain. Weather must be turning or something."

"I hear you, mate," Derek said. "I did a number on myself once when...." but whatever he was going to say remained unsaid as the door opened and the teacher walked in. Alex forced himself not to react to the sight of the young woman whom he’d seen with Ambrose the day before. Her ethereal beauty affected him more now that he was in close proximity to her. She swept her gaze around the room, giving them a smile, greeting them with an ‘aur vaer’ to which the class dutifully responded in kind. Alex couldn’t help noticing how musical her voice sounded and realized it had the same lilt that he had heard in the voices of Gil Winters and Loren DelaFiore; the same lilt that he remembered Ambrose as having.

Alex was taken aback when the woman came directly to him, putting out her hand. "You must be Alex. I’m Della White or, if you prefer, Nimrodel."

Alex took her hand and shook it. "Er... thanks... I’ll... um... keep that in mind."

Della nodded and went back to the front of the class, addressing them all.

"Can anyone give me an outline of the Elves’ creation myth?" As she spoke she wrote the word ‘Ainulindalë’ on the board.

There was a moment of silence before one of the women raised her hand and began to give a hesitant account with Della writing out her responses. Some others chimed in with corrections and additions until it was all laid out to everyone’s satisfaction.

Alex did not bother to participate in the discussion. Instead, he let his mind wander as he stared out one of the windows. None of this made sense to him. A made up language and a made up history just to add verisimilitude to their personae as elf guides? What was the deal here? And Ambrose Elwood was a part of it. Why? What reason would he have to be here, apparently going along with the charade?

"Alex, what do you think?"

Alex started at the sound of his name, giving everyone an embarrassed look. "I’m sorry, would you repeat the question?" He felt himself reddening even more at the sound of the women tittering and Derek giving him a sour look. It didn’t help matters that Della’s expression was one of amusement and he wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole. God! He hadn’t felt like this since he’d been in grade school stumbling over a math problem.

"I asked if you see any similarities between this myth and any other creation myths that you know."

"Oh... um.... I... I guess the fact that there’s one god. That’s similar to the Judeo-Christian and Muslim creation myths. Most others have multiple gods."

"Very good. And what differences do you notice between this myth and, let us say, the Genesis myth? We’ll deal with other myths later."

Now Alex quickly scanned the board, desperately trying to pick out some aspect of this myth that didn’t gel with what he remembered of the Genesis story. It’d been a long time since he’d been in a Sunday school class. "Ah... well... there’s a lot of singing," he offered. "I don’t think singing is mentioned in Genesis."

Most of the class chuckled at that, and Della raised an eyebrow. "Anything else?"

Alex swallowed nervously. Why was she picking on him? And why did he suddenly feel as if he were ten years old and it was old Mrs. Hopper, his fifth grade teacher, standing before him, quizzing him? He shook his head and muttered "Sorry," not looking up, wishing he could just get up and walk out and never look back.

For a long moment Della just stood there staring at him and then, to his immense relief, she looked away and gave the question to the class. Derek raised his hand and began giving a litany of differences between the two myths with others adding their own observations. Alex merely sat there in stony silence refusing to enter into the discussion that followed about the names and characteristics attributed to these Valar and Maiar who apparently, as far as Alex could figure out, were angels of some sort.

But when the discussion moved on to some dude named Melkor who apparently was supposed to be like Lucifer, he couldn’t stop himself from raising his hand. Della acknowledged him. "Why are we learning this?" he demanded. "What possible use is this... this fake history to us as tour guides?"

"All people have a history, Alex, including Elves," Della answered.

"Who don’t exist except in fairy tales," Alex countered with a sneer.

For a long moment Della did not respond. The rest of the class remained silent, watching the confrontation. Alex vaguely noticed Derek and a couple of others giving him angry looks, but ignored them, keeping his eyes on Della.

"Your hostility is rather odd considering you applied to come here," she finally said.

"I didn’t...." Alex stopped himself just in time, appalled at his near gaffe. Fifteen years of training had nearly gone out the window without a moment’s thought. What was happening to him? He’d never been this out of control before, certainly not when in the field. He was one of the Agency’s top operatives, noted for his coolness under fire, his quick thinking and his ability to be convincing to those who did not know they were inviting the snake into their little garden of sedition and terrorism. But within a few days of coming here, he found himself making mistakes that even a newly minted operative would never make, never mind an expert such as himself.

He swallowed, taking a deep breath. Della had raised an eyebrow when he started to deny he’d applied to the Academy and he thought he’d caught a look of triumph or expectation on her face, but it was there and gone in an instant and the woman merely gave him a cool stare.

"Perhaps you need to rethink why you are here, Alex Grant," she said in a voice that sent shivers down Alex’s spine. The words had been softly spoken but there was something almost threatening about them or... almost as if she knew the truth and was allowing him the opportunity to make a choice. He couldn’t deal with that thought right then and pushed it away. Instead, he nodded, closed his textbook, shoved it into his book bag and stood up.

"Perhaps I should," he said quietly and then without apology left the room, striding down the hall, his pace quickening almost to a run and then, in a fit of something that felt almost like despair, he gave a wordless yell, flung the book bag away and ran to the nearest exit, flinging open the doors, the need to get away, far away, from this place driving him.

He never knew that more than one pair of eyes watched him run away or that another followed him, easily keeping pace with him without allowing himself to be noticed. He never saw Loren DelaFiore retrieving his book bag, or heard Della give a distressed Derek a comforting word after she had dismissed the class.

And he never heard the conversation that followed between Loren, Darren, Della and the one he knew as Ambrose Elwood when the four of them met in Loren’s office, a conversation that would have shocked and confused him even more than he already was....

"James Bond he’s not," Glorfindel said with a grin as he took his seat. The others snorted in amusement.

Nimrodel and Amroth sat in the other two chairs holding hands while Daeron leaned against a bookcase, his ankles and arms crossed in a nonchalant pose.

"He’s forgotten everything I ever taught him," Amroth said with a shake of his head, but his eyes glittered more with amusement than with disgust.

"What do you think he will do?" Nimrodel asked her husband.

Amroth shrugged. "Once he calms down, I suspect he’ll be shooting off an email to the fair Maddy and demanding reassignment."

"Will she grant his request?" Daeron asked.

Amroth shook his head. "If I know Maddy Washburn, and seeing as how I trained her I should, she’ll tell him to man up and get on with it."

"That’s not going to sit well with him," Nimrodel observed dryly.

Amroth shrugged. "Agents are rarely reassigned once they’re in the field. At this late date, there’s no one else whom the Agency can put in his place and they have a vested interest, or so they think, in knowing what’s behind all this."

"Well, I’m less concerned about one Alex Grant at the moment than I am about young Derek Lowell," Glorfindel said. "He deserves better."

"You’re planning to have him join us," Daeron said, making it more a statement than a question.

Glorfindel nodded. "Yes, eventually, along with about two-thirds of this particular class from what I’ve been able to determine this early in the term. That figure may go up or down as we get closer to the end of the year. For now, though, I want us to concentrate on Alex and Derek. Alex is the key, but the question still remains: do we bring him into our little conspiracy or shut him out and ultimately, which is the safer course?"

"I don’t think it’s a matter of shutting him out or bringing him in," Amroth commented. "His real reason for being here is me. He and the Agency are interested in knowing why I’m still alive."

Glorfindel gave him a sour grin. "Of all the professions you could have chosen with which to while away your time, you had to choose espionage."

Amroth shrugged. "It wasn’t exactly a choice on my part. Eventually, Alex will confront me, either to bring me in from the cold, as they say, or to eliminate me with extreme prejudice. There are no other options as far as he knows."

"So we need to convince him that there is a third alternative to either of those two scenarios," Daeron said, "and the only alternative is to make him one of us."

"Is that possible though?" Nimrodel asked. "Can he simply resign from the Agency and will they let him go, considering what he knows?"

"It is possible," Amroth replied. "Not easily done, but doable. Yet, that won’t necessarily solve the problem of how to get the Agency and other government officials off our backs."

"We’ll have to explore some avenues of thought on that," Glorfindel said, "but in the meantime, I’m going to introduce Derek and Alex to Zach."

The others nodded in agreement, for they all knew Zach’s worth.

"This should be interesting," Daeron said, his expression deadpan and the others chuckled as Glorfindel dismissed them.

Once he was alone, Glorfindel sat in deep contemplation, only bestirring himself when he heard the distant chimes of the carillons at St. Andrew’s, which rang every day at three o’clock with a selection of songs. He left his office and sauntered over to the athletic field to see how Elladan and Elrohir were doing with the archery lesson. He wasn’t at all surprised to see that Alex Grant was not there but was not unduly concerned, knowing that Gil was keeping an eye on the young spy.