Silver Stars
Disclaimers: Middle-earth and all its inhabitants belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate, not me. I intend no infringement of copyright and am making no money by this.
Rating: G.
Summary: Young Ereinion decides to explore. Featuring Fingon.
Feedback: Yes, please.
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The servant, his face ashen, stood before his master,
gasping for breath.
"What is it?" Fingon hurriedly handed the sheaf of
papers to his aide and stood, his deep blue robes swirling around him.
"My liege…" It was only too clear that the underling was only too terrified of
the news he had to impart to his lord.
"Orcs?" the prince inquired, already reaching for his
sword.
The servant shook his head mutely, trying to find some way to frame the
incident which would not bring the wrath of the Noldorin
lord crashing down on his head.
"Worse?"
"Sire…" he said in a bare whisper. "Sire, the prince is gone…"
"What do you mean 'gone'?" One long-fingered hand tightened around the
sword-hilt until the knuckles shone white through the skin. The servant – Aelingalen, he remembered the name now – winced, and Fingon knew that it was at the harshness of his words, but
it counted for naught. At this time, none could afford to wander off, least of
all a mere elfling. His blood ran cold at the images
of what might be.
"I … we … the prince was having lessons in the great courtyard, when – and I
swear that I know not how it happened…"
"Be swift at least if you cannot be knowledgeable," Fingon
snapped, already striding across the room, Aelingalen
scurrying to keep up with his longer legs.
"Well, my liege, the other child, Gelmir, managed to
stab himself in the hand with his pen. As you can imagine, there were many
tears, and we thought it would be best if we were to take him to the healer…"
"And you left my son alone," the king finished, ire flashing in his grey eyes.
"Yes, my liege, and … and when we returned, there was neither hide nor hair to
be seen of the prince."
Fingon drew a deep breath to hide the hammering of
his heart, which seemed to pound as drums of war within him. 'Twas not as if Ereinion was a
particularly mischievous elfling. Indeed, to his
father's eyes, something of the spirit of the times seemed to enter into him,
and he had not the freedom from cares which he remembered so well from his own
childhood playing in the light of the Two Trees. But 'twas as if trouble found
the prince without him ever needing to find it, and it was all too lamentably
likely that he had wandered off in a daydream…
"Very well." He quelled his boiling anger, and the sudden urge to throttle the
servant before him for his carelessness. "I will take a small party out of the
city, and I suggest that you try your very hardest to seek him within its
confines. If he is not found…"
The threat was left hanging in the air, but there was no mistaking what it was…
~*~
The afternoon was drawing to a close as Fingon rode
back into the courtyard, soaked to the skin by an unseasonable downpour. Even
from a distance, his sensitive ears had picked up the rising clamour, the
increasingly desperate shouts for the little prince to show himself.
He felt sick with dread, to return thus with empty arms only to find an equally
empty house.
"Ereinion, where in the name of Mandos
are you?"
And then, he saw something aloft, the merest shadow against the westering sun.
Nay, he shook his head. What a state he had to be in to be disturbed by a
flight of birds… But something, maybe it was very fear itself, made him glance
upwards in a prayer to the Valar for his son's
safety, and to reassure his own startled nerves.
Manwe, let not the vengeance for my blood-letting
fall upon my son's…
And then he saw it again, silhouetted against the dying light, and there was no
mistaking it…
Fingon called out in alarm and horror, but such was
the uproar of the palace that no Elf attended even to the cries of their
liege-lord…
Thus, being baffled of all other options, he took off at a sprint to the
tallest tower from which fluttered the banner of the House of Fingolfin…
~*~
He would not cry. 'Twould be unseemly, and babyish.
But how he wanted to…
He could no longer remember how long he had been up here, how long he had
ignored the yells rising to a tumult in the paved yard below. But he could not
let them know where he was, for how his father would scold him if he knew how
foolish her had been!
It had seemed innocent enough. After all, he was bored, and he was not the one
who had been silly enough to stick his pen through his hand as if he was an
idiot like one of those orcs adar
was always chasing.
What else was there to do when Gelmir was bawling his
eyes out in the infirmary, and ada was off being ada, and naneth was busy as well?
And the stars had been so very pretty, and he wondered if he touched them, it
would be a bit like touching the Lady Elbereth's
creations…
Ereinion clung to the flagpole and sniffled quietly.
~*~
"Ion-nîn," Fingon stood on
the flat roof and bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Ion-nîn,
come down this instant!"
"Caaaaa…" The reply drifted back to him on the wind
which lifted his dark hair.
"What?"
"I cannot, adar," Ereinion
wailed, his control breaking. "I cannot go up and I cannot go down. I am
stuck."
And, more to the point, he could feel his sticky little hands slipping on the
polished wood. As his grip gave out, he made one final lunge with the desperate
agility of an elfling, and caught the swaying edge of
the banner. Dangling precariously from the blue fabric, he decided that he did
not want to touch the stars after all. They were far too far up.
Fingon uttered a strangled yelp of pure terror which
rang in the very stones. As one, the milling household looked up to see their
lord frozen in place, his face as white as the scudding puffs of cloud, and,
above him, the babe like yet another flag.
But the Noldorin lord's paralysis lasted only a
fraction of a second. Stripping off his heavy cloak, he grasped the pole
between his hands and began to scale it, hand over hand. So intent was he in
his ascent that he did not even hear his wife scramble up the stairs, nor her
faint gasp of terrified dismay. He only thanked the Valar
that he had spent so much of his youth betting his much-older cousin Maedhros as to who could climb the tallest tree. But here
there were no branches to guide his way, no soft turf to cushion his fall, only
the petrified elfling above him and the all too solid
stone beneath.
"I am no Sindar Elf to be doing this," he muttered to
himself, but kept climbing.
Finally, he reached the top of the pole. Latching his knees as firmly as he
could around it, he prayed that his luck would hold, and, slowly, so very
slowly, reached for the flapping fabric, hauling it in inch by inch until he
could reach the elfling who was by now sobbing, tears
streaming down his pale cheeks.
"Come to ada, Ereinion-nîn,"
he said in a soft, coaxing voice.
"I know not how…" the boy wailed.
"There. I have you." And with a sudden jerk, he tugged the boy to himself,
cradling him against his chest and wrapping his arms as swiftly as he could
around the flagpole. "Tuck your hands round the wood … there … that is it…"
He could not spare a hand to hold his son tight as he would have wished, but
nevertheless, the trembling body secured against his chest reassured him. When
the boy seemed a little more secure, he slithered gracelessly to the ground.
"Pen-nîn tithen." He
enveloped his son in a bone-crushing hug, quivering as badly as the sob-wracked
elfling. "Ai ai, my beloved
son, do not do such things." He looked down into the startlingly blue eyes, his
own as grave as the night. "You know it is foolish to behave in this way, yet
you persist in it. What if you had fallen? You would have broken your mother's
heart and mine as surely as you would have broken every bone in your body."
"I did not wish to, adar," Ereinion
said with unwonted seriousness. "I was bored, you see, and I wanted to touch
the stars."
"The stars? Oh, you mean on the banner." Fingon
smiled tenderly, and unfurled first one tiny fist and then the other. "Well, it
seems you have."
In each outstretched palm there was a scrap of blue fabric emblazoned with
silver.
Soundlessly, the lady knelt beside them, her warm arms enfolding both her
husband and son in her welcoming embrace.
"Well, it seems I have a pair of sterling climbers before me," she chuckled to
cover the last remnants of her fear. "What say you that we take Ereinion inside and find something less fraught with risks
to engage all our minds until supper is served, Fingon-nîn?"
The family, still streaked with tears, trooped inside to beguile the time in
card games which – hopefully – would involve no threat of broken bones. The
screams of laughter of the prince, and the softer merriment of his parents,
echoed through the twilight.
FINIS
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