Chapter Ten – Loss and Hope
A/N – Just again want to say a huge thank you to the reviewers. This chapter was especially difficult to write! Thanks to those who say they see the caring and the trust, that it's worth celebrating. That's exactly why I write, I see that in these people and I know we all do. It's nice to share that feeling especially in our sometimes dark world. – Carolyn-Majorbee
"Garad!"
He came awake instantly though Faramir's warning had been a whisper.
The gray half light and stillness of beginning dawn surrounded and filled the glade. Garad had expected to wake chilled and sore. Instead, he found himself surprisingly well rested and the air around him was warm and sweet, as if spring had come early here.
Crouched close at his side, a darker shadow against the gray, Faramir inclined his head to the right. Looking in the indicated direction, Garad started. The light he had taken as that of early dawn was coming not from overhead, but from something, a figure, silent and still some distance ahead among the trees. It was a ghostly outline, a woman's figure.
Finduilas.
"Come on," Faramir whispered and his warm hand closed about Garad's uninjured arm, gently hauling him to his feet. "Hear it?" he asked, still barely lifting his voice above a whisper.
Garad, stepping over leaf litter with all the stealth for which Rangers were renowned, craned to hear the least sound. And caught it, ever so faint. Trickling water, a stream somewhere not far ahead, gurgling over stones.
The shimmering light that could only be Finduilas - or so Garad fervently hoped – led them still further, twisting and threading their way ever deeper into the forest. The silvery illumination shed in her wake fell like a gentle rain. Then, with crushing sadness, it came to Garad that Finduilas wept and the falling light was her tears.
The sound of running water grew louder in union with the cresting dawn. Gradually, it became much more difficult to pick out Finduilas' form amid the soft dawn that seeped slowly through the dense leafy canopy. Unlike every dawn Garad had ever known, there was not the least sound, no bird sang, no breeze stirred. There was only the stream, somewhere ahead, and ever thinner, a trail of ghostly tears shimmering like mithril on the emerald green of the mossy forest floor.
As their path grew clearer, Garad realized something else – the trees were giving way before them, making a space broad enough that Garad and Faramir could walk side by side. Like a crowd of mourners gathered along the way of a funeral procession, drawing back then gathering behind again as whatever they had awaited passed before them, the trees paid homage. Just ahead of them, flanking rows of stately giants lifted their limbs skyward in salute, letting in more light on Faramir's silent steady approach in solemn honoring of his grief.
Then, a glimmering pearly white was glimpsed from among the rocks that stood at the head of the forest corridor. The stream. Even it wept, its rushing hush a song of mourning.
The trees lifted their branches still higher and a beam of golden light speared downward. Finding what it sought, it shattered in a dazzling sunburst reflected from something in the water, spilling warm sunlight and life through the glade.
Finduilas' almost translucent form hovered a moment at the edge of the stream, then vanished.
The sunburst that had blinded Garad narrowed to a glowing star shining in the water. No, shining from beneath the water, reflected from something... something metallic.
Faramir uttered a grunting breathless cry as if struck hard in the gut.
A sword hilt. Boromir's sword. Trapped, awaiting them, held fast by a tumble of small boulders that partly dammed the stream and created a deep pool.
Garad, placing a stalling hand on Faramir's arm, made to go to it. Then he froze, halted, as he caught sight of something else drifting on that silver and gold rippling surface.
Boromir.
Face downward, the body drifted gently on the whispering flow of water. Red-gold hair fanned outward from the head, gleaming with a cruel impression of life and health. The right arm, that so strong right arm, trailed limp and lifeless, the hand palm upward, the fingers white and loosely curled. Clothed in crimson tunic and silver-gray chain mail, the broad shoulders lifted and fell, carried on each surging wave entering the pool.
Garad heard a terrible, half-strangled sound of distress, and realized it was his own attempt at words.
"No!" he said on the second try, holding Faramir back. "I'll get him."
Taking advantage of Faramir's grieving paralysis, Garad plunged into the waist deep chill water. If he got there first, he could cover Boromir before Faramir would see the terrible bloating corruption the water and the long days of death would have wrought upon his brother's face.
Blinded by tears, Garad stumbled as he reached the body and missed his grip. His hands grabbed at Boromir's mail shirt and the body rolled over, face upward. Garad reached up to take off his own tunic to cover Boromir. Then, he froze, staring at the impossible. Boromir lay atop the waters as if atop his bed. His face was composed as if in peaceful sleep. The eyes did not stare blankly up at him, breaking his heart with their lack of light and life, but rather were closed, calm and serene.
But sleeping men did not recline face down in water.
For all its magical protection, this was still death.
Boromir would never speak again, nor laugh, nor call for ale for his men.
Biting down against the urge to weep, Garad gently reached to take hold of the left arm. Faramir, arriving at his side, took the right. Grim and silent, Faramir bent to haul the arm up over his shoulders, uncaring of the drenching with chill river water. Garad quickly slid an arm under Boromir's knees, taking some of the weight as, bearing the burden together, he and Faramir waded ashore.
There, Faramir crumpled to sit back on his heels. He drew Boromir's upper body hard against himself and held him tight. He made no sound, but lay his cheek against his brother's wet hair and sat as if never to move again.
Garad felt the vice of overbearing grief close his chest then break in a gasping choked sob. He sat watching the brothers, the sight swimming and blurring beneath the force of his silent weeping. Gradually, Garad lowered his head to his chest, not wanting to see, nor wanting to intrude on the dreadful, intimate agony etching itself deep into Faramir's features. His Captain kept vigil, Boromir's head held tightly, protectively to his heart.
If Faramir wanted to sit here unmoving for all eternity, Garad would not leave him. But he could feel the tension building in the very air about the living and the dead. Faramir was searching, hunting, hoping to find and guide Boromir's spirit into and through the body, then onward to The Halls of Mandos.
Drink an ale or two there for me with the lads, Boromir, Garad urged. Boromir would not be without company, at least. I hope Mandos has a good supply. He's going to need it!
The day grew older amid a silence as unchanging as it was profound. Only the sunlight and the water moved, entwined as twin markers of the time that had passed since last Boromir had drawn breath.
"He is near, yet too far," Faramir said, making Garad start as if the dead had spoken. Faramir lifted his head a fraction away from his dead brother, but no more. "He will not come. Duty holds him."
Garad did not know what to say. Did this mean Boromir was doomed never to return to Mandos and never to return on the wheel of life? Would he then become a wraith?
"He says he will return when it suits him, and not before," Faramir said, and something like a smile twitched at his stony face.
Unable to think of anything else to say, Garad ventured, "Sounds like Boromir, all right!"
Faramir nodded, and lowering his head again, said no more but returned to his calling.
Then again, Faramir might not have the will to move, regardless of any supposed search for Boromir's spirit. Surely Finduilas, who had been here but a short while ago, would be better equipped to lead her elder son to wherever she herself now resided? Faramir was in no state to think clearly.
"If it happens that way," Boromir's words suddenly came to Garad from the memory of the many years past since they were both eighteen. "No, damn it, listen to me! If it happens that way and I die first, I want you to promise me you'll make him go on. Swear to me, Garad, swear you won't let him get himself killed or fade. Gondor will need him."
Gondor will need him. Gondor would go on for him where it could not have recovered from Boromir's loss otherwise. Not with sufficient strength to keep Sauron at bay. That made Garad at last draw a weary breath. Keep Sauron at bay?
Boromir, my friend, you needn't have worried. You almost made the distance to die at Faramir's side. Almost. We can't hold, alone, against Sauron too much longer. We'll all be dead soon enough. You knew it before you left for Imladris. But, I will keep my oath.
Feeling sure he had aged a hundred years since they had found Boromir's body, Garad at last prised himself upward. He stood a moment, suddenly aware he had forgotten something. Sunlight danced across his eyes, dazzling him. Boromir's sword! It still lay waiting in the water. Garad turned and climbed back down the low grassy bank and splashed toward it. He reached out, then paused, humbled by all that sword and the arm that had wielded it represented, had accomplished since Boromir had first taken it up as a boy. Bowing his head in acknowledgment a moment, Garad reverently took hold of the hilt and lifted it from the water.
Silently, he returned with it to Faramir's side. Faramir remained as unmoving as any statue, his expression hidden against his brother's hair. That hair was dryer now, Garad realized absurdly, as if part of him expected Boromir to look up at him with loud complaint for the dousing. Boromir's clothing, unlike his body, was in ruins. Tattered and torn by more than the river's relatively gentle passage. The marks of battle were plain to see for any experienced soldier. The chain mail was ruptured about the chest, its rings broken by what could only have been a fatal blow. Old blood was still plainly visible, thick and wide about the tunic collar and chest. No amount of river water could completely remove so deep and telling a stain.
Plainly, Boromir's ribs and the organs beneath had been crushed, and he had bled to death.
Silently vowing vengeance, Garad knelt and gently returned the sword to its master, pressing the hilt into Boromir's limp hand and taking his own left, folded the dead fingers about its grip.
Then, Garad drew a deep, heavy breath, bracing himself to carry out his oath-bound duty.
"Faramir," he said gently, "Come, time to take him home."
Slowly, Faramir lifted his head and looked up at his friend. His eyes were dry, but his face stark white and lined, oh so lined, as it had never been before, by a pain beyond enduring.
"I know," he said.
Garad had to swallow hard before he could get past the lump in his throat. Hesitantly, gently, he reached out and lay his hand to Faramir's shoulder. It was an honor far beyond his earning, to ask that he might in some small way share Faramir's pain, lighten his burden.
"When you're ready, we'll need a travois." Letting go, he turned away, to find wood somehow, without touching the trees.
"Garad?" Faramir said at his back.
Garad looked back at him.
"Thank you."
Tears again filmed Garad's eyes. He nodded and turned again to his work.
The day was growing late, and long shadows stood everywhere about him, but the trees no longer seemed in anyway menacing. Garad didn't understand why it should be so, but was simply grateful, for it seemed they must spend the night here. They could not hope to move Boromir's body over such rough terrain in darkness.
Garad found there were fallen branches aplenty where he would have sworn there had been none this morning. Conveniently, most were the precise size needed to make the three -sided litter. Stooping to collect them, he became gradually aware that the light was growing rather than diminishing. Growing rapidly brighter, in fact.
A human form was again taking shape.
"Finduilas?" Garad asked of Faramir, but the other Man only frowned and shook his head.
"No!" Garad exclaimed as a long white beard and piercing dark eyes became visible. He drew his sword and shouted warning, "Saruman!"
Even as he braced himself, Garad wondered what the hell he thought he was doing setting to tackle The White Wizard with nothing more than a blade,
The face took on more clearly defined features, and Garad dared breathe again.
"Gandalf!" he exclaimed, then sensing something was very different not least that the Wizard wore dazzlingly clean white robes, Garad flicked a glance to Faramir and asked, "Right?"
Faramir nodded.
"Is that any welcome?" Gandalf asked, his bushy eyebrows lowering, to frown at Garad's drawn weapon.