Eldarion
When I wake up in the morning he is gone.
The fire still burns low but the clearing is empty and I wonder . . . What do I do? Carry on and follow him, or take this as a firm rejection and return home? Legolas follows us both at any rate so am I really needed?
He has obviously thought on my story of last night, the mess that was Aderthron, and decided it was too much to forgive after all. It hurts, but really, I do not blame him.
I prod the fire as I ponder what to do. . . Where to go . . .
"Good morning!"
He makes me jump a mile as he drops unexpectedly out of the trees in front of me. He is bright, as he was not last night. He radiates light and he laughs, a silvery song of pure joy, at my surprise.
I thought you gone!"
Completely the wrong thing to say.
He was joy filled and luminous and it all bleeds away.
"I told you I would watch over you. Why would I then go?"
"You were angry." Clumsily I attempt to scramble back to where we were moments before.
"Angry, but not irresponsible or neglectful," he frowns. "This is what I meant last night, Eldarion. We do not know each other. If you knew me you would know I would not leave my post no matter how angry I was." He deposits his pack upon the ground with a sigh.
"I went to get my things," he continues with no small amount of sarcasm. "Which I hid when I came in search of you. They were weighing me down if there was—infact—a threat. I was always in earshot." He bends over to fumble for something within his pack.
"I thought you might be hungry."
He pulls out something, is it mushrooms? I cannot tell. And he turns his back to me, prodding the fire into life as he kneels beside it. I have no way of seeing what it is he does.
"I am sorry, Estel."
"I wish you would stop saying that," he grumbles. "I am sick of it." In a moment he has gone from a shining beacon of happy light to sullen moodiness.
"What else is there for me to do?"
He leans back upon his heels then and turns his head to look back at me over his shoulder.
"I have decided," he says, "we need to go backwards. That is what I want. To go back to the beginning."
So even though he is still here, he may as well not be. A sinking feeling devours my stomach.
Back to the beginning means barely speaking.
"If that is what you want."
There is no point arguing with him. I did all my arguing last night. I have nothing left to say.
"It is what I want." He says determinedly, turning back to his cooking. "I think it is the best way to do things."
"So I will go home."
There is nothing else to do it seems.
But his head whips round to look at me with astonishment and there is confusion in his eyes.
"Do you not want to come with me to my woods?"
He has wrong-footed me. I am not sure what it is he is trying to tell me or what it is he wants and I am beginning to get frustrated by it.
"Well what is the point?" I ask him. "Legolas follows after you. You do not need me to escort you all the way because as he said, you are quite capable. I may as well go home."
And his shoulders slump. He turns back to the fire with a sigh.
"I suppose there is no real point" he says quietly. "I thought you might enjoy it. You could relax. It would give you a chance to be you without having to worry about your men and what they might think. It would be a good place to get to know each other. I realise you would have to go back when Father and Aragorn-the-King go in search of Gimli." It is the heaviest of sighs he makes then. "If they ever do now, of course. Which looks unlikely."
"Of course they still will!"
Every word he says becomes more confusing. There are many things in that last statement I want to question but the suggestion either my father or Legolas would let the other go off to find Gimli in their own is a ridiculous one.
"Did you not see them last night?" He says. "Where were you? Did you not see how angry your father was?"
"He is angry, yes, but not at the expense of the two of them finding Gimli."
"Well it will be a very miserable trip," Estel says despondently, "while they hate each other."
"They do not hate each other. This is what they always do, how they always are. They will work through it." I tell him but he rolls his eyes at me in disbelief.
"Do not make me feel better by lying! I grew up with my father's stories of their wonderful friendship."
"Well then he left some things out." Too late I remember Estel has never seen my father and Legolas together before. He does not know anything about how they usually are with each other. "For every tale you have heard from Legolas about their closeness I can tell you another when they have been at odds. Misunderstandings and falling outs are their speciality. The strength of their friendship is that they always overcome them."
But he snorts in disbelief.
"Do you try to tell me Father lies? Why would he do that? To what end?"
"Because he remembers their good times better than the bad? Because it is easier to tell a small son about adventures and companionship than the time he stormed out of Minas Tirith and sent all Father's letters back unopened for a month? Because he realises they have been occasionally guilty of behaving like children with each other and did not wish to confess that to you, his own child?"
He stares at me, his mouth set in a stubborn line of scepticism.
"Because when someone is dead you only wish to remember the good and not the bad, Estel," I add.
"I would not know." He says in the end. "I am a Valinor elf, remember. I know nothing of death."
I do not believe that for a second.
"On the contrary," I tell him, "I think you know a lot about death . . .and grief. Growing up as Legolas' son how could you not, but I will explain. All those years I lived after my father died I did not remember our disagreements. I did not remember all the times he frustrated me or all my moments of resentment. I remembered his intellect, his skill with people, his strength. I remembered how safe he made the world feel. I would sit in his study to try and capture his presence so it would guide me to the right decisions. All our bad moments simply melted away. Perhaps that is why Legolas has not mentioned them to you? But whatever the reason is I tell you they did have them. I know last night was one of their worst but I have seen similar. They always overcome."
He hesitates. Has he heard me?
"My Father has waited a lifetime for this reunion," he says at last, "and I have ruined it for him."
"If anyone has ruined it, it is me. I was the one who pleaded with Legolas to keep quiet about Ithilien and I was the one who revealed it in possibly the worst circumstances because I was angry. But I tell you—with confidence—this will not inflict so much as a dent on our fathers friendship in the end. It runs too deep, it is too important to them for that."
He is silent then, bent over the fire, poking aimlessly at whatever it is he cooks.
"That smells delicious." I tell him, and it does.
"Breakfast."
I can not identify the concoction he hands me. Vegetables? plants? something he has collected from the forest floor? Warm and steaming, wrapped up in a broad wide leaf. He catches me peering at it suspiciously.
"Do not worry, it was Erynion who taught me to cook, not my father."
He makes me laugh out loud. I cannot help it. It was a standing joke with both my father and Gimli that Legolas' cooking was terrible. It was always Gimli who took charge of their meals when they went travelling.
"I am sorry," I tell him. "I just remember Gimli. He complained so badly of Legolas' food. He would not let him cook anything!"
"Well he was right then."
I am rewarded, out of nowhere, with a brilliant Estel grin. Short and sweet, just a flash of one.
"Then I am glad you learned from someone else."
It is a relief to see that smile no matter how fleeting.
"One of the benefits of having three fathers." He signs but he says it with affection and settles himself down, with his own food, next to me—but not too close. "There is always one of them who is an expert at whatever it is I need to know. Of course then there are the times all three of them are unhappy with me. That is not pleasant."
"Three fathers seems rather complicated to me." I reply. "I struggle to communicate with just one." and he looks across at me in surprise.
"But didn't you have exactly that?" he asks.
"What do you mean?"
"My father describes himself as being as close to you when you were small as Erynion is to me. He tells stories of things he did with you which sound very much like fatherhood to me. I used to resent it, that you had such happy times with him while with me he was always a step away from misery. I felt you got the best of him as a father."
"But—" I am about to tell him he has it wrong, but does he? I am accosted by a rush of my Legolas memories. Legolas on his hands and knees playing in the mud with me, Legolas patiently teaching me the mysteries of the growing of plants, Legolas teaching me the bow, how to communicate with his elven horses and calm them, how to climb to the highest treetops, his patient, gentle talks with me after the Aderthron disaster as I attempted to organise my emotions. It does feel like fatherhood. An elven fatherhood.
Then there was Gimli. Solid, sturdy, with gruffness that was surprisingly comforting. I saw less of him but I remember clearly my childish excitement when I did. He would seek me out the moment he arrived in Minas Tirith, with Legolas in tow or without. He would take me to the walls to wonder at their craftsmanship, and to the caves outside the city where we clamboured and adventured and he illuminated me on the secrets of the stone. He was closer to my size and he would take me upon his broad shoulders when I was very small and we would race against the long legged Legolas, charging at him in mock battles. I feel a surge of grief for that brusque, no nonsense dwarf I have not seen for so long that chokes my words.
It is not Gimli I speak of however when I answer.
"Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I did have three fathers in a way though I have never thought of it like that. But the time with Legolas was not always as joyful as he has obviously described it to you. The sealonging always hovered at the edges of it. At first I did not know what it was. I did not understand why my parents became so upset when he spoke of the sea, and he so often did. Every conversation we had he could turn to a discussion of the sound of the waves on the shore, the gulls in the sky. His obsession with the sea confused me.
"It would distress my father and also my mother. They worried deeply about it when it was at its worst and consumed him. Gimli was the best at turning his thoughts from the waves and back to the trees and the woods. In the end, when I was grown, it weighed him down completely until it swallowed him whole. When he left us to sail to Valinor he was giddy with it. It was as if the sea could smell the nearness of its victory and exploded all over him. He was delirious with joy that day he left. He could see nothing but the sea, hear nothing but the gulls. It was to be the last time he saw me . . .forever . . . And yet he did not see me at all. He left Elrohir behind who he adored and yet he laughed and cavorted in the face of Elrohir's misery. Gimli, Maewen, Erynion, all mourned the loss of the land yet Legolas acknowledged none of it. It was a cruel thing to see and I am sure—when he arrived in Valinor and the sea-longing left him—he must have regretted that so bitterly, that it stole from him those proper goodbyes."
His eyes, as he looks at me, are horrified.
"I did not know. My parents never mention the sealonging. I knew it brought Father across the sea but, that he did that to Elrohir . . . "
"It was not Legolas who did that." I am as firm as I can be in my response. "The sea-longing had him by the throat. It must have been devastating when he arrived on the other side and the sea abandoned him, finally allowing him to be able to think clearly."
I hope he understands.
"I am sorry you have felt as if I received the best of Legolas and you missed out but you have to know, if they have not told you the details of the sea-longing then you do not know the half of it, Estel."
"Was he ever happy?" he asks me.
"Oh of course he was happy." He looks so miserable I would like to touch him, to take his hand, but I think that would not be accepted. "He had a smile that would light the world, but it was always a struggle, Estel, as long as I knew him. A struggle he kept hidden for the most part."
"That is my father," he sighs. "Always hiding his struggles. And now I have added to them."
There is a pause then, a silence that drags on until I feel compelled to break it with the first foolish thing that comes into my head.
"Well at least your food tastes good."
And against the odds he laughs.
"Yes I may be a failure of a son but I can cook!"
I should give him a lecture about that negativity. I should boost his spirits by elaborating on what a wonderful son he actually is, but I think doing that will lose me this glimpse of lightheartedness that I love so much.
Instead I return to the security and comfort of Gimli.
"Gimli would be proud," I say. "He would exclaim that the fool of an elf has somehow managed to produce one more skilled than he and just as well so he no longer has to starve."
He rewards me with a splutter of laugher and a smile that is genuine.
"I want to meet Gimli," he says. "I think I would like him."
"I know you will like him."
And I hope against hope that day is not too far away.