- 21 -
"That bit was made up, wasn't it?" asked Tilly, frowning. "About harp-playing?"
Everyone around the fire laughed again, as she was the only one to interrupt the story with her questions, not wishing to accept even a tale without proof.
Acwyn smiled at the girl indulgently. "Any why would you say that, dear?"
"I've seen king Thorin once or twice..." Tilly broke off, searching for words or a way to explain what she meant. "It just doesn't suit him."
"The gal's right," said the moustached man, putting a woollen shawl around his daughter shoulder's against the evening cold. "He looks a warrior, not a harp-player."
"Are the two necessarily mutually exclusive?" asked a male voice. Its owner was further from the fire, his face invisible in the shadow, but Acwyn saw he was noticeably shorter than the other men present, and saw the hood hiding his face, and recognised he was one of Durin's folk.
"That's true, then?" Tilly asked, surprised.
"Aye, lassie, that's true. Improbable doesn't always mean impossible."
"Alright, alright." Tilly raised her slender hands in a gesture of surrender. "So, what happened next?"
"Well, I was about to say that, before you chimed in." Acwyn laughed. "But before I do that, I must tell you I've never had a listener as curious and inquisitive as you, young lady."
Her words were followed by a bout of laughter, some hands-clapping and merry shouts, demanding she continued her tale.
"And that is right what I'm going to do," Acwyn said. "So we have already established king Thorin can play harp, or at least could and did so that long time ago when our story takes place."
"Despite how peaceful life in Ered Luin had become for the dwarves, their king still had many duties. But each evening he would leave his kingship at the entrance to his family's halls, shrugging it off his shoulders along with his pelted coat, and became a man. He would eat supper with his sister and her husband, and sometimes also their good friends Balin and Dwalin, and then drink a cup of beer or mead or smoke his pipe. Then he would play with his older nephew, teaching him how to fight, telling him stories and legends, and playing his harp and singing the songs of old. He would sing the song of Durin and his awakening, and how the First Father had walked among unnamed hills and drunk from untasted wells, and how he had seen the crown of stars above the head of his reflection in the depths of Mirrormere. He would sing of Khazad-dûm, of its high halls and of its splendour when the days when the world had been young and fair, and of the demise of the first and foremost dwarven kingdom of old. He would sing of Erebor, of its prosperity and beauty, and of the fire dormant inside the Arkenstone, and of home lost.
"And sometimes, when Dís would take out her ocarina and whistle a merrier tune that bore memories of birdsong on spring meadows within, Thorin would play a more gentle and serene and much less sombre song, a song of a new life being carved slowly and laboriously in an unknown land. And sometimes, however rarely, he would take his harp and, even without the accompaniment of Dís' ocarina, he would play melodies that sang of the silver ribbon of the river Lhûn winding among the green of forests and meadows like a vein of mithril in the stone, and of the gleam of white snow upon the peaks of Ered Luin like the finest gems, and the music he played was like a soft spring morning over the Blue Mountains, like gentle summer rain and like light of the first stars in the sky at dusk. And each time he played such music, his face serene and peaceful as it was only rarely, the melodies he played captured Run's heart a little more, string by string; not the ballads of old, thought she loved hearing them too, but the less solemn, more serene melodies of life.
"When exactly the king noticed that, it is hard to tell, but it might have been he began playing those melodies more often after that, or might have simply been that the time he devoted to his family finally allowed his heart to heal and he relearned joy, and played merrier melodies more often because of that. What did he see in her is even more difficult to guess, and she never quite learned it either. It might have been that she had no desire whatsoever for gold or wealth, and she treasured neither silver nor gems, but laughter and little everyday joys, something that to him came with difficulty. Or it might have been his loneliness answered to hers. Or it might have been that the music he played put a spell on him too, and the harpstrings bound together two hearts that had never been destined to meet."