The soldiers happen upon a body sometime in the night. At first, their reactions are unchanging, the same blank gazes emptying out through their eyes, for they have been conditioned only to see the corpses of orcs and their comrades. But as seconds pass, realization culminates into confusion. Who is this girl, half-dressed in rags that match the tones of our armor? they wonder. Speculation meanders amongst their quiet words to each other.
One man gathers the body up into his arms. So light he thinks as he draws what is left of her cloak over the bloodied expanse of her pastel skin.
Another picks a pair of jewels from the mud beside her. He rinses them in the river, and as they begin to gleam again, a crowd gathers about. Their fevered conjecture begins anew upon the sight of these tokens.
The men agree on one point; she is to be taken to their Marshal. He will know what is to be done with her.
If she had appeared as anything else, they would have left her to die. But something calls to these men; some indefinite innocence that bleeds through her garish wounds. The haunted expression on her face does not drive them away; rather, it pains them into pity for this wayward creature.
Moreover, she captivates them subliminally. In their hearts, they see through her alien guise and feel in her the same song that binds them all. She is of their kind, if only in the blood now barely pulsing through her.
A pack of them see to it that she arrives safely in their camp. These men, although having only been in this land for three days, have mastered the terrain of this river. The Anduin is theirs to keep safe, and safe thus far they have kept it.
A league passes beneath their feet. A mass of tents and firelights appears from behind a secluded moor. A camp of what had been three thousand only a day ago has now ebbed to a third of that number. And yet the expanse of what remains is thrilling.
The crowd grows as they pass into the encampment, moving to the heart. Like a wake, they appear behind the ghost they carry.
Men look on with curious eyes, staring at the bare skin and the bloodied hair of the fallen angel. She appears familiar to some, and almost all feel the same, subconscious kinship to this girl. But she remains nameless. An anomaly.
They come to the center of their fortress. Here lie the wounded and the ill. Healers work even in the gloom of a waning moon to recover some of their fading numbers. Bloodshot eyes of those marred now with scars and sutures find more in this body than those that are whole. In her, they see green meadows, twilit groves, the smiles of their lovers whom they dream are still alive. In her damages, they find life once again.
She is carried further, until she rounds a turn in the rows of canvas and soldiers. Feet from the ornate tent that holds their captain, a soldier tears his eyes from the veiled stars and looks over her body. He breaks his solace, his mourning silence, and calls out to her.
Eyes turn to this man and rake over his frame. This is the one they call 'Unsung' in their tongue, for though his eyes carry words beyond their years, he speaks little and sings never.
The one without a song races to the pale wraith in the arms of another. He takes her hand in a bandaged hand of his own and tenderly brushes sweat and hair from her brow with the other.
Furtive glances question his sanity. Do you know her? they ask, or are you merely lost in your grief as you have been these last few days?
"No," he speaks aloud to their silent inquiries, "This is my sister. This is our Shieldmaiden,"
The healers pry the Shieldmaiden from the hands of bewildered men. Now, they simply watch, for they have found that her wounds are not those that can be healed with poultice or stitch.
Her back is a mass of bruises, from a fall that they have not factored into their list of assumptions. Her forearms are slashed from self-mutilation that she herself will never remember. Her fever persists, but not from an illness or poison that could be prescribed.
Yet, even in these men's ignorance and practicality, they sense in her a breakage and a hemorrhage that was not born of flesh or bone. Though they do not understand it, for they possess none of the skills that might have mended her ailing mind, they recognize it.
All they do now is wait, watching her when they can but leaving her for other patients more often than not. But she is not alone, for the one who has called her sister stays at her side.
He whispers in a language that none in that camp would have recognized. It is a language he has only recently learned, and he speaks it hesitantly, as if he is unsure of the power of his own words. But the affect is the same whether he pronounces them or not, for that is the way of that noble language.
Eventually, the spoken Sindarin hymns rouse the woman from her coma. She awakes in a panic, her eyes rolling this way and that. The healers rush to her side, and the man is pushed away. He watches in a bastion of hope and despair as too hot broth is poured down her throat, as her nude body is prodded by the hands of strangers. She is gagged when she resolves to screams. He feels the terror exuded from her writhing body. And though he knows better than to intercede, he cannot help it.
He pushes past all of them and looks into her eyes. A moment passes in which she is silenced, in which the room is thick with silence.
The wild terror vanishes from her face as she remembers.
"Lenwe," she murmurs, and she reaches up to stroke his face as the rest of her body recoils. The paradigm of her actions is noticed by those that look on the two, and looks of alarm pass between the them. A pair of healers pull the man from the tent, and the rest return to the girl.
Brought forth to Lenwe is Elfhelm, Marshal of these men. He looks over the elf-man with a guarded look.
"She has awoken?" A rhetorical question meant for the healers, for Elhelm looks with disdain towards the shrieks coming from the tent.
"Yes, lord," one replies, lowering his head.
"She will not quiet unless they leave her be, Marshall," Lenwe says, begging that the stern knight will hear him out.
Elfhelm looks over him. He has dwelt with men long enough to learn the difference between truth and lies. In Lenwe, he cannot be certain of what he sees.
But the elf-man cares not, for the screams have grown both louder and greater in distress.
"She despises healers, Marshal. Calahdra has hated them ever since she was seven,"
In this, Elfhelm sees truth ring through. He nods once to the healers. "Call them off. Let us see to her,"
The girl lies now in a pained sweat. Though she is in more anguish than she has ever felt before, she is grateful that the healers have left her.
Two shadows stand yet before her though. When she has calmed herself, she looks up into their faces. She recognizes both.
And Elfhelm sees in her the matured reflection of a child he once saw riding before Cahlan of Fenmarch. Before him now is what is left of Rohan's dawn, a glimmer that drowns behind the veil of night.
He no longer doubts her, nor her brother.
But he sees also what the healers have suspected. A dark plague eats away at her, as though she is already dead and rotting.
And as the two watch her, see her laborious breathing, the weight laying yet upon her brow, she falls once more into something that is a mockery of sleep.
Elfhelm turns and takes Lenwe by the shoulders. "My healers have not the ability to heal her wounds, for this malady is of the sort that buries itself ever deeper. You must take her to the Houses of Healing. You must ride swiftly, Calhan's son. We cannot let our Shieldmaiden perish,"
Lenwe agrees, but he says nothing. Born in him now is hope, and in Lenwe's heart is the hope for Redemption.
A day has passed, and in a secluded hollow at the easternmost foothills of the White Mountain lays a fire, a horse, and two restless siblings.
Calahdra stares listlessly at stars she cannot see. The emotion that registers in her eyes is of an eerie, indefinable kind.
In Lenwe is a warmth, but also a fear. He has not seen his sister in over three years, and he rejoices in having found her again. But this wraith is not his sister. This silent figurine is but a memory of her.
He has tried to make her speak, to pull words from her. But she has lost the will.
She does not know why she has survived, nor does she wish to know. She had been so sure of her death. As sure as she had been of so many things that had once been good and pure in her life.
And she does not know why the evil she faced before has not returned to claim her mind, for her defenses are but a comical remembrance now. Her thoughts lie open for all to read.
One fact has piqued her shallow musings, however. Although she can clearly read the thoughts of her brother's steed, she cannot read Lenwe's thoughts. She muses upon this, wondering if it is because he simply has nothing to think about. But she grows bored with speculation, and instead falls back into a landscape of blanket blackness.
Lenwe notes this, and he fears as he has all day that she will not return from it.
For Lenwe has discovered that he, too, has gained his sister's ability. He, too, can read minds and speak to beasts.
Calahdra had once though it to be a gift. Now they both live with the opinion that it is a curse.
"Cal?" he asks, shifting to look at her from across the fire. She lies on her side, her brother's cloak propped behind her blackened back. Shadows dance over her wan face.
She blinks, and turns her head to peer at him. The nickname, having not been used since he last used it awakens something within her that survived.
For a moment, Lenwe sees this light, this flash of gold. He pounces on it.
"Are you sure you are not hungry?"
Calahdra considers this question. In truth, she is. But she cannot come to answer as such.
The will to die, though having faded to naught but the strength of a single heartbeat, is still the strongest impulse within her.
Lenwe flinches as she comes upon this realization.
"Why?" is his automatic reaction.
"Why?" she repeats, now turning to lie on her stomach. Lenwe watches in wonder as she accomplishes the feat, unable to offer to help. The sound of her voice, for only the second time, has rendered him silent.
She raises an eyebrow, perching it on a forehead that is splattered with mud. Lenwe takes in the sight, of that normally sensual expression now on the feverish face of one who is dying. Her emaciated body is drowning in one of his tunics, and her arms are bound by blood stained bandages. If he had not been her brother, Lenwe doubts that he would have thought that there was hope for this creature.
"Why do you wish to die?"
Calahdra contemplates answering this question. She decides against it, but the words fall from her mouth anyways.
"Because I was a threat, Lenwe. I chose to desert my men before I was given the chance to betray them,"
Lenwe notices the use of the past tense. He finds comfort in this.
"Betray them how?"
Calahdra licks dried blood from the craters of her lips. "Sauron was going to make me his queen,"
She expects Lenwe to laugh, to declare her mad, to say anything other than what he does.
"I understand, then,"
Calahdra begins to cough. Lenwe crawls to her and lifts her up into his lap. He lets water fall down into her throat from his canteen.
She is so weak, yet so vibrant, he thinks. And she is.
For something within her, something with all the spirit in the world is fighting for her. And though it could not possibly be a will of her own devise, it is one that dwells within her as any other part of her does. It is something made of gold and viridian and the fey storm clouds of a passing gale.
Lenwe pushes this thought away, and sees to it that she is better. He pulls his saddle to them, and lays her chest down atop it. She rests her chin beneath a wad of one of his tunics.
Calahdra gives him a grateful smile. It surprises them both.
Lenwe pokes at the fire with a branch he has stripped of leaves.
"I have the ability to mind speak, Calahdra. I have felt the Enemy's presence,"
Calahdra looks through benevolent flames towards her brother. She, too, understands. For before the Enemy had said a word to her, she had felt him grow at the back of her mind.
She wonders when it was that Lenwe learned of this, and when it was that he learned Sindarin.
Lenwe answers to this. "When father fell, I returned home. I arrived in Fenmarch a day after you left, Calahdra. I stayed with mother until but five days ago, when the Muster was called,"
Calahdra is mesmerized by the flames, and how different they are from those that she saw in her waking nightmares, and she no longer looks at Lenwe. But she listens.
"I went through your things, read your books. And as I studied from them, I realized everything I am. I have learned so much…,"
Lenwe halts, suddenly overtaken by emotion. He does not cry, for that is not the way of ellyn.
Calahdra feels this, for it pours over the ramparts that he himself has made and into the night between them.
"I have changed, Calahdra. I am not who I once was,"
Lenwe stares at her through the fire. His eyes are filled with guilt, with love, with flames brighter than those that were between the siblings.
"Huor and I did a terrible thing to you, Calahdra. We committed a detestable sin against our own sister. And neither of us had the heart to repent while we had the chance,"
Lenwe rounds the fire pit again. He kneels before her, and takes her hand gingerly.
"I swear to you that I do not go a day without hating who I was because of it. But I have changed in immeasurable ways. I am a better person for it.
"Forgive me,"
Calahdra looks into the unrecognizable eyes of a brother whose gaze used to haunt her every step, her every dream.
She sees change, and she sees truth.
She sees the same things in herself. She feels, in that moment, as though she is capable of healing. She feels that if Lenwe is capable of such a thing, than why isn't she? For a moment, she feels the light that Lenwe had seen.
"Please, forgive me," he repeats. Calahdra is torn from the borders of her epiphany.
She speaks in truth when she says "I cannot forgive you, Lenwe, for you ruined a part of me that cannot be healed. Nor do I have it in me to forgive anyone, for it is not a strength that I possess,"
Lenwe breaks away from her, demolished by the words he should have been expecting to hear.
"But I can move forward, Lenwe. I can put the past aside. My trust will be hard to gain again, but if I have learned anything," Calahdra says this with a mournful smile, "it is that we all deserve second chances,"
And she remembers the suicide, the falling, the drowning. The memory comes back to her in full. She relives her life in a blink of an eye, and her mind, as if in reverse, folds up into something tangible. The shards fuse back together.
And though she is not healed, she is whole. Though she is still empty, her skeleton has reformed.
Lenwe feels this surge, and he witnesses every moment of it as her thoughts lay unguarded before her, and he is rendered silent in the marvel of it.
He watches as his sister runs her hand over her temple. She sighs in mixture of emotions; grief, joy, perception, confusion.
Calahdra forces herself to see through the memory that had blinded her before she passed into that void. Calahdra remembers the cliff, and she remembers Meleare screaming out as she pitched herself over stone and granite. And Calahdra remembers the lashes holding her to her saddle coming undone as air rose past her.
She does not remember the splash, nor the pain, nor the hours spent in a coma before she was washed up upon the banks of the Anduin.
"Meleare," she says, as if in a fog, "Where is Meleare?"
Lenwe gulps. This is a question he has been wishing that she will not ask.
"She did not survive, Calahdra. We found her body a ways down the river,"
Pain is undoubtedly clear in her eyes. But the fact that her eyes are clear now, and not masked as they had been before by misery and fever, is cause enough for at least a little joy in Lenwe's heart.
He takes her hand. "Meleare loved you, Calahdra. Never before was there a rider and a horse with a greater bond. Grieve for her, but only for a little while, for she was a great war horse with many feats to find joy in, not pain,"
Calahdra knows this. And she does grieve for only a moment, staring blankly at the leather of the saddle before her nose. She breathes in the smell of horse and sweat and blood. She closes her eyes.
When she opens them, she watches as sparks shoot from the dying fire as it collapses in on itself.
"Goodbye, my dear. I loved you as you shall never know. Find green pastures now, and fields of carrots, and many stallions to hassle and chase and curse."
A broken smile crosses over a scarred face. Its brilliance taints the shadows still in her eyes, and the light begins to grow behind the wells of tears.
But Calahdra does not cry.
For a soldier does not cry for the fallen.
They startle some time in the night to the braying of Lenwe's steed. At first, Lenwe draws arms and passes a knife to Calahdra.
They find that it is only a family of voles that has startled the horse, and they rest easier.
But the excitement has awakened them, and they cannot fall asleep.
Lenwe rekindles the smoldering fire into a small glowing oven.
Calahdra looks over Lenwe's horse and realizes that not only does she not recognize it, but that it is also of a breed not native to Rohan.
Lenwe reads her thoughts, but he is loathe to tell her the story unless she asks of it.
And she does ask of it. "Who is this new horse? Where now is Fealoch?"
Lenwe sits cross-legged beside her. "It is a terrible tale, Calahdra. And in Fealoch's passing, another fell…,"
Pain burns behind amber eyes. Calahdra reaches to a hand resting limp on Lenwe's knee.
"Huor is dead, Calahdra. Huor and Fealoch fell upon the Pelennor,"
Calahdra is stricken. She had no love for either name, but Lenwe's loss is clear. Huor was his closest friend, and Fealoch his closest steed. To lose both was nigh unbearable.
"Huor had fallen out of my favor, Calahdra, for when he returned with tidings of you from Edoras, he had disgraceful things to say. I tried to have him see reason, to understand that your obligations were to the King, not to your family. I tried to convince him to repent against what we had done to you and how we had treated you after. But he would have none of it.
"I was not given the chance to speak to him as we had as brothers before he died, Calahdra. And when Fealoch fell, too, I felt as though I had lost everything,"
Calahdra ignores the incredible pain in her back and rises to embrace him. At first, he moves to push her back down, but he settles into her hold.
"I am sorry to hear of their deaths, brother. I wish I could ease your grief,"
Lenwe shakes his head. "Grief shall pass,"
"But tell me then of the Pelennor, Lenwe. We triumphed?" Calahdra speaks with the vibrancy that had shimmered before. Lenwe sees to it that she has settled down before he shares the tidings of war.
"Indeed we did. The city was almost overtaken, nearly breeched when we arrived at dawn. Such an army, I have never dreamed of, for the enemy was tens of thousands strong and was composed of every fell beast and race of men….And we ourselves nearly failed had it not been for Aragorn son of Arathorn,"
Calahdra's eyes grow unnaturally wide. She feels shallow and light, as if she might float away. "He lived? But he entered the Dwimorberg!"
"Aye, and with him he brought an army of the undead, as well as an elf and a dwarf of the likes of which I have never seen before. And with them, we vanquished all, save the Nazgul,"
Calahdra is overcome by this news.
He is alive
The words ring over and over, like a bell that is not stilled by the force of gravity. In fact, each toll grows stronger, threatening to consume her.
But a voice of reason, perhaps that of the Wisdom she has earned, holds back the tide.
You shall cross that bridge when you come to it…if you come to it at all.
Lenwe sees her confusion clear, and he continues.
"The last stands of men and our allies now hold in Minas Tirith, preparing for the final battle, whatever that may be. King Eomer ordered Elfhelm into Anorien with three thousand knights, to hold the Anduin,"
Wisdom does not hold back Calahdra's panic this time, however.
"King…Eomer?"
Lenwe curses himself over and over, and shall continue to do so for the rest of his days. This was the news that he was supposed to break gentlest of all. For the Shieldmaiden above all others would be most aggrieved to have lost her King.
Lenwe struggles to console her as he tells her of Theoden's valiant passing. He tells her also of Eowyn's valor and the Hobbit's bravery.
But Calahdra does not hear the many synonyms for the word 'courage'. She merely matches the names to death and sees nothing else.
For a moment, she slips back into despair. But Lenwe catches her.
"You have a new King, Calahdra. You are bound to Eomer, now,"
Lenwe knows that there is little hope of Calahdra's oaths being renewed what with her deserting, for her story is too unbelievable for many to understand. Even if her alibi was believed, she has committed a grievous crime.
But Lenwe gives her a purpose anyways. He lays before her a false hope.
And though Calahdra is lured from despondency with this knowledge, her grieving does not cease. Her fever returns.
This time, Calahdra does not play the part of soldier.
This time, Calahdra plays the part of daughter, grieving for the loss of her father.
Her tears fall mercilessly until the fire dies out again.
When morning breaks, the two ride upon Lenwe's steed, Dacil. Calahdra falls into a fitful slumber before her brother. She dreams of all the many variations of Theoden's death. Every once and a while she screams, and Lenwe has to calm her before Dacil will go any farther.
Despite these halts, they arrive in Minas Tirith in only a few hours. By now, the Pelennor Fields are almost clear of bodies. Left now is merely a smog that hides the great pits of burning corpses and wrecked war machines from view.
The road is mostly empty, save the occasional messenger or host of those seeing to the cleansing of the field.
Lenwe fears that he will not be admitted through the ruined gates of the White City. To his surprise, no one stops him upon entering. For the truth is that no one expects anyone to willingly enter the disastrous city as of late.
Dacil passes through the many levels of the city in silence. Smoke and mist hide the riders from the view of others, and in the primordial gloom of the city, no one cares to notice them.
The city of Minas Tirith seems to be a ghost town, saved in physicality but not in spirit.
When at last Lenwe comes to the Sixth Level of the city, he finds himself in the mitts of a miracle. This level is teeming with the injured and their healers.
But there are no soldiers nor Captains of men to be seen. For the Great Host of the West emptied out of the city two mornings ago, and now trudges into the East.
All that remains in the city now waits in trepidation as their doom is decided by pawns that lie leagues away.
Dacil halts before the Houses of Healing, and the famished horse is enthralled by the smells of herbs wafting from the nearby gardens.
This is the last place in Minas Tirith that resembles life.
"Bair Nestad," Lenwe sighs. His arm fastens around his little sister, willing her to thrive once more in this place.
Before she is taken from him by another crowd of healers, Lenwe whispers sweet words to her.
"You have changed much, Calahdra. A Shieldmaiden you have become, and a harsh soldier. But I see more in you. I see tenderness, and vivacity, and the ability to forgive.
"If there are days ahead for any of us, then I see in them better days for you, my dearest sister,"
And Lenwe, having found his Redemption, places a kiss upon her brow and her jewels around her neck. He imparts with her, also, enough protection to ward off Sauron's will should he try to invade her mind again.
For war has changed them both, and where it had hardened some, it broke away the shells of others, and revealed in them something greater than all the strength in the world.
It has revealed love.
Chapter End Notes:
Review pleases! You will have my sincerest gratitude.
Also: Perspective and tense change. I know it came out of nowhere, but it was the only way that I knew how to express what needed to be expressed. Do I write 3rd person/present tense well, mediocre, or poorly? Please tell me, because I kind of like it and I think I'll use it more often in the future, but only if you think I have a knack for it.
Finally, a reviewer asked why it was specifically that Calahdra wanted to commit suicide. She asked me to recap the reasons why, so here it is: There is no one reason, but rather a culmination of several things.
Ultimately, Calahdra knew she was going to die, because that was the assumption that every soldier of Rohan rode to the Pelennor Fields with. But she was also quite depressed, and so while others feared death, Calahdra embraced it. And then came Sauron's attack on her mind. She knew that if he succeeded in fully entering her thoughts, not only could she possibly become his puppet and lead her people under his sway, but also that he would learn of Rohan's "sneak attack" on Minas Tirith. She knows that she must kill herself before he does so, but in her panic and paranoia she continues on running throughout the night until her last confrontation with him.