In Misty Mountains
A/N – Hello! Anybody who actually happens to be reading this. Please review. So much for finishing this over the summer holidays – but I know where I'm going now, and, more importantly, exactly how to get there…
Ilesté, a child who simply woke up, alive, in a cave and learned how to live on her own was found by Éowyn and Faramir, who were on their way to stay with the King and elven Queen in the summer palace of Arnor. They had encountered many difficulties travelling, but when Ilesté was riding with them they did not. Somehow, Ilesté made the snake leave them. Trying to find a way through a band of trees, she fell down a cliff into a river, and unable to swim, drifted, eventually into a lake. A bird saved her. A lady found her while walking beside the lake, unable to sleep, and healed her. Aran, Aurelen (Evie), and Gideon make friends with her, and Faramir and Éowyn are shaken when they see her, but she is absorbed almost completely as attempts are made to take one of the Princes. They leave, travelling down the Baranduin and meeting the hobbits, and going through Bree where Ilesté has a nightmare of the dark elf on a black horse, looking for something. As Evie discovers, to her amazement, that Ilesté has never been told the story of the Lord of the Rings, Strider is unsettled by her perceptions of the stars and the magic in the white stones that were placed there thousands of years before, to protect the path to Rivendell.
The sun woke the adults, and the group rose early, Faramir gently but insistently waking the children. Ilesté was the last to sit up, despite having been nudged awake again twice by Evie. When she did resolve to get up, however, she did so very swiftly, and was ready before any of the other children, though Aran soon stood beside her, by their horse.
"I don't suppose you would like to ride in front of me today, Ilesté, and take the reins?" he suggested with a rueful smile. Ilesté returned his gaze seriously, feeling guilty.
"I am sorry we can't take turns, Aran. I'm really sorry," she twisted her fingers together, unable to convey that she genuinely was.
"Of course you're sorry – because you wouldn't be so bumped around if it was anyone other than Aran you were riding with!" the newly-arrived Evie added, laughing.
"'tis true, 'tis true," lamented Aran, grinning.
"And most tragic for poor Ilesté too," called a laughing Aragorn from the other side of the horse, before striding around to check the saddle-strap.
"But it's good practice for you, Aran, to ride every day, rather than sharing a horse with your sister and taking turns controlling."
"Or not," Evie muttered.
"Not taking turns, or not controlling?" Ilesté murmured back, unsure.
Evie snorted with laughter as she easily mounted her pony, and Aran objected as he did the same thing, with not quite so much gracefulness.
"I always take turns, if you want to! But you never do, because it's a little bumpier when I have the reins. You like to ride; I don't, and it suits us both better if you do it – so I'm actually demonstrating one of the main kingly qualities-"
"What letting other people do the work for you?!" interjected Evie. Aran met his father's eyes.
"Which…?–" Aragorn shook his head, grinning just like his son. "Anarion's Principle of Kingly Delegation, in accordance with the Principle of Purpose; you don't learn that until the year after next, the year before you can legally become king!!" he protested. "I see I'm going to have to expect to have these things thrown at me, whether you're meant to have learnt them yet or not!"
"Honestly, father. They are principles."
Chuckling exasperatedly, Aragorn went to help Arwen with Gideon, and Ilesté quickly and quietly climbed up behind Aran.
As they rode into the ever higher and more rugged foothills, it became more quiet. They had left the countryside behind them, and had entered the great territory of the mountains. Damp, misty cold hung over the rocks through which they picked their way, and they were mostly silent, trying to remain inconspicuous to the huge mountains. They seemed devoid of life, as if they hid mist-veiled secrets in their midst and wanted none to discover them.
At about two o'clock by Ilesté's unsure reckoning, they got off the horses and rested beside a large river. She dipped her fingers in, tensing with the shock of the cold water, and then letting them relax, trailing in it. Evie came and sat down next to her, and Ilesté glanced up at her.
"If you need to know how cold it really is, you have to put your foot in." Evie grimaced, then began to take off a riding boot and sock, and then to lean over, toes stretched out. Suddenly, Ilesté threw out an arm to stop her.
"Don't." She had noticed something. "I think there's something wrong with the water."
"Why?" Evie asked dubiously, but withdrew her foot.
"I can't see any fish."
"It's too cold maybe."
"No," Ilesté shook her head. "They should be here, eve if we cannot see them. But I don't think they are."
"You think there's something wrong with the water – but the horses are drinking it!" Evie hissed, alarmed.
"They've already drunken it; it is probably alright."
Evie smiled.
"Perhaps Gollum ate all the fish. This could be a river leading from the underground lake in his cave."
"Gollum?"
"The creature that had the ring, and gave it to Bilbo, and was torture, so he shouted Baggins and Shire but Gandalf knew that in the end – do you not know about the Lord of the Rings?"
"Should I? Could you tell me?" Ilesté said, feeling even more uneasy as Evie stared at her. The rock was strangely uncomfortable and she shifted slightly.
"But didn't your mother…? The whole of Middle Earth was covered by darkness, though I suppose Arnor never really emerged from the first darkness…perhaps your village…"
"I didn't live with anyone who could tell me. There were no other people." Ilesté looked away from Evie's stare as if began to frighten her, but the only other thing to look at was the cold, rushing water. "I lived on my own."
"With your family?"
The fast-flowing water was clear, and she tried to look into it and remember. She could remember nothing of her life before waking up. The feeling of stone. The inside of the hill, with the drip of water and her, on the slab. In the centre of the memory stood the metal table, and at its head, the black metal chair, towering. She turned away from it, and back to Evie.
"You will tell me about the Lord of the Rings?"
"Yes. But not here." Evie looked around. "It's too real."
They followed the river up, steeped in the dark gloom that filled the narrow gap between two sheer mountains. Evie and Ilesté were particularly careful to stay close to each other and away from the water, and for Ilesté the reasons were twofold; she knew that she could not swim. At one point, the mountain on their right became a sheer rock-face and they walked along a ledge barely a table's width, with the river running fast and deep on their left. The rock-face leant over them as if to fall and push them into the river as it did so. They passed, however, and continued a little further, to the old bridge.
Arwen, who was leading them, halted.
"The bridge is here," she murmured, her eyes distant, looking across the water to another time. Faramir and Éowyn reined in their horses to stop on one side of her. The children halted too, behind Arwen, and last came Aragorn, who rode around to Arwen's other side as Faramir certified:
"The river has brought down the bridge. The water must have eroded the stone and it crumbled away."
"But…so completely," Éowyn doubted.
"Even the works of the greatest craftsmen – even the wondrous designs of the elven masters of old – are defeated in time," said Aragorn.
"Lost," Éowyn corrected, murmuring as she stared at the river. She glanced to Arwen. "Lost in time."
Arwen's face changes as she gazed across the water, as if she was reacting to something she was seeing, but she remained, held, motionless. Gideon, shifted on her lap, and stared up at her anxiously.
"Mummy?" he called.
She looked down, saw him and a sudden smile transformed her, beautiful but fleeting, as she rearranged him on her lap.
"Can we swim across?" she asked.
Faramir assessed the water before turning back to them, his expression grim.
"It is cold – but yes, it is possible. The current is strong – and swift – so if we should, we must take the greatest care. We could cross in a group, with the weaker swimmers more upstream…" His brow furrowed. Éowyn nodded, and turned to the children, her light smile reassuring.
"So that we can catch you if the current is much too strong, and sweeps you into us. Ilesté, you cannot swim?"
She tried, from behind Aran, to answer, but an irrational fear had twisted somewhere inside her, constricting her windpipe. She shook her head at Éowyn, who indicated that she should stay on the horse as it swam, and she would swim beside her. The others prepared themselves. Aragorn took Gideon. Aran handed her the reins and slipped off the horse. She helped Evie take off her outer dress and put it in a bag so it wouldn't weigh her down as she swam. Pockets were emptied. Jewellery was carefully removed and tucked into clasped bags. Ilesté watched, as if from a distance: perhaps from the shadowy ledge of rock far above. She might have seen something move there, but she felt cut off from everyone by a wall of icy water; separated, and she couldn't speak. Evie pressed something into her unfeeling hand and she put it in a place that seemed safe. Her arms and legs felt completely numb and useless as the horse edged into the water, led by Éowyn. Aragorn, Gideon and Faramir were in front and on one side, Arwen and Aran on the other. Ilesté looked for Evie, who waved from just behind her mother, amongst the other horses.
The swirling water was freezing, though Ilesté knew she didn't feel it nearly as much as the others. Pebbles skittered underneath her horse's hooves as they waded deeper. They were about a third of the way across by the time everyone was forced to start swimming. The turbulent water pulled at Ilesté's legs, sucking at the horse's head. She shook with the twisting animal and tried to calm her terror by whispering to the animal, but it could hardly be heard over the noise of the thrashing water, and the words seemed only to make the horse wilder, inciting it to splash desperately. Suddenly it threw its head back and she saw its rolling eyes as it screamed – she screamed too, a word she did not understand and somewhere, everywhere, the scream was taken up. The raging water was full of wings, waves surrounding her – Éowyn was swept away, her eyes finding Ilesté's and widening in terror before she was snatched from the water by huge talons – and a manic voice above her screamed,
"Take the elf!"
Air and water mixed, flying, light and dark roiling, and she threw out her hands to find the horse's neck, trying to stay on as it threw itself forward – the head of a great snake reared from the churning water and the horse twisted backwards, going under completely as it bolted, carried downriver until its hooves found rock and it pushed upwards, water streaming from Ilesté and she turned her head, trying to look back but snatched a glimpse of only the water as the horse galloped and she fought to stay on.
Ilesté crouched, her knees gripping the horse's flank, slipping as its body thudded from shape to shape, hands pressing either side of its neck. It swung to avoid things but her hands and knees kept her on and she gradually found the pattern of its movement, learning in her own way, to ride the storm as they hurtled along the path. Ilesté began to pray, as they thundered through a gully, that the mountain would not notice her, would be occupied with the others – she felt a surge of revulsion at her own selfishness, but it was combated by her need to get down, out of the mountains and back into the hills. She prayed that the horse would not turn an ankle on one of the hundreds of rocks that littered their path and she hoped, hoped and hoped for the others…for Evie, for Gideon and Aran, for Éowyn, in the talons of the bird; why had Éowyn been taken from the river? She wasn't an elf!
Suddenly they surged over the lip of a steep slope, and Ilesté was thrown forward into the horse's neck, slipping to one side as the horse tried to slow down, turning the sharp corner of the path but it skidded in the dirt and Ilesté was finally thrown off, gasping in pain when she landed on sharp stones and the horse's hind legs just missed her shoulder. Her head reeling, Ilesté clambered to her feet. Pain shot through her legs and knees but she took a step forward. To her right she saw the horse careering down the slope, attempting to get back up onto the path that curved very sharply away from where she found herself now standing. Ilesté walked to the edge of the rugged outcrop, and stood, tiny, on the precipice at the head of the gorge of Imladris.
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