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and the three of them and the imps started down the narrow path that wound through the woods to the honeymoon cabin.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
    They settled into the small cabin, whose door was unlocked, and whose interior was sparsely furnished.
    “I’ll sleep in the bed,” Putienne volunteered.
    “We were going to fight about it otherwise,” she spoke up in response to Kestrel’s startled glance, “so I just decided to take the bed and avoid the fight.”
    Kestrel waggled his head in concurrence with the practicality of his friend, then sat on a stool and removed his boots.   His feet felt delighted to be free of the confinement, and he felt contented as he opened his pack and started to unpack some of the items he carried.  One of the first things he found was one of the sets of pipes he had prepared in Seafare; they were gnomish pipes, modeled after the musical instrument the gnomes in the Water Mountains had used so wonderfully to entertain themselves during the long cold winter in the mountains.
    He experimentally placed the pipes to his mouth and blew an off-key note, then adjusted, and began to slowly pick out a tune he had learned from Greta, a different gnome maiden named Greta than the one he was on his way to meet.
    “What in the name of the glades of the Eastern Forest has possessed you?” Wren asked from where she sat in a corner of the cabin, also unpacking her supplies and growing comfortable.
    “I made these pipes while I was in Seafare, and I planned to give a set to the gnomes here as a gift,” he answered.  “These are like the pipes the gnomes in the Water Mountains use.”
    “They sound nice,” Putienne said from where she lay back upon the bed, her feet hanging over the edge of the short mattress.
    “You might think that because you’re from the Water Mountains,” Wren said, “so maybe it’s born into you to like them.”
    “Is that true?” Putty asked Kestrel.
    He smiled, and shook his head ‘no’, then resumed playing, trying to recall the tune that Greta had first taught him on the pipes when he had taken lessons from her.
    “If you’re going to play, at least play something that we,” Wren started to speak, then glanced at Putienne, “or at least I, can recognize.”
    Kestrel smiled.  “This is an elvish song, Putty,” he explained, and then he began to pick his way through the notes of a traditional elvish dancing song, a lively tune that was often danced to under the full moon of the summer skies.
    The imps all settled down into positions around the interior of the cabin, Mulberry laying on the floor with her head in Kestrel’s lap, while others picked spots where they were comfortable.
    “Do you know our music?” she asked, and she began to hum a tune.
    “Hum it again,” Kestrel suggested, then slowly tried to recreate the song.
    “Perhaps your many battles have harmed your ears?” Acanthus suggested, after wincing from a series of misplayed notes.
    “No, I can do this,” Kestrel insisted.  “Hum the tune again, Mulberry.”
    “Is this the village where you had that ceremony?  What did you call it?” Wren asked.
    “It was the Garrant Spark ,” Kestrel answered.  “And yes, this is the village where it happened.”
    “Can you show us where it was?  I remember you made it sound dramatic,” his cousin said, standing up.
    Kestrel looked at the pipes in his hand, then looked at his cousin, where he saw the ghost of a smile on her face, a hint of what her motive was.
    “Yes, absolutely,” he answered.  “I can play these some more when we get back,” he said with a grin at Wren, who winced.
    Mulberry’s head rose from his lap, and Kestrel stood up, as the others in the cabin also began to move about.
    “Kestrel friend,” Stillwater spoke up as he floated in front of a window, “perhaps you should look at this.”
    Kestrel ambled over, and saw to his surprise that a dozen gnome maidens were squatting around the small opening