Title: A Teacher's Duty
Chapter 26: Ivana's Secret
NOTE: The title of this story has been changed from "The Terrors of Teaching Elven Teenagers" to "A Teacher's Duty" upon the advice of one of my reviewers.
…
"You may not know this, Legolas, but the King was married twice," Ivana began, fully prepared to be interrupted, as she of course was.
"He what!" Legolas was flabbergasted. He had never heard of this before.
"Yes…you see, many years ago, when I was an Elfling of five summers; my parents were captured and killed by orcs. We were traveling from Rivendell to Mirkwood-"
"What does this have to do with my father being married twice?" Legolas asked. He was still preoccupied with this bit of information to pay much attention to the rest of the story.
"I'm getting to that, just be a little patient, for Valar's sake! You never did possess that virtue, even as a child." She gave him a half smile, but he was once again far too amazed to let this sentence pass.
"What?" You knew me as a child!" he said, his voice cracking slightly on the words.
Ivana looked as if she might like to kick herself. She swore under her breath in a manner not at all becoming a lady, and then asked the shell-shocked Legolas to please let her tell the story properly at her own pace without interrupting her, or she would only confuse him by giving away bits and pieces.
Legolas nodded numbly and motioned for her to continue, wondering if anything could surprise him now.
Ivana took a deep breath and then continued. "As I was saying, my parents were killed by orcs on our way to Mirkwood. I will never know how, but somehow I escaped from the orcs and walked two days to the Mirkwood gate. I don' know how I even knew the way- I think I found the place by accident, or with the trees' help.
"When I arrived there, I was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and weeping. The guards took me in to their cottage, fed me, and took me to the King's palace. I had no family, as the King discovered; I was the only one left after my parents died. We had been planning to permanently migrate to Mirkwood when this happened.
"Under the circumstances, the King tried in vain to find me a home, but was finally forced to take me in. He was only just into kingship, and did not appreciate this new burden to his duties, but after a number of tantrums from my part, and a handful of scolding from him; we grew closer than you could ever imagine." Ivana's eyes were distant as she remembered her childhood.
Legolas gazed blankly at her. The words pounded in his head horribly. How could any of this be true? He wondered. But Ivana was not lying; her eyes said as much. He motioned for her to continue, which she did after another moment's reminiscence.
"Your father, at the time, was married to the She-Elf Gailrin of Lorien. He was very much in love with her. You may have noticed that he does not particularly stand up for the rights of women," Ivana gave a slightly tight-lipped smile as she said this. Evidently she was not pleased about the fact.
Legolas agreed with this view whole-heartedly, though wondering what relevance it had to her story. He had always thought that his father did not give women the credit the deserved. He would never forget how he had argued with his father just to allow the girls to come for the hunting trip a month ago.
"Yes, I've noticed it," he said noncommittally.
"Well, it is only an act to please the people," Ivana replied, shaking her head, "According to Mirkwood's laws, the person that inherits the throne must be descended from the King directly, and according to its people, it must not under any circumstances be a woman. The King's wife was barren, which they found out later, and they therefore had no means of securing an heir. When I came to them, Gailrin took me into her home with open arms. She had always wanted a child, and I was hers before a month passed. The King accepted me only because she loved me so much.
"But he too came to love me as his own daughter in time. Between us, we built up a beautiful family of the kind you find in fairytales. But of course, it was not meant to be. " She paused, a bitter look coming over her face, and became lost in thought.
Legolas waited impatiently for her to continue, which she did in a moment.
"Well. The first thousand years of my life passed happily enough, but then my fa- the King made a public announcement stating that I was to be his heir."
Legolas gasped in amazement. He did not know what surprised him more; the fact that Ivana had almost called Thranduil 'father', or the fact that Thranduil, who abided by Mirkwood's protocol so staunchly, had actually declared a woman to be his heir.
Suddenly he realized how his gasp must have sounded to Ivana, as though he too shared Mirkwood's view that a woman could never take the throne. He flushed, and hastened to explain himself; but stuttered and stammered so much that Ivana cut him off and told him she had known exactly why he had gasped, thank you very much. He gave her a sheepish look and told her to continue.
"As you can imagine, the people went up in smoke when they heard this. Even the women protested. This was completely unprecedented! For one thing, I was not the heir by blood, and for another, I was a mere woman." She glared at Legolas as though this was his fault and then resumed her story. "The next century was a nightmare for my family, because I could not even step out of the palace without insulting whispers following me. My mother was shunned for being barren, and my father was cursed for his lack of judgment."
"But he remained adamant, and after a century of cursing and mocking and insulting, the people grew tired of singing the same song over and over again, and reconciled themselves grudgingly to the thought of a woman inheriting the throne.
"But suddenly, when we least expected it, the unthinkable happened. My mother was killed by a snake while she was walking in the forest." Her voice shook on the words, but she continued bravely in a moment, and when she did her tone conveyed no emotion. "My father and I were shattered. But we helped each other in our sorrow, and our joint bereavement brought us much, much closer than we had ever been before. Mirkwood contained itself for awhile as we grieved, but soon it became apparent that they were overjoyed. The-"
"What?" Legolas interrupted, staring at her in disbelief, "What do you mean, Mirkwood was overjoyed!"
Ivana gave him another tight lipped smile, "Well it freed the King from his marriage, did it not? He could marry again; have a male child if luck was on his side. Even if a male was not born, at least the heir would be descended directly from the King."
Legolas was appalled. He had never seen this side of Mirkwood before, and he hated what he was hearing. He had never realized that his people could be so prejudiced, and when he did it angered him greatly.
When I am King, he thought, I will declare my firstborn to be the heir, whether girl or boy, and we shall just see what Mirkwood has to say about it if it is a girl. Suddenly he realized what he was thinking, and he stopped himself hurriedly. He wasn't planning to marry, and without marriage, there would not be a 'firstborn' anyway.
Ivana glanced at him, and decided he had had enough time to recover himself. "As I was saying, the people started crying out for the King to marry, and he did so eventually, albeit reluctantly. The woman he married- your mother- was very beautiful and completely outshone Gailrin in this respect. Yet, father disliked her very much, and refused to even sleep in the same bed with her after his wedding night.
"She had a good heart, yet, after all, she could hardly overlook the way the King slighted her. I was very close to my father at the time, and she grew to hate me deeply because she thought I was only making matters worse. Soon she was with child, and when she went smiling to give my father the news, but he told her, very coldly, that I was to be heir regardless."
"But why would he-?" Legolas began, bewildered, but she cut him off.
"Why would he declare me as heir when that had been the very reason that people had pressured him into marrying again? I don't know, Legolas, but I can guess. I think the marriage made him miss naneth more than ever. It had been her wish for me to be the heir, and he wanted to honor that.
"Of course, your mother Caladel was not at all happy about this. She thought her child was the rightful heir to the throne. She grew angry, and bitter, and her hatred for me grew substantially; but she could not act on her feelings because of the King. So she bottled them up, and it weakened her greatly. That, in my opinion, is the real reason for her dying in child birth. The baby, of course, was you."
"My mother died in childbirth because she hated you and bottled it up inside of her?" Legolas asked faintly. He had never heard of any of this before. He had known his mother died while delivering him, but he had no idea why.
"Yes," Ivana replied, somewhat defensively, "But it wasn't my fault."
"No, no, I did not mean to accuse you; I know it is not our fault," Legolas said distractedly, his mind still whirling from everything he had just heard.
"Mirkwood waited impatiently for Thranduil to announce you as his next heir, but he did nothing of the sort. During the first three years of your life, I brought you up as though you were my own son. I was deeply attached to you, and you couldn't bear to be away from me for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. But then the Kingdom started to get rebellious. They asked my father flat out in a demonstration whether he meant his son to take the throne when he sailed.
"The King said no, he did not. The Kingdom was on the brink of civil strife, and my father was turning a blind eye to the fact. I had to do something, or watch my father's rule fall to pieces. Driven by necessity, I did something cruel, but necessary. It was the only option for me at the time. I faked my own death and escaped beyond the borders of Mirkwood."
Legolas gasped, staring at her. "You did what!" he said, wondering if he had heard right.
"Wouldn't you have done the same?" she asked him quietly, "If you were in my place?"
"I…yes…" he said, trailing off as he realized that he would have. He glanced at her. You are your father's daughter. No, you are my father's daughter.
"I always lived near Mirkwood so I could stay informed of what was happening inside it. Of course, the Kingdom was delighted by my death. Probably the only people who mourned my loss were you and my father, though you were too young to understand what had happened except that your darling 'Iva' had gone."
Legolas stirred at this. The name 'Iva' rung a bell in his memory that Ivana had not. He looked at her intently, eager to hear more.
"If you missed me, I missed you ten times more. I was completely alone, no one had any idea that I was alive, and the entire Kingdom was rejoicing for my death. Can you wonder that I missed you?"
Legolas continued to gaze at her intently. He thought the question was rhetorical, so he did not answer. But to his surprise, Ivana asked the question again; evidently she wanted an answer. Suddenly he realized that she was guilty about something. That she was trying to assure herself that what she had done was natural, and not wrong. He nodded his head, amazed that such a firm, strong-minded woman could doubt herself in this fashion.
"Two years passed, and my loneliness grew on me. I was waiting, waiting for any opportunity that allowed me to see you and my father. And then, the opportunity came. The King announced that he needed a tutor for you, to teach you Elvish Literature, and the History of Middle-Earth, and Geography, and Arithmetic. So I-"
"Elchim!" Legolas said, staring at her in startled comprehension, "You were Elchim!"
"Yes, I was," she said, feeling happy that he had realized.
"You- your hair was black! And you always wore that veil…"
"I colored my hair black, and I told father that the veil was to cover a deformity which was the result of an orc attacking me and maiming me for life. I think it was that, more than the fact that I knew the subjects well that persuaded him to choose me. He must have felt sorry for me, and I must have reminded him of me. In a manner of speaking."
"This is so…strange," Legolas said, "You were…Elchim was always my favorite tutor. You taught me for- how long was it?"
"Ten years. You were fifteen when…" She trailed off again, at a loss for what to say.
"When what? Why did you leave? Father never told my why Elchim left, though I asked till my throat was sore. Why did you leave?" Legolas asked loudly. His voice rang out over the treetops, and the forest seemed to hold its breath. Ivana put her finger on her lips to quiet him. It would be disastrous if anyone heard this.
"I left because I tripped over a root one day," she said in a continued whisper, "And the veil fell back from my face. Your father's back was turned to me at the time, so I escaped discovery, but it made me realize I was putting the Kingdhad discovered me then, he would have insisted on putting me on the throne instead of you. As it was, he had pronounced you the heir on the day when I faked my death, but I did not know what he would say if he found me alive. So I left."
"But I missed you more than ever as the years passed. I was waiting for another opportunity to come when I could see you again, and then you announced that you were going to train teenagers in warfare. It was a golden opportunity for me. You did not recognize me because you were too young to remember what I looked like, and the other children were not born in that time so they didn't know either. And you know what happened after that…"
Legolas certainly knew what happened after that, but he needed to clarify a few things. "So the reason you hate me so much…is because I more or less stole your father and kingdom from you?" he asked.
Ivana snorted at this, "Legolas, for one thing I do not hate you, but you can't exactly expect me to respect you and call you 'sir' without finding it highly amusing, when I was the one who held you when you learnt how to walk."
Legolas flushed at this, the image was slightly unsettling not to mention embarrassing.
She laughed at his expression. "Secondly, it was my choice to leave the Kingdom, not yours. You did not make me leave my family, so why would I hate you?"
"But I lost you your throne," Legolas answered.
"Do you really think I cared about losing the throne?" Ivana asked, "As long as the Kingdom's future was in capable hands, I was perfectly happy if those hands were not necessarily mine."
Legolas realized that continuing to express guilt would be slightly ridiculous on his part; Ivana would only utter the same assurances again. "You're so good at archery because you had to live in the wild for all these years?" he asked to change the subject.
"No, I'm good at archery because I was trained by ada, just the same as you."
Legolas thought about this for a moment, once again stunned by the revelation, though a moment later he chided himself the thought. Of course his father would have taught her! And no wonder she was as good as him.
"I'm sorry," he said suddenly.
She gave him a questioning look.
"For treating you badly, I'm sorry," he explained hurriedly, "I was not always kind to you while teaching…I yelled at you a lot…"
"But you also praised me when I deserved it," she said in a low voice, "Though anyone could see that I got under your skin rather too often for the good of our 'relationship' at that point. The bad treatment was partly my fault too. I have realized that I have too much pride for my own good. If I hadn't found calling you 'sir' half as amusing as I did, then things might be better between us."
"They might still be," Legolas said in a tentative tone, "If that is what you want?"
"I want it, of course, but I do not think we can. It will not be easy to meet each other very often," she said earnestly, taking his hand. The gesture surprised him, because she had made a great show of hiding her emotions while telling her story. In fact, this was the first time she had shown him any of her emotions so openly.
"But why?" he asked. "Why can't we meet every now and then?"
"Because if ada finds out that I am alive, then he will try to make me his heir again-"
"Which he should," Legolas finished for her, "And I think you should be too."
"No, I should not," she answered, "Because that will plunge Mirkwood into more darkness than already shrouds it. Remember, the orcs were heading towards Dol Guldur, which means that there could be more of them there. This will have to be looked into; ada will have to put more patrols on the south side of Mirkwood to prevent orcs coming. Goodness knows how many are there already. And after all this, if ada declares me the heir, Mirkwood will not survive civil strife as well as the growing threats from orcs."
"Ada has a right to know, Ivana. He doesn't even know that you are alive. He-"
"He must never find out," Ivana said firmly.
"But he will," Legolas countered, "Even if I keep it secret, he will still find out, because the other children are not going to keep the fact that a female got hurt on this trip a secret. Well, they would if I asked them to, but that would be lying to the King, and I won't burden them with that."
Ivana went ashen, "Oh Valar," she groaned, "I forgot about that completely. What am I going to do? If the kingdom finds out that I'm alive, then they will force ada to throw me into prison for the rest of my life. Because I-"
"Deceived the royal family," Legolas finished in a despairing tone.
"It's even worse than that," Ivana said miserably, as another horrifying thought struck her. "I did not just deceive the royal family once, but thrice. I faked my own death. I disguised myself as your tutor. And I fooled you into believing that I was a minor. The Kingdom will never hear of letting me live after this. They will kill me."
"And that will kill ada," Legolas said quietly, despairingly. "Whatever are we going to do?"
…
Above them, Linnor sat frozen on a tree branch, unable to believe what she had just heard.
…
TBC…
Hello people! So now you know about Ivana. And yet, I managed to leave you on a cliffie. I rock, don't I? (covers ears as reviewers start hissing and booing) OKAY! So I don't rock.
First off, I'd like to say thank all my reviewers for getting me, for the first time in my life, past the hundred review mark. THANK YOU! You have no idea what this means to me. Well actually, some of you do, if you write yourselves. LOL.
Second, if any of you are interested, Ivana has gone through so many identity changes that it is seriouslyfunny that I even know who she is.First, believe it or not, she wasn't supposed to exist. When I did bring her to life, she was supposed to Legolas's half sister, AND she was supposed to die from the stomach wound after telling Legolaswho she was in a dramatic dying conversation. That version had Ivana as the rightful heir to the throne, but Thranduil had an affair outside his marriage, and Legolas was supposed to be illegitimate. Thranduil's wife forgave him, and then she and Ivana went and lived in the borders of Mirkwood to protect Thranduil's name. And she died, but I've forgotten how. It was a long time ago.
Then, I decided that that was just TOO dramatic, plus none of you wanted Ivana to die, so I decided to make Ivana Leoglas's nanny (as in nurse, not grandma). But that wasn't working either, so I came up with this. So now you know what a complex person Ivana is. (snorts).
Hope that didn't confuse you too much. If it has, Ivana is Legolas's adoptive sister, maybe his adoptive mother, his teacher, and possibly his friend. I just know that's left you'll completely befuddled.
Third, I got caught in a flood on Tuesday. It's been raining really heavily in my city these days. And the drains have gotten all clogged, and water level rose even on the main road. It rained 94 cm on Tuesday alone, which is a record breaker for any city in India.
I got caught in all this because I had to leave college when it was pouring. I luckily went with two friends, but one of them decided to take a short cut. We got stuck there and had to walk back to the main road in knee deep water. Then we took another auto, and then got stuck again. Waded through waist deep water at one point. Climbed onto a school bus, and moved two inches in ten minutes. Got freaked by the rising water, and decided to walk before it rose too much. Finally, I got to my friend's place three hours after I'd started, while the other guy walked it home coz it was ten minutes away. There was no power, but my friend's family was really kind to me and let me stay the night. The next morning, my dad drove some way,walked down the main road, picked me up, then we went back home by car.
My mum had a worse time. She spent the night in office (poor thing) and then it took her five hours to reach home. She walked most of it, and even waded through neck deep water! Freaky!.
Anyway, enough rambling from me. If you want to know more I'll tell you next update.Review replies:
WildBlackWolf and Viva: Thanks for explaining the war. As for the pairing you mentioned, I've read about it in the HP fandom, it's in 'Fallen' by cyropi, so I wasn't totally surprised. I think they make an okay couple. Do you realize that our conversations are growing shorter and shorter? Give me something to respond to, girl!
DarkStarofMirkwood: There's no need to be polite. My penname is actually my nickname at my old school. Long story. I know it sucks, so no need to pretend. I actually got the best of it. There's a girl in my class who's nickname is Wooly Mammoth. Thank you for reviewing.
Lindahoyland: Once again noAragorn this chapter. I miss him too, but I hope the revelation and the cliffie compensated for it. Thanks again for the e-card. It was very nice of you. Though I'm a little surprised that no one guessed that Ivana was an adult, I know that it seems obvious to me only coz I'm writing the story. Something I should have figured out a long time ago.Oh and you're right about the modern language. I'll try harder. 'I figured' was a stretch, but Frodo does say "I'm alright. I'm not hurt." in the first movie. Are you sure alright'snot Middle Earthean?
Eleniel of the Stars: You are my 100th reviewer! Yay! Thank you! Also, I never said Hindi movie songs were weird. I said they'd be weird by most of my reviewers' standards. I agree they're not all of it is good, but I love A.R. Rahman's music especially. If that has any meaning to you. By the way, where did you hear the music? You're not Indian are you?
Hershey.xoxo.kisses: Yes you were my 101th reviewer. And that's great coz the 101th dalmation was always the cutest. And I know that didn't make any sense, but seeing as how you seem to have a peice of my mind in yours, it shouldn't be difficult for you to figure it out. Sort of. I don't know what the hell I'm saying!
Black Shadow: Thanks for reviewing!