Chapter 14: Comradely friendships
With thanks to Tommy Ginger, Borys and Lady Peter, whose combined ideas have sparked off this latest piece...
Not mine, of course.
"Ouch!" Boromir was showing me how to sharpen a sword with an oil stone. I sucked the blood from the cut.
"You're meant to run the blade across the stone, not across your finger," he said.
"Know it all," I answered.
"So," said Legolas, his blond head bent over the arrows he was checking for damage, "Do you think we're in book-verse or movie-verse?"
"What, you mean you know the difference?" said Charlize.
"Oh yes, well, Gimli, Aragorn, Boromir and I do. The hobbits are in blissful ignorance. And I think Éowyn's in denial."
"In denial?" asked Charlize.
"Yes," said Aragorn, "She's had so much horrible stuff happen to her in Tolkien's original world – parents dying, Grima pawing his grubby hands all over her, now her cousin dying. She can't cope with the extra shit the fan-ficcers pile on top of her... Faramir two-timing her with me, being fem-slashed with Arwen, that strange faction of teenage girls who hate her for no reason I've never been able to identify, not to mention the other, even less savoury fics. She and Éomer see a therapist a couple of times a week about that, when they're in limbo between fics. So when she's in a fic, she just goes into this state where she pretends it's all real – in fact I think for the duration of the fic, she really thinks it is real. Most of the time at any rate. Very occasionally, when it gets too ridiculous, she sometimes breaks out – like with the 'I've been a vair, vair naughty girl' joke. But mostly I think she's in denial."
"Oh," said Charlize, looking very upset. "Gosh, I though she seemed on the brink of losing it yesterday. Now I know a bit more, I'm surprised she hasn't gone completely bonkers."
"This time, though, it's all going to be okay," said Boromir, firmly. "I will look after her. While respecting her autonomy of course. And encouraging her to find self realisation through chopping the bad guys' heads off in battle."
"Ruth," I said accusingly, "You've loaned Boromir your copy of Betty Friedan, haven't you."
"What if I have?" said Ruth, defensively.
"Anyway, this is all a bit beside the point," said Charlize. "What I really want to know is how, if you know the plot, or rather, the two plots, you don't end up messing things up?"
"Well, we know the plot, but we can't actually change it unless the author chooses to change it – usually through the OCs, but sometimes through one of us," Aragorn explained. "Like almost happened with Boromir... Brilliant move, by the way, Boromir," he continued, turning to the Gondorian. "You survived the lure of the ring and the orc attack but kept the plot on track."
Boromir looked a bit baffled. "What did I do?"
"Well, you still scared Frodo off," Aragorn said.
"How? I didn't do anything."
"You bored him into fleeing across the Emyn Muil and Dagorlad."
"I bored him?" Boromir looked really baffled.
"I think," I said gently, "What Aragorn's trying to say is that, dearly as we love you, the way you're mooning over Éowyn might be getting a little bit much. Just a tiny bit..."
Boromir looked quite crestfallen. "Do you all think that?" He glanced round the group anxiously.
"We don't," said Charlize. "Me 'n' Ruth think it's really sweet."
Boromir looked round the rest of the group. Gimli shook his head. "Nay, lad, I'm afraid you are a bit soppy."
"Sez you, sitting there braiding your boyfriend's hair," said Charlize. Legolas smirked, and continued repairing the fletches on his arrows.
"Still," said Gimli from behind the Elf's back, fingers woven in his silken locks, "we still haven't established whether we're in book or movie verse."
From the window behind us, we could hear Théoden's deep voice, explaining something in Rohirric. Charlize quirked an eyebrow, then frowned as she tried to concentrate. Clearly the hours with Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer had paid off. Suddenly an ear-piercing noise rent the air, somewhere between a shriek and a bellow.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'VE GOT TO STAY IN THE CAVES WITH THE WOMENFOLK?" It was Éowyn's voice.
"Movie-verse, then," said Aragorn, "Brace yourself for her cookery."
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
And that's how we found ourselves having to do yet more long-distance hiking across Rohan. Ruth had fallen into step with a tall, blond woman of a certain age. She told us in that her name was Earcongota, then proceeded to tell us her life story.
"My mother was a Rohir who went to Lamedon to earn her living as servant girl. Shortly before her death, she told me her tragic life story. One day, the Lord of the Manor came upon her. He said, 'You were trespassing in my garden. Now you will have to pay for it, BUAHAHAH!'"
Ruth and I managed with some difficulty to stifle our giggles at the evil laugh. Earcongota, unaware of the incipient giggles, but sensing an appreciative audience, carried on with her tale, and her next words made us wonder if her mother had in fact been created by one of the Muriels.
"The maiden shivered at what she saw in his eyes. It was animal lust. He would take her here and now, on the lawn, leaving difficult to remove green stains from her dress of imported Khand silk, with a delicate green pattern inlaid with gold thread which matched her green eyes with golden accents which stood out when she was mirthful... And so on and so forth ..."
I stifled a laugh at the gratuitous 'and so on and so forth.' Then I couldn't help it. My mind was off and running like a greyhound out of the traps, riffing on the strange description Earcongota had just presented us with. There was the question of exactly what the words "stood out" cross-referred to? Her eyes (in my imagination now popping out on stalks in all their green and gold flecked glory)? Or their accent? How did eyes have an accent? Was it a Sheffield accent? Actually talking of accents, the weirdest thing of the lot was that Earcongota had a faint Texas twang. At this point I started to laugh for real, and tried to cover it with a fit of fake hiccups.
Nothing daunted, the blonde woman continued. "It is from my father that I inherited my heliotrope eyes..." (Definitely a left-over from a Muriel story, I thought, shoving my fist into my mouth and trying not to let my shoulders shake visibly).
Ruth came to my rescue. "So how did you end up back in Rohan?"
"When my mother realised that her dishonour would lead to a baby, she came home. I was the result, some nine months later. Fortunately the Rohirrim are much more understanding about that sort of thing that Gondorians. So, despite my lowly birth, I trained with the village wise woman and became a Piss Prophetess. Such was my skill that I was sent to Minas Tirith to study, and then returned to become the Royal Piss Prophetess at the Golden Hall."
"If you don't mind me asking, what is a Piss Prophetess?" asked Ruth, politely. A lot more politely than I could have managed at this point.
"When a woman thinks she may be pregnant, I get her to piss on some ribbons. Then I burn them. I can tell from the smell whether she is pregnant or not," said Earcongota. "I also supply herbs to help girls who wish to avoid pregnancy." Ruth and I shared a look: we remembered the placebo effect from my encounter with the Lothíriels. "And I have other herbs that will deal with an unwanted pregnancy. Though if I was in Gondor, they would insist I had admitting privileges at the Houses of Healing before I could do that last bit."
At this point, Marshal Elfhelm rode past. Earcongota gave a huge sigh. "Oh, is he not the most beautiful specimen of a man you have ever seen?" Ruth and I looked at each other, and the glance we exchanged was sufficient to establish that Earcongota had no competition to worry about as far as the two of us were concerned. "At one point I had a bit of a thing going with him. But alas, he cares not for the smell of singed ribbons soaked in urine..."
I decided enough was enough. "It's lovely to have met you," I said, "But I've just remembered I need to talk to Lord Aragorn about something. So if you'd please excuse me..." Ruth sent a pleading glance my way, but I wasn't about to hang around. I dropped back a bit down the long line of people. Aragorn, Boromir and Éomer were riding side-by-side.
"We may have to go on a quick sortie to do some scouting," Aragorn was in the process of saying to Éomer. "Want to come along? Safety in numbers and all that?"
"Oh, gosh, I suppose you can never be too careful with all these orcs around," I said, feeling suddenly extremely worried for them, not least because I'd just remembered the warg attack and Aragorn's fall from the cliff earlier in the movie-verse version. What if we were in for another one of those?
"Not so much orcs," said Éomer. "More a matter of having a chaperone."
"A chaperone?" I said. This was really getting weird now.
"Male friendships are very difficult in this world," said Aragorn, shaking his head sadly. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I like all my friends enormously. But one-on-one time is always, well... it has you on edge. You think you're having a nice day out, I don't know, a ride amid the green trees of Ithilien with Faramir, a boat trip in the sunshine, the waves sparkling, with one of his cousins. But you just can't relax and enjoy it. Because you never know whether this is going to turn out to be a meandering story of platonic friendship, or whether one of you is suddenly going to end up pinning the other to the ground and ravishing him. It means you can't enjoy it at all."
"Oh, I see," I said. "Actually, no, I don't see. Surely you know whether you're gay or not in any given fic."
"Well, not necessarily. You see, all love stories, specially a half-way decent smutty one, require the author to build up loads of... what's it called again, Éomer?"
"UST – unresolved sexual tension," the Horselord supplied.
"That's right, UST. And one of the ways of doing that is to have the two protagonists never having fallen for another man before, so at first they think it's just friendship, then each of them individually realises how they feel, then they fight against their feelings for a while, then they agonise over the fact that they don't think the other one could possibly feel that way, and so on and so forth." (There seemed to be a lot of "and so on and so forth" going on today, I noted). "So those late night sessions looking through legal documents with your Steward by the light of the fire in your chambers which culminate in the two of you falling asleep, with his head nestled on your shoulder, your hand somehow entangled in his hair... well you never quite know whether they're platonic or going somewhere. Especially when some of the writers of the platonic stuff are so innocent they unwittingly give their stories really suggestive names even though they don't intend them to be suggestive."
"And don't get me onto the subject of shared baths," said Boromir with a shudder.
"Or being wounded and taking shelter in caves..." said Éomer. "Actually, even though that one was written tongue in cheek I still ended up... actually, never mind what I ended up doing, or with whom." I could have sworn he cast a quick glance sideways at Boromir and blushed.
At this point, Legolas and Gimli rode up. Boromir whispered to me in an undertone, "You know, I think Gimli just pretends to be frightened of horses so he's got an excuse to cuddle Legolas."
Aragorn and Éomer explained the need for a quick reconnaissance mission, and the Elf and Dwarf agreed to go along. Having escaped chaperone duties, Boromir surreptitiously dropped back a bit in the long file of refugees, to where Éowyn was walking. I eavesdropped as best I could from a distance. As far as I could tell, he'd asked her about horse breeding, and she was telling him in great detail about the Mearas, and different blood lines, and so on, a happy smile on her face. Every so often he'd ask her a reasonably intelligent question, and she'd smile again, and carry on with the lecture. She looked genuinely happy and Boromir looked delighted. I had to give it to him: he was (as my older brother would put it) playing a blinder. He'd got her engaged in conversation without scaring her off, and had come up with a topic which cheered her up.
The only slight fly in the ointment appeared that night, as Éowyn doled out bowls of stew to everyone. However, once more I had to admit to a certain awestruck admiration at the level of thought Charlize had put into the preparations for our journey. When Éowyn was safely out of sight, she ferreted around in her rucksack for a moment, then produced a bottle of tabasco sauce which she shared round.
Author's Note: Earcongota appears by special request. I am happy to supply more details of her illustrious career if asked... And many thanks to Borys, who let me have a scrap of his genius parodies of OTT Mary-Sue stories to incorporate as the back story for Earcongota's mother.